Government’s clean fuel drive on reverse gea

he Union government’s crackdown on air pollution, by implementing stricter vehicular emission standards, is facing a delay due to unavailability of suitable fuel to support its clean technology. The government is now considering to postpone the implementation of Euro-V norms by a year to 2020 and that of Euro-VI norms to 2022, government officials said. The implementation of Euro-V emission standards for all vehicles might take place...

Read More

Congress wins in Bidar, Ballari, Raichur-Koppal

JD(S) wraps Kolar seat from Congress The Janata Dal (Secular) candidate C.R. Manohar won the Kolar Local Authorities Constituency defeating nearest Congress rival M.L.Anilkumar. Nazir Ahmad of Congress had represented this seat for the last two terms. While Mr. Manohar polled 3221 votes, Mr. Kumar got 2278 votes. The BJP candidate G.E. Ramegowda could muster only 210 votes. Kolar has recorded highest percentage of votes in the polls held...

Read More

Transformational year: U.S. envoy Richard Verma

2015 was an unprecedented year in defence relationship as India and the United States began merging their critical defence and strategic needs, said U.S. envoy Richard Verma in a year-end statement. “We held the first-ever Strategic and Commercial Dialogue, merging our commercial and strategic issues to help power the growth of both our countries. We established secure lines between our two National Security Advisers, and between the President...

Read More

Navy successfully launches long-range air defence missile Barak NG

One of India’s most ambitious and costly efforts to develop a surface-to-air missile system, in collaboration with Israel, achieved a significant milestone over the last two days with its successful firings from an Indian Naval warship. The Long Range Surface to Air Missile (LRSAM) -- land version is called MRSAM (medium range SAM) -- is a joint development project between India and Israel and is said to be a very advanced SAM that can track...

Read More

DDCA to file defamation case against Kejriwal, Kirti Azad

The Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) on Wednesday took exception to the allegations levelled by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal regarding its functioning. Responding to various allegations by Mr. Kejriwal and also the State government’s decision to appoint Gopal Subramanium to head the probe, DDCA acting president Chetan Chauhan said, “The allegations are serious and the whole thing has become political. Since it involves...

Read More

Land allotment to Hema Malini draws ire

Following the Maharashtra government’s recent decision to allot land in Andheri’s Ambivli area to actor Hema Malini’s dance academy, demands for land allotments to house the homeless and slum-dwellers are growing louder. On Wednesday, the Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action sent a letter to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse and other officials asking the government to make land available for the rehabilitation...

Read More

Two militants killed in Pulwama encounter

Two separatist guerrillas were killed on Thursday in an overnight gunfight between holed up militants and security forces in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district. “Two militants including Manzoor Ahmad Dar of Samboora (Pulwama) and a Pakistani national have been killed in Gusoo village encounter,” a senior police officer told IANS in Srinagar. Security forces including troops of 53 Rashtriya Rifles, 183 battalion of CRPF and special operations...

Read More

NASA captures landslip on Mars

NASA has released an image of a relatively fresh landslip on Mars that shows boulder-covered landslip along a canyon wall. Landslips occur when steep slopes fall, sending a mass of soil and rock to flow downhill, leaving behind a scarp at the top of the slope, the researchers said. The mass of material comes to rest when it reaches shallower slopes, forming a lobe of material that ends in a well-defined edge called a toe. Striking feature The...

Read More

‘69 journalists died on the job in 2015’

Sixty nine journalists were killed around the world on the job in 2015. Twenty eight of them were slain by Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The New York-based organisation says Syria again was the deadliest place for journalists, though the number of deaths there in 2015 13 was lower than in previous years of the conflict. “These journalists are the most vulnerable,”...

Read More

Canteen cashier raped on Infosys campus in Pune

A female contractual staffer was raped on the Infosys campus here on December 27. Two persons have been arrested. The incident came to light only on Tuesday after the employee filed a complaint with the Hinjewadi police. The woman works as a cashier in one of the canteens in Phase 1 of the sprawling 114-acre campus. One of the two accused raped the woman in the restroom while the other filmed it on a mobile phone, Inspector Vishwajeet Khule...

