SC allows firms to negotiate with staff on lockdown wages
- The Supreme Court on Friday asked factory owners and other private industrial establishments to negotiate terms and enter into settlements with their workers on the payment of wages during the lockdown period.
- The court urged employers and employees to sort out their differences and resume work in a congenial atmosphere.
- No coercive action will be taken for non-payment of full salary, says top court.
Samples from Lonar lake sent for testing
- A day after the colour of water in Lonar lake in Buldhana district turned pink, the State Forest Department has sent samples to National Environmental Engineering Research Institute in Nagpur and Agarkar Research Institute in Pune.
- State Forest Minister Sanjay Rathod on Friday said the samples were collected and sent for testing after the phenomenon was observed on June 9. The Forest Department had appointed Dr. Milind Shirbhate, a professor at Shankarlal Khandelwal College, to collect the samples and sent them to the research institutes.
Nepal’s Lower House to vote on new map
- The Lower House of Nepal’s Parliament will vote on Saturday on the Second Constitution Amendment, which gives legal status to the updated map of the country.
- Sources in Kathmandu said the Parliament Secretariat had included the last round of discussion and voting by members on the map, which claims Kalapani, Limpiyadhura and Lipulekh of Pithoragarh district, for the day’s
schedule. - Apart from the ruling Nepal Communist Party’s 175 members, the main opposition Nepali Congress has extended support of its 63 member block for the amendment. With the turnaround of the Madhesi parties, the amendment is expected to get almost full support when it comes up for voting in the house, which has 275 members.
New virus cases raise fears in Beijing
- Beijing closed two markets on Friday and delayed the return of primary school students after three fresh COVID-19 cases emerged in the capital — the first after two months of no infections in the city.
- Local authorities announced one new case with no recent travel history outside the capital on Thursday, followed by two more on Friday. The two latest patients are employees of the China Meat Research Centre, city officials said at a daily press conference.
- One of them had travelled to Qingdao in east China within the past two weeks.
Twitter removes accounts linked to China’s campaign
- Twitter on Thursday said it removed more than 1,70,000 accounts tied to a Beijing backed influence operation that deceptively spread messages favourable to the Chinese government, including about the coronavirus.
- The company suspended a core network of 23,750 highly active accounts, as well as a larger network of about 1,50,000 “amplifier” accounts used to boost the core accounts’ content.
- Twitter, along with researchers who analysed the accounts, said the network was largely an echo chamber of fake accounts without much further traction.