IN A surprise move, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has sent notices to over a dozen of people, including a journalist, farmer leaders associated with the agitation against three farm laws and others, in connection with its probe into the Sikh For Justice (SFJ) case, officials said on Saturday. An NIA official related with the development wishing not to be named told IANS, “The NIA has sent notices to several people for examination.” The official said that they have been called as witnesses ..

BHARAT Biotech, which has received a Government purchase order for supply of 55 lakh doses of Covaxin, a COVID-19 vaccine, will pay compensation to recipients in case of any ‘serious adverse’ effects experienced after receiving the antidote. A consent form to be signed by the vaccine recipients said, “In case of any adverse events or serious adverse events, you will be provided medically recognised standard of care in the Government designated and authorised centres and hospitals.”..

THE first COVID-19 vaccine shots in India were given on Saturday to nearly two lakh frontline healthcare and sanitary workers as Prime Minister Narendra Modi rolled out the world’s largest inoculation drive against the pandemic that has caused 1,52,093 deaths and upended millions of lives in the country. As Modi asserted that the two vaccines being deployed will ensure a “decisive victory” for India against the coronavirus, the Union Health Ministry said no case of post-inoculation hospi..

IF there is any proposal on bad banks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will examine the proposal, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das during 39th Palkhiwala Memorial lecture on Saturday. “Bad banks have been under discussion for a long time, we are open to looking up any proposal on bad banks...

CASES of bird flu are spreading in Maharashtra with 382 bird deaths reported from nine districts on Thursday, taking the toll to 3,378 across the State. According to the State Department, samples of birds from four more districts in the State Latur, Nanded, Nashik and Ahmednagar returned positive for bird flu. ..

THE Election Commission will extend “full assistance” to the Government in identifying targeted beneficiaries at the polling station level for the COVID-19 vaccination drive, but wants health authorities to delete the data once the inoculation exercise is over, sources privy to the development said on Friday. ..

IN A clear message to China, Chief of Army Staff General M M Naravane on Friday said no one should make any mistake of testing India’s patience though it is committed to resolve the border stand-off along the northern frontier through talks and political efforts. In an address at the Army Day parade here, General Naravane said a “befitting response” was given to the “conspiracy” to make unilateral changes on the border and that the sacrifice of the Galwan heroes in eastern Ladakh will not go waste. ..

HEMANT Ghai, an anchor with CNBC TV 18, has been debarred by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) from trading in stock markets and offering investment advice. Madhabi Puri Buch, wholetime member, SEBI, passed an interim order on Wednesday in the case of CNBC Awaaz show “Stock 20-20”, co-hosted by Hemant Ghai. “CNBC TV 18 is also advised to appropriately bring to the notice of the viewers of the shows co-hosted by Mr. Hemant Ghai that SEBI ..

UNDER fire over its recent privacy policy update, WhatsApp on Thursday said it is open to answering any questions from the Government on the issue and is aware that the company will have to “compete” for users’ trust with rivals such as Signal. In an interview to PTI, WhatsApp Head Will Cathcart said the Facebook-owned company remains committed to privacy and security of users across India and will continue to explain to users that their messages are end-to-end encrypted. Rival messaging platforms ..

INDIA’S Armed Forces have displayed courage in times of conflict and compassion to support its citizens, and the ex-servicemen community has been a source of motivation for them, Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat said on Thursday. In a message on the occasion of Veterans Day, General Rawat said the Armed Forces continue to seek guidance of the ex-servicemen who had set high standards for the military to emulate...

INDIA’S preparedness to deal with all possible challenges in the maritime domain, including contingencies from peace to war-time, was tested in a two-day multi-agency military exercise that covered the 7,516 km-long coastline and exclusive economic zone, officials said on Thursday. The second edition of exercise ‘Sea Vigil’, which concluded on Wednesday evening, particularly focused on the efficacy of the measures initiated to plug gaps in the coastal security set up following the Mumbai terror attack ..

A WOMAN has accused Maharashtra Social Justice Minister Dhananjay Munde of rape and claimed the Mumbai police ignored her complaint. The NCP leader denied the allegations, claiming he is being blackmailed by the complainant and her sister. Munde said he had been in a relationship with the complainant’s sister and sired two children. The 37-year-old woman, an aspiring singer, said she wrote to Mumbai police commissioner on January 10, stating that Munde repeatedly raped her in 2006...

