Latest news with #Calcutta
RNZ News
3 hours ago
- Sport
- RNZ News
Rugby Premier League looks to revive Indian game through sevens league
Former New Zealand captain Scott Curry, who will feature in the Indian RPL, scores a try in the 2019 World Series event in Hamilton. Photo: Photosport Nearly 150 years after the demise of Calcutta Football Club resulted in the creation of rugby's oldest international trophy, a new sevens league was launched this month with the aim of reviving the gladiatorial sport in India. The Rugby Premier League (RPL) has recruited top internationals from the World Sevens circuit to play alongside locals in six franchises under broadcast-friendly rule variations. Organisers not only want to lead a revival of local rugby to the extent that India one day qualifies for the Olympics, but believe they can help revolutionise the future of the game worldwide. "Rugby in India is not so popular and not because it's not played, it's played in more than 250 districts in India and there's a lot of talent pool available, but because people have not seen it," Satyam Trivedi, chief executive of co-organisers GMR Sports, told Reuters. "It has not been commercialised, originally or globally. It is a very aspirational sport. In countries like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, it's a private schoolboy sport, which is not how it is seen in India. "I'm sure with the league getting commercials, going on broadcast, some of the finest athletes of the world coming and participating, the audiences will see it and the sport will catch up." The launch of the RPL comes at a time when sevens, which took off after its inclusion for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, is facing challenges. Financial pressures have led to cutbacks in some programmes, with Ireland ending its men's programme and Britain's men's and women's going part-time at the end of July. World Rugby plans to introduce a three-division regular season in 2026, increasing the number of events to make the sport more cost-effective and competitive. Unlike World Sevens tournaments, organised on national lines, each RPL squad features five top-level "marquee" players, five from India, and three more internationals dubbed "bridge" players. Scott Curry, who played 321 times for New Zealand's All Blacks Sevens team and represents the Bengaluru Bravehearts in the RPL, believes the franchise model could be a peek into the sport's global future. "The World Series has been changing a lot and there's a little bit of uncertainty there but to see something like this, a franchise league ... I think it could be the future of the game going forward for sure," Curry said. "Having franchises where players from all over the world can come and play together along with local Indian players is really exciting for our sport." Rugby India is another co-organiser of the RPL and its President Rahul Bose senses a major opportunity to get the eyes of 1.4 billion people on the game through the country's potential bid for the 2036 Summer Olympics. "After Indian hockey, we want to be the second team, and by that time (2036), it'll be 80 years that there's no other team that's gone to the Olympics from India," Bose said. "I'm not counting cricket, which is coming into the Olympics through a different route. But certainly when it comes to sports that have 100-plus nations playing it, like soccer and rugby, we've trained our eyes on that." Spaniard Manuel Moreno, who was named in the World Sevens series dream team last season and has been playing for the Hyderabad Heroes in the RPL, thinks India might not have to wait as long as 2036 given the Olympics has regional qualifiers. "It's a long way to try to compete with the best teams in the world ... the World Rugby Series, maybe is too far from now but maybe (India can qualify) for the Games as qualification is from the continent," Moreno said. "They (India) can do it in the next Olympic cycle. There are only two or three big teams in Asia. So I think they have a real possibility to be in the Los Angeles Games in 2028." Moreno might be being a little optimistic given India's men finished seventh in Asian qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics, while the women were sixth. Still, playing with the likes of Curry and Moreno can only help accelerate the development of local players and it might not be too long before Indian rugby is known for more than just the source of the trophy that England and Scotland play for every year. - Reuters
South China Morning Post
13 hours ago
- Sport
- South China Morning Post
Rugby Premier League looks to revive the sport in India and worldwide through 7s format
Almost 150 years after the demise of Calcutta Football Club resulted in the creation of rugby's oldest international trophy, a new sevens league was launched this month with the aim of reviving the gladiatorial sport in India. The Rugby Premier League (RPL) has recruited top internationals from the World Sevens circuit to play alongside locals in six franchises under broadcast-friendly rule variations. Organisers not only want to lead a revival of local rugby to the extent that India one day qualifies for the Olympics, but they also believe they can help revolutionise the future of the game worldwide. 'Rugby in India is not so popular and not because it's not played – it's played in more than 250 districts in India and there's a lot of talent pool available – but because people have not seen it,' Satyam Trivedi, chief executive of co-organisers GMR Sports, said. 'It has not been commercialised, originally or globally. It is a very aspirational sport. In countries like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, it's a private-school sport, which is not how it is seen in India. Bengaluru Bravehearts' Hongkonger Mak Chung (right) tackles Delhi Redz's Moritz Noll. Photo: AFP 'I'm sure with the league getting commercials, going on broadcast, some of the finest athletes of the world coming and participating, the audiences will see it and the sport will catch up.'
