Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has returned to his camp office, Pragathi Bhavan in Hyderabad, on Saturday afternoon after taking a break for two weeks. He held a meeting with the agriculture officials on the comprehensive agriculture policy which would be introduced soon.

During the time when he was not in the Pragathi Bhavan, the Opposition parties staged protests seeking the whereabouts of the CM and also filed a petition in the High Court, which viewed it seriously and reprimanded the petitioner not to “play political gimmicks”. The netizens posted different messages on the social media about KCR’s disappearance from public view.

For the last two weeks, KCR was reportedly confined to his farmhouse, 100 km away from Hyderabad. On June 28, after holding a review meet on the health condition of people in the state, he had been to the farmhouse and returned only yesterday afternoon.

In the meeting with the agricultural officials, he enquired the officials if the farmers had sown the same crops as suggested by the officials and also asked about the acreage of various crops. The officials told the farmers to sow such crops which would give a bumper yield and also help them in getting a remunerative price in the market.

KCR is likely to release a statement after taking stock of the agriculture activity in the state. In the next week, he is likely to meet the farmers directly.

Exactly 24 hours after his arrest, most wanted gangster Vikas Dubey has been killed in an encounter. This incident took place while Vikas Dubey was being shifted from Ujjain to Kanpur via road.

The UP Special Task Force (STF) police started to Ujjain early in the morning in three vehicles. However, one of the three vehicles overturned on the highway. During that time Vikas Dubey is said to have tried to escape. Alerted by this the police have fired at him and in this Dubey sustained injuries and was unable to move.

Having noticed this the police have rushed Dubey to a nearest hospital. But then the doctors have declared him as dead.

This whole episode sounds very dramatic and certainly many will have their doubts. In fact for some this is not a surprise at all as Vikas Dubey’s mother and brother have appealed to the police to kill him for being the most dreadful gangster.

Dreaded gangster Vikas Dubey has been finally arrested by the police. This happened on the wee hours of Thursday morning in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain. Ever since the Kanpur episode, Vikas was on the run and the Uttar Pradesh police have deployed 25 teams to hunt him.

On Tuesday, Dubey was spotted at a hotel in Faridabad and the police reached the place and searched for him at every spot. Then social media was abuzz since last night that he was hiding at Noida Film City and then police reached here too. But much to their disappointment, police could not find him.

Finally Vikas Dubey appeared in Ujjain’s popular Mahankali temple and when he came for darshan, he shouted loudly that he is ‘VIKAS DUBEY.’ The temple security staff have caught hold of Vikas Dubey and informed the same to police. In no time the special task force police reached the temple and took him to their custody.

Vikas Dubey turned a criminal at the age of 13 and so far there are about 60 criminal cases against him.

In a huge blow to foreign students in the United States, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said on Monday that international students whose classes become fully online either have to depart the country or to transfer to a school with in-person classes. The ICE  told international students on student visas that they must depart the United States if their school is going online this fall semester and they cannot remain through the fall semester.

“Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status,” said the ICE in its temporary exemptions for the Fall 2020 semester. “The US Department of State will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools and/or programs that are fully online for the fall semester nor will U.S Customs and Border Protection permit these students to enter the US,” the ICE added. The ICE said this applies to nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students.

With rapid spike in Covid-19 cases across the US, several universities and colleges are asking their student populations to stay home in the fall semester. While some colleges and universities are allowing 40 to 60 percent of their students to return to campus and live in the college residence halls at one time.

Prestigious Universities like Harvard, Stanford are no different. Harvard on Monday announced that it will allow first-year students and some students in special circumstances to be present in the fall, the freshmen will leave in the spring as it will then allow the seniors. Stanford University said it will allow freshmen and sophomores to stay on campus in the fall while juniors and seniors study remotely from home.

Now the statement from the ICE and schools have pushed several international students studying in the US into a great difficulty as large numbers of foreign students are likely to be returned to their home countries. The move is seen as a big set back to the Indian students studying in the US.