KARNATAKA Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Wednesday expanded his 17-month old Cabinet, inducting seven ministers and indicated that excise minister H Nagesh would be dropped. Governor Vajubhai Vala administered the oath of office and secrecy to the Ministers at a ceremony at the Raj Bhawan. The new Ministers are MLAs Umesh Katti (Hukkeri), S Angara (Sullia), Murugesh Nirani (Bilgi) and Arvind Limbavali (Mahadevapura), and MLCs R Shankar, M T B Nagaraj and C P Yogeshwar. Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, ..

CHIEF Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan ordered to remove Morena Collector and Superintendent of Police in the wake of Morena hooch tragedy. Instructions for suspension of SDOP of concerned area has also been issued. Excise Officer has already been suspended...

THE Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the highest decision-making body for security issues headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday approved the purchase of 83 Tejas fighter jets for the Indian Air Force at a cost of Rs 48,000 crore, including infrastructure. The CCS approved the largest indigenous defence procurement deal worth about Rs 48,000 crore to strengthen the IAF’s fleet of homegrown Light Combat Aircraft (LCA)-Tejas...

SERUM Institute of India (SII) has dispatched over 90 per cent of the COVID-19 vaccine, Covishield, ordered by the Government of India. Official sources confirmed to ANI that about 10.99 million doses have been already dispatched from SII facility in Pune and only around 90,000 doses are left to be dispatched. Sources have also confirmed that the remaining volume of the vaccines will be dispatched either on Wednesday or Thursday from the SII facility. The Government of India had placed an order for ..

THE Supreme Court on Wednesday took suo motu cognisance of pollution in the Yamuna after Delhi Jal Board (DJB) alleged that water containing high pollutants is being released in the river from Haryana. A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde was hearing the DJB plea alleging that the water released by neighbouring State Haryana in Yamuna river has pollutants including high ammonia content which become carcinogenic after mixing with Chlorine. “We are issuing notice without argument...

RESEARCHERS at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati, claim to have found important clues to understand the death of massive stars and have also revealed the problems with the existing models. The research in collaboration with Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich, Germany, and Northwestern University, USA, has also been published in international journal Physical Review Letters (PRL)...

THE Serum Institute of India (SII) makes 70 to 80 million doses every month and planning is underway for distribution to India and foreign countries, said Adar Poonawalla, CEO and Owner, SII. “We make 70-80 million doses every month. Planning is underway to see how many will be given to India and foreign countries. Health Ministry has made logistics plans. We also have a partnership with private players for trucks, vans and cold storage.” Poonawalla said many countries have been writing to India ..

THE Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the implementation of controversial new farm laws till further orders and constituted a four-member committee to resolve the impasse over them between the Centre and farmers’ unions protesting at Delhi borders. A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde said, “As a consequence, the Minimum Support Price system in existence before the enactment of the farm Laws shall be maintained until further orders. In addition, the farmers’ land holdings shall be protected, i.e., ..

THE Central Board of Direct Taxes dashed hopes of all taxpayers waiting for further extension of due dates for filing tax returns rejecting all representation in this regard, citing that the process cannot be delayed ‘indefinitely’ and hamper the functioning of the tax department and welfare programmes of the Government...

THE search for the black boxes of a crashed Sriwijaya Air jet intensified Monday to boost the investigation into what caused the plane carrying 62 people to nosedive at high velocity into the Java Sea. The Boeing 737-500 jet disappeared minutes after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, during heavy rain on Saturday, and the search so far has yielded plane parts and human remains but no sign of survivors...

THE Bombay High Court on Monday extended till January 13 a civil court order granting interim protection to actor Sonu Sood from coercive action by the BMC against the alleged illegal structural changes made by him in a residential building in suburban Juhu without permission. Sood last week approached the HC, challenging a notice issued against him by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in October last year and an order passed by a civil court in December dismissing his suit against the BMC’s ..

