Tamil Nadu news live: CM announces Rs 39 cr memorial for Karunanidhi

An Rs 39-crore memorial for late DMK president and former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi will be constructed at the Marina on Kamarajar Salai in Chennai in recognition of his efforts to create a "modern Tamil Nadu," chief minister M K Stalin announced on Tuesday. The "Kalaignar Memorial" on the famous beach, where he has been laid to rest after his demise on August 7, 2018, will come up on 2.21 acres of land, Stalin informed the state assembly. (PTI)

The central agencies are on high alert after the arrest of Sri Lankan national Suresh Raj or Chinna Suresh and Soundararajan from Kochi and Chennai in the last week of July. The National Investigating Agency (NIA) sleuths who are probing the seizure of five AK 47 rifles and Rs 3000 crore worth of drugs from a Sri Lanka boat off the Kerala coast on March 25, 2021, has found that the arrested were handled by a Pakistani national and that the two were involved in smuggling the drugs for garnering funds to the now-defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Earthquake of magnitude 5.1 reported at 12.35pm in Bay of Bengal at a depth of 10km off Andhra coast

At a time when Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are struggling to fix the reservation quota beyond 50%, only Tamil Nadu has managed to have 69%. Decades of struggle and timely state intervention ensured that TN was ahead of others. The original communal government order (GO) passed by the provincial government led by the Justice Party in the Madras Presidency was designed to check the near monopoly of brahmins in government jobs and seats in public higher education institutions. (on the ground that brahmins constituted only about 3% of the population while the backward communities constituted 89%).

The state government will build 190 check dams, four subsurface dykes, six barrages, two regulators and 12 anicuts this fiscal, covering all districts. The water resources maintenance division will get 69 drones for topographic surveys on water courses, sand mining and investigation for new projects which are until now carried out manually, said water resources minister S Durai Murugan in the assembly on Monday.

Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) has developed a motorised wheelchair vehicle called NeoBolt that is capable of moving at a maximum speed of 25kmph even on uneven terrains. The lithium-ion battery-powered wheelchair can travel up to 25km for every charge. The team led by Prof Sujatha Srinivasan, department of mechanical engineering, which designed and developed the wheelchair through a startup called Neo-Motion, said the wheelchair is convenient, safe and a lowcost mode of outdoor mobility compared to other vehicles including modified scooters.

The Tamil Nadu Health Department is gearing up to conduct serum surveillance survey in ten districts of the state following the decline in the number of Covid-19 positive cases. The health department will announce the date after the approval from the state government. The previous serum surveillance study was conducted in June in Virudhanagar, Chennai, Madurai, Tenkasi, Theni, Erode, Coimbatore, Nagapattinam, Namakkal, and Karur. While the first five had the highest serum positivity rate, the last five had the lowest. The department will be conducting the serum surveillance test in the top five and the bottom five districts and is for reconfirming the testing details of the previous survey.

After more than 100 days of being a no-go zone for the public, beaches, cinema theatres, and parks reopened on Monday. People swarmed the beaches, but the short notice caught managements of other facilities off guard. Several theatres, parks and swimming pools did not open as maintenance work was still on. Neither the governmentrun SDAT pool in Velachery and the Marina swimming pool nor private pools across the city opened.

Chennai metro rail might finally get the boost in footfalls it has been looking for as commuters from North Chennai, fed up with the repeated delays and the sluggish speed of suburban trains, are switching over to metro services at Wimco Nagar. Suburban trains get delayed quite often on Gummidipoondi-Central route as they are either run slowly on the last stretch of the route after Wimco Nagar or halt before Basin Bridge station during the morning rush hours. Pressed for time to report to work, many get down at Wimco Nagar and switch to a metro train that’s a 5-minute walk away.

Greater Chennai Corporation has issued notices to 231 hospitals for not sharing data on patients treated for flu-like symptoms and Covid-19 patient discharges. In a meeting on August 13, corporation commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi had asked all private hospitals to share information on patients with influenza like illness (ILI) and Covid-19 patients. “We had shared the e-mail ID gccpvthospitalreports@chennaicorporation.gov.in with a format in which the data had to be mailed every day. But we haven't been receiving them,” said Bedi.

One lakh city residents will be vaccinated on Thursday at nearly 400 locations including all UPHCs, Amma Clinics and corporation buildings. Greater Chennai Corporation has already sought vaccines from the state public health department for the massive drive and will deploy its complete health staff to execute it.

The government on Monday launched round-the-clock centres in medical colleges and government hospitals across the state to increase the pace of vaccination against Covid-19. Inaugurating a facility at Omandurar Government Hospital in Chennai, health minister Ma Subramanian termed it the first such attempt in the country towards vaccinating the maximum population amid apprehensions of a third wave. “It will benefit those who frequently travel for occupational reason. The flexible timing will particularly help those who give lame excuses of not having time out of their work for vaccination,” he said. The first of these centres, set up in 55 places across the state, was opened by chief minister M K Stalin at the DMS complex in Chennai on Saturday.

The final investigation report into the January 29 near-miss involving an AirAsia India flight from Ahmedabad to Chennai and an IndiGo flight from Bengaluru to Vadodara over Mumbai airspace has found that the two aircraft came within 8km of each other with 300ft vertical separation between them. The report also looked into the changes brought about due to the pandemic which had restricted manpower at the Mumbai air traffic control.

Tamil Nadu Finance Minister, P.T.R. Thiagarajan has said that the previous AIADMK government had raised petrol prices by five times during its one decade rule from 2011 to 2021. He was responding to a question of AIADMK legislator, K.P. Munuswamy in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Monday. The Finance Minister said that while the previous government had raised the petrol prices five times, it did not have the courage to reduce it even once.

Multiplexes and theatres in Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu, as well, will start receiving film lovers from August 27, nearly four months after cinema halls were closed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tamil Nadu Theatre and Multiplex Owners Association said on Monday. With the state government relaxing COVID-19 lockdown regulations permitting theatres to re-open from today, theatre owners are bracing for a grand re-opening this week-end hoping to draw a steady trickle of movie lovers. On Saturday, Chief Minister M K Stalin announced extending the ongoing lockdown in the State by another two weeks till September 6 but permitted the re-opening of theatres with 50 per cent occupancy. And along with it, the government allowed beaches and parks to be thrown open to the members of the public from today.

The Tiruvallur district administration on Monday launched a job counselling centre for disabled people. The centre will help find private sector jobs for disabled people and also guide them on self - employment and skill development. Read more

The Madurai district police on Sunday arrested two people for stealing 26 boxes of brandy bottles worth Rs 2.3 lakh from the Ayalankudi Tasmac shop. The stolen liquor was recovered from the two, Sankar and Vijay. Police are searching for at least four others who were invovled in the break-in.

Fifteen Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel on Sunday set off from Kanyakumari on bicycles and will reach Rajghat on October 2 after covering 2,850km across the country. It is part of the commemoration of the 75 years of progressive India under the ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ initiative of the Government of India. The rally was flagged off from the Gandhi Mandapam in Kanyakumari by information technology minister T Mano Thangaraj. The 15 personnel will be accompanied by a 45-member crew from the force to offer food, technical and medical needs enroute. They will cover 70km to 80km a day and will visit places associated with freedom struggle enroute.