Read More

Russia wants HAL as partner

The Narendra Modi government’s grand plans to bring in the private sector into the defense sector has received its first reality check with Russia refusing to sign up with a private sector partner for manufacturing helicopters, instead opting to go with the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). The move, confirmed by official sources and Russia’s Rostec on Tuesday, is contrary to the much-hyped claim about Russian willingness to...

Read More

Guinea declared free of Ebola virus that killed over 2,500

Guinea was declared free of Ebola on Tuesday after more than 2,500 people died from the virus in the West African nation, leaving Liberia as the only country still awaiting a countdown for the end of the epidemic. People in the capital, Conakry, greeted the declaration by authorities and the U.N. World Health Organisation with mixed emotions given the deaths and the damage the virus did to the economy and the country's health and education...

Read More

Malaysian Airlines plane flies in wrong direction over sea

Beleaguered Malaysian Airlines has launched a probe after one of its planes flew in the wrong direction towards Melbourne rather than Kuala Lumpur for eight minutes during a Christmas Day flight from New Zealand. The Flight MH132 from Auckland to Kuala Lumpur took off at 2:23 am on Christmas Day but flew south over the Tasman Sea rather than taking a more direct ‘north-west’ route to the Malaysian capital, radar data showed. Just eight minutes...

Read More

South Korea, Japan settle deal on wartime Korean sex slaves

The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan say they’ve reached a deal meant to resolve a decades-long impasse over Korean women forced into Japanese military-run brothels during World War II. Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida says his Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is offering an apology and that Tokyo will finance a 1 billion yen aid fund for the elderly former sex slaves to be set up by South Korea. The issue of former Korean sex...

Read More

Mohammad Aamir accepted by Pakistan players after tearful apology

Pakistan paceman Mohammad Aamir broke down during the national conditioning camp and offered to leave the game before being accepted by protesting players, who had reservations training with him. Mohammed Hafeez and skipper Azhar Ali had refused to train with him earlier. After Aamir spoke to players at a meeting, arranged by head coach Waqar Younis and chief selector Haroon Rasheed, the protesting cricketers finally relented. Aamir offered...

Read More

It’s Gujarat’s day

Gujarat executed a first-rate demolition job to undermine a supposedly much-superior Delhi side, winning by 139 runs, to claim its maiden Vijay Hazare Trophy title here at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. If its manner of victory in Saturday’s semifinal against Tamil Nadu was worthy of applause, the style, the performance and result on Monday all gained perfection unseen thus far. A maiden List-A century for skipper Parthiv Patel (105, 119b, 10x4)...

Read More

Afghanistan storms into semifinals, to meet Sri Lanka

Defending champion Afghanistan played the two periods in contrasting styles and yet came out with an easy win against Maldives in a Group B match of the SAFF Suzuki Cup football tournament at the Greenfield stadium here on Monday. The 4-1 win saw Afghanistan top the group with three wins and earned the right to play Sri Lanka in the semifinals. Maldives will play host India in the other semifinal on Thursday. After having ensured qualification...

Read More

Hingis and I complement each other, says Sania Mirza

Even as a highly successful 2015 comes to an end, five-time Grand Slam champion Sania Mirza is already in a preparatory mode for next year and setting new targets to achieve. The 29-year-old Sania insisted that 2015 has been the best year of her career and is glad that she achieved the World No.1 ranking in April this year for the first time and remained so at the end of the year too. “Reaching the top is one thing and staying there is another...

Read More

Man distracted by electronic device dies in fall from cliff

A 33-year-old man, apparently distracted by an electronic device, died when he fell 50 to 60 feet from the top of a cliff in the U.S. State of California. The incident happened when the man — who may have been distracted by a cell-phone or camera — fell from the top of Sunset Cliffs on Christmas Day, San Diego lifeguards said. Dies at scene Lifeguards and San Diego Fire-Rescue Department personnel responded and rappelled to the bottom of...

