Pioneer in short

strong Tremors Felt In Kolkata

Tremors were felt in Kolkata and the adjacent districts of West Bengal on Friday afternoon, after an earthquake of 5.5 magnitude jolted parts of Bangladesh, officials said. The quake was felt at around 1.22 pm, an India Meteorological Department (IMD) official said, and left people in panic. The temblor was recorded at a depth of 10 km below Earth’s surface. The epicentre of the quake was the Satkhira district of Bangladesh, located at some 100 km from Kolkata and barely 25 km from the bordering areas of Taki in the North 24 Parganas district, he said. There was no immediate report of any loss of life or major damage to property in the state, although employees of some establishments in the northern parts of Kolkata claimed that walls developed cracks as a result of the jolts. Roads in the Parnashree area of Behala in West Kolkata developed large cracks. The tremors lasted for some 10 seconds, throwing people in Kolkata into panic and tizzy, prompting them to scurry out of their buildings and seek the safety of open streets. No aftershocks of the quake were immediately felt after the first bout of tremors.

NCERT seeks return of banned book

NCERT on Friday issued an advisory asking anyone with copies of the banned class 8 textbook that had a chapter on “judicial corruption” be returned to the council headquarters. In a strongly worded advisory, the NCERT also called for all social media posts that carry the chapter’s content be deleted. The Union Ministry of Education on Thursday wrote to the ministries of information and broadcasting, and electronics, asking them to stop the dissemination of a controversial NCERT textbook through digital platforms and electronic media after the Supreme Court imposed a ban on the social science book.