IN A bid to implement ‘One Nation, One Ration Card’ across the country by June 1, 2020, the Centre on Friday kick-started inter-State portability of ration card between Telangana-Andhra Pradesh as well as Maharashtra-Gujarat. This means beneficiaries living in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh can buy their quota of ration from the Public Distribution System (PDS), also called ration shops, in either of the State. Similar would be the case in Maharasthra and Gujarat. Launching the ..

THE British economy shrank in the second quarter of the year for the first time in six and a half years largely because Brexit uncertainties weighed heavily on business investment, official figures showed on Friday. The decline, the first since the fourth quarter of 2012, was unexpected. Most economists thought that the economy would be flat. The Office for National Statistics said the contraction came “at a time of increased volatility around the UK’s original planned exit date ..

 FORMER Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was admitted to the AIIMS here on Friday after he complained of breathlessness and restlessness, and is under observation, sources at the hospital said. “Arun Jaitley was admitted to AIIMS today morning. He is currently undergoing treatment in the Intensive Care Unit under the supervision of a multidisciplinary team of doctors. At present, he is haemodynamically stable,” the AIIMS said in a statement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home ..

THE MeT department has forecast “extremely heavy rainfall” on Monday at isolated places in Raigad district neighbouring Mumbai and “heavy to very heavy rainfall” at few places in Mumbai city and suburban districts.The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Sunday predicted entire Maharashtra would receive widespread rainfall on Monday. An official of the Mumbai regional centre, IMD, said the variation in rainfall would be in intensity.Districts like Thane and Palghar ..

 THE Amarnath yatra from the three main base camps was suspended on Sunday due to widespread intermittent rains in Jammu and Kashmir for the fourth successive day, with the weather department predicting snowfall in the cave area, officials said. However, nearly 1,000 pilgrims who had reached the cave shrine situated at an altitude of 3,880 metre in south Kashmir Himalayas were allowed to offer prayers in the morning, they said. “To avoid any untoward incident, no pilgrim was allowed ..

THE Himalayan States on Sunday came together at a conclave here to demand a separate Union Ministry to deal with problems endemic to them and a green bonus in recognition of their contribution to environment conservation. The twin demands formed part of a common agenda of the Himalayan States and a proposal in this regard was handed over to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman at the end of the conclave, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat told reporters after the event. Sithara..

THE path to achieving the country’s target of a USD 5-trillion economy passes through Uttar Pradesh, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Sunday as the State launched works for 250 industrial projects worth Rs 65,000 crore.Shah expressed confidence that the State will contribute to the target by becoming a USD 1-trillion economy and said the Yogi Adityanath Government has removed the biggest hurdle to UP’s development by improving the law and order situation. Prime Minister Narendra ..

A FIRST-of-its-kind air ambulance service has been sanctioned for troops deployed in anti-Naxal operations and those posted at high-altitude border posts, officials said on Sunday. The ambulance will be on a Mi-17 helicopter platform of the Border Security Force (BSF) and it will be stationed at Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi, a recent Union Home Ministry order accessed by PTI said. A team of doctors, nursing assistants and paramedics have been deputed to round-the-clock man this first “dedica..

 COMMEMORATING the 20th anniversary of Kargil Vijay Diwas on Friday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh paid tribute to the heroes who fought tough battles during the conflict, saying their unwavering courage and supreme sacrifice ensured the safety and sanctity of the country’s borders. The Union Minister, along with his deputy Shripad Yesso Naik, and the vice chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force -- Lt Gen Devraj Anbu, Vice Admiral G Ashok Kumar and Air Force Air Marshal Rakesh Kumar Singh ..

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi planted saplings in Parliament as part of a tree plantation campaign by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla here on Friday. Speaking to ANI, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said, “The Prime Minister has spread out a message of ‘Green India’ and I believe that we will make every village and city in the country green. If we want to keep the environment healthy, we have to make this country green. “Earlier, we had ‘Swachchta Abhiyan’ and now we ..

