Muslim woman names newborn son 'Narendra Modi'
Gonda (UP), May 25: Impressed with the prime minister, a Muslim woman has decided to name her newborn 'Narendra Damodardas Modi'.
After failing to convince the mother Mainaz Begum against it, the family in Parsapur Mahraur village has filed an affidavit seeking the registration of the name.
Mainaz Begum came up with the idea while names for the boy were being discussed on May 23, the day the Lok Sabha results came in and Narendra Modi won a massive mandate.
People around her tried to make her change her mind, but she was adamant, her father-in-law Idrees told PTI.
When her husband Mushtaq Ahmed, who works in Dubai, was informed, he too tried to make her drop the idea.
But he ended up agreeing to his wife's wish.
The famly then filed an affidavit addressed to the district magistrate and submitted it to Assistant Development Officer (panchayat) Ghanshyam Pandey.
When contacted, Pandey said he received the affidavit on Friday.
He said the application has been forwarded to the village panchayat secretary, who deals with the registration of births and deaths.
Action will be taken as per the law," he said.
In the affidavit, Mainaz Begum lavished praise on Modi and his government's welfare schemes, including free cooking gas connection to the poor and financial help to construct toilets.
He is doing very good work for the country, it said.
The affidavit also praised Modi for the initiative to end triple talaq.
Her father-in-law Idrees said naming the child was the family's private affair and no one should interfere in this."
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Fossils of possibly largest snake to have ever lived found in Kutch, scientists say
New Delhi (PTI): Fossils recovered from Kutch in Gujarat may have belonged to the spine of one of the largest snakes to have ever lived, according to new research from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.
From the Panandhro Lignite Mine, researchers discovered 27 "mostly well-preserved" bones forming the snake's spinal column, or vertebra, with some connections still intact. They said the vertebrae appeared to be from a fully-grown animal.
The snake is estimated to be between roughly 11 and 15 metres long, comparable in size only to the extinct Titanoboa, known to be the longest snake to have ever lived, the researchers said. Owing to its size, it may have been a "slow-moving ambush predator," similar to an anaconda, they said. The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The researchers have named this newly discovered snake species 'Vasuki Indicus' (V. Indicus) after the mythical snake round the neck of the Hindu deity Shiva and in reference to its country of discovery, India. V. Indicus is part of the now extinct madtsoiidae family, known to have lived across a broad geography, including Africa, Europe and India, they added.
The authors said the snake represented a "distinct lineage" originating in India which then spread via southern Europe to Africa during the Eocene, about 56 to 34 million years ago. The first ancestors and close relatives of the modern mammal species are said to have appeared in the Eocene period.
The authors dated the fossils to the Middle Eocene period, roughly 47 million years ago.
The vertebrae, measuring between 38 and 62 millimetres in length, and between 62 and 111 millimetres in width, suggested V. Indicus to possibly have had a broad, cylindrical body, the researchers said.
They extrapolated the measurements of V. Indicus to be between 10.9 and 15.2 metres in length.
Despite uncertainties in estimates, the researchers said the snake was comparable in size to Titanoboa, the fossils of which were first discovered in the 2000s from present day Colombia.