CALL IT a love for his mother tongue ‘Hindi’ or his passion to invent something new that a school drop out, a carpenter by profession, turned into a Wikipedia editor and wrote 1,800 articles for its pages using his humble old vanilla plain mobile’s keypad. Knowing no fullstops, he also edited 57,000 pages on Wikipedia using the same keypad with Hindi alphabets, typing one mobile keypad stroke at a time. Looking at his immense passion, Wikipedia in 2016 gifted him a laptop and a free Internet connection...

CREATING history, Air India’s longest flight from San Francisco to Bengaluru with an all-woman crew landed in the city on Monday. As the flight (AI-176) landed at the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru and the crew members walked to the airport lounge, there was a huge crowd of people to receive them with elation and joy for setting a new record of an all-woman crew flying the longest distance over the North Pole. Air India had said earlier this will be the longest commercial flight ..

UNION Minister for Ayush and Defence Shripad Y Naik was injured and his wife Vijaya and personal assistant killed when their car overturned at Ankola in Uttara Kannada district on Monday night, police said. The Minister’s condition was stable, they said. Police said Naik, along with his wife, personal assistant Deepak, his close confidante Sai Kiran, gunman and the driver were heading from Yallapur to Gokarna on Monday night...

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said the two already approved made-in-India COVID-19 vaccines are more cost-effective than any other in the world and have been developed as per the country’s needs. Interacting with Chief Ministers of all States to discuss the COVID-19 situation and the vaccination roll-out in the country, Modi also said that apart from the two already approved vaccines, four others are in the pipeline. “Our experts have taken all precautions to provide the countrymen with effective ..

THE Centre on Sunday said bird flu outbreak has been confirmed in seven States -- Kerala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, while test results are still awaited for Delhi and Maharashtra samples. No samples have been confirmed positive in wild birds from Balod district, Chhattisgarh which were tested earlier, the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying said...

AMID a deadlock in the Government’s negotiations with protesting farmer unions, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Monday a clutch of pleas challenging the new farm laws as well as the ones raising issues related to the ongoing agitation at Delhi borders...

MAHARASHTRA Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday met kin of the newborns who died in a fire at the Bhandara district hospital the day before and said orders have been issued for conducting safety audit of all hospitals in the State. Ten of the 17 infants, aged between one month and three months, died in the blaze erupted at the Special Newborn Care Unit of the four-storey State-run hospital here in east Maharashtra. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said, “people co..

INDIA could soon be a part of the United Nations (UN) mandated international disaster rescue operations as the country’s federal contingency force, NDRF, is expected to obtain a globally recognised standardisation later this year, a top ranking official has said...

THE preliminary study of 2nd-3rd century CE structures excavated in Gujarat’s Vadnagar has revealed that people there might have known about earthquake resistant techniques, experts said on Sunday. Experts said no cracks or stress were found in these structures despite the area, some 100 kilometres from here, being prone to earthquakes, though they added the observations need further corroboration...

THERE was no let-up in cold weather conditions in north India on Saturday with fresh snowfall in parts of Kashmir affecting flight operations. A thick layer of fog enveloped parts of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said. Heavy rainfall was observed at isolated places in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala and Kashmir...

OVER 1,200 birds were found dead across the country on Saturday, including 900 in a poultry farm in Maharashtra, with the Centre saying that the outbreak of avian influenza has been reported in Uttar Pradesh, taking the total number of affected States to seven. The Centre said confirmation of bird flu in Delhi, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, is awaited as the samples have been sent for testing, it said...

A SRIWIJAYA Air passenger jet carrying 62 people lost contact with air traffic controllers minutes after taking off from Indonesia’s capital on a domestic flight on Saturday, officials said. Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said Flight SJ182 was delayed for an hour before it took off at 2:36 pm (local time)...

INDIAN universities and colleges with the Institutions of Eminence (IOEs) tag, which include several IITs, will now be able to set up campuses in foreign countries with the University Grants Commission (UGC) issuing fresh guidelines on the same. The Education Ministry had launched the IoE scheme in 2018 as per which 20 institutions were to be selected -- 10 public and 10 private ones -- that would enjoy complete academic and administrative autonomy...

INDIA will launch its COVID-19 vaccination drive from January 16 in what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called the world’s largest inoculation programme with priority to be given to nearly three crore healthcare and frontline workers. The decision, the Government said on Saturday, was taken at a high-level meeting where Modi reviewed the status of COVID-19 and vaccine preparedness across States and ..