DESPITE a “resounding defeat” in Kargil, Pakistan does not seem to have learnt its lesson as it continues to indulge in ceasefire violations, Eastern Army Commander Lt General M M Naravane said on Friday. Asserting that the Army is always ready to face any situation, the General Officer Commanding-In-Chief (GOC-in-C), Eastern Command, said, “On the 20th anniversary of our (Kargil) victory, we are rededicating ourselves for safeguarding the security and sovereignty of our nation.̶..

         By Khushboo TiwariSCIENTISTS at the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) here have discovered 28 new variable stars in the Milky Way galaxy. ARIES Director Wahab Uddin described the finding of the new variable stars, whose luminosity or brightness keeps changing, as a “rare achievement”. It is for the first time that variable stars have been identified in Globular cluster NGC 4147 in the constellation ..

 INDIA on Friday commemorated 20 years of its victory over arch-rival Pakistan in the Kargil War, saluting the supreme sacrifices and valour of the fallen heroes in recapturing several mountain heights seized by Pakistani intruders in Kashmir.It was on July 26, 1999, Indian Army had declared successful culmination of ‘Operation Vijay’, declaring a victory after nearly three-month-long battles on the icy heights of Kargil. India had lost around 500 soldiers in the war. President ..

CHINESE Army troops and civilians for the first time participated in a joint yoga session with Indian Army personnel along the Indo-China border in the Eastern border on Friday. Altogether 70 Chinese Army personnel and 30 civilians participated in the joint yoga sessions at Nathu-La in Sikkim and at Bumla and Wacha-Damai in Arunachal Pradesh, a defence spokesperson Lt Col Harshwardhan Pande said.Participation of Chinese Army personnel in such an event during border personnel meetings will go ..

THE 5th International Yoga Day was observed in Tamil Nadu on Friday, with Governor Banwarilal Purohit leading from the front.Among those who performed various yoga asanas coinciding with the day were Tamil Nadu Ministers for School Education and Health, KA Senkottaiyan and Dr C Vijayabaskar, respectively and State BJP chief Tamilisai Soundararajan. Naval personnel at INS Adyar also joined the International Yoga Day. At the Raj Bhawan here, Purohit was joined by a number of volunteers including ..

 LOK Sabha Speaker Om Birla, dressed in a white track suit, led Yoga Day celebrations at Parliament premises on Friday. Along with staffers, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi, BJP MPs Locket Chatterjee, Poonamben Maadam and Bhupendra Yadav, and former Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu were among those who participated in the celebrations at the Parliament premises. More than 400 people participated in the event which was conducted by two trainers from 7 am to 8 am.Prime Minister ..

   PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said yoga is above caste, religion, colour, gender and region as he meticulously performed various asanas with around 40,000 enthusiasts at the Prabhat Tara ground here to mark the fifth International Day of Yoga. Modi also urged people to make yoga an integral part of life.“We should make efforts to take yoga from cities to villages and tribal areas. Yoga is above religion, caste, colour, gender and region, it is above everything,” ..

BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur on Friday appeared before a special court here in connection with the 2008 Malegaon blast case, after failing twice this week to do so. When Special NIA Judge V S Padalkar asked the saffron-clad Thakur if she has to say anything about the blast, she said, “I don’t know.” Supported by two aides while entering the court, Thakur appeared before the special NIA Judge as per the direction of the court which is conducting trial in the 11-year-old case.Besides ..

 IN what could be an unprecedented move, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Friday decided to have five Deputy Chief Ministers under him in a full 25-member Cabinet.The new Council of Ministers will be constituted at a public function here on Saturday. The Chief Minister held a meeting of the YSR Congress Legislature Party at his residence here in the morning where he announced the decision to appoint five Deputy Chief Ministers.Accordingly, one each from Scheduled Caste, ..

