PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday told Indian Police Service probationers that the spirit of ‘Nation First, Always First’ should reflect in every action of theirs and also asked them to work to change the negative perception of the force among people. Addressing the IPS probationers at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy via video-conferencing, he urged them to let their every action in field be guided by national interest and perspective. “You are the flag-bearers of ‘Ek Bharat, ..

INDIA’S second-longest serving legislator and Peasants & Workers Party (PWP) senior leader Ganpatrao Annasaheb Deshmukh, who passed away on Friday, was cremated with full State honours in Sangola here on Saturday afternoon, official sources said. Deshmukh, 95, breathed his last at a private hospital following a brief illness, his family said. As his mortal remains were taken from Solapur to Sangola on Saturday morning, thousands of people including farmers and labourers with moist eyes lined up on ..

AMID the ongoing violence in Afghanistan, the country witnessed the bloodiest day in a month as security forces repelled mass Taliban attacks on the capital cities of Herat, Helmand, Takhar, and Kandahar provinces, according to media reports. Besides being the bloodiest, Friday was also one of the busiest days for the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) in the past one month. The media reports said the Taliban entered Herat province and launched attacks on Afghan Government forces’ ..

ELON Musk has refuted a story based on an upcoming book about Tesla that he tried to replace Tim Cook as Apple CEO. The book, titled ‘Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century’ by The Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins, claims that Musk reportedly wanted to become the Apple CEO in a 2016 phone call with Cook, who suggested to Musk that the iPhone maker acquire the electric car-maker. Musk reportedly said that he wished to become Apple CEO, reports ‘The Los Angeles Times’, quoting ..

THE rescue operation to locate 20 people missing after a cloudburst in a village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar resumed on Friday after remaining suspended for hours together owing to inclement weather, officials said. Seven persons were found dead and 17 others were rescued in an injured condition after the remote Honzar village in Dacchan tehsil was hit by flash floods triggered by the cloudburst in the early hours of Wednesday, damaging 21 houses, 21 cow sheds, a ration depot, a bridge and a mosque...

ISRAEL has launched a probe into the allegations of wrongdoing against the NSO Group in the Pegasus snooping scandal, with authorities inspecting the cybersecurity company’s offices over alleged abuses of its spyware by several Government clients which have raised eyebrows the world over. Representatives of several bodies visited the office of NSO to assess the allegations raised in regards to the company on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Israel’s Ministry of Defence said. When asked to share details, ..

GOOGLE received 71,148 complaints from individual users in India in May and June combined, which resulted in the removal of more than 1.54 lakh pieces of content, as per the company’s latest monthly transparency reports. The number of complaints received in June from individual users in India was 36,265, leading to 83,613 removal actions - both the numbers were higher than the levels seen in May. In addition to reports from users, Google also removed more than 11.6 lakh pieces of content in May and ..

THE Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) recorded the highest ever pass percentage of 99.37 in this year’s class 12 results, declared on Friday, with girls outshining boys by a slender margin of 0.54 per cent. The pass percentage increased by over 10 percentage points against last year’s 88.78 per cent. The difference between the pass percentage of girls and boys was nearly 6 per cent last year...

AS OPPOSITION protests over alleged snooping using Pegasus spyware continue to disrupt House proceedings, Union Minister Pralhad Joshi on Friday said the controversy was a “non-issue” and that the Government was ready for discussions on people-related issues. The Pegasus spyware issue has snowballed into a political controversy, disrupting Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha since the start of the Monsoon session on July 19. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has given a statement on the issue in both the Houses ..

AN ANTI-NARENDRA Modi agenda alone will not help sustain an Opposition front to take on the BJP, senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily cautioned on Thursday, calling for drawing up a common minimum programme for parties to work together. The former Union Minister also warned that such a front will not take off if parties debate on which leader or political outfit should lead it at this stage itself. “They (Opposition parties) should not bother about leadership now,” Moily told PTI here. “If they ..