The Telangana High Court has shut down on Wednesday as 10 regular and security staff have been tested positive of Covid-19. About 50 people have undergone the tests and out of them ten people’s results arrived as positive.

Also the officials are taking steps to sanitize the entire High Court and its premises while important cases are being heard through video conference. The files of High Court are being shifted to Judicial Academy and then the sanitization drive would take place.

But the officials haven’t informed when the High Court would reopen again. Hyderabad has been in Red Zone of Covid-19 as every day over a thousand cases are reporting from the city. Telangana has over 27,000 cases.

The Shiv Sena today said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had expressed confidence that the battle against COVID-19 would be won in 21 days, but it has been over 100 days and the crisis still persists.

The fight against COVID-19 is more difficult than the war of Mahabharata, an editorial in Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece ‘Saamana’ said, adding that the battle against the pandemic will continue till 2021 as the disease vaccine won’t be available before that.

It expressed concern over India reporting the third-highest COVID-19 cases in the world.It is unfortunate and serious for the country, which is dreaming to become a financial superpower, to report over 25,000 COVID-19 cases in 24 hours, the Shiv Sena said.

We left Russia behind in terms of the number of cases. We will attain the number one slot in this unfortunate area if the number of cases continues to go up,” it said.

The war of Mahabharata lasted for 18 days. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had exuded confidence (in March) that we will win this battle against COVID-19 in 21 days. But it has been over 100 days and the coronavirus still persists and those fighting it have become tired, the Shiv Sena claimed.

Patients are recovering on a big scale in Maharashtra, but the situation in some areas of the state turns one restless, it said citing the example of Thane district, which has been a major COVID-19 hotspot.

The Shiv Sena said several politicians, public representatives, policemen, health workers, and other administrators are getting infected by the disease, and this does not suit the country and states.

“The coronavirus will be there and (we) need to live with it…the vaccine for coronavirus will not be available before 2021…that means (we) will have to live with coronavirus at least till then, it said.

Without naming anyone or any party, the Shiv Sena said questions are being raised as to for how many days the lockdown will continue.

But when you open the door , the “messengers (threat) of coronavirus” is right out there, the Marathi publication said.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has relaxed lockdown restrictions to some extent, but the threat is still not over, the Sena said.

It said the COVID-19 must be fought even though the industries, economy, and lifestyle have been hit hard by the disease.

Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan is said to be unhappy with the TRS government in the way it is handling the Covid-19 crisis in the state. Accordingly, Governor Tamilisai has called for a review meeting on Monday and informed the Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and Health Secretary to make it to the meeting.

However, both the CS Somesh and Health Secretary skipped this meeting citing that they were pre-occupied with already committed appointments. So Governor Tamilisai held the review with the officials who were present as per the allotted time.

With Monday’s review did not go as per the plan, Governor Tamilisai has reportedly rescheduled it to tomorrow. Also the Governor will be interacting with private hospitals tomorrow at 11 AM regarding Covid-19 management and public grievances.

The private hospitals have been charging a bomb from the Covid-19 patients and the Governor will discuss this with the hospitals.

The Andhra Pradesh government has decided to reopen schools all over the state from July 13th. This is a surprising move by the YCP government as earlier the Union Human Resource ministry has said that all the schools would reopen after August 15th.

Initially the YCP government fixed August 3rd as the date for reopening of schools and CM Jagan wanted to launch his YSR Vidhya Kanuka scheme too on the same date. But the government changed its mind and brought the date much closer. It is just a week away from now and it is yet to be known whether YSR Vidhya Kanuka would be launched from July 13th.

As per the government sources, the primary schools will conduct classes once in a week while upper primary and higher school classes will hold twice in a week in the state with restrictions and Covid-19 protocols in place.

Also the YCP government would be introducing bridge courses for students while all the Headmasters and Teachers of all the schools all over the state were asked to update all the registration of students on or before July 10th.

We have to see if the Union HRD intervenes in AP government’s decision as the Covid-19 situation is getting worrisome in the state.