The Hindu
21 hours ago
- The Hindu
Three arrested for gang rape of student at Kolkata law college
Three persons have been arrested in connection with the gang rape of a student at a law college in South Kolkata. The alleged sexual assault was committed inside the college premises between 7.30 p.m. and 10.50 p.m. on June 25, 2025, a senior official of Kolkata Police official said on Friday (June 27, 2025). The official said that the accused include 30-year-old Manojit Mishra, 20-year-old Pramit Mukherjee and 19-year-old Zaib Ahmed. One of them is a former student and the rest are current students of the college. A medical examination of the survivor was conducted at Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital. 'The witnesses were examined and their statement were recorded. The P.O (place of occurrence) was visited and it was guarded for pending forensic investigation,' the police officer said. A First Information Report naming the three accused persons was lodged at the Kasba Police Station based on a complaint by the survivor. Two of the accused named in the FIR, Mr Mishra and Mr Ahmed, were arrested at around 7.30 p.m. on Thursday (June 26, 2025) from Siddhartha Shankar Sishu Roy Udyan near Talbagan crossing. The third accused, Mr Mukherjee, was arrested from his residence at around 12.30 a.m. on Friday (June 27, 2025). The accused's mobile phones have been seized. The three accused persons are likely to be produced at the Alipore Court on Friday (June 27, 2025). The police will pray for custody of the accused. The incident of sexual assault comes nearly ten months after a postgraduate trainee doctor was raped and killed at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in August last year. The rape of a college student inside college premises once again raises questions on safety and security of women in public spaces in Kolkata.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Étienne-Émile Baulieu obituary
The French doctor and biochemist, Étienne-Émile Baulieu, who has died aged 98, was known as the 'father of the abortion pill' for the development of RU486 (mifepristone) in 1980. It blocks the uptake of progesterone, which is essential for a successful pregnancy and, taken with a second drug (misoprostol), triggers a miscarriage. 'Medical abortion', as taking the two pills is known, is faster and more convenient than surgical procedures, and in 2022 accounted for 86% of terminations in the UK. Baulieu told the German newspaper Die Zeit that when he was in Calcutta in the early 1970s, he was approached by a young woman begging. She had two very young children in tow and cradled a baby in her arms. He could see the baby had died. He told Die Zeit that the moment was pivotal: 'The fatalism of extreme poverty and pregnancies! At that moment, I decided to stand up for women to make sure they could make their own decisions about their bodies. It gave meaning to my life as a doctor and researcher.' At this time, Baulieu, who had made key discoveries about the hormone DHEA, was director of a research unit at Inserm (the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) and professor of biochemistry at the Bicêtre faculty of medicine at the University of Paris-Sud. Creating a pill to stop pregnancy had been on his mind for a long time. In 1961 he had discussed with Gregory Pincus, the US inventor of the contraceptive pill, that if a chemical could be found to block the uptake of progesterone in the uterus, it would be impossible for a fertilised egg to embed. Baulieu was able to research a suitable drug at Roussel Uclaf, a French pharmaceutical company that specialised in steroid hormones, where he was a consultant. It was a long road, but in 1980 he identified his antiprogesterone chemical, which the company called RU486 (RU from their initials and 486 because it was the 38,486th substance they had synthesised). A tortuous path followed to bring the drug to market. Roussel Uclaf underwent a lot of changes in the 70s and the German pharmaceutical giant Hoechst AG became its majority shareholder. Baulieu lobbied the Hoechst management hard to bring RU486 to market, but the chief executive, Wolfgang Hilger, was a devout Catholic and shrank from the adverse publicity it was attracting. As news of RU486 circulated, hostile articles in the press appeared and letters poured in to Roussel Uclaf. Some called it 'a chemical coathanger' and Pope Jean-Paul II denounced it as 'the pill of Cain' (referring to the Bible story in which Cain kills his brother Abel). There were demonstrations, and anti-abortionists bought shares in Roussel Uclaf, so that they could attend and disrupt shareholder meetings. Baulieu was likened to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who had conducted hideous experiments in concentration camps. He had to have a bodyguard at public meetings, and at a New Orleans conference he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, when his talk was rescheduled at the last minute. The bomb intended for him injured another hapless speaker. Roussel Uclaf dithered during the 80s, submitting but then retracting its application to the French ethics committee to have RU486 licensed for use. In September 1988 the drug was finally approved by the French authorities, but under pressure from anti-abortionists a month later Roussel Uclaf said that it would stop marketing it. At the time, Baulieu was at the World Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Incensed, he organised a petition that thousands of doctors at the conference signed, insisting it should be made available to women. The row made newspaper headlines all over the world, and