PARLIAMENTARY Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi on Friday met Congress Parliamentary Party chief Sonia Gandhi, seeking her party’s co-operation for smooth functioning of the Parliament session beginning June 17. “Our meeting with Sonia Gandhi was very cordial. We sought her co-operation for the smooth functioning of Parliament. She said they (Opposition) also need co-operation from Treasury benches. I told her that the Government has always been ready to cooperate,” Parliamentary Affairs ..

4 terrorists Killed in Pulwama..

CENTRAL Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel carried an ailing 13-year-old boy on a cot for 8 kilometres from his village to a camp in Kondasawali. Jeetendra Yadav, Commandant of 231 BN, told ANI, “While patrolling on Thursday, troops of 231 Battalion of security forces found a boy in Gumodi village who was suffering from jaundice. The troops carried the kid on their shoulders for 8 km and got him treated in the camp here in Kondasawali.” He further said that ‘The villagers ..

EXTERNAL Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday said that India will aim to enhance regional cooperation under the BIMSTEC grouping as there have been certain problems with SAARC. Speaking at a seminar, he also said that implementation of developmental projects in neighbouring countries and elsewhere will be one of his key focus areas. In his first public comments after taking charge of the External Affairs Ministry, he also said regional connectivity is going to be a key priority for India ..

THE BJP has comfortably crossed the 31-seat mark in Arunachal Pradesh to claim simple majority in the 60-member Assembly, while its rival Congress has bagged just four seats so far, the results made available by the Election Commission showed. Counting of votes is still underway for five Assembly constituencies in the State.For the first time, the BJP will form Government in the Himalayan State with the support of its own MLAs.The BJP has clinched 37 Assembly seats, including three unopposed, ..

 THE stepping aside of the Gandhi family from the leadership role in the Congress following its debacle in the Lok Sabha elections is not a solution, a senior party leader said on Friday, hinting that other leaders may not be able to hold the party together. Four-time MLA Marri Shashidhar Reddy said the Gandhi family has been the “binding force” for the party, keeping it intact, amid critics calling for its members to make way for others to lead after the crushing defeat. “So, ..

THE highest-ever number of women have been elected in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.Out of 542 MPs who will take oath as members of the Lower House in the next few days, 78 are women with Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal leading at 11 each. A total of 724 women candidates contested from across the country with Congress fielding the maximum women at 54 followed closely by BJP at 53. With over 14 per cent female MPs, the 17th Lok Sabha will have the highest number of women candidates since 1952. In 16th Lok ..

AFTER a humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, top Congress leaders will deliberate on party losses at a meeting of the working committee slated on Saturday in which party chief Rahul Gandhi is likely to offer his resignation.Murmurs have already started within the party over taking responsibility for the poor performance of the Congress across the country, with some of its leaders already sending in their resignations. Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Raj Babbar and Odisha Congress president ..

PRESIDENT Ram Nath Kovind on Friday accepted resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked him to continue till a new Government assumes office, a communique from the Rashtrapati Bhawan said.The Prime Minister met the President and tendered his resignation along with the Council of Ministers, it said.“The President has accepted the resignation and requested Modi and the Council of Ministers to continue till the new Government assumes office,” the communique said.Earlier in the ..

  OVER one million trees that once stood tall and provided green cover to the Odisha capital have been felled by the raging winds of cyclone Fani, the uprooted trunks and bare branches testimony to the intensity of storm that barrelled through the State last week. The extremely severe cyclonic storm on May 3 did not result in major casualties but the environmental damage in the city is immense and it will take more than a decade to recover, officials said. Uprooted trees and fallen ..

 CAMPAIGNING came to a close on Friday evening for the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha polls in 59 constituencies spread across seven States on May 12. Union Minister Maneka Gandhi, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, Congress leader Digvijay Singh and BJP’s Pragya Singh Thakur are among 968 candidates in the fray. Voting will be held in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, ten in Haryana, eight seats each in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, seven in Delhi and four in Jharkhand. Bharatiya Janata Party ..

