ABP Live News Shots: Manipur Violence, EAM Remarks To Pak, King Charles III Coronation — Top Headlines From The Week

ABP Live News Shots: From Manipur violence to the crowning ceremony of King Charles III — bringing to you all the big news that made headlines this past week, in case you missed it.

New Delhi: Arsoning and clashes in Manipur remained in headlines over the past week while worrying visuals of violence surfaced on social media. Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar's unexpected resignation from the post of party president was also widely discussed, besides Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari's arrival in India for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting of foreign ministers. In poll-bound Karnataka, both BJP and Congress released their manifesto to woo voters. Meanwhile, the wrestlers' protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar saw the grapplers in a clash with Delhi Police personnel. In world news, King Charles III was crowned the new King of Britain.

INDIA

As many as 55 columns of the Army and Assam Rifles were deployed to contain widespread rioting that broke out across Manipur between tribals and the majority Meitei community, displacing over 9,000 people. The Manipur government issued 'shoot at sight' orders to contain spiralling violence. Manipur Governor Anusuiya Uikey authorised all district magistrates, sub-divisional magistrates, and all executive magistrates/special executive magistrates to issue shoot-at-sight orders "in extreme cases whereby all forms of persuasion, warning, reasonable force etc has been exhausted". The Centre also dispatched teams of the Rapid Action Force (RAF), a specialised force to handle riots, for deployment in violence-hit areas of the Northeastern state. Violence first erupted in the Torbung area in Churachandpur district during the 'Tribal Solidarity March' organised by the All Tribal Student Union Manipur (ATSUM) to protest the demand of the Meitei community, which accounts for 53 per cent of the state's population, for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar Friday slammed Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Zardari Bhutto’s remarks on the abrogation of Article 370 and said it is “history” as he called his counterpart a “promoter, justifier and spokesperson of a terrorism industry”.  This came after Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal called India’s move to scrap Article 370 and 35 A that took away the special status of Jammu and Kashmir “unilateral and illegal” while he told New Delhi to go back to the pre-August 2019 position. According to Jaishankar, Bilawal came to India as a member of the SCO as part of multilateral diplomacy, refuting claims that his Pakistani counterpart did that to achieve some kind of a “breakthrough” between India and Pakistan. He said India has no issue to discuss with Pakistan except for one and that is “when will Pakistan vacate its illegal occupation of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. That is the only issue.”

The core committee of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) rejected the resignation of Sharad Pawar who quit the post of the party president in a surprise move this week. The committee passed a proposal requesting Pawar to continue to lead the party. After announcing his decision to resign as NCP president, Pawar said a committee of party leaders would decide on the election for his successor. After his proposal was rejected, Pawar withdrew his resignation and said, "I can't disrespect your sentiments. Due to your love, I am respecting the demand that was made to me to withdraw my resignation and the resolution that was passed by senior NCP leaders. I withdraw my decision to step down as the national president of NCP". The former Maharashtra chief minister, however, went on to mention that there needs to be a succession plan in the NCP.

WORLD

King Charles III was crowned as the new King of the United Kingdom on Saturday. The Coronation Ceremony took place at Westminster Abbey in London. The event marked almost seven decades since the last coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Following the ceremony, he became the 40th monarch to be crowned at Westminster Abbey. 74-year-old Charles Philip Arthur George became the United Kingdom's new King after her mother, Queen Elizabeth II passed away in September, last year. He had been the Prince of Wales, the title reserved for future British kings-in-waiting, for the longest term in the history of the UK's monarchy. King Charles III was crowned on the Coronation Chair. According to the news agency AFP, the chair was made in 1300-1301. It enclosed the Stone of Scone or Stone of Destiny, which was used for centuries to crown the kings of Scotland.

The US has rejected the 'ludicrous' claims of Moscow accusing it of involvement in an alleged drone attack on the Kremlin. Moscow's allegations were followed by a warning by the country's deputy foreign minister stating that both the powers were on the precipice of an 'open-armed conflict'. US National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby denied Russia’s 'ludicrous' claim that the alleged attack took place on the directions of the US. Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy also denied allegations that his country carried out an alleged drone attack that Russia termed as an assassination attempt on President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin said two drones had been used in the alleged attack on Putin's residence, but had been disabled by electronic defences, news agency Reuters reported. “The Kremlin has assessed these actions as a planned terrorist act and an assassination attempt on the president on the eve of Victory Day, the May 9 Parade,” Russia's RIA news agency said, as quoted by The Guardian.

Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Marikovskyi punched a Russian representative after the latter snatched the Ukrainian flag from him during the 61st Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC) in Turkey's Ankara, over 14 months after Russia invaded Ukraine. Marikovskyi was taking photographs, holding the country’s flag when an unidentified Russian representative walked towards him and snatched the flag then walked away. Marikovskyi chased the Russian representative to get the flag back and began hitting him. He was intercepted by other officials after he snatched the flag back and the two men were separated. Others present at the spot were seen filming the incident.

