New Delhi: Delhiites on Thursday woke up to a cold morning as minimum temperature dropped to 5.8 degrees Celsius while fog continued to disrupt train traffic.
According to MeT department, the minimum temperature was two notches below normal. Yesterday, it was 11 degrees Celsius, which was three notches above normal.
An official of the department said that shallow fog was observed in the national capital in the early hours and visibility was recorded at 400 meters at 8:30 AM.
Apart from that, humidity recorded till 8.30 AM this morning was 94 per cent.
According to a Northen Railway official, 61 trains were delayed and five trains were cancelled due to inclement weather.
However, flight operations remained smooth, airport authorities said.
Weatherman has predicted a mainly clear sky throughout the day.
“There will be mainly clear sky and maximum temperature is expected to settle at 17 degree Celsius,” the official also said.
Yesterday, the maximum temperature was recorded six notches below the season’s average at at 14.7 degrees Celsius.
PTI

Pope Francis enjoyed a rapturous welcome in the Philippines on Thursday as he began a five-day trip in the Catholic Church’s Asian heartland that is tipped to attract a world-record papal crowd.
Church bells tolled across the former Spanish colony as the charismatic pontiff flew into the capital of Manila after a successful visit to Sri Lanka.
Francis smiled as he looked out the window of his plane upon touchdown, greeted by the sight of hundreds of children on the tarmac chanting: “Welcome Pope Francis”.
Francis has said his two-nation tour is aimed at adding momentum to the Church’s already impressive growth in Asia, with its support in the Philippines the benchmark for the rest of the region.
Eighty percent of the former Spanish colony’s 100 million people practise a famously fervent brand of Catholicism, and the pope is set to enjoy thunderously enthusiastic crowds throughout his stay.
“Every step he makes, every car ride he takes, every moment he stays with us is precious for us,” Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said as he called on all Filipinos to make an effort to see him.
A man sweeps the blocked street near where Pope Francis will be staying in Manila on January 15, 201 …
Hundreds of thousands of people crowded the route the pope passed as he made a 35-minute trip in a “popemobile” from the airport to the Vatican’s embassy to rest overnight.
The pope stood on the back of the vehicle, which had no walls, waving and smiling constantly to the crowd.
“It’s a blessing to see the pope. That’s why we’re here,” school teacher Jeannie Blesado, 35, told AFP.
– Open-air mass –
The high-point of his trip is expected to be an open-air mass on Sunday at a park in Manila, with organisers preparing for up to six million people despite a forecast of rain and security concerns.

Pope Francis waves as he disembarks from his plane after arriving at a military airbase in Manila on …
Organisers have said that, if the crowd is as big as expected, it will surpass the previous record for a papal gathering of five million during a mass by John Paul II at the same venue in 1995.
Francis, who is the fourth pope to visit the Philippines, is also due to visit communities devastated by Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left 7,350 people dead or missing in 2013.
Church officials have said one of the main reasons for Francis wanting to visit the Philippines was to make a “mercy and compassion” trip to meet survivors of the typhoon.
On Saturday, he is scheduled to deliver a mass to tens of thousands of people in Tacloban, one of the worst-hit cities in the central Philippines, and have an intimate lunch with 30 typhoon survivors.
The main scheduled events on Friday included a state welcome at the presidential palace, a mass at Manila Cathedral and a meeting at a shopping mall with thousands of families.

Students holding umbrellas rehearse a dance hours prior to the arrival of Pope Francis at a military …
– Security concerns –
Authorities have expressed major concerns over the pope’s security in the Philippines, where attempts have been made to kill visiting pontiffs twice before.
Nearly 40,000 soldiers and police are being deployed to protect Francis in what Philippine military chief General Gregorio Catapang described as a “security nightmare”.
Potential stampedes from the giant crowds, as well as the threat of Islamic militants or lone-wolf assailants, are among the concerns.
On the first papal visit to the Philippines in 1970, Bolivian painter Benjamin Mendoza donned a fake priest’s cassock and swung a knife at Pope Paul VI as he arrived at Manila airport.
Paul VI was wounded but continued his trip without disclosing his injury.
One week before John Paul II’s 1995 visit, police uncovered a plot by foreign Islamist extremists to kill him by bombing his Manila motorcade route.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino made a nationally televised address this week specifically to highlight the security threats for the pope and call on all Filipinos to help protect him.
Adding to the concerns, the pontiff has insisted he will not travel in a bullet-proof vehicle during his big events so he can be closer to the faithful.
On Thursday night, barriers kept the crowds well away from the pope as he travelled from the airport and his vehicle passed quickly along the route.
The pope flew out of Sri Lanka on Thursday morning, a day after one million people gathered to hear him give mass in what police said was the biggest public celebration ever for the capital of Colombo.
His visit, which began on Tuesday, came days after an presidential election that exposed bitter divisions on the island and saw the surprise victory of Maithripala Sirisena over strongman leader Mahinda Rajapakse.
Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith said the pope had brought “great joy” to the island as it struggled to recover from civil war.

