NEWS

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday provisionally attached Rs 1.77 crore belonging to journalist Rana Ayyub in connection with a case of money laundering.

The ED case is based on an FIR registered by UP police last year, where it was alleged that Ayyub collected a huge amount of funds through online crowd funding platform Ketto in the name of relief work but allegedly diverted the funds.

Phone calls, texts and WhatsApp messages to Ayyub did not elicit a response.

The Congress in Punjab is in a bit of a fix as its star campaigner Navjot Singh Sidhu is locked in a rather grim electoral battle in Amritsar East.

Sidhu, also the state party unit chief, made a limited appearance outside Amritsar city. He was seen campaigning in Amritsar Central and Amritsar West seats but nothing beyond.

Reports from his own constituency, Amritsar East, also don't present an impressive picture, as Sidhu, whatever campaign he could do, struggled to pull crowds. Rather, he has been to the Vaishno Devi shrine twice in a week.

West Bengal Transport Minister Firhad Hakim on Wednesday said that the metro services between Phoolbagan and Sealdah will start in March. Hakim, who is also the Mayor of Kolkata, chaired a high-level meeting with various agencies at the office of the Kasba Transport Department on Wednesday to facilitate and discuss Metro projects, Millennium Post reported. The reports stated that Sealdah to Phoolbagan service in the East West Corridor of Metro will start soon.

10 kilometers in 20 minutes: Once the seventh station is added to the existing network, the residents of Kolkata can cover 10 kilometers in 20 minutes. At present, the east-West Metro runs only 6.9 km between Sector V and Phoolbagan.

Despite Covid-induced lockdowns keeping a large number of vehicles off the roads in 2021, Mumbai and Bengaluru have been ranked 5th and 10th in the global ranking of urban congestion during the period while Delhi and Pune occupied the 11th and 21st spots among 404 cities across 58 countries, according to a report by a global location technology company.

However, the congestion level in Delhi during 2021 was 14% less than 2019 while in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Pune, the level dropped by 18%, 32% and 29% respectively, said the report. The four cities featured in TomTom Traffic Index's global top 25 list. Istanbul topped the list, followed by Moscow.