AUTHORITIES on Sunday closed the highway for two days that connects this Himachal Pradesh tourist resort with Leh in Ladakh owing to possible snowfall this week. They also advised motorists to avoid travelling on high mountain passes till October 18. “Chances of snowfall on the Manali-Leh National Highway-21 are high till October 18. We have closed the traffic movement beyond Darcha,” Deputy Commissioner Neeraj Kumar told IANS...

THE Government will take a final decision on vaccinating children and adolescents against coronavirus on the basis of overall scientific rationale as well as the supply situation of vaccines available for those below 18 years old, COVID Task Force chief V K Paul said on Sunday. Paul, who has been playing a key role in the Government’s efforts in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, also cautioned that even though infections are coming down and the second wave is subsiding, it will not be fair ..

RESEARCHERS at different Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are working on development of a first-of-its kind “smart speed warning system” for vehicles which will alert the driver on the basis of road infrastructure and geographical location to avoid over-speeding related crashes. According to statistics available with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, about 70 per cent of road fatalities in India occur due to over-speeding. To minimise such fatalities, the Government had mandated ..

NITIN Agarwal, who was elected as a legislator on the Samajwadi Party ticket but then cozied up to the ruling BJP, is all set to be the Deputy Speaker of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly with the support of the BJP. A miffed Samajwadi Party, which has fielded Narendra Verma as its official candidate for the contest that is taking place just months ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls, hit out at the BJP, accusing it of trying to sabotage democracy, and asserted that the post should traditionally go to the Opposition ..

PETROL and diesel price on Sunday was hiked again by 35 paise a litre and the auto fuels now cost a third more than the rate at which ATF is sold to airlines. The fourth straight day of 35 paise per litre hike sent petrol and diesel rates to record highs across the country. The price of petrol in Delhi rose to its highest-ever level of Rs 105.84 a litre and Rs 111.77 per litre in Mumbai, according to a price notification of state-owned fuel retailers. Petrol used in two-wheelers and cars now costs ..

PUNJAB Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu has sought a meeting with party President Sonia Gandhi, flagging in his letter issues which the Government “must deliver upon” and saying it is the poll-bound State’s “last chance for resurrection and redemption”. In the letter to the Congress President on October 15, a day after he had meetings with senior party leaders in Delhi, Sidhu pitched for a “Punjab Model with a 13-Point Agenda to be part of the Congress manifesto for the 2022 Assembly Elections”. ..

TOP 10 hacking groups have executed ransomware attacks worth a whopping $5.2 billion in Bitcoin over the past three years, according to a US treasury report. The report, released by the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on Friday, found that ransomware-related transactions totalled around $590 million from January 2021 to June 2021, exceeding the $416 million reported for entire 2020. “The FinCEN analysis of ransomware-related suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed during ..

THE Income Tax Department, which raided at least 70 premises allegedly linked with Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and others last week, said it has unearthed proof of unaccounted incomes of around Rs 184 crore, officials said on Friday. The I-T Department sleuths had swooped on unnamed two realty companies in Mumbai, and other unidentified individuals/entities associated with them, during the raids simultaneously carried out in Pune and Baramati, as well as in Goa and Jaipur. The sleuths ..

TWO more soldiers, including a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO), were killed as the massive search operation to track down terrorists continued for the sixth day in the forest areas of Jammu and Kashmir’s twin border districts of Poonch and Rajouri on Saturday, officials said. With the latest killings, a total of nine Army personnel, including two JCOs, have laid down their lives in the ongoing counter-insurgency operation that began in Surankote forests of Poonch on Monday and later spread to nearby ..

A SECOND member of the Sikhs’ Nihang order was arrested on Saturday in connection with the lynching of a Dalit man at the farmers’ protest site at Singhu border, even as the victim’s family questioned the attackers’ claim that he had committed sacrilege and demanded a high-level probe into the episode. The mortal remains of Lakhbir Singh were cremated at his native village in Punjab’s Tarn Taran amid tight security in the presence of his close family members. No Sikh priest was present to perform ..