AFTER meeting West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Delhi, lyricist-poet Javed Akhtar on Thursday said there should be a change in the country and it is the history of Bengal that it had led the revolutionary movements. Javed Akhtar and actor Shabana Azmi met Banerjee in Delhi. Briefing mediapersons after the meeting, Akhtar said, “It is a courteous meeting...

AS THE new National Education Policy (NEP) completed one year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said it is one of the major factors in the grand exercise of nation building and assures the youth that the country supports their aspirations. Modi said in the last one year, teachers, principals and policymakers of the country have worked very hard in implementing the National Education Policy on the ground. Addressing a programme on the completion of one year of the NEP, the Prime Minister said ..

THE Government on Thursday announced a 27 per cent quota for OBCs and 10 per cent reservation for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category in the All-India Quota (AIQ) scheme for undergraduate and postgraduate medical and dental courses from the current academic year, 2021-22. Hailing the “landmark decision” taken by his Government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “This will immensely help thousands of our youth every year get better opportunities and create a new paradigm of social justice ..

THE Supreme Court on Thursday reserved verdict on e-commerce giant Amazon’s pleas against the merger of Future Retail Ltd (FRL) with Reliance Retail and would rule whether Singapore’s Emergency Arbitrator (EA) award, restraining the Rs 24,731 crore deal, was valid under Indian law and can be enforced. Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC and FRL are embroiled in a bitter legal fight over the deal and the US-based firm has sought in the apex court that the EA award was valid and enforceable. “So ..

RESCUE operations were underway on Thursday to trace 20 people missing after a cloudburst hit Honzar village in Kishtwar district of Jammu and Kashmir with authorities pressing more teams into action. Seven persons were found dead and 17 others were rescued in an injured condition after the remote village was struck by the cloudburst in the early hours of Wednesday, damaging 21 houses, cow sheds, a ration depot, a bridge and a mosque. The officials said the joint rescue operation by police, Army and ..

THE West Bengal forest department is set to get 14 tigers from Kaziranga in Assam to be released at Buxa National Park in North Bengal, State Minister Jyotipriyo Mallick said. The Forest Minister said that 10 female and four male tigers would be brought from Kaziranga forest as their habitat has similarities with the Buxa forest area. “This will be a major step in increasing the tiger population of the State. The tigers would be brought very soon,” he told PTI in an interview. However, the State Government ..

THE Opposition on Wednesday hardened its stand on the Pegasus spyware issue with 14 parties unitedly demanding a debate in Parliament in the presence of the Prime Minister or the Home Minister and a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the matter. Meanwhile, asserting that preventing a possible third wave of COVID-19 is the biggest issue now, the BJP hit out at Opposition parties on Wednesday for disrupting Parliament proceedings over “manufactured” matters like the Pegasus snooping and claimed it was ..

ONE of Indian badminton’s earliest superstar Nandu Natekar, whose on-court grace was often compared to a ballet dancer, died on Wednesday after suffering from age-related ailments here. The 88-year-old, who won over 100 national and international titles in his career, is survived by his son former Davis Cupper Gaurav and two daughters. “He passed away peacefully at home and we were all with him. He has been ailing for the last three months and he passed away peacefully,” Gaurav told to PTI. Natekar, ..

AROUND 70 per cent of consumers are aware of realty law RERA and five out of six homebuyers seek grievances redressal through this legislations, according to a survey by Omidyar Network India and Boston Consulting Group released on Wednesday. However, the report pointed out that the implementation of the grievance redressal process still has many gaps as “only 22 per cent of the consumers involved in a grievance redressal process were satisfied due to the uncertain timelines involved”...

AT LEAST 18 people were killed and 25 injured after a truck rammed into a stationary double-decker bus here amid heavy rain, police said on Wednesday. The accident took place on the Lucknow-Ayodhya highway under Kotwali Ramsanehighat area late on Tuesday night. The private bus was carrying over 130 passengers to Bihar from Punjab and Haryana, they said. The axle of the bus broke and it was parked on the road when a speeding truck coming from behind hit it, killing 18 people and injuring 25 others, ..

