World

Work starts on turning Adolf Hitler’s birthplace in Austria into police station

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On Monday, workers put up fencing and started taking measurements for the construction work.The police are expected to occupy the premises in early 2026.

Published Date – 06:20 PM, Mon – 2 October 23


Work starts on turning Adolf Hitler’s birthplace in Austria into police station

On Monday, workers put up fencing and started taking measurements for the construction work.The police are expected to occupy the premises in early 2026.

Braunau am Inn: Work started Monday on turning the house in Austria where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 into a police station, a project meant to make it unattractive as a site of pilgrimage for people who glorify the Nazi dictator.

The decision on the future of the building in Braunau am Inn, a town on Austria’s border with Germany, was made in late 2019. Plans call for a police station, the district police headquarters and a security academy branch where police officers will get human rights training.

On Monday, workers put up fencing and started taking measurements for the construction work.The police are expected to occupy the premises in early 2026.

A years-long back-and-forth over the ownership of the house preceded the overhaul project. The question was resolved in 2017 when Austria’s highest court ruled that the government was within its rights to expropriate the building after its owner refused to sell it. A suggestion it might be demolished was dropped.

The building had been rented by Austria’s Interior Ministry since 1972 to prevent its misuse, and was sublet to various charitable organisations. It stood empty after a care centre for adults with disabilities moved out in 2011.

A memorial stone with the inscription “for freedom, democracy and liberty. Never again facism. Millions of dead remind us” is to remain in place outside the house.

The Austrian government argues that having the police, as the guardians of civil liberties, move in is the best use for the building. But there has been criticism of the plan.

Historian Florian Kotanko complained that “there is a total lack of historical contextualisation”. He argued that the Interior Ministry’s intention of removing the building’s “recognition factor” by remodelling it “is impossible to accomplish”.

“Demystification should be a key part,” he added, arguing in favour of a suggestion that an exhibition on people who saved Jews under Nazi rule should be shown in the building.

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Dutch Regulator Rejects Apple's Objections To $53 Million Fine

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Dutch Regulator Rejects Apple's Objections To $53 Million Fine

ACM in 2021 ruled that Apple violated Dutch competition laws in dating app market (Representational)

Amsterdam:

Dutch competition watchdog ACM on Monday said it had rejected objections by Apple against fines of 50 million euros ($53 million) it gave the company over failure to comply with orders to limit the dominant position of Apple’s App Store.

The ACM said Apple has complied with most of its demands to open its App Store to alternative forms of payment for dating apps in the Netherlands, but had not met an undisclosed third element of the conditions related to the fines.

The ACM in 2021 ruled that Apple violated Dutch competition laws in the dating app market and required Apple to allow developers of dating apps to use third-party payment processors.

It fined Apple 5 million euros per week, eventually reaching 50 million euros during the period it failed to comply.

Apple objected to these fines, saying that the regulator had incorrectly defined relevant markets and had overestimated the dominance of Apple’s position in the dating app market.

The regulator rejected all of Apple’s objections in a decision dated July 13, 2023, which was published on Monday.

“We disagree with the ACM’s original order, which degrades investment incentives and is not in the best interests of our users’ privacy or data security,” Apple said in a response.

“As the ACM has denied our administrative appeal, we will appeal to the Netherlands courts.”

The ACM said it would publish the still-undisclosed part of the proceedings objected to by Apple if it won in court.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

India

Post Delhi HC’s order to rename service charge, survey shows 53% of consumers prefer its abolition

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The survey received over 23,000 responses from citizens across 304 districts in India.

Published Date – 06:02 PM, Mon – 2 October 23


Post Delhi HC’s order to rename service charge, survey shows 53% of consumers prefer its abolition



New Delhi: In wake of the Delhi High Court’s recent interim order directing 3,300 members of the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) to replace the term ‘service charge’ with ‘staff contribution’, 77 per cent of restaurant goers prefer its abolition (53 per cent) or making it optional (24 per cent).

LocalCircles conducted a survey to gauge consumers’ opinions on c’s interim order, which aimed to resolve the longstanding issue surrounding the levying of service charges in air-conditioned restaurants.

The survey received over 23,000 responses from citizens across 304 districts in India.