FINANCE Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that climate financing continues to be an area of worry as she flagged India’s concerns over funding mechanism and technology transfer. Her remarks came ahead of the upcoming COP26 Summit to be held at Glasgow in the United Kingdom. Leaders of nearly 200 countries, including India, will gather at the high-level summit on climate change, scheduled to be held from October 31 to November 12, to discuss the way forward to tackle climate action and submit their ..

THE Enforcement Directorate on Saturday issued fresh summons to Bollywood actor Jacqueline Fernandez to appear before its Delhi office on Monday for questioning in connection with the Rs 200 crore money laundering case...

A SPECIAL NDPS court here on Thursday rejected the bail application of Bollywood actor Armaan Kohli in a drugs case. Judge A A Joglekar rejected the bail plea. Kohli was arrested on August 29 following a raid by the NCB at his residence during which banned drugs were allegedly seized. His lawyers had argued that only a small quantity of drugs was allegedly recovered from his possession, which is a relatively lesser offense, so he was entitled to bail...

JAPAN’S new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida dissolved the Lower House of Parliament on Thursday, paving the way for October 31 national elections. Kishida said he is seeking the public’s mandate for his policies after being elected Prime Minister by Parliament only 10 days ago to replace Yoshihide Suga. Tadamori Oshima, the speaker of the more powerful lower chamber, announced the dissolution at a plenary session. At the announcement, all 465 lower house lawmakers stood up, shouted “banzai” three times ..

TERRORISM has been employed as a weapon of choice by non-state actors and irresponsible states to advance their political objectives in the region, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Thursday in a thinly-veiled attack on Pakistan. In an address at a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) seminar on the role of women in the Armed Forces, Singh said the concept of security is undergoing a “paradigm shift” and the member states of the grouping will have to deal with challenges like terrorism collectively..

ENSURING equitable vaccines for all is a key to the global economic recovery but it faces a significant challenge, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told her G-20 counterparts on Wednesday In her remarks at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting, held on the sidelines of the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Sitharaman said for the global economic recovery, it is essential to keep up the support, build resilience and enhance productivity ..

IN A huge setback to Aryan Khan, a Mumbai special NDPS court on Thursday reserved its order on his and other co-accused’s bail applications till October 20, even as the NCB virtually labelled him a ‘junkie’ regularly consuming drugs. Thus, Aryan Khan - the son of Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan - and other co-accused Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha will remain in judicial custody at the Arthur Road Central Jail and the Byculla Women’s Jail for the next five days on account of public holidays ..

A DELHI court has extended the custodial interrogation of actor Leena Maria Paul till October 16 in a money laundering case related to extortion of Rs 200 crore from a businessman’s wife here. Special Judge Parveen Singh also extended the ED custody of Paul’s husband Sukesh Chandrasekhar, an accused in 21 cases, by 11 days after the couple were produced before the court on October 12 on expiry of their 3-day custodial interrogation granted earlier. The couple allegedly duped former Fortis Healthcare ..

THE National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested nine terror associates during searches at 18 locations in Jammu and Kashmir after registration of a case over a conspiracy launch attacks in the union territory and other major cities including New Delhi, an official said on Wednesday. The NIA had registered the case on October 10 and initiated an investigation. An NIA spokesperson said a total of nine people were arrested -- five on Wednesday and four a day earlier -- after multiple searches in ..

STRESSING on the need for enhanced connectivity, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday proposed that the strategic Chabahar Port in Iran be included in the North-South Transport Corridor that has the potential to bridge connectivity barriers, as he reviewed the whole gamut of bilateral relations with his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan. Jaishankar was speaking at a joint press meet with Armenian Foreign Minister Mirzoyan following their meeting here. Jaishankar on Tuesday arrived ..