DHOLAVIRA, a Harappan-era city in Gujarat, has been conferred the tag of UNESCO World Heritage Site, the organisation said on Tuesday. This is the second site to be included in the world heritage list this month after the Ramappa temple at Palampet in Telangana’s Warangal. “Dholavira: A Harappan City, in India, just inscribed on the @UNESCO #WorldHeritage List. Congratulations!” UNESCO tweeted. Dholavira and the Ramappa Temple were included in the list during the 44th session of the UNESCO’s World ..

SENIOR BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday defended visiting flood-hit areas in Maharashtra, saying it spurs authorities into action, hours after NCP chief Sharad Pawar observed that visits by VIPs to such spots should be avoided as they affect rescue and relief operations. Fadnavis also said he will visit more such areas in the coming days. Union Minister Narayan Rane, Fadnavis, and Opposition leader in Legislative council Pravin Darekar recently visited Taliye village in the worst-hit Raigad ..

INDIAN-ORIGIN British author Sunjeev Sahota is among the 13 authors longlisted for the prestigious 2021 Booker Prize for fiction for his novel ‘China Room’, alongside Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro and Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers. The 2021 longlist or “The Booker Dozen” of 13 novels was unveiled on Tuesday after judges evaluated 158 novels published in the UK or Ireland between October 1, 2020 and September 30, 2021...

WEST Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for what she called a courtesy meeting. This is the first official meeting between Prime Minister and Banerjee in the national capital after she became Chief Minister of West Bengal for the third time after stunning victory in Assembly polls. The meeting, held at Prime Minister’s residence, lasted for around 45 minutes. It is learnt that during the meeting, Banerjee discussed COVID situation in the State and ..

ASTRONOMERS have, for the first time, uncovered evidence of water vapour in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. This water vapour forms when ice from the moon’s surface sublimates -- that is, turns from solid to gas. The findings are published in the journal Nature Astronomy. Previous research has offered circumstantial evidence that Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, contains more water than all of Earth’s oceans. However, temperatures there ..

THE deadly second wave of COVID-19 may lead to some reassessment of India’s economic growth rate in the current fiscal but the long-term prospects for the country continue to remain robust, Aditya Birla Group Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla has said. The silver lining, however, was the lesser severity of disruptions to production and supply chains during the second wave of the pandemic than during the first wave, said Birla in the latet annual report of group firm UltraTech Cement Ltd. Moreover, a pick-up ..

NON-PERFORMING assets (NPAs) or bad loans of banks have declined by Rs 61,180 crore to Rs 8.34 lakh crore at the end of March 31, 2021, as result of various steps taken by the Government, Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat K Karad said on Monday. Scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) were carrying NPAs worth Rs 8.96 lakh crore on their balance sheet at the end of March 2020. ..

AFTER months of speculation over his exit, B S Yediyurappa on Monday stepped down as the Chief Minister of Karnataka, coinciding with his Government completing two years in office. He termed these two years as “trial by fire”, pointing out that he had to run the administration without Cabinet in the initial days, followed by devastating floods and the challenge of COVID-19 management, among other issues. The 78-year-old BJP veteran who submitted his resignation to Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot at the ..

AT LEAST nine people killed while three were injured in Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur district on Sunday after a bridge collapsed as a result of boulders rolling down a hill due to a landslide. According to Saju Ram Rana, Superintendent of Police, Kinnaur district, the nine persons who died were tourists traveling in a vehicle. A rescue team is present on the spot...

THE Taliban, who are rapidly gaining territory in Afghanistan as the US withdraws its forces, are demanding that families marry off girls to their fighters and ordering men to grow beards and go to mosques. During the Taliban’s five-year rule (1996-2001) - which was almost universally shunned by other Governments but supported militarily and politically by Pakistan - women were prohibited from working, attending school or leaving home without a male relative. Men were forced to grow beards and wear ..