Asked about their satisfaction with the high court’s order to rename service charges as staff contributions, 53 per cent of respondents stated that it was unsatisfactory and called for the complete banning of service charges.

An additional 24 per cent of respondents believed that service charges should be optional.

Only 10 per cent of respondents supported the renaming of service charges to staff contributions, and 13 per cent did not provide a clear response.

Of the respondents, 62 per cent were male, while 38 per cent were female. Geographically, 45 per cent were from tier 1 cities, 32 per cent from tier 2, and 23 per cent from tier 3, 4, and rural districts.

The survey clearly indicates that the majority of respondents (77 per cent) support either abolishing or making service charges optional. This demand arises from concerns about the transparency and use of service charges, with 34 per cent of respondents suspecting that a portion of these charges is used for purposes other than staff remuneration.

Justice Singh’s order, issued on September 5, mandates FHRAI members to use the term ‘staff contribution’ for the amount of service charge they charge customers. However, this charge should not exceed 10 per cent of the total bill amount, excluding GST. The menu cards of these establishments must clearly state that no further tip should be paid after the staff contribution.

The survey also probed respondents’ perceptions regarding how service charges collected by restaurants are utilised. Of the respondents, 34 per cent believed that some of the service charges are used for purposes such as covering breakage, restaurant maintenance, and being distributed among staff, with the remainder potentially kept by management or used for bribes/tips to local authorities. Only 11 per cent of respondents expressed optimism that service charges were entirely distributed among staff.

Another 13 per cent believed that some service charges were used for various purposes, while 42 per cent admitted uncertainty regarding the use of service charges.

The court’s decision came in response to pleas filed by the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) and FHRAI, challenging the guidelines issued by the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) on July 4, 2022. CCPA’s guidelines stated that restaurants and hotels should not automatically add service charges to bills or collect them under any other name, advocating giving consumers the choice to decide whether they want to pay service charges.

In April 2023, the high court stressed on the need for clarity and suggested exploring alternative terminology for “service charge” to avoid confusion. The court also sought information on how many FHRAI members imposed service charges as a mandatory condition and whether there were objections to renaming it.

In response, FHRAI members expressed readiness to change the terminology to “staff contribution.” However, the NRAI disagreed, citing past decisions that upheld the legitimacy of service charges.

The court has listed the matter for further hearing on October 3.

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Mahatma Gandhi Never Received Nobel Peace Prize. Panel Explains Why

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Mahatma Gandhi Never Received Nobel Peace Prize. Panel Explains Why

Mahatma Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and finally in 1948

New Delhi:

Mahatma Gandhi was nominated several times but was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On the eve of his 154th birth anniversary, the Nobel Prize panel explained why Mohandas Gandhi, who became the symbol of non-violence in the 20th century, was never awarded the prize.

He was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was assassinated in January 1948. Failure to give the prize to Mahatma Gandhi before his death in 1948 is also seen by many as a mistake.

In 1937, a member of the Norwegian parliament Ole Colbjornsen nominated him and he was selected as one of the thirteen candidates.

Some of his critics on the panel maintained that Gandhi was not consistently pacifist and that some of his non-violent campaigns against the British would degenerate into violence and terror. They cited the example of the first Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920-21 when a crowd killed many policemen and set fire to a police station in Chauri Chaura in the Gorakhpur district of the United Provinces in British India.

Some, according to the panel, were of the view that his ideals were primarily Indian and not universal. The Nobel committee’s adviser Jacob S Worm-Muller said, “One might say that it is significant that his well-known struggle in South Africa was on behalf of the Indians only, and not of the blacks whose living conditions were even worse.”

Lord Cecil of Chelwood was the laureate of the 1937 award. Mahatma Gandhi was renominated by Colbjornsen again in 1938 and in 1939 but ten years were to pass before Gandhi made the short list again.

In 1947, Mohandas Gandhi was one of the six names on the committee’s short list.

However, three of the five members were very reluctant to award the prize to Gandhi amid the India-Pakistan struggle. The 1947 award went to the Quakers.

Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30 1948, two days before the closing date for that year’s Nobel Peace Prize nominations. Six letters of nomination were sent to the committee – some nominators were former laureates.

But nobody had ever been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously. According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation in force at that time, the prizes, under certain circumstances, be awarded posthumously.