Read More

Washington likely venue for the next Modi-Sharif meet

As India and Pakistan enhance their engagement over the next weeks, after the abrupt turnaround in relations, the U.S capital will likely be the venue for the next meeting between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif. President Barack Obama has invited both prime ministers for the Nuclear Security Summit on March 31 and April 1, 2016. Though no formal announcements have been made, it is almost certain that both Mr. Modi and Mr. Sharif...

Read More

Texas storms, tornadoes kill at least 11

Tornadoes swept through the Dallas area, leaving substantial damage and at least 11 people dead either from the storm or related traffic accidents, in the latest of a succession of freakish winter weather events across the country. The Texas tornadoes that touched down after dark on Saturday followed days of tumultuous weather in the Southeast, including unusual winter tornadoes that left 18 people dead there over the Christmas holiday period. Full...

Read More

Behind the scenes, Pakistan’s military helped revive talks with India

The quiet involvement of Pakistan's powerful military in its foreign policy this year paved the way for reviving a stalled dialogue with India, officials said, a thaw leading to the first visit to Pakistan by an Indian premier in almost 12 years. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise trip to meet Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif on Friday raised hopes that stop-and-start negotiations between the nuclear-armed neighbours might finally...

Read More

Sunburn and other EDM festivals banned in peak season from next year says Goa CM

The Goa government has said that the Sunburn and the Supersonic Electronic Dance Music (EDM) festivals, which the state hosts at Vagator and Candolim, respectively, won’t be held in the peak season of December 15-January 15 from the next year. The state Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, who on Saturday cleared the files, granting conditional permission to the organizers of both the festivals to hold the four-day-long events from today, categorically...

Read More

Anger against India over blockade snowballs in Nepal

If anger could melt ice, Mount Everest would be standing bare and brown today — so angry are the people of Nepal with India. The four-month-old blockade of its border with India has pushed the erstwhile Himalayan kingdom back to the dark ages, with the acute shortage of fuel, cooking gas and other essential supplies crippling daily life; and its citizens, still recovering from two earthquakes and facing a harsh winter, unequivocally blame the...

Read More

IT sector worried; India to take up visa fee with U.S.

India will soon schedule discussions with the U.S. to raise its concerns over the Obama administration’s recent decision to hike visa fees, official sources told The Hindu. India will also consider retaliatory measures and even explore the possibility of dragging the U.S. to the World Trade Organisation’s dispute settlement body, but only if talks fail to amicably resolve the issue. Issues related to the tightening of the visa and immigration...

Read More

Yechury pitches Left as alternative

Twenty minutes on foot from a traffic diversion near Fort William, crowds thronged the Brigade Parade Grounds here on a quiet Kolkata Sunday to see the CPI(M)’s brass make a bid to showcase the party’s cadre strength, amid a palpable political decline. All buses, packed with party workers, seemed to head to the rally from some kilometers away. Closer to the venue, hundreds walked with red flags, some even sporting red caps. The grand rally...

Read More

Nothing like family to win over voters, unless your name is Bush

One closes every speech with the heartfelt tale of his bartender father; another invokes her newborn granddaughter while musing about future generations. And then there are the far more famous father and brother who seldom get a mention unless explicitly asked about. Family members may not be physically present for the most part on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, but their presence is routinely felt as candidates crisscross the country...

Read More

Strong earthquake hits Afghanistan, Pakistan

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit northern Afghanistan and Pakistan late on Friday, two months after more than 300 people were killed by a quake in the same mountainous region. Strong shocks were felt in the Afghan capital Kabul at 11:14 p.m. local time (1914 GMT) and in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, waking sleeping people and driving them out of their houses. Tremors were felt as far away as New Delhi, officials said. The U.S. Geological...

Read More

‘Need for unity against terror atrocities’

Pope Francis urged the world in his Christmas message on Friday to unite to end atrocities by Islamist militants that he said were causing immense suffering in many countries. Security was tight at the Vatican as Pope Francis, marking the third Christmas since his election in 2013, read his traditional Christmas Day “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) address from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. Tens of thousands of people...

Read More