Ten newborn babies died in the fire that broke out in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Bhandara District Hospital in the early hours of Saturday while seven babies were rescued by the security staff of the Hospital and fire fighters. The incident has shocked entire nation with President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top leaders express their shock and grief at the loss of little lives...

AS HEAVY snowfall threw life out of gear across Kashmir Valley this week, Army troops helped a pregnant woman in Kupwara reach hospital by carrying her a distance of about 2 km in knee-deep snow before she could be driven to a hospital, sources said on Thursday...

THE Jammu and Kashmir administration on Thursday announced a new industrial developmental scheme (IDS) with a total outlay of Rs 28,400 crore to encourage new investment and to take industrial development to the block level. “In a major decision of far-reaching consequence, Government of India has approved a new Industrial Developmental Scheme for Jammu and Kashmir,” Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha announced at a press conference here...

EXTERNAL Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday met the Tamil leadership in Sri Lanka and discussed issues pertaining to the development and devolution and the role of provincial councils as part of national reconciliation. The meeting assumed significance against the backdrop of moves by the ruling Sri Lanka People’s Party (SLPP) allies to mount a public campaign for abolition of the country’s provincial council system...

TAMIL Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Thursday welcomed External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s statement in Sri Lanka, which he said signified the Centre’s concern towards Tamils and would be welcomed by people of Tamil Nadu. Jaishankar unequivocally stated the Indian position on the 13th Amendment to the island nation, Purohit said in a statement...

THE Union Health Ministry has informed States and Union Territories that they are likely to receive the first supply of COVID-19 vaccine shortly and asked them to remain prepared to accept these consignments. In a communique, the Ministry said, vaccine will be supplied to the identified consignee points of 19 States and Union Territories — Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil ..

A TOP ISRO scientist on Tuesday claimed he was poisoned more than three years ago. Tapan Misra alleged he was poisoned with deadly arsenic trioxide on May 23, 2017, during a promotion interview at ISRO headquarters here. “Fatal dose was probably mixed” with chutney along with Dosa, in snacks after lunch, he said...

AROUND 400 terrorists are currently in launching pads across the Line of Control (LoC), waiting to sneak into Jammu and Kashmir during the winters, after a tight anti-infiltration grid frustrated attempts by Pakistan to push them into the Indian side, according to security officials. A top police official said that Pakistan is trying to infiltrate terrorists along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir even during the winters when most of the passes and mountainous areas along the border are covered in heavy ..

DIPLOMATIC relations have been restored between Qatar and four Arab States that imposed an embargo against it for three years, the Saudi Foreign Minister says. Prince Faisal bin Farhad told reporters that the countries had agreed to “fully set our differences aside” at a Gulf Co-operation Council summit on Tuesday...

THE Supreme Court on Wednesday said that it would hear on January 11 a batch of pleas challenging the new farm laws as also the ones raising issues related to the ongoing farmers’ protest at Delhi borders. A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde, which observed that there is no improvement on the ground regarding farmers’ protests, was informed by the Centre that “healthy discussions” are going on between the Government and farmers over these issues...

THE Income Tax Department questioned Robert Vadra, son-in-law of interim Congress President Sonia Gandhi, for the second consecutive day on Tuesday in connection with its probe against him under the benami assets law, official sources said. A team from the Chandigarh investigation unit of the department, that is handling the probe, was seen going inside Vadra’s office in the Sukhdev Vihar area of the national capital around 3 pm...

RESIDUAL terrorist strength in Jammu and Kashmir is currently below 200, said the Ministry of Defence in its annual review. The Ministry also pointed out that local recruitment is decreasing giving a serious blow to the nefarious designs of Pakistan to “indigenise” the movement and fuel unrest in the Valley. “Well synergised, Intelligence-based operations have resulted in significant successes and have considerably degraded terrorist leadership and their capabilities in Jammu and Kashmir,” the ..

THE Centre’s ambitious Central Vista Project, covering a 3-km stretch from Rashtrapati Bhawan to India Gate in Lutyens’ Delhi, got the green signal on Tuesday from the Supreme Court which found “no infirmity” in grant of environment clearance and other permissions. The top court said it cannot “jump to put a full stop on execution of policy matters” and the courts cannot be called upon to “govern”...