Important News to be read from “The Hindu 14-02-2020”

Publish criminal history of candidates, SC orders parties

• The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered political parties to publish the entire criminal history of their candidates for the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections along with the reasons that goaded them to field suspected criminals over decent people.
• The information should be published in a local and a national newspaper as well as the parties’ social media handles. It should mandatorily be published either within 48 hours of the selection of candidates or less than two weeks before the first date for filing of nominations, whichever is earlier.

Coronavirus deaths spike in China

• Japan confirmed its first death — a woman in her 80s living in Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo — adding to two previous fatalities in Hong Kong and the Philippines.
• In Hubei province, in central China, officials said 242 people died on Wednesday, the biggest daily rise since the flu­like virus emerged in the provincial capital Wuhan in December. Total deaths in China are 1,367.

Experts’ meet to discuss restoration of Sun temple

• A plan to restore and preserve the nearly 800year­old Konark Sun temple in Odisha would be drawn up soon, after a two­day conference of experts at the end of the month, Union Culture Minister Prahlad Singh Patel said.
• The 13th century temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, had been filled with sand and sealed by the British authorities in 1903 to stabilise the structure, an Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) official said.
• A scientific study was carried out by the Roorkeebased Central Building Research Institute from 2013 till 2018 to ascertain the temple’s structural stability as well as the status of the filled­in sand, the official said.