THE central board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is facing shortage of nine non-official Directors, including seven from the category of people of eminence from various fields. The Government nominates 10 eminent persons from various fields to the central board of the RBI, besides four Directors (one from each of the four local boards). The Government is yet to appoint seven non-official Directors from the category of people of eminence from various fields while representations from local board ..

WHILE a large number of people now have immunity against coronavirus due to previous infections or vaccination, a guarded approach is needed in terms of implementing restrictive measures to avoid a second wave-like crisis, experts said. Dr Yudhyavir Singh, who has been managing the COVID-19 ICU at AIIMS New Delhi, said it is important to lift a few restrictions to resume economic activities when cases are low. Dr Singh added that Delhi may have already achieved herd immunity, considering the massive ..

THE number of deaths due to flooding, landslides and other rain-related incidents in parts of Maharashtra reached 113 on Sunday with one more casualty reported in the last 24 hours, while 100 people were missing after the monsoon fury, the State Government said. So far, 50 people have also been injured in these incidents, the Government said in a statement. On Sunday, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray visited Chiplun, the site of severe flooding in Ratnagiri district of the Konkan region. A group of ..

AFTER waiting for more than seven years, John Abraham, a veterinary-doctor-turned-inventor, has finally received the patents for inventing biodiesel from slaughtered chicken waste that offers mileage of over 38 km a litre at around 40 per cent of the current price of diesel and lowers pollution by half. After seven-and-a-half years, the Indian Patent Office finally granted us the patent on July 7, 2021, for inventing ‘biodiesel produced from rendered chicken oil’, Abraham, an associate professor at ..

INDIA has urged the G20 countries to bring down per capita emissions to the global average by 2030 in view of the “fast-depleting available carbon space”. In the two-day Environment Ministerial meet at the 16th G20 Summit held in Naples, Italy, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said, “We have noted the pledges made by some countries to achieve Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions for carbon neutrality by or around mid-century. However, this may not be adequate in view of fast depleting available ..

THE UK-India dialogue on the roadmap towards accelerated talks on a free trade agreement (FTA), with an interim agreement factored in, is “going well” and will see “good progress” in the coming months, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Saturday. At the conclusion of his two-day visit to London to take stock of the Roadmap 2030 agreed between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Boris Johnson in May, the Foreign Secretary said he held a range of meetings with UK interlocutors on the full ..

THE CBI on Saturday started searches at 40 locations in Jammu and Kashmir, and in the national capital in connection with cases related to alleged irregularities in the issuance of thousands of arms licences to non-residents on forged documents, officials said. The search operation is spread across Jammu, Srinagar, Udhampur, Rajouri, Anantnag, Baramulla and Delhi at the official and residential premises of public servants, including IAS officers, around 20 gun houses among others in an ongoing investigatio..

THREE unidentified militants were killed while an Army jawan was injured in an encounter in Bandipora district of Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday, officials said. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Shokbaba forest in the Sumblar area of Bandipora in north Kashmir following inputs about the presence of militants there, they said. The officials said as the forces were conducting searches in the area, the militants fired upon them. The forces retaliated, ensuing an encounter in ..

THE CISCE on Saturday announced results for classes 10 and 12, with class 10 girls and boys achieving the same pass percentage of 99.98 per cent. In the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) class 12 results, girls outshone boys by a margin of 0.2 per cent. The board said like last year, there will be no merit list this time too in view of the exceptional circumstances in which the results have been prepared. The CISCE had cancelled the exams for both classes this year in ..

THE United Kingdom’s Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 2021, led by the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, has met up with the Indian Navy in the Bay of Bengal for three days of complex maritime interactions, the British Government said on Thursday. The maritime partnership exercise between the Indian Navy and the Royal Navy will see the two navies conducting a range of multi-ship, air, sea and sub-surface maritime evolutions, as well as close quarter manoeuvring. This enables both forces to advance their ..

