Latest news with #Makar
India Today
3 days ago
- Health
- India Today
Centralised procurement in Delhi's healthcare: A necessary reform facing resistance?
The Delhi government's recent decision to mandate the Central Procurement Agency (CPA) as the sole body responsible for procuring medicines, medical devices, and equipment for state-run hospitals has been hailed as a transformative step toward transparency and efficiency in healthcare delivery. However, the move has reportedly faced resistance from Dr Rati Makar, Director General of Health Services (DGHS), raising concerns about potential vested interests disrupting a system designed to curb corruption and streamline CPA represents a systemic overhaul aimed at fixing a broken procurement process. While resistance from within the system is not uncommon during such transitions, the focus should remain on whether the agency delivers on its promises: fair pricing, timely supplies, and better patient care. If Dr Makar's objections are procedural, they should be addressed transparently. But if the pushback stems from vested interests, it would only reinforce the need for the CPA's stricter THE CPA MATTERSThe CPA was introduced to address longstanding issues in Delhi's healthcare procurement: Price Inflation & Discrepancies: Hospitals previously procured supplies directly or via the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal's cart feature, leading to inflated prices and audit irregularities .Administrative Burden: Doctors and hospital staff were bogged down by procurement tasks, diverting attention from patient care. The CPA centralises demands, allowing medical professionals to focus on treatment .Transparency & Accountability: By consolidating procurement under one agency, the government aims to eliminate price manipulation and ensure compliance with financial regulations .ALLEGED RESISTANCE FROM DGHSadvertisementDespite the CPA's clear benefits, reports suggest that Dr Rati Makar, DGHS, is attempting to obstruct its implementation. While no official statement from Dr Makar has been cited, sources indicate concerns over:Loss of Discretionary Powers: The shift to centralised procurement removes individual hospitals' autonomy in purchasing, potentially disrupting existing Influence of Drug Mafias: Critics speculate that resistance could stem from entrenched interests benefiting from the older, less regulated procurement system .A NEUTRAL PERSPECTIVEWhile the BJP government frames the CPA as a pro-patient reform, the resistance highlights a broader debate:Efficiency vs. Autonomy: Centralisation can reduce corruption but may also slow emergency procurements. The CPA does allow exceptions for urgent needs, but bureaucratic delays remain a concern.
Scotsman
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Scottish stars read Gaelic children's bedtime stories in new BBC ALBA series
BBC ALBA is helping little ones wind down with a new season of Stòiridh, its much-loved Gaelic bedtime story series with the help of some familiar Scottish personalities. Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Stars of the acclaimed drama An t-Eilean, Sorcha Groundsell and Sam James Smith, along with Scotland's Makar, Peter Mackay, chaplain and broadcaster Suzie Roberts and poet Babs Macgregor are the Gaelic personalities lending their voices and storytelling talents to the new series, guiding young viewers into dreamland with charming Gaelic tales. With two episodes airing each week at 5.55pm on BBC ALBA, Stòiridh invites children to cosy up in their favourite aodach-leapa (pyjamas) to hear this season's guest contributors read from some well-known storybooks, with cuddly toys and fun props to help bring the tales to life. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Aimed at 3-6 year olds, the series supports early Gaelic language learning while providing an entertaing evening routine. The season opens with Sorcha Groundsell reading Sin an Dìthean Agamsa! | That's My Flower!, a beautifully illustrated story about a protective bird that tries its best to take care of a precious flower. BBC ALBA - Stòiridh Sam James Smith Talking about her involvement in the new series, Sorcha Groundsell says: 'I'm thrilled to be part of this iconic series reading some of our well-loved Gaelic stories to little ones before bedtime. It's a great way to educate BBC ALBA's younger audiences with Gaelic words they may not be familiar with. 'We hope the new series will help kids – and their parents – get a good night's sleep!' Peter Mackay, Scotland's Makar, adds: 'It's great to be part of this series of Stòiridh; I wish that when I was young we'd had so many different stories - and readers - on TV in Gaelic. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'There are so many great books out there, and I hope each story in the series helps encourage children to love reading, and playing, and messing around with words themselves.'
Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
‘A life of crime taught us how to kill on the front line'
When he pulled a knife and robbed a jewellery shop in President Zelensky's home city of Kryvyhi Rih, the convict and career criminal codenamed 'Makar' was not thinking of a future in the army. Yet since he was freed from prison along with thousands of other Ukrainian convicts last summer on condition they fought at the front, the 47-year-old, now a respected and wounded veteran of Ukraine's 71st Jaeger Brigade, is certain that his life of crime and prison prepared him well for the stresses of war. Makar is proud to have commanded three other convicted thieves — Zippo, Alavarez and Dronik — in an assault team sent up against Russian positions near the gutted city of Vovchansk. 'The adrenaline rush I get in crime
Scotsman
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Muckle Flugga by Michael Pedersen review: 'an extraordinary first novel'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Like all the best adventure stories, Michael Pedersen's debut novel Muckle Flugga begins with a map. It's a map of an imagined island at the far northern tip of Shetland; a small island complete with lighthouse, bothy for accommodating visitors, cliffs, caves, coves, and also unexpected gardens, and wild places. It's to this island that the book's central character, a young Edinburgh writer and artist called Firth, makes what he intends to be a final journey, after he abruptly cancels his planned suicide off the Forth Bridge. He is inspired to live a little more by a visit - as he dangles from the ironwork - from a passing gannet; the bird reminds him of a promise he once made to his old seafaring grandfather - who used to tell tales of Muckle Flugga - that he would go there and paint a gannet for him. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Shaun Murawski | Shaun Murawski So it is that Firth arrives on the island, inhabited only by the fierce widowed lighthouse keeper and his gentle 19-year-old son Ouse; and begins a physical, emotional and psychological journey so vivid, intense, and fiercely tragic-comic that it often threatens to take the breath away. Indeed Firth himself seems to spend much of his time gasping for air, as he is overwhelmed by rain and seawater, pitched by the swaying hammock in his bothy into the bath that sits beneath it, attacked by the ravenous sea birds known as bonxies, or - most significantly - increasingly heart-struck by the beauty, wisdom and genius of the boy Ouse, a quiet lad relentlessly bullied by his distraught father since his mother's death, yet nonetheless filled with an inner poise and creative energy that enables him to survive his father's rages, and even to continue to love him. Until now, Michael Pedersen has been known primarily as a poet; currently Edinburgh's Makar, he has published three powerful collections of poems, as well as his acclaimed 2022 memoir Boy Friends, a study of love and friendship inspired by the death of his friend Scott Hutchison, of the indie band Frightened Rabbit. In Muckle Flugga, though, he delivers an extraordinary first novel, that takes a fairly simple narrative arc - despairing hero travels to a far place, where he rediscovers the will to live and love - and packs it with the most audacious forms of strangeness, including a weird, tangential relationship with the normal timelines of human history. It is difficult to know, on Muckle Flugga, whether we are in an internet-free past where a demented solo lighthouse keeper might avoid the attention of the authorities, in a disintegrating future where such systems are breaking down, or in a parallel reality altogether, where past and future collide in Firth's tormented, whisky-fuelled dreams. What is clear, through, is that Firth's time on the island reconnects him with the natural world in ways that are both comically emphatic and unbelievably rich in brilliant and rotting detail; and that that encounter with the physical extremes of life on Muckle Flugga has nothing to do with 'escape' from Firth's previous city life, and everything to do with a new recognition of the reality on which all life rests. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad For all its geographical distance, Muckle Flugga is intensely linked to the wider world in myriad ways that race and dance through Pedersen's story. There is the lighthouse lamp itself, and its intense connection to the lives of the ships and sailors whom it guides to safety, all filtered through the disturbed but energetic mind of The Father, who tends the light with fanatical dedication. There is the great library Firth discovers on the island, tenderly cared for by Ouse, and rich with stories and histories from across the globe. And there is that strand of Scottish history that links islands and maps and lighthouses through the Edinburgh family of Lighthouse Stevensons, builders of the Muckle Flugga light; and their rebel son Robert Louis Stevenson, the magical storytelling creator of the best loved of all treasure islands, who appears on Muckle Flugga as Ouse's familiar spirit and guardian angel. Stevenson, of course, is also the author of The Strange Case of Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and it's difficult not to see autobiographical elements both in Pedersen's self-mocking account of the briefly fashionable Edinburgh writer in flight from the shallowness of his world, and in his portrait of the strength, steady sweetness and sheer creative genius of Ouse, who designs and makes the most beautiful woollen artefacts Firth has ever seen. Pedersen's first novel, in other words, is as rich in meanings and resonances as a gorgeous painting laden with significant detail. And all of its threads and strands are transformed and re-energised by the brilliant refracting lenses of Pedersen's prose; sometimes tumbling over itself in haste and over-exuberance, sometimes glinting in perfection, but always conjuring up vital new realities, just when we need them most.
Boston Globe
30-04-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
Cale Makar trying to get back on scoring track as Avalanche face elimination against Stars
'I'm not worried about him,' Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said of Makar. 'I think he's going to bounce back with a huge game for us tomorrow.' Makar sets the bar high when it comes to scoring expectations. He entered the first-round series averaging 1.11 points per playoff game, which was the second-highest mark among blue liners in Stanley Cup history. Only Hall of Fame defenseman Bobby Orr had a higher average (1.24). Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The 26-year-old Makar is coming off a regular season in which he had 30 goals and 62 assists. He's just the ninth different defenseman in NHL history to score at least 30 goals. Advertisement In recent days, the honors have poured in for Makar. He's a finalist for the Norris Trophy, an award given to the blue liner voted the best at his position. On Wednesday, Makar, along with teammate Nathan MacKinnon and the Lightning's Nikita Kucherov, were announced as finalists for the Ted Lindsay Award. It's an award given to the most outstanding player in the NHL as voted by fellow members of the NHL Players' Association. Advertisement He appreciates the recognition. But he's focused on Game 6. 'Honestly, I've got to be a lot better,' Makar said. 'There have been glimpses where I've been pretty good. . . . There's a lot of things I can do a lot better. It's do-or-die now, so we've got to step it up.' Makar's not alone as the defensive-minded Stars have locked up the high-flying Avalanche. New forward additions Martin Necas and Brock Nelson have yet to find the back of the net in the series. Same goes for Jonathan Drouin, while Valeri Nichushkin only has one goal. 'Pressure is a privilege, and you earn that pressure,' Bednar said. 'Pressure, a lot of times, can drive the best out of your team.'
