DailyOh! Confusion inundates bridge collapse news
Floods are common in Bihar and so are collapse of bridges.
A day after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and on the day Priyanka Gandhi indicated that not all doors have been shut on Sachin Pilot, Pilot knocked on the doors of the Rajasthan High Court. The knock could have sounded like a bang on the court’s doors given that Pilot was joined by 18 other Congress rebels in the knocking programme. Pilot and 18 others moved court after they were served disqualification notices by the Rajasthan Assembly Speaker. The one door Pilot has clearly stated he is not going to enter is the BJP’s. This has left everyone including BJP leaders confused over which way Pilot would fly.
Pilot will go where he goes but going where you want to go can have serious repercussions amid the coronavirus pandemic. For England cricketer Jofra Archer going where he wanted to go instead of going where he was supposed to go has meant watching the second Test match against West Indies on TV. Archer’s crime? He has breached the biosecurity protocol set for the team. Archer was supposed to be travelling between the Ageas Bowl and Emirates Old Trafford. But it appears he may have forgotten to turn the gas off or left a switch on because of which he stopped en route at his flat in Brighton. As a result he has been dropped from the 13-men squad. Jofra has said sorry though.
Nobody so far has said sorry to actor Rhea Chakraborty for sending hate messages and rape threats her way. To be honest, one really can’t get away with a sorry after threatening someone with rape and murder. Many who are claiming Sushant Singh Rajput was forced to die by suicide are telling Rhea that she should kill herself. Where this bunch of people have hidden sanity and sensitivity should be probed by a high-level probe team. Rhea, meanwhile, has demanded a CBI probe into Sushant’s death. She has directed her demand straight to Home Minister Amit Shah.
Respected @AmitShah sir , I’m sushants Singh Rajputs girlfriend Rhea chakraborty,it is now over a month since his sudden demise I have complete faith in the government, however in the interest of justice , I request you with folded hands to initiate a CBI enquiry..part 1 ..
— Rhea Chakraborty (@Tweet2Rhea) July 16, 2020
Rhea made the demand on Twitter, where Pappu Yadav yesterday said that his demand for a CBI probe in the case has been acknowledged by Shah. While we can verify that the two tweets came from the same two people and not account hackers, it is difficult to say that for all other high-profile accounts.
High-profile accounts of the likes of Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Elon Musk were hacked last night by what Twitter says is social engineering.
The spam message that was tweeted from these verified accounts directed those reading the message to invest bitcoin in the wallet address that was provided in the tweets. The return on the investment, the message read, would be doubled. Now, if you see that kind of a message from Barack Obama or Bill Gates, you are likely to fall for the bait.
The site Blockchain.com, which monitors transactions made in bitcoins, claimed 12.58 bitcoins, worth almost US $116,000 (Rs 87,23,570), had been sent to the email addresses mentioned in the fraudulent tweets.
Now, bitcoins are cryptocurrency and a cryptocurrency is nothing but electronic cash. It is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange. You may say this is not real money, but equally unreal is the money in your accounts. When we think of our money in our account, we imagine wads of notes. Even if we aren’t swimming through it quite like Uncle Scrooge.
But then that is electronic money, unless we withdraw it and turn it into tangible cash and coins.
But let’s talk about bitcoins now because that is what hackers came after.
A bitcoin, our Word Of The Day, is a digital asset. The individual coin records are stored in a ledger existing in a form of computerised database. The owner can transact using the coins. In India, such a transaction is a banned exercise.
But how did bitcoin come into existence? The developer (or developers) developed bitcoin in 2009 under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. It is believed that Nakamoto created the digital currency in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
To help people understand how bitcoins work, Nakamoto came up with a Bitcoin whitepaper.
He explained that each bitcoin transaction has to be verified by a group of computers. These are called miners. In exchange for verifying transactions and auditing the network, miners get bitcoins as rewards. That’s one mine that doesn’t get your hands dirty. But this mine is a complicated one, even if it is slightly less complicated that filing GST returns.
From bitcoins, we want to jump to bridges. Mind you this is only a jumping of topics because you can’t be assured of a safe landing while jumping on bridges. In any case, why would someone be jumping on bridges? That would depend on that someone. Anyway Bihar ki janta remained inundated in confusion over a bridge collapse story.
It all started with RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav attaching a figure to a bridge collapse. Yadav took a dig at his arch rival and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar saying a bridge built at a cost of Rs 263 crore couldn’t stand where it stood even for a month.
This led people to assume that what collapsed was Sattarghat Bridge because it was this bridge that was built at a cost of Rs 263 crore and was inaugurated tees din earlier.
Turns out Sattarghat Bridge is still fine with the water of Gandak river is flowing under it. So what collapsed? The approach road to the bridge which was about 2 kilometres from the main bridge. This approach road bridge is situated inside the embankment area of Gandak.
So, what Nitish inaugurated on June 16 stood fine on July 16. But in 2014, a bridge in Bihar collapsed even before it was inaugurated.
The Basghatta Bridge, that couldn’t stand to see its inauguration, was built by the Bihar State Bridge Construction Corporation over the Bagmati river in Muzaffarpur at a cost of Rs 25 crore.
Poor quality of construction material was blamed for the collapse. Then state road construction minister Rajeev Ranjan Singh did what is expected to be done after such collapses – order an inquiry. An inquiry has been ordered in Sattarghat Bridge collapse too.
From 2014 to 2020, not much has changed in the construction quality of Bihar’s bridges but everyone from Salman Khan to Vicky Kaushal has wished Katrina Kaif on her birthday.
Happy bday Katrina. . pic.twitter.com/LFLVUHGgzk
— Salman Khan (@BeingSalmanKhan) July 16, 2020
We can’t confirm if they have extended gifts too, or it’s the wishes that have to be treated as gifts but we do extend our wishes to the Bollywood actor.
Another Bollywood actor, Kunal Kemmu, is very excited (not because of Katrina's birthday) because his movie Lootcase is releasing on July 31. Why are we talking about it today? Because the trailer released today.
Don’t judge a movie by its trailer because (poori) picture abhi baaki hai. What also came today is the announcement of 17 upcoming originals - films and series - from Netflix. You can see the list here.
That will be all for today.
We will be back tomorrow.