TWELVE BJP MLAs from Maharashtra on Thursday moved the Supreme Court challenging their one-year suspension from the state Legislative Assembly for allegedly misbehaving with the presiding officer. Advocate Abhikalp Pratap Singh said he has filed the petition in the apex court on behalf of these MLAs and they have challenged the resolution passed by the Assembly to suspend these lawmakers for one year. They were suspended on July 5 from the Assembly after the State Government had accused them of ..

A TRINAMOOL Congress (TMC) MP snatched papers from Communications and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday and tore those as the Minister was about to make a statement on the alleged snooping row using Israeli spyware Pegasus. TMC, Congress and other Opposition party members, who had earlier forced two adjournments of the proceedings in the Rajya Sabha, rushed into the well of the House as Vaishnaw was called to make a statement on the issue. TMC MP Shantanu ..

THE Competition Commission of India (CCI) has accused Amazon.com Inc of concealing facts and making false submissions when it sought approval for a 2019 investment in a Future Group unit, a global news wire reported. The report said the letter complicates Amazon’s bitter legal battle with Future Group over the Indian’s firm’s decision to sell its retail assets to Reliance Industries - a matter that is now before India’s Supreme Court. Amazon has argued that terms agreed upon in its 2019 deal to ..

MUMBAI police have registered an FIR against senior IPS officer Param Bir Singh, five other police personnel and two more persons for allegedly demanding Rs 15 crore from a builder to withdraw cases against him, an official said on Thursday. Based on the builder’s complaint, the case was registered at the Marine Drive police station in south Mumbai, he said. The five other cops accused in the case are - DCP (crime branch) Akbar Pathan, inspector Shrikant Shinde, Asha Korke, Nandkumar Gopale and Sanjay ..

THE Government will move a motion seeking suspension of Trinamool Congress MP Shantanu Sen for snatching papers from Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, sources said. The Government will move a motion seeking suspension of Sen on Friday. They said some Opposition MPs ‘misbehaved’ with the treasury bench members, including a Minister, even after the House was adjourned...

A 108-YEAR-OLD man did not live to see that the Supreme Court has admitted his appeal in a land dispute case he had been pursuing since 1968 and had remained pending before the Bombay High Court for 27 year before being dismissed. On July 12 this year, the apex court agreed to hear the appeal after Sopan Narsinga Gaikwad’s counsel pleaded that the delay in filing the appeal may be viewed from the perspective that the aged petitioner belonged to a rural area of Maharashtra and learned of the high court ..

MORE than 1.5 million children around the world, including 1,19,000 from India, have lost at least one parent, custodial grandparent, or grandparent, as a result of Covid-19, according to a new study published in The Lancet. Of those, more than 1 million children experienced the death of one or both parents during the first 14 months of the pandemic, and another half a million experienced the death of a grandparent caregiver living in their own home, the study estimates. In India, the researchers ..

A LOCAL court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Louise Khurshid, wife of former Union Minister and Congress leader Salman Khurshid, in a case of misappropriation of over Rs 71 lakh received i n central grants by Dr Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust that is run by her. Chief Judicial Magistrate Praveen Kumar Tyagi, on Tuesday, issued the non-bailable warrant against Louise Khurshid and Trust Secretary Athar Farooqui and has fixed August 16 as the next date for hearing...

NARCO terrorism is becoming a major challenge for the security forces as the smuggling of narcotics in over 95 per cent cases has been linked directly with financing of various terrorist organisations in Jammu and Kashmir. Intelligence agencies believe that all cross LoC and cross international border smuggling rackets in J&K are directly linked to financing and sustaining terrorism from across the border. “In over 95 per cent narcotics smuggling cases, we have been able to establish a direct link ..

SECURITY forces of India and Pakistan exchanged sweets along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir on the occasion of Eid-al-Adha on Wednesday, officials said. Officials of the Indian and Pakistani armies exchanged sweets at Poonch-Rawalakot and Mendhar-Hotspring crossing points along the LoC in Poonch district. They said the ceremony is seen as an enhanced confidence- building measure in the backdrop of a ceasefire between both countries...