SPORTS

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Union Sports Minister Anurag Singh Thakur launched the mascot, logo, jersey, and anthem of the Khelo India University Games 2022 (KIUG) at the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan in Lucknow's Gomti Nagar on Friday (May 5). Besides state capital Lucknow, the 3rd edition of the Khelo India University Games will be hosted by Noida, Gorakhpur and Varanasi, from May 23 to June 3; opening ceremony for The Games is scheduled for May 25 at the Babu Banarasi Das University in Lucknow. 

Football's global superstar Lionel Messi is all set to leave Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) at the end of the 2022-23 season. The same has been informed to the Ligue 1 club by Messi's father Jorge, who doubles up as his agent. Messi's contract expires after this season and a new club is being sought for the 35-year-old months after he led Argentina to a historic FIFA World Cup win in Qatar in December last year. Messi's future at the club was in doubt, especially in the manner in which he was suspended by the team for two weeks for an unauthorized trip to Saudi Arabia without taking permission from the PSG management.

LSG mentor Gautam Gambhir and RCB stalwart Virat Kohli landed themselves in a controversy after Royal Challengers Bangalore secured an 18-run win over Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in their IPL 2023 match on Monday (May 1). The duo got engaged in an intense verbal banter and had to be separated by players and umpires. It all started from an argument that took place between Lucknow pacer Naveen-ul-Haq and Virat Kohli and later Gambhir joined in. Both Kohli and Gambhir were fined 100% of their match fees for breaching the IPL Code of Conduct.

BUSINESS

In a surprise move, Go First airlines, owned by Wadia-group, said on Tuesday that it was cancelling all its flights for three days -- May 3,4, 5 -- in view of a severe fund crunch. The sudden decision by the Mumbai-based low-cost airline, earlier known as Go Air, has left both passengers who had booked tickets as well as crew members in lurch. The development marks the collapse of another airline in India after the failure of Jet Airways. Jet Airways has been grounded since 2019 due to financial issues.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has recently issued new guidelines for investment advisers (IAs) and research analysts (RAs) prohibiting the use of technical and legal terms or guaranteed returns in their advertisements. This move is seen as a response to the growing number of complaints against misleading information and edited screenshots shared by 'finfluencers' to attract new business leads.

Another Black Friday for the stock market as two key equity benchmarks, Sensex and Nifty, today plunged due to heavy selling pressure in index heavyweights after report suggested that MSCI has decided to use an adjustment factor of 0.5 while computing the weightage of the merged entity. The S&P BSE Sensex tanked to a low of 61,002 towards the fag end of the trading session, while finally closed with a significant loss of 695 points at 61,054. On the other hand, the Nifty 50 lost 187 points at 18,069.

TECH

Apple has reported its March quarter results and the tech giant reported revenue of $94.8 billion in the first quarter (Q1) of this year, which is down 3 per cent YoY, but the company posted a profit of $24 billion, beating analysts' expectations amid a slowing economy. Bumper iPhone sales contributed $51.3 billion to Apple's profits in this quarter. "Today, we're reporting revenue of $94.8 billion for the March quarter, which was better than our expectations. We set an all-time record for Services and a March quarter record for iPhone. We were particularly pleased with the performance we saw in emerging markets and achieved all-time records in Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE, as well as a number of March quarter records, including in Brazil, Malaysia and India," Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in a statement. Apple iPhone sales increased 1.5 per cent to $51.33 billion. However, Mac sales declined more than 30 per cent to $7.17 billion.

US-based video conferencing platform Zoom has grabbed a pan-India telecom licence that will let it offer telephone services to enterprise customers. Zoom has been offering voice and video conference services through its website and app. With these licences, the company will be able to offer its cloud-based private branch exchange (PBX) service 'Zoom Phone' to multinational corporations (MNCs) and businesses operating in India, the company announced. "ZVC India, parent firm Zoom Video Communications, Inc, has received the Unified License with Access pan India, NLD National Long Distance, and ILD International Long Distance from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT)," the company said in a statement.

Google India on Tuesday confirmed that Pixel 7a will be launching in India on May 11, which is next week. The tech giant shared a post on Twitter revealing the launch date of Pixel 7a in India. The company is likely to unveil the Pixel 7a at its annual Google I/O conference on May 11. The device will go on sale on e-commerce site Flipkart. The Pixel 7a will succeed the Pixel 6a and has been much anticipated by fans and tech enthusiasts alike. According to several reports and leaks, we have an idea of the specs, features and details as well as colour options of the Pixel 7a with the latest leak suggesting a brand new coral/orange colour option. As mentioned earlier, this phone will be to be the successor to last year's Google Pixel 6a, arguably the best-value and camera smartphone of last year. Google Pixel 7a is likely to be powered by an in-house Tensor G2 chip, paired with 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB of internal storage. The device may feature a 6.1-inch full-HD+ OLED screen with a refresh rate of 90Hz. The Pixel 7a may also come in a Charcoal Black variant.