The then Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, August Schou, asked the Swedish prize-awarding institutions for their opinion. The answers were negative as they thought the posthumous awards should not take place unless the laureate died after the committee’s decision had been made.

That year there was no award as the Norwegian Nobel Committee felt “there was no suitable living candidate”.

What many thought should have been Mahatma Gandhi’s place on the list of Laureates was silently but respectfully left open.

Moreover, up to 1960, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded almost exclusively to Europeans and Americans.

The panel explained that Gandhi was very different from earlier laureates. “He was no real politician or proponent of international law, not primarily a humanitarian relief worker and not an organiser of international peace congresses. He would have belonged to a new breed of Laureates,” it said.

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Dutch Regulator Rejects Apple's Objections To $53 Million Fine

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Dutch Regulator Rejects Apple's Objections To $53 Million Fine

ACM in 2021 ruled that Apple violated Dutch competition laws in dating app market (Representational)

Amsterdam:

Dutch competition watchdog ACM on Monday said it had rejected objections by Apple against fines of 50 million euros ($53 million) it gave the company over failure to comply with orders to limit the dominant position of Apple’s App Store.

The ACM said Apple has complied with most of its demands to open its App Store to alternative forms of payment for dating apps in the Netherlands, but had not met an undisclosed third element of the conditions related to the fines.

The ACM in 2021 ruled that Apple violated Dutch competition laws in the dating app market and required Apple to allow developers of dating apps to use third-party payment processors.

It fined Apple 5 million euros per week, eventually reaching 50 million euros during the period it failed to comply.

Apple objected to these fines, saying that the regulator had incorrectly defined relevant markets and had overestimated the dominance of Apple’s position in the dating app market.

The regulator rejected all of Apple’s objections in a decision dated July 13, 2023, which was published on Monday.

“We disagree with the ACM’s original order, which degrades investment incentives and is not in the best interests of our users’ privacy or data security,” Apple said in a response.

“As the ACM has denied our administrative appeal, we will appeal to the Netherlands courts.”

The ACM said it would publish the still-undisclosed part of the proceedings objected to by Apple if it won in court.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Hyderabad

KTR to tour Warangal on October 6

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The minister will distribute cheques to beneficiaries of Kalyana Lakshmi/Shaadi Mubarak, CM Relief Fund, and compensation to farmers who lost crops due to untimely rains.

Published Date – 05:54 PM, Mon – 2 October 23


KTR to tour Warangal on October 6



Warangal/Hanamkonda: Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister K T Rama Rao will visit Warangal on October 6 and lay foundation stones and inaugurate development works. He will also distribute assets to 15,000 beneficiaries at a beneficiaries meeting, said Warangal East MLA N Narendar.

The minister will distribute cheques to beneficiaries of Kalyana Lakshmi/Shaadi Mubarak, CM Relief Fund, and compensation to farmers who lost crops due to untimely rains. He is also expected to distribute title deeds of the double-bedroom houses constructed at Doopakunta.

As part of the preparation for the minister’s visit, Narendar visited the sports ground in Kota on Friday to explore a suitable venue for the meeting, which is expected to be attended by around 60,000 people. He also inspected convenient places for VIPs, constituencies, routes, and parking lots.

Earlier, in the day, Minister KT Rama Rao is scheduled to participate in several programmes in Warangal West constituency and address a meeting at KUDA grounds in Balasamudram. He is likely to inaugurate the Laundromat near GWMC office.

World

1 dead, 2 missing after boat capsizes in southern Philippines

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Xinhua reported citing the chief of the Zamboanga City police Colonel Alexander Lorenzo that the boat left the city’s port around 5 p.m. local time Saturday and was sailing to a remote island in Sulu province for a fishing venture when it encountered big waves late Saturday night, which sank the boat in the waters on the city’s west coast.

Lorenzo said a fishing vessel spotted the ill-fated boat on Sunday morning and rescued 15 people.

Authorities said they have been searching for the missing male crew members aged 50 and 63.

AMK/PR

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Katalin Kariko, Drew Weissman Get Nobel Prize For Medicine

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Katalin Kariko, Drew Weissman Get Nobel Prize For Medicine

Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman will receive their prize from at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10

Stockholm, Sweden:

Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman won the Nobel Medicine Prize on Monday for work on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that paved the way for groundbreaking Covid-19 vaccines.