the French health minister Claude Évin intervened, saying in a TV interview that sales of RU486 must resume as the government had approved the drug and it was the 'moral property of all women'. Roussel Uclaf complied and slowly RU486 was licensed in other countries, for example the UK (1991) and Sweden (1992). Baulieu soldiered on, lobbying for it to be licensed elsewhere, including in the US. He stressed it was safer than anything else, telling the New York Times in 1989, 'Almost 50 million women have abortions each year, and some 150,000 women die annually from botched abortions. RU486 could save the lives of thousands of women.' Baulieu was born Étienne Blum in Strasbourg to Léon Blum, a nephrologist, and Thérèse (nee Lion), a lawyer. His father died when he was three and his mother took him and his two sisters, Simone and Françoise, to live first in Paris and then in Grenoble, where he attended the lycée Champollion. The second world war was well under way and France was occupied by the Nazis. Aged 15, Baulieu and his classmates were committing acts of defiance such as throwing stones at people who worked for the Germans and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. One day he spied a couple of men outside a cafe where he was sitting whom he reckoned might be Germans tailing him. Slipping out through a window at the back, he left Grenoble without a word to his family, and met up with undercover French Resistance members in Chambéry in south-east France. False papers were a must, and he changed his name from Étienne Blum to Émile Baulieu (making himself a year older at the same time, so that he could buy cigarettes). His group mostly ferried weapons, but in 1944 they kidnapped Charles Marion, a prominent officer in the Vichy regime, and executed him. As the youngest, Baulieu was excused from shooting the prisoner, but he was tasked instead with taking photographs of the event. At the end of the war, Baulieu was reunited with his family and studied medicine and biochemistry at the Université Paris Cité, qualifying in 1955. He had wanted to enrol at medical school under his true name but, as his ID card had 'Émile Baulieu', he had to be enrolled as such, and the name stuck. He preferred to be called Étienne-Émile Baulieu. Aged 20 in 1947, Baulieu married Yolande Compagnon and had three children: Catherine, Laurent and Frédérique. They remained married until Yolande died in 2015, but for decades lived separate lives. In the 60s Baulieu socialised with artists such as Andy Warhol and Frank Stella, and had affairs with the film star Sophia Loren and the artist Niki de Saint Phalle. In the 90s he met his long-term partner, Simone Harari, a TV executive, and they married in 2016. In the late 90s Baulieu retired from Inserm and his university posts, but continued to teach and conduct research for the rest of his life. He was a professor emeritus at the Collège de France and he set up the Institut Baulieu in 2008 as a vehicle for his new research interest: to understand neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. Tau proteins are thought to interfere with brain cell communication; into his 90s Baulieu was working on a way to target them with another naturally occurring protein that he had identified. In 2003-04 he chaired the French Academy of Sciences and in 1989 won the prestigious Albert Lasker prize. In 2023 President Macron awarded him France's highest honour: the grand cross of the Légion d'Honneur. Baulieu is survived by his wife, his three children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Étienne-Émile Baulieu (Étienne Blum), doctor and biochemist, born 12 December 1926; died 30 May 2025
News24
07-06-2025
- News24
Man caught with slain cop's phone arrested for barbershop murder
Constable Khulani Chabangu, 29, was shot dead during a barbershop robbery in Mpumalanga on 30 May. A 25-year-old suspect found with a cellphone allegedly taken from the murdered officer has been arrested. A second suspect remains at large. A man found in possession of a murdered policeman's phone has been arrested by the Hawks in Mbombela, Mpumalanga, a week after the officer was shot dead during a barbershop robbery in Calcutta, near Bushbuckridge. Constable Khulani Chabangu, 29, was visiting a barbershop at around 23:00 when two armed men entered the premises and ordered everyone to lie down. Chabangu, who was off duty, was reportedly ordered to undress before suspects made off with his clothes and car keys. It is alleged they shot and killed him when he followed them outside the barbershop. The suspects then fled the scene in the officer's vehicle. Chabangu had been stationed at Volkrust police station. Mpumalanga Hawks spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Magonseni Nkosi said the suspect was arrested in Calcutta on Friday afternoon. Nkosi said he was found in possession of two cellphones. 'It is alleged that one of the cellphones was [stolen] during the murder of the police official,' Nkosi said. 'Further investigation was conducted that led the team to the suspect's friend's house. On seeing the police, the suspect's friend managed to evade arrest and vanished within the residential area. A search was conducted in the house whereby a handgun with [filed off] serial numbers and four live ammunition rounds were found.' Mpumalanga Hawks head Major General Nico Gerber said his members 'will not rest until all those behind the murder of our fallen hero are brought to book'. The suspect is expected to appear in the Calcutta Magistrate's Court on Monday on charges of murder, business robbery, theft, car theft as well as illegal gun and ammunition possession.