HEALTH & SCIENCE

There are more than 6,000 mammalian species on Earth, each of them different. Over the past 100 million years, mammals have evolved to adapt to their surrounding environment, resulting in diverse features. However, certain parts of the genome have remained the same across species and over millions of years, a large international collaboration of 30 research teams has found. This suggests that these regions are important, and the researchers believe these could hold the key to understanding human disease better. The findings were recently published in 11 papers in the journal Science. The collaboration, called Zoonomia Project, investigated the genomic basis of shared and specialised traits in mammals. A genome is the complete set of genetic information in an organism, and provides all of the information the organism requires to function. It consists of two broad parts. One is the genes, which are responsible for manufacture of protein molecules by the organism. The other part consists of regulatory elements. These regions do not code for proteins, but instruct other genes where, when and how many proteins they must produce.  The scientists hypothesised that mutations in these regions of the genome may give rise to new diseases, or may be responsible for some unique mammalian features.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday, May 3, 2023, approved the world's first respiratory syncytial virus vaccine. The vaccine, called Arexvy, is manufactured by British pharmaceutical company GSK, and has been approved for use in individuals aged 60 years and above in the United States. Arexvy is an adjuvanted respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, which means that it has an adjuvant, or an ingredient that helps create a stronger immune response to vaccination. The aim of the vaccine is to prevent lower respiratory tract disease caused by respiratory syncytial virus in older adults, the FDA said in a statement. The vaccine is planned to be launched in the US before the 2023/2024 respiratory syncytial virus season, the period when outbreaks of the virus tend to occur, and people are at increased risk of severe or life-threatening infections caused by the pathogen. In most regions of the US, respiratory syncytial virus season begins in the fall and peaks during winter, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Star Seen Swallowing A Planet For The First Time, May Herald A Possible Fate Of Earth

When a star nears the end of its life, it expands to several times its size, and swallows up everything in its wake, including planets. This is what will happen to our Sun, although that is still a long time away (5 billion years). When that happens, the Sun will absorb its nearest two planets (Mercury and Venus) and possibly even Earth. All this is understood from theory, and has been deduced from the remnants of many giant red stars that astronomers have identified over the years. What had never been observed until now, however, is the actual process of a dying star consuming a planet. Now, this has finally happened. In a study published in Nature on Wednesday, astronomers have described the first observation of an ageing star swallowing a planet. A statement from NASA describes the process: “After running out of fuel in its core, the star began to grow in size, shrinking the gap with its neighbouring planet, eventually consuming it entirely.” The event, which has been named ZTF SLRN-2020, appears to have taken place in our own galaxy, some 12,000 light-years away, near the eagle-like constellation Aquila, according to details published by MIT, whose researchers were involved in the study. The planet has been estimated to be about the size of Jupiter, and its orbit is even closer to its star than Mercury’s orbit is to our Sun. 

ENTERTAINMENT

Shah Rukh Khan took to his social media handles to announce the new release date of his upcoming high-on-action drama 'Jawan'. The Atlee directorial will have the superstar opposite south actress Nayanthara. Fans are thrilled to witness SRK on the celluloid once again as the film gears up for its theatrical release on September 7. Makers announced the new release date with a short video that shows a bandaged SRK flying high in the air amid a thunderstorm, with a spear in his hand. The makers also released a new poster announcing the film's release date.

Amid all the controversy around the recently released film 'The Kerala Story', the Sudipto Sen directorial has been made tax-free in the state of Madhya Pradesh by CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Announcing the decision, the Chief Minister tweeted, "The film 'The Kerala Story' exposing the horrific truth of terrorism is being made tax-free in Madhya Pradesh." Releasing on over 1300 screens, the film starring Adah Sharma earned approximately Rs 8 crores on the first day of its release. The film stars Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani, and Siddhi Idnani in the lead.

Anushka Sharma will honour women in film at the Cannes Film Festival 2023. Along with Hollywood actor Kate Winslet, she will honour women in film at the Cannes Film Festival 2023, which is scheduled to take place from May 16 to May 28. Emmanuel Lenain, who is the French Ambassador to India, took to his Twitter handle and dropped a picture with cricketer Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma. “A pleasure meeting @imVkohli and @AnushkaSharma. I wished Virat & #TeamIndia all the best for the upcoming tournaments, and discussed Anushka’s trip to #CannesFilmFestival,” he wrote. Filmmakers, artists, and film fans go from all over the world for this eagerly awaited celebration of cinema this year. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Sonam Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, and other Indian celebrities have walked the Cannes red carpet in the past.