From the Newsroom: K Sudhakar takes up health portfolio; US duo win Nobel Economics Prize

In your evening news brief, From The Newsroom, US duo win Nobel Economics Prize; Karnataka Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar takes up health portfolio; Power outage hits Mumbai; Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu tests negative for Covid-19; Supreme Court issues notice to the Centre on pleas challenging the validity of farm laws; govt announces Rs 12,000 crore interest-free 50-year loan to states for spending on capital projects; Hathras victim’s family appears before high court and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh says that China is also creating a dispute at the border with India as if it was part of a mission.

Hi, this is Ahmed Shariff and you are listening to, From The Newsroom— your daily evening news catch up show from Deccan Herald.

Here are the top news of October 12, 2020:

After Pakistan, China is also creating a dispute at the border with India as if it was part of a "mission", Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Monday, as Indian and Chinese troops remain locked in a standoff in eastern Ladakh for over five months.

The Defence Minister, speaking at an online event after inaugurating 44 bridges, said India is not only facing the situations along the frontiers resolutely, but it is also bringing in major development including in border areas.

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Family members of the 19-year-old Dalit woman, who died after allegedly being raped by four men in Uttar Pradesh's Hathras district last month, appeared before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Monday.

The family comprising the victim's father, mother and three brothers was brought amid tight security from Hathras earlier in the day.

The court had on October 1 asked the woman's parents to apprise it of their version of the incident and had also ordered the Hathras district administration to arrange for their travel to the court and facilitate their appearance before it.

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US economists Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson won the Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for work on commercial auctions, including for goods and services difficult to sell in traditional ways such as radio frequencies, the Nobel Committee said.

The duo was honoured "for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats," the jury said.

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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharman on Monday announced a Rs 12,000 crore interest-free 50-year loan to states for spending on capital projects in a bid to boost economy.

Addressing a press conference, she said, out of the Rs 12,000 crore, Rs 1,600 crore will be given to north-eastern states and Rs 900 crore will be for Uttrakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

She said Rs 7,500 crore will be for the remaining states. Rs 2,000 crore will be given to states that fulfill pre-stated reforms.

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The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre on a batch of petitions filed by Chhattisgarh Kisan Congress leaders and DMK MP Tiruchi Siva, challenging validity of recently passed farm laws.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian asked Attorney General K K Venugopal and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to file the response in the matter on behalf of the Union government.

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The Congress in Karnataka on Monday claimed Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa reshuffling his cabinet by changing the Health Minister is proof of the government's miserable failure in handling Covid-19.

Minister B Sriramulu was divested of the Health and Family Welfare portfolio by Yediyurappa today and it was allocated to Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar.

K Sudhakar, who was asked by Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa to take up the health portfolio alongside medical education, said Monday that as a Health Minister he would focus on bringing Covid-19 under control and work towards decreasing the fatality rate in the state.

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Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday tested negative for Covid-19 and is expected to resume normal activities soon.

The Vice President's Office said in a statement that the 71-year-old Naidu, who was tested positive for Covid-19 on September 29, was examined by a medical team from AIIMS on Monday.

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Train services came to a halt in Mumbai in the morning as a grid failure resulted in massive power outages across the city.

The exact reason for the failure was not immediately known, but the Western Railway and the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST), the state-run discom supplying power to the island city, blamed the fault on Tata Power.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday took serious cognisance of the power outage in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and ordered an immediate probe into it.

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That is it today, From the Newsroom. Tune in tomorrow morning for our feature show, The Lead.

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