Muzaffarnagar: A local court has rejected the bail pleas of 14 accused in connection with Hastinapur sanctuary land grabbing scam here, an official said today.
District and Sessions Judge Vijay Laxmi turned down the bail plea of 14 accused including Umesh, Prem Singh, Ilam Singh, Gyani, Bharti, Nitu, Shokendra, Kunwar and Anil Kumar in connection with Hastinapur sanctuary land grab, said district government counsel Dushyant Tyagi.
The others who were refused relief were Pramod Kumar, Bijender, Anil, Toley Ram and Jasvir.
As many as 30 cases have been registered in different police stations against the alleged encroachment on government land in 27 villages in the district.

NEW DELHI: Against the backdrop of teacher training programme being revamped, the government today said it was also working on introducing refresher courses to help them acquire knowledge about the latest developments in the field.

“The National Council for Teachers Education is working on a refresher programme. This is being done to ensure that teachers are navigated through a huge maze of knowledge and information developing in this fast changing world,” School Education Secretary Vrinda Sarup said at an event today.

The programme was organised by NCTE to commemorate Swami Vivekananda’s birth anniversary.

The government had earlier announced from the next session onwards, the two teaching degrees – B.Ed and M.Ed – would be two-year courses.

At a state education ministers conference last week, Sarup had said that an integrated four-year course leading to B.A and B.Ed degree will be started immediately after class XII to attract bright minds from an early age into the profession.

Those who want to be primary school teachers can get into two-year diploma in education course after class XII.

Pursuing the M.Ed programme under the open and distance learning mode has been dropped.

Subjects such as yoga, information and communication technology, gender and children with special needs will be included in all the teacher education programmes, she had said.

New Delhi: An eyewitness on Monday identified in a Delhi court the six accused who had allegedly gangraped a 51-year-old Danish tourist at knife point in January 2014.
Deposing as a prosecution witness, Shivji Singh, who was working as a gardener with Indian Railways, told Additional Sessions Judge Kaveri Baweja that he had seen all the accused sitting with the woman in a park and at that time, one of them was raping her.
Singh deposed that on the evening of January 14, 2014, when he returned to her room and started preparing food, he heard a voice which appeared to be an alarm raised by a woman and found that it was coming from a temple in the park.
“I saw all the accused sitting nearby the foreigner lady and Mahender was committing rape upon her. All the other accused were sitting surrounding the woman and Arjun was having a knife in his hand,” Singh deposed in the court.
Singh, whose statement remained inconclusive on Monday and would continue on Tuesday, said the accused saw him and showed him the knife with a gesture that he would be killed after which he became frightened and returned to him room.
The witnesses identified the six men in the court and said they were ruffians who resided in the area and used to commit petty offences.
The police, in its charge sheet, had said that the eight persons, all vagabonds, had robbed and gangraped the Danish tourist at knife-point on the night of January 14, 2014 after leading her to a secluded spot close to the Divisional Railway Officers’ Club near New Delhi Railway Station.
The eight accused, including the two juveniles, were arrested in the case. The two juveniles are facing an inquiry before the Juvenile Justice Board.
The six adult accused Mahendra alias Ganja (24), Mohd Raja (22), Raju (23), Arjun (21), Raju Chakka (22) and Shyam Lal (55) are in judicial custody.
The eight have been booked under Sections 376 (2)(G) (gangrape), 397 (robbery or dacoity, with attempt to cause death or grievous hurt) and 392 (robbery) of IPC.

A Team of all female climbers from Nepal have achieved a mountaineering first, scaling seven of the world’s highest peaks on seven continents.
Their aim was to show other women in Nepal that climbing isn’t just a sport for men, so they set out on the quest in 2008, starting with Mount Everest in their own backyard. Their goal was realized in late December when four of the women made it to the top of Mount Vinson in Antarctica.
Today, the team returned home to a hero’s welcome. The team leader, Shailee Basnet, told reporters at the airport in Kathmandu, “A big journey that started seven years ago has finally culminated in a seventh climb, so, after years of saying one done, two done, three, four, five, we can now say: seventh climb!”
In six years the women scaled Everest in Asia, Kosciuszko in Australia, Elbrus in Europe, Kilimanjaro in Africa, Aconcagua in South America, Denali or McKinley in North America and Vinson in Antarctica.
More than 4,000 people have scaled Mount Everest and more than half of them have been from Nepal, but of that number only 24 have been women. The first Nepalese woman to reach the summit, Pasang Lhamu, made it in 1993 but died on the descent.
The seven women financed their climbs with personal savings, sponsors and fund raising events

PTI