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Time of India
5 days ago
- Time of India
Fading boundaries: Encroachments, sewage choke Amber Cheruvu
Hyderabad: The fate of Amber Cheruvu hangs in the balance due to encroachments and sewage. It wasn't too long ago that a man bought a plot of land for Rs 6 crore, only to realise he'd acquired a piece of the Amber Cheruvu. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The incident forced authorities to finally mark the Full Tank Level (FTL) of the lake. However, while the paperwork may now reflect where the lake begins, the ground reality tells another story, one where the lakebed continues to vanish under a steady stream of debris and unchecked construction, as builders push boundaries, quite literally. The construction over the years has also led to a functional road between the water body, leading to its division into two lakes — Amber Cheruvu and Pragati Nagar Lake. "A sewage treatment plant (STP) project launched two years ago came to a halt after nearby colonies resisted pipeline work. As a result, raw sewage continues to gush into the water body, turning it into a toxic cesspool. You can barely stand near it," said Sandeep Raj, a resident of the area. The extent of the combined twin lake boundary is currently at 162 acres. In 2024, a report on the condition of 13 lakes across different locations of the city was submitted by the two-member committee of advocate commissioners to the high court. Amber Cheruvu was one of them. The report revealed extensive encroachments on the FTL and the buffer zone, along with various sewage inlets polluting the lakes. The committee, in its report, also shared details of the fencing around the lakes, walking tracks, CCTV cameras, and sewerage treatment. "There are five encroachments on the FTL and 105 in the buffer zone. Fencing is not completed even on the main roadside, Ring Bund, though completed, but the walking track is not laid. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Cameras are not available, and no lake guards were observed on site. Sewage diversion is not completed. The lake is seen dumped with garbage and sewage water, and the lake has a pungent odour and foul smell," the report read. "In 2014, a preliminary notification was issued, but there was no update on it afterwards. The lake channel connectivity between Ambar Cheruvu and Yellamma Cheruvu near Jayanagar in Kukatpally has almost eroded, owing to the unregulated construction activity. Fixing FTL is not the end; making sure that it is not encroached again is important," said Lubna Sarwath, an environmentalist. Adding to the danger is a narrow strip of road that separates the two lakes. With no barricades on either side, it remains exposed and unsafe, particularly during rains when the lakes swell and visibility drops. Locals worry it's only a matter of time before an accident occurs. Over the years, the twin lakes have caught the attention of officials more than once. But for the people living around them, not much has changed. "Residents say they are grappling with daily health and safety concerns, from clouds of mosquitoes to the overpowering smell that refuses to go away. The problem becomes serious during the monsoon as it floods our cellar. Mosquitoes swarm into the house by 6 pm, and we've even had snakes enter the compound," said Sharon D, a 25-year-old resident of the area. "We have fixed its FTL and even submitted all the information with the report last year, but we need to check if fresh encroachments have come up," said an official from HMDA.
Time of India
06-07-2025
- Time of India
Key member of extortion gang held in city after firing incident
Jaipur: City police Sunday arrested a key member of an extortion gang who fled after opening fire on a police team in June. SHO (Bhatt Basti) Hari Om Singh said the accused, identified as Rajesh Swami, was a close aide of absconding gangster Sandeep Raj and played a crucial role in the June 1 firing incident in Jaipur's Ramnagaria area. A pistol and live cartridges were seized from Swami's possession. Singh said Swami was instrumental in running the gang's extortion operations and provided shelter and logistical support to its members. The gang is believed to have extorted money from gambling rackets, land mafias, and private moneylenders. "They threatened their targets and resorted to firing when demands were not met," Singh said. The same gang was behind the June 1 incident in which Sandeep Raj opened fire at a police patrol before fleeing in a black Scorpio. A senior police official said a dedicated team was constituted to trace the suspects. "After the firing, the Scorpio was hidden in Chomu. The gang kept moving to evade arrest, but Swami was eventually tracked down and arrested from Bhatt Basti," the official said. Police said Swami not only arranged firearms but also managed finances and logistics for the gang. He also dropped Sandeep Raj at Phulera railway station in a different vehicle to help him escape. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Doutor: Manter a massa muscular após os 50 anos depende deste hábito noturno Revista do Homem Saiba Mais Undo During interrogation, Swami confessed that the Scorpio was hidden immediately after the incident to avoid detection at police checkpoints. Police are now intensifying efforts to locate Sandeep Raj and other gang members. Officials said the gang operated with a well-structured network, preying on vulnerable targets and using violence to maintain control. "The recovery of weapons and Swami's confession confirms the gang's organised criminal operations," a senior officer said, adding that more arrests are expected in the coming days.