THE Government on Wednesday scrapped basic Customs Duty as well as slashed agri cess on crude varieties of palm, soyabean and sunflower oil till March 2022, a move which will help cool prices and increase domestic availability in the festive season. The duty cuts will be effective from October 14 and will remain in force till March 31, 2022, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) said in a notification. Crude palm oil will now attract agri infrastructure development cess (AIDC) of ..

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday launched a Rs 100 lakh crore national master plan for multi-modal connectivity that aims to develop infrastructure to reduce logistic costs and boost the economy. PM Gati Shakti targets to cut logistic costs, increase cargo handling capacity and reduce the turnaround time, Modi said at a function to launch the plan. Unveiling the plan, Modi said that the programme will boost India’s self-confidence and make the country self-reliant (Atmanirbhar) as today, ..

THE Gun Carriage Factory (GCF) Jabalpur’s indigenously upgraded CiWS 40mm Smart anti-aircraft gun has successfully accomplished the technical trials. The GCF has developed the Close-in-Weapon System ‘Smart Gun’ by modifying the Swedish L-70 gun in technical collaboration with Bharat Electronic Limited (BEL). The advanced anti-aircraft gun has enhanced firing capacity, targeting accuracy and night vision competence. GCF, Additional GM and Spokesperson, Sanjay Shrivastava, while taking to ‘The Hitavada’, ..

THE Income Tax Department has detected undisclosed income of about Rs 750 crore after it raided three major Bengaluru-based contractors engaged in the execution of irrigation and highway projects, the CBDT said on Tuesday. The searches were launched on October 7 at 47 premises spread across four States. “These three groups were involved in suppression of their income by resorting to bogus purchases, inflation of labour expenses, booking of bogus sub-contract expenses etc. “Investigation found that ..

AIRLINES can operate domestic flights without any capacity restriction from October 18 onwards, the Ministry of Civil Aviation announced on Tuesday keeping in mind the “passenger demand for air travel”...

THE Special Cell of Delhi Police has arrested a suspected Pakistani terrorist, who was planning to carry out a terror attack during the festival season in the national capital, an official said here on Tuesday. The suspected terrorist was arrested from the Laxmi Nagar area of the national capital. According to the official, the suspected Pakistani national, who had obtained fake Indian identity cards through forged documents, has been identified as Mohd Ashraf alias Ali, a resident of Punjab province ..

AN EXPERT panel of India’s Central drug authority has recommended granting emergency use authorisation to Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin for children and adolescents in the 2 to 18 years age group with certain conditions, sources said on Tuesday. If approved by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), it will be the second COVID-19 vaccine after Zydus Cadila’s needle-free ZyCoV-D to receive emergency use authorisation (EUA) for use in those below 18 years. Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, which completed ..

INDIA and China failed to make any headway in resolving the 17-month standoff in the remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh with the Indian Army on Monday saying the “constructive suggestions” made by it at the latest round of military talks were neither agreeable to the Chinese side nor Beijing could provide any “forward-looking” proposals. In a strong statement after the 13th round of talks on Sunday that ended in a stalemate, the Army also said the situation along the Line of Actual Control(LAC) ..

THE Ministry of Civil Aviation has given a no-objection certificate (NOC) for the operation of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed new airline ‘Akasa Air’ in India, a company statement said on Monday. The new airline aims to start operations by the summer of 2022, the holding company, SNV Aviation Private Limited, said. Akasa Air is backed by ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and ex-Jet Airways CEO Vinay Dube “We are extremely happy and grateful to the Ministry of Civil Aviation for their support and for the ..

CONGRESS leaders led by party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra staged a silent protest here on Monday demanding the dismissal of Union Minister Ajay Mishra in connection with the Lakhimpur Kheri violence. The Minister’s son Ashish was arrested on Saturday by the Uttar Pradesh Police in connection with the October 3 violence in which eight people, including four farmers, were killed. He was produced before a court late on Saturday night, which sent him to 14-day judicial custody...

