The Congress on Monday released its third list of 16 candidates for the Telangana assembly elections, fielding its state unit chief Revanth Reddy against Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao from the Kamareddy assembly constituency.

This is the second seat on which Mr Reddy, the sitting MP from the Malkajgiri parliamentary constituency, is contesting.

In this list, the party has also replaced two candidates declared earlier.

While Ade Gajender will now contest from the Boath-ST seat, replacing Vannela Ashok, Tudi Megha Reddy has been fielded from Wanaparthy in place of Gillela Chinna Reddy, who was nominated earlier.

With this, only three more candidates are left to be declared by the Congress, which is seeking to wrest power from the BRS in the southern state.

Revanth Reddy will also contest from the Kodangal assembly seat, while CLP leader Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu has been fielded from the Madhira-SC seat. The candidates for these seats were announced on October 15.

The party has also fielded its sitting Lok Sabha MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy from the Huzurnagar assembly constituency. He currently represents the Nalgonda Lok Sabha seat in Telangana.

The assembly elections in Telangana will be held on November 30 and the counting of votes will take place on December 3.

An anthropologist found a real human skull while shopping at a thrift store in Florida. Lee County Sheriff’s Office in a Facebook post shared that the shopper, “who happened to be an anthropologist, noticed the skull in the Halloween section and recognized it to be human.”

“Based upon the observations of detectives on scene, the skull is believed to be that of a human,” the sheriff’s office said.

The Sheriff’s office said that the case was not suspicious.

According to a USA Today report, the owner of the North Cleveland Avenue store told deputies that the skull came from a storage unit that was purchased “years prior.”

LCSO Captain Anita Iriarte told Newsweek, “This is definitely different,” Iriarte said. “We don’t usually get a call from an antique store that there’s a human skull out on the floor.”

After the testing, it was found that it was indeed a real human remains. 

“It is our belief that it’s a human skull,” Iriarte said. The officer told the media outlet that the skull will go through additional testing at the medical examiner’s office before being sent to Gainesville for long-term testing to determine where it came from, how old it is and any other details that can be uncovered.

The officer shared that the skull is estimated to be about 75 years old. “What’s preliminarily been decided is it’s like an archaeological bone,” she said. “The skull is estimated to be about 75 years old. There’s no noted trauma to the skull. There’s nothing that leads them to believe that this skull has been preserved by suspicious means of any sort.”

Expressing dismay over the ‘thief’ slur levelled at her Trinamool Congress party by the opposition, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said she had not accepted a single paisa nor taken even a cup of tea from anyone.

The erstwhile Left Front government was corrupt as one crore fake ration cards were detected after the TMC came to power defeating the coalition in 2011 and those were later scrapped, she said while addressing a programme in her Bhawanipore assembly constituency.

Her comments came amid the hullabaloo over the arrest of senior minister Jyoti Priya Mallick by the ED last month in connection with its probe into ration supply scam. Several other party leaders were also arrested by central agencies for their alleged involvement in corruption cases. Opposition BJP has been describing the TMC regime and the party leaders as “thieves”.

“There might have been problems by certain individuals, but we made great efforts in cleaning up the system for seven-eight years. Have we taken one cup of tea with other’s money? I did not take one single paisa. I do not take the Rs 1.25 lakh monthly pension (as an MP),” she said.

Claiming that the TMC government’s move to scrap the fake ration cards led to zero starvation deaths during the Covid pandemic, Ms Banerjee said people should compare the hunger allegedly suffered by the population at Jangalmahal region in the southern part of the state during the rule of the CPI(M)-led Left Front.

“I was stunned to discover that people eat ants at Birpahari when I went there as an opposition MP,” the TMC supremo said.

Ms Banerjee also asked people not to allow those “who never spare a chance to speak ill against me” to go near her when she dies.

She said that as her government is pro-people, those who had given farmland at Singur for Tata’s small car project and were unable to till it even after getting it back, are still getting Rs 2,000 as a monthly allowance apart from rice.

Reiterating her criticism of the BJP-led government at the Centre for alleged non-clearance of dues for the MGNREGA project, she said, “Giving wages to those who have toiled for the 100 days’ work is mandatory and Rs 7000 crore is due to the state.”

“The allocation of funds for Awas Yojana and Gramin Sarak Yojana has been stopped. The state bears 60 per cent cost of the central projects but the Centre takes away all the money. We must protest against this,” she said.

Ms Banerjee called upon the people to join the fight and save the country from those who are running it in an authoritarian manner.

“This country belongs to all communities, this state belongs to all irrespective of caste, creed and language,” she said.

In an apparent jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has a cricket stadium named after him at Ahmedabad, she said, “I believe in doing work as much as I can. But I don’t believe in self-publicity like others. I don’t name stadium after me,” she added.

The chief minister said the just concluded Durga Puja festival brought in 40,000 foreign tourists to the state, including Kolkata.

She also said that the Red Road Carnival in which select idols of goddess Durga are showcased can be compared to the Rio Carnival in Brazil.