The pair, who had been tipped as favourites, “contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” the jury said.

In honouring the pair this year, the Nobel committee in Stockholm broke with its usual practice of honouring decades-old research.

While the prize-winning science dates back to 2005, the first vaccines to use the mRNA technology were those made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna against Covid-19.

Kariko of Hungary and Weissman of the United States, longstanding colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, have won a slew of awards for their research, including the prestigious Lasker Award in 2021, often seen as a precursor to the Nobel.

Unlike traditional vaccines which use a weakened virus or a key piece of the virus’ protein, mRNA vaccines provide the genetic molecules that tell cells what proteins to make, which simulates an infection and trains the immune system for when it encounters the real virus.

The idea was first demonstrated in 1990, but it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that Weissman and Kariko developed a technique to control a dangerous inflammatory response seen in animals exposed to these molecules, opening the way to develop safe human vaccines.

Kariko’s and Weissman’s mRNA technology is now being used to develop other treatments for diseases and illnesses such as cancer, influenza and heart failure.

The pair will receive their Nobel prize, consisting of a diploma, a gold medal and a $1 million cheque, from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.

Last year, the Medicine Prize went to Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Paabo, who sequenced the genome of the Neanderthal and discovered the previously unknown hominin Denisova.

Peace Prize to Iranian women?

The Nobel season continues this week with the announcement of the winners of the Physics Prize on Tuesday and the Chemistry Prize on Wednesday.

They will be followed by the much-anticipated prizes for Literature on Thursday and Peace on Friday.

The Economics Prize winds things up on Monday, October 9.

The awards, first handed out in 1901, were created by Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel in his will to celebrate those who have “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.”

Criticism over a lack of gender and geographical diversity has plagued the Nobels over the years.

US-based men have dominated the science fields, while women account for just six percent of overall laureates — something the various award committees insist they are addressing.

Among the names making the rounds for Thursday’s Literature Prize are Russian author and outspoken Putin critic Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Chinese avant-garde writer Can Xue, British author Salman Rushdie, Caribbean-American writer Jamaica Kincaid and Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse.

But for the Peace Prize, experts have been scratching their heads over possible winners, as conflicts rage around the globe.

Some have pointed to the Iranian women protesting since the death in custody a year ago of Mahsa Amini, arrested for violating Iran’s strict dress code imposed on women.

Others suggest organisations documenting war crimes in Ukraine, or the International Criminal Court, which could one day be called upon to judge them.

“I think that climate change is a really good focus for the Peace Prize this year,” Dan Smith, the head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told AFP after a year of extreme weather around the world.

For Tuesday’s Physics Prize, twisted graphene or the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica have been seen as possible winners, as well as the development of high-density data storage in the field of spintronics.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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Vivek Oberoi wishes his “forever saathiya” Priyanka on her birthday

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In the video, a montage of candid moments of Priyanka was showcased. The video also included some pictures of the couple.

Published Date – 05:36 PM, Mon – 2 October 23


Vivek Oberoi wishes his “forever saathiya” Priyanka on her birthday



Mumbai: Actor Vivek Oberoi on Monday penned down an adorable birthday wish for his wife Priyanka Alva Oberoi.

Vivek took to Instagram to post a video of the couple and wrote, “To my soulmate, my better half and my forever #saathiya. Happy birthday my love; today I celebrate you because you have made my life our world together a lifelong celebration! Here’s to forever with you.”

In the video, a montage of candid moments of Priyanka was showcased. The video also included some pictures of the couple.

As soon as Vivek Oberoi posted the video, netizens chimed the comment section with heartfelt birthday wishes. A fan wrote, “Happy birthday to her, I was watching Saathiya movie today again.” Another commented, “Always my favourite.” A social media user wrote, “More Graces and blessings upon her.” Vivek married Priyanka Alva on October 29, 2010, and are doting parents to a son and a daughter.

As per reports, Vivek stated that he fell in love with Priyanka within twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, on the work front, Vivek will be seen in Rohit Shetty’s debut web series ‘Indian Police Force’.

The series also stars Sidharth Malhotra and Shilpa Shetty Kundra.

Vivek and Sidharth will be portraying the lead roles in the series, which will stream exclusively on the OTT platform Amazon Prime Video.