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Monday cited his dispensation’s push for wide-ranging reforms, including the privatisation of Air India, to assert that the country never had a more “decisive Government”. Launching the Indian Space Association (ISpA), an industry body aspiring to be the voice of the country’s space sector, Modi noted that fields like mining, coal, defence and space have been opened to private players, and said his Government’s clear policy about public sector enterprises is to open ..

THREE US-based economists won the 2021 Nobel prize for economics on Monday for pioneering research on the labour market impacts of minimum wage, immigration and education, and for creating the scientific framework to allow conclusions to be drawn from such studies that can’t use traditional methodology. Canadian-born David Card of the University of California at Berkeley was awarded one half of the prize, while the other half was shared by Joshua Angrist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ..

FIVE Army personnel, including a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO), were martyred in a fierce gunfight with terrorists during an anti-insurgency operation in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir on Monday, officials said. The operation was launched in a village close to Dera Ki Gali (DKG) in Surankote in the early hours following the Intelligence inputs about presence of terrorists, a Defence spokesman said. He said the ultras opened heavy fire on the search parties resulting in critical injuries ..

UNION Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Sunday mooted the idea of incorporating the role of Indian traditions in keeping good mental health, in the medical syllabus and urged the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Sciences (NIMHANS) to study the issue deeply to enable the Government take a decision and formulate a policy. “We need to understand the traditional way of curing mental problems. I am thinking whether we can incorporate in our syllabus the role of our tradit..

NINETEEN months after the COVID-19 pandemic forced school closures worldwide, only half of the schools across the globe have resumed classroom teaching and learning while around 34 per cent schools are relying on mixed or hybrid instruction mode, according to the COVID-19 Global Education Recovery Tracker. The tracker has been jointly created by Johns Hopkins University, the World Bank, and UNICEF to assist countries’ decision-making by tracking reopening and COVID-19 recovery planning efforts in ..

THE second FIR lodged over the Lakhimpur Kheri violence claims “bad elements” among farm law protesters attacked BJP workers who were in an SUV but makes no reference to the mowing down of farmers or presence of Union Minister Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish in the car. The FIR was lodged on October 4 at the Tikonia police station over the alleged lynching of BJP workers while the other one mentions name of Ashish Mishra, who was allegedly in one of the cars that knocked down four farmers. The second FIR ..

THE National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Sunday carried out raids at 16 locations across Kashmir Valley in connection with two cases -- ISIS voice of Hind case and TRF case. According to the Voice of Hind magazine case, ISIS terror outfit has been releasing the online monthly India-centric magazine since February 2020, aiming to radicalise Muslim youths in the Valley. NIA’s raids in relation with The Resistance Front (TRF) case is an ongoing probe into the terror outfits including Lashkar-e-Toiba, ..

WITH States from Delhi to Andhra Pradesh sending warnings of a developing power crisis due to shortage of coal, the Central Government on Sunday pressed all resources at its command to ensure power plants have enough feedstock to generate electricity. While Union Power Minister R K Singh reviewed the coal stock position at all thermal power plants, including those units that supply electricity to distribution companies in the national capital, the Ministry of Coal said “ample coal is available in ..

MUMBAI Police on Saturday pasted a notice outside the residence of IPS officer Param Bir Singh, asking him to appear before it in connection with an extortion case on October 12, an official said here. Recently, Maharashtra Home Minister Dilip Walse-Patil had said that there were reports that Singh, a former Mumbai Police Commissioner who is now facing at least five criminal cases in the state, had left the country, but there was no confirmed information. The crime branch of Mumbai Police is probing ..

DEFENDING privatisation policy, Principal Economic Adviser Sanjeev Sanyal on Saturday said most of the public sector undertakings (PSUs) that the Government intends to sell were actually created by the private sector. Stressing that this Government is unapologetic about privatisation, he said “you (Opposition) made the point that this (PSUs) has been built through the blood and sweat of the public sector. So, let me put the record straight on this: Actually much of what we are attempting to privatise ..