FORMER Union Ministers Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan on Friday sought from the Supreme Court setting aside its earlier verdict that dismissed their petition for criminal investigation into the Rafale fighter jet deal case.A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi reserved its verdict on a batch of petitions seeking review of its December 14 judgement last year which had dismissed the pleas challenging India’s agreement with France to procure 36 Rafale fighter ..

Indian diaspora should contribute to devpt agenda back home: Venkaiah..

 APPEARING before a court here on Friday in pursuance of his defamation suit against Rahul Gandhi, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said his image has been tarnished by the Congress chief’s “why all thieves have Modi in their name” remark. The senior BJP leader requested the court to take cognisance of the comment under sections 499 and 500 of the IPC which relate to defamation, and issue summons to the Congress President and put him on trial. He contended ..

TAKING a dig at Congress, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said he was “disappointed” by the party’s decision of not fielding Priyanka Gandhi against Prime Minister Narendra Modi after building up a “suspense for an eventual thriller” in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi is contesting from Varanasi for the Lok Sabha and there were speculations that Congress would field Priyanka against him. However, the party on Thursday again named Ajay Rai, a political lightweight ..

THE Supreme Court on Friday stayed the proceedings of an inquiry commission set up to probe the death of then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa at Apollo Hospitals in Chennai in 2016.A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi was hearing the appeal of Apollo Hospitals against the April 4 order of the Madras High Court rejecting its objection against the ongoing inquiry into the death of the AIADMK leader at the hospital. “Notice. Stay of further proceedings of the inquiry commission,..

 SRI Lanka’s Police Chief on Friday became the latest senior official to quit over failures to prevent the Easter massacre, as President Maithripala Sirisena said the top leader of the Islamist extremist group blamed for the deadly attacks died in the blast at the Shangri-La hotel. Sirisena, who is also the Defence Minister, said Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara resigned over failures which led to the worst terror attack in the country’s history. “The ..

   PRIME Minister Narendra Modi filed his nomination papers for the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat on Friday, accompanied by a galaxy of top BJP and NDA leaders in a massive show of strength for the country’s ruling alliance.As the temple town virtually stopped in its tracks with roads cordoned off for traffic and crowds lining the streets to see the VIP cavalcade, Modi exhorted voters to not fall into the trap of those who say he has already won the election so it is fine to not exercise ..

 Cong, NCP supporting those who want to separate J&K from India,  PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Friday stated that the Congress and NCP were in support of those who were advocating for the separation of Jammu and Kashmir from India. “Congress and NCP are supporting those who want to separate Jammu and Kashmir from the country. I do not expect anything better from the Congress, as they are the ones who are responsible for giving birth to such separatist ideologies,” ..

    THE untimely demise of Mr. Manohar Parrikar has delivered a severe blow to the country. That he was the reigning Chief Minister of Goa, or that he also served as Defence Minister with distinction, are only incidental details about the life and work of Mr. Manohar Parrikar. What was more important was that he was without doubt and beyond words one of the very good people in public life. He played his role in public life like very few would do. And as he did that and passed through ..

   Reliance Foundation Founder & Chairperson Nita M Ambani poses for photo with Armed Forces’ jawans at the special Musical Fountain show at Dhirubhai Ambani Square as a post-wedding celebration in Mumbai on Tuesday...

Words are not only meant for speaking, they all have specific meanings in themselves. And expressions! They are not only a medium to exhibit your current mood or mental state but are also a great way to add up something new to the situation, may it be good or bad. Happiness is such a mental state that causes people to have a vision that they can do everything they want. And why not? People must follow the things which make them happy and are also ethically correct. Everyo..

   Celeb-inspired daily wear outfit ideas!Fashion isn’t just a one evening story! It’s a daily mantra! Your daily wear has to be comfortable and stylish! But does it mean wearing baggy clothes that are too airy? Are you wearing fabrics that aren’t suitable for the weather today? Are you not sure of what pair of heels would go with your work dress today? There can be a lot of confusion around your daily wear outfit ideas especially when you want a stylish look for yourself. ..