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  Investigators searching for clues in the sighting of two drones over an Army station on the outskirts of Jammu city on Monday had pinned hopes on a CCTV image suspecting it to be of the remote control but it turned out to be of a bundle of newspapers. And the two men seen in a grainy CCTV image holding the newspapers in the dead of night and suspected to be terrorists behind the unsuccessful attempt to target the military facility were actually a vendor and a distributor of a regional language newspaper, sources in the security establishment said on Tuesday. After sentries at the military station in Kaluchak on the outskirts of Jammu city sighted two drones during the intervening night of Sunday and Monday and also fired nearly two dozen rounds, the authorities carried out its internal probe and informed security agencies that a car was seen driven on the road running alongside the defence installation at a very slow speed. The military station is located on the national highway...

  In the first all-party meeting involving leaders from Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday that the Centre is fully committed to the democratic process in J&K, and holding Assembly elections in the region just like the successful conduct of the District Development Council (DDC) polls is a priority. Delimitation, roadmap for Assembly polls, restoration of statehood and bringing back Kashmiri Pandits were the key issues discussed in the crucial all-party meeting on Jammu and Kashmir that was chaired by Prime Minister Modi and involved leaders from different political parties in J&K. The meeting lasted for more than three-and-a-half hours with nobody raising cross-border issues, sources said. In the first such meeting held nearly two years after the erstwhile state of J&K lost its special status and was bifurcated into two Union Territories -- Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh -- the Prime Mi...

  Congress panel has summoned CM  over compassionate jobs to MLAs’ sons The crisis in Punjab Congress is far from over. Amid new controversy over the compassionate appointments given to the sons of two sitting legislators, the Congress’ three-member panel has once again called Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh to Delhi . Half a dozen Ministers, and equal number of MLAs, critical of the appointments, too have been called by the panel. Amarinder has reached Delhi and is slated to meet the panel, headed by the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, with State party affairs’ in-charge Harish Rawat and former MP JP Aggarwal as its members, on Tuesday. He is likely to interact with the Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi. The meeting comes at a time when a new controversy has hit the State Congress unit, virtually dividing the party in vertical, following the Cabinet’s recent decision to appoint sons of two MLAs — Arjun Pratap Singh Bajwa (son of Qadian MLA F...

  To address issues of sensitive video content, fake news In a move aimed at providing a level-playing field in the media, the Modi Government has decided to bring in an overarching statute that will provide for self-regulation in digital media, including Over-the-top (OTT) platforms and news websites, to address issues of sensitive video content and fake news. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) on Thursday issued a notification amending the Cable Television Network Rules, 1994 providing a statutory mechanism for redressal of grievances/complaints of citizens relating to content broadcast by television channels in accordance with the provisions of the Cable Television Network Act, 1995. Now, the broadcaster will have to establish a self-regulating body to redress citizens’ grievances. Besides, they will have to ensure that programmes are not violative of the programme code or advertising code. According to the new amendment, the Centre may prohibit the transmission...

  The race for nuclear arsenal supremacy has not declined with nuclear weapon states, including Russia and the USA deploying more and more warheads operationally. India with nearly 156 nuclear warheads lags behind its arch-rivals China and Pakistan. At present, China has more than 350 warheads. Pakistan is ahead of India with more than 165 nuclear weapons at the beginning of this year as per the annual report released on Monday by the prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). At the start of last year, while India had 150 warheads, Pakistan had 160 and China had 320, the SIPRI report observed. It also said nearly all the countries have started rapid modernisation of its nuclear weapon inventory. “China is in the middle of a significant modernisation and expansion of its nuclear weapon inventory, and India and Pakistan also appear to be expanding their nuclear arsenals,” it said. There are nine nuclear weapon states in the world, including India, USA, Pa...

  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently called for an accelerated global effort to distribute vaccines to end the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a welcome step because past official statements by world leaders have fallen short of delivering specific policies to reach desperate populations, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The IMF was also right to recognise that the cost of containing the COVID-19 pandemic is far less than the overall benefits for the global economy of full vaccine coverage. But it could have gone further by recognising that the inefficient vaccine allocation rules currently in place must be replaced by new cooperative institutional structures and more concrete steps by the Group of Twenty (G20) countries. The IMF is approaching the problem too narrowly. It strongly supports vaccine donations and distribution to be carried out solely through the COVAX facility. COVAX is one of three pillars of the initiative known as the Access to COVID-19 To...

  It is impossible to overlook the fact that a State which was showing reasonable progress in vaccination and reporting minuscule wastage suddenly screeched to a grinding halt in mid-May Today as India battles the corona virus pandemic, the old saying "adversity uncovers the real nature of your friends and foes" is being put to test. If there was ever a time to forget ideological and political differences and use co-operative federalism to protect our citizens, this was it. Yet many politicians chose human suffering as a laboratory for their debauched politics. Through their malevolent toolkits and through their controversial actions, they weakened a nation's fight against a common enemy. For every Opposition leader like Naveen Patnaik who chose to walk on the path of statesmanship, we got a Mamata Banerjee who chose to stoke her pitiful ego over common good. Rajasthan unfortunately saw a man at the helm of affairs who peddled untruths to hide his Government's lackad...

  Will BS Yediyurappa trade punches as he did 10 years ago to launch his own outfit or will he hang up his gloves as and when he is asked to? BS Yediyurappa's gambit to return to the Bhartiya Janata Party had paid off. In January, 2014, he had merged his Karnataka Janata Paksha with the BJP . And early trends flashing on TV screen showed NDA steadily inching closer to the halfway mark. By noon, 16th May, 2014, Yediyurappa's supporters had started bursting crackers at his residence in Shimoga and Bengaluru. The former Karnataka Chief Minister had taken an in-assailable lead over his rivals in hometown Shimoga. As selection for the formation of the new cabinet gained momentum in Delhi, it was widely reported that the Lingayat strongman would be adequately rewarded with a plum portfolio in Modi's government. A couple of days before the swearing in, an emissary from BJP's central leadership met Yediyurappa. The former CM was told that he would not be accommodated in the uni...