Amravati, Jun 20: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will participate in a massive International Yoga Day organised by Andhra Pradesh, on Saturday, in a 26-km-long corridor from RK Beach in the port city of Visakhapatnam that stretches up to Bhogapuram, where over 3 lakh people can perform Yoga simultaneously.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has said the event, scheduled from 6:30 am to 8:00 am, will be organised in such a way to get recognition and set records, including a Guinness World Record. The Andhra Pradesh government aims to set a string of records in Yoga by mobilising several lakh people, not just in Visakhapatnam, but by organising simultaneous activities across the state on June 21.

The 11th International Yoga Day, celebrated by several countries across the world, has been themed as ‘Yoga for One Earth, One Health’. “As many as 25,000 tribal students will perform Surya Namaskars for 108 minutes. The objective is to set records for the largest group and the most people performing Surya Namaskars simultaneously,” said Naidu.

The government is aiming to organise yoga sessions in one lakh centres across the state and attract five lakh people to participate in yoga activities in Visakhapatnam. Observing that elaborate arrangements have been made across a 26-km stretch from RK Beach in Vizag to Bhogapuram, the CM said 3.19 lakh people can perform yoga simultaneously from RK Beach. Participants from eight lakh locations across the state, country, and the world are expected to join, he said, adding that the estimated two-crore registrations for yoga day activities participation overshot to 2.39 crores.

Meanwhile, elaborate security arrangements are being made for the Visakhapatnam event. “Over 1,200 CCTV cameras and drones will monitor the 26-kilometre stretch where thousands of people will perform yoga, with around 10,000 police personnel deployed for security duties,” DGP Harish Kumar Gupta said earlier. A high-tech police control room has been set up to oversee coordination and ensure foolproof security during the event, which will witness massive public participation. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other key ministers attending, standardised security protocols are being followed at every level, Gupta noted.

New Delhi, June 20: US researchers have found that developing personalised vaccines can play a key role in keeping aggressive tumours from recurring.

The study, led by a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focused on triple-negative breast cancer and melanoma, a deadly skin cancer.

Currently, the long-term prognosis for human patients with these cancers is relatively poor.

It’s because the diseases tend to recur after the initial treatments to remove the tumours.

However, using mouse models, the team could slow down the recurrence of tumours.

Quanyin Hu, a professor in the UW–Madison School of Pharmacy, said the approach could theoretically be applied to any cancer that tends to recur, such as pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma, the most common and extremely aggressive brain tumour.

The personalised vaccine approach is an extension of the team’s recent discovery of pyroptotic vesicles — tiny sacs filled with the remnants of cancer cells when they undergo programmed cell death.

Crucially, the remnants in these microscopic sacs include antigens specific to the tumour, along with other molecular bits that can help direct immune cells to find and suppress cancer cells that might remain after a tumour is surgically removed.

In the new study, published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the team engineered these sacs to carry an immune-stimulating drug.

They then embedded these engineered vesicles into a hydrogel that can be implanted into the space left behind after surgical removal of a tumour.

Using a melanoma mouse model and two different types of mouse models for triple negative breast cancers, including one with a human-derived tumour, the researchers compared their new approach with other cancer vaccine methods being studied.

The mice that received the hydrogel laden with their engineered sacs survived significantly longer than others.

“Compared to the other approaches, ours shows a much stronger immune response,” Hu said.

Another advantage of this approach, the researchers said, is the localised nature of the treatment.

According to Hu, applying the engineered vesicles directly to the site of the removed tumour greatly reduces the risk of systemic side effects, unlike currently available treatments.

New Delhi, June 20: Air India, currently reeling under the devastating AI 171 Boeing 787 Dreamliner crash that killed at least 270 people, including 241 passengers and crew members, on Friday faced more heat as the Aviation Industry Employees’ Guild (AIEG) demanded a CBI probe into the sacking of two cabin crew members by the airline for reporting a technical fault in the aircraft last year.

AIEG General Secretary, George Abraham, told IANS that they have demanded a CBI probe into the sacking of two cabin crew members, as this move, after pressure on them by Air India to change their statements after reporting a technical fault in the Dreamliner 787 aircraft, is a very serious matter.

“This poses a threat to the safety of the aviation sector. We have also written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a fair probe into the matter,” Abraham said. He further stated that on May 14, 2024, after the Air India flight from Mumbai to London reached its destination, the slide rafts opened in manual mode due to a technical fault in the door of the aircraft.

According to Abraham, the slide rafts are activated only when the plane is in automatic mode. The pilot and the entire cabin crew had also admitted the technical fault in the plane in their initial statements, but due to alleged pressure from the airline’s management, the statement was later changed.

Abraham said that to suppress the technical fault in the plane, the Air India management allegedly pressured these people to change their statement, and when they refused, both these crew members were fired from their jobs.

Speaking to IANS, Abraham further said that due to the seriousness of the matter, both these crew complained about the matter to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the regulator called them to Delhi and heard the whole matter and talked about conducting an “informal investigation”.

However, eight months have passed, but no result of the “informal investigation” has come out, he noted.

According to Abraham, after the deadly Ahmedabad plane crash, the attention of the government and the people is back on this issue.

“This is why we have raised it once again and written a letter to PM Modi. We hope that this investigation will be expedited,” he said.

In a statement to IANS, the airline on Friday said that the “said cabin crew members were terminated for their misconduct and behaviour and continuing to falsify critical information during the course of an investigation”.

“The said investigation was launched after an emergency slide was activated while opening the aircraft door post landing,” said Air India.

Slide rafts deploy when a door is opened in “armed” or “automatic mode”.

The crew alleged the Dreamliner’s door had malfunctioned as the slide raft deployed, though the door was opened in the “manual mode”.

The incident is reported to have occurred on May 14 last year, after the Mumbai-London flight AI-129 docked at Heathrow airport and the passengers disembarked.

The two former senior cabin crew members have written to PM Modi, alleging they were wrongfully terminated last year after raising an alarm over technical issues in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft.

The letter claimed that, “the said accident was waiting to happen as our various statements and contentions relating to the technical aspects and defects in the Aircraft – (Dreamliner Aircraft B787/8 Series), were deliberately pulled under the carpet, ignored, overlooked or not considered seriously for reasons best known to Air India Ltd management (AI) and the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)”.

The crew claimed the crash was “waiting to happen”, and that their repeated warnings about aircraft defects — especially a 2024 incident involving Dreamliner VT-ANQ — were ignored by Air India and the DGCA.

However, the signatories allege they were later pressured to change their statements, and when they refused, they were sacked without a proper enquiry.

“We fail to understand why an informal discussion instead of an impartial full-fledged enquiry was sought to be conducted by DGCA, the Regulatory Authority, when such a grave incident relating to passenger and crew safety was reported,” the letter read.

Calling it their “last hope,” the crew seeks the Prime Minister’s intervention to reinstate them and investigate the Dreamliner’s safety record.