New Indian Express
25-04-2025
- General
- New Indian Express
It's not success, but a hazard, residents near WTE plant in Hyderabad warn Chennai
CHENNAI: A joint fact-finding report released by activists and civic groups in Hyderabad states that the waste-to-energy (WTE) plant in Jawahar Nagar is the cause for multiple health issues for residents in the locality. The report finds significance as a team of corporation officials and councillors visited the WTE plant on Thursday to study its 'successful' operation. GCC had claimed it to be a success and has been pushing to open a similar facility at Kodungaiyur. The report states that residents living within an 8km radius of the Jawahar Nagar facility live with constant foul odour. The incineration also produces fine ash, which settles inside homes, covering furniture, clothes, and household items, which has aggravated respiratory issues, kidney ailments, skin diseases, and other chronic conditions in the region. The report documents the public health hazards and environmental degradation caused by the WTE plant and adjoining landfill. The plant with an incineration capacity 24MW has been in operation since 2021. Another plant with the same capacity is currently being constructed. Meanwhile, leachate from the landfill has contaminated nearby water bodies. A groundwater test revealed a TDS of 10,506 mg/l - 20 times over the permissible limit. The report accuses the plant operator of pollution control violations and fly ash mismanagement. 'When we visited the plant, we observed that the fly ash was dumped over garbage in the landfill. The company is not complying with the regulations,' Sandeep Raj (40), a resident of Jawahar Nagar living just a few metres from the plant, told TNIE . 'Garbage trucks arrive uncovered. The air and water in a 10km radius are polluted . As per MoEFCC norms, a 500m buffer is required between landfills and homes, but even government-built flats are just 215m away,' said Ruchith Asha Kamal, a member of Climate Front Hyderabad. The Kodungaiyur dumpyard falls within 100m of residential zones. The proposed Kodungaiyur WTE plant, to be built by the same firm, is designed to process 2,100 tonnes of non-recyclable solid waste per day. But now residents, councillors, and environmental activists are warning against it since countries like Canada are closing WTE plants due to air pollution and health hazards. 'When a 10-tonne facility in Manali led to cadmium contamination 24 times over the WHO limit, what will happen with 2,100 tonnes,' asked Ramachandra Rao, a Kodungaiyur resident. North Chennai residents argue the region cannot withstand further environmental stress. 'It is good that GCC officials went on a study tour, but have they spoken to the victims there,' asked T K Shanmugam, president of the Federation of North Chennai Residents' Welfare Association. During the visit, GCC officials were provided with a detailed operation mechanism of the WTE plant in Hyderabad by GHMC Commissioner K Ilambarithi. The team will return to Chennai on Friday.
Los Angeles Times
02-04-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
Researchers Develop Test Utilizing Machine Learning to Aid Predicting Immunotherapy Response in Lymphoma Patients
Researchers with City of Hope and MSK have created a tool that uses machine learning to assess a non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) patient's likely response to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy before starting the treatment, according to study results published in Nature Medicine. CAR T cell therapy is one of the most promising recent advances made in the fight against blood cancers. But more than half of NHL patients who do not respond to standard lines of treatment also relapse or progress within six months of CAR T therapy. Known as InflaMix (Inflammation Mixture Model), the new tool was developed to assess inflammation, a potential cause of CAR T failure, by testing for a variety of blood biomarkers in 149 patients with NHL. With the help of machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence that uses algorithms to learn from sets of information and draw conclusions from patterns found in that data, the model was able to find an inflammatory biomarker from a series of unique blood tests not usually employed in standard clinical practice. By analyzing the inflammatory signature that InflaMix identified, the researchers found it was associated with a high risk of CAR T treatment failing, including increased risk of death or disease relapse. InflaMix is an unsupervised model, meaning that it was trained without any knowledge of clinical outcomes. 'These studies demonstrate that by using machine learning and blood tests, we could develop a highly reliable tool that can help predict who will respond well to CAR T cell therapy,' said Marcel van den Brink, M.D., Ph.D. president of City of Hope Los Angeles and City of Hope National Medical Center, and a senior author of the paper. 'With a rigorous statistical approach, we demonstrated that this is one of the most thoroughly validated tests we have for predicting CAR T outcomes in lymphoma patients and could be used by oncologists everywhere to assess the risk of CAR T in an individual patient.' According to the team, the machine learning model is very flexible and worked well even when they used only six available blood tests – all of which are typically evaluated for patients with lymphoma – to assess InflaMix's capabilities with less data. Researchers said this is important because it means this test can be made available for most, if not all, patients with lymphoma. 'Prior studies had hinted that inflammation might be a risk factor for poor CAR T cell efficacy,' said medical oncologist Sandeep Raj, M.D., who specializes in bone marrow transplants at MSK and is lead author of the Nature Medicine paper. 'Our goal was to refine this concept and build a robust and reliable clinical tool that characterizes inflammation in the blood and predicts CAR T outcomes.' Studies of three independent cohorts comprising 688 patients with NHL who had a wide range of clinical characteristics and disease subtypes and used different CAR T products were also used to validate the team's initial findings. Next, City of Hope and MSK researchers plan to investigate whether blood inflammation defined by InflaMix directly influences CAR T cell function and learn more about the source of this inflammation. 'InflaMix could be used to reliably identify patients who are about to be treated with CAR T and are at high risk for the treatment not working,' said Dr. Van den Brink. 'By identifying these patients, doctors may be able to design new clinical trials that can boost the effectiveness of CAR T with additional treatment strategies.' City of Hope, a recognized leader in CAR T cell therapies for blood and other cancers, has treated more than 1,700 patients since its CAR T program started in the late 1990s. The institution continues to have one of the most comprehensive CAR T cell clinical research programs in the world – it currently has about 70 ongoing clinical trials using immune cell products, mostly CAR T, for blood cancers and 15 different solid tumor types. These products include City of Hope-developed therapies and industry-sponsored treatments. The team's studies were funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute and an MSK Support Grant. The work was primarily done at MSK where Dr. Van den Brink worked for more than two decades before coming to City of Hope in 2024. Information was sourced from Businesswire. For more details, contact lemarquez@