THE Indian job market maintained its record-breaking run for the third consecutive month in a row, clocking 57 per cent year-on-year growth in September, according to the latest Naukri JobSpeak report. At 2,753 job postings, the index hit an all-time high in September surpassing pre-COVID levels in September 2019 by 21 per cent. The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly Index that calculates and records hiring activity based on the job listings on Naukri.com website month on month. The objective of Naukri ..

THE Income Tax Department detected “unaccounted” income of Rs 550 crore and seized over Rs 142 crore cash after it recently raided Hyderabad-based Hetero pharmaceutical group, official sources claimed on Saturday. Company officials were not immediately available for comments. The raids were carried out by the tax department on October 6 at about 50 locations in half-a-dozen States. “During the search, several bank lockers have been found, out of which 16 lockers have been operated. The searches ..

INDIA and China will hold 13th round of Corps Commander talks on Sunday, at Moldo on the Chinese side, to resolve border dispute in Eastern Ladakh. Both the countries will discuss phase-III of disengagement and also overall de-escalation along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh. The talks are scheduled two months after both the countries withdrew troops from friction Patrolling Point (PP) 17A in Gogra at the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh. The disengagement process was carried ..

INDIA and Denmark on Saturday inked four agreements and decided to expand cooperation in “Green strategic partnership for the Green Transition”. In his statement, after the bilateral talks with his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen on Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that last year both the countries took a historic step to establish a ‘Green Strategic Partnership’ which has been a fine example of our far reaching approach towards the environment. “This partnership is an example of how ..

A SOARING stock market propelled the combined wealth of members of the 2021 Forbes list of India’s 100 Richest to a record US$775 billion, after adding $257 billion -- a 50 per cent rise -- in the past 12 months. In this bumper year, more than 80 per cent of the listees saw their fortunes increase, with 61 adding $1 billion or more. At the top of the list is Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest person since 2008, with a net worth of $92.7 billion. Ambani recently outlined plans to pivot into renewable energy ..

THE Income Tax Department has detected dubious transactions of over Rs 1,000 crore after raids on some Maharashtra public office-holders and middlemen allegedly running a bribe racket for Government clerances and favourable postings for bureaucrats, the CBDT said on Thursday. It said Rs 4.6 crore cash and jewellery worth Rs 3.42 crore have been seized after the raids that were conducted on September 23 “on a big syndicate involving certain businessmen/middlemen of Maharashtra and some persons holding ..

TERMING “unfortunate” the killing of eight people including four farmers in the October 3 Lakhimpur Kheri incident, the Supreme Court Thursday sought a status report by Friday from the Uttar Pradesh Government on the accused named by the police in FIR and whether they have been arrested. The apex court has also sought details of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) and the judicial enquiry commission, reportedly set up by the State Government. The incident, which triggered a major political storm ..

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday completed 20 years as the head of a Government, including over 13 years as Gujarat Chief Minister, with top BJP leaders lauding his leadership and crediting him for ushering in good governance and development. Home Minister Amit Shah, who has been a close aide of Modi for over three decades, said the journey of good governance and development that started on this day in 2001 when he took oath for the first time as Chief Minist..

UK-BASED Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose work explores the profound impact of migration on uprooted people and the places they make their new homes, won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday. The Swedish Academy said the award was in recognition of Gurnah’s “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” Gurnah, who recently retired as a professor of post-colonial literature at the ..

TRANSPARENCY advocates are calling on Britain to tighten the country’s defences against money laundering and tax avoidance after a massive leak of financial data showed how London is a key destination of choice for some of the world’s richest and most powerful people to conceal their cash. The cache of almost 12 million files shows how wealthy people around the world reportedly set up offshore companies to buy property and avoid taxes. Foreign individuals identified as beneficiaries of these types ..