From the Newsroom: Night curfew in Karnataka to begin from Dec 24; India suspends flights from Britain

In your evening news brief, From The Newsroom, National Conference president Farooq Abdullah says forging alliance was tough after leading People’s Alliance for Gupkar Deceleration to victory in DDC elections; Karnataka will impose a state-wide night curfew from 10 pm to 6 am starting Thursday; the curfew will be in effect till 6 am on January 2, 2021, and scientists said that there could be a chance that a new mutated variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus has already made its way into Karnataka.

Here are the top news of December 23, 2020:

After leading People’s Alliance for Gupkar Deceleration (PAGD) to victory in DDC elections, regional National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah Wednesday said that forging alliance was a tough decision “but was taken for larger interests of people of Jammu and Kashmir.

“It was difficult to forge an alliance with the parties that were the rivals of the NC. But a decision was taken in the large interests of people of J&K,” he said while addressing party workers at the NC headquarters.

The PAGD bagged 110 seats in the DDC polls and emerged victorious in 13 out of 20 districts in J&K.

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Like many countries, India has suspended flights from Britain, where cases have soared because of the variant of Covid-19 virus.

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Karnataka will impose a state-wide night curfew from 10 pm to 6 am starting Wednesday. The curfew will be in effect till 6 am on January 2, 2021, Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa announced.

Yediyurappa said that the curfew was being imposed to contain Covid-19, after a new strain was recently discovered.

Highlighting fresh regulations for international passengers, he said that all of them should travel with a RT-PCR test certificate, conducted 72 hours prior to travel.

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Scientists said that there could be a chance that a new mutated variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus which is sweeping through the South of Britain has already made its way into Karnataka through airline passengers.

The so-called B1.1.7 mutated variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus which causes Covid-19 was first identified in the United Kingdom on September 20. However, nearly three months elapsed before UK health officials identified the new variant, with the European CDC estimating increased transmissibility of up to 70%. “It is very possible that it is already here. There have been a lot of flights between the countries since September,” said a veteran genomic scientist who did not want to be identified.

Karnataka has seen a steady number of UK origin flights in Bengaluru International Airport (BIAL) since September. According to BIAL, before the government moved to suspend flights on December 21, six flights from London were arriving at the airport weekly. Since December 1, the state has identified 3,017 passengers arriving at BIAL from the UK.

Source: DHNS/ PTI/ Reuters

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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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