English News Paper | Breaking News | Latest Today News in English | News Headlines India

  At least 124 cases of dengue have been reported in the national capital this year, according to a civic report released on Monday. The number of dengue cases for January 1-September 4 period is also the highest this year since 2018 when the count had stood at 137 in t same duration. Seventy-two cases were reported in August,  according to the report, which is about 58 per cent of the total reported cases. No cases have been recorded in the first four days of September. Dengue mosquito larvae breed in clear, standing water, while those of malaria thrive even in dirty water. Cases of vector-borne diseases are usually reported between July and November, but the period may stretch till mid-December. According to the civic report issued by the municipal corporations last week, 97 cases of dengue were recorded till August 28 this year. At least 124 cases have been reported this year till September 4, the report said. The month-wise distribution of cases are January (0), February...

  Former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh approached the Bombay High Court on Thursday, seeking to quash the summons issued to him by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case registered against him. Deshmukh's application came up for hearing before a single bench of Justice Revati Mohite Dere. However, Justice Dere recused herself from hearing the application without assigning any reason and said, “Not before me”. The application will be heard by another bench in due course of time. The ED had initiated a probe against Deshmukh and his associates after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) lodged an FIR against the NCP leader on April 21 this year on charges of corruption and misuse of official position. The ED's case is that while serving as the state home minister, Deshmukh allegedly misused his position and through dismissed police officer Sachin Waze collected Rs 4.70 crore from various bars and restaurants in Mumbai. The money...

  Mandatory thermal screening, staggered lunch breaks, alternate seating arrangement in classrooms and avoiding routine guest visits are among the guidelines announced by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) for reopening of schools and colleges from September 1. The DDMA has said that students, teachers and other employees living in Covid containment zones will not be allowed to come to schools and colleges. Following a marked improvement in the Covid situation in the national capital, the Delhi government on Friday had announced that schools for classes 9 to 12, colleges and coaching institutions would reopen from September 1. The Delhi government had clarified that no student would be forced to attend physical classes and the consent of parents would be mandatory. "Schools and colleges should prepare a timetable as per occupancy limit of classrooms following Covid norms. A maximum 50 per cent students per classroom may be called depending upon capacity. The seating a...

  President Joe Biden has said the US is on "a pace" to complete its evacuation mission in Afghanistan by August 31 and doesn't plan to have troops in the country past that date, but the completion of the deadline depends on cooperation from the Taliban. The US has currently approximately 5,800 troops at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. “We are currently on a pace to finish (the evacuation mission) by August 31. The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “But the completion by August 31 depends on the Taliban continuing to cooperate and allow access to the airport for those who were transporting out and no disruptions to our operations,” he said. The Taliban -- which seized power in Afghanistan on August 15, two weeks before the US was set to complete its troop withdrawal after a costly two-decade war -- has warned that the US must end its evacuation m...

  But 7,87,00,000 trees to be planted under compensatory afforestation rule At least 2,800 trees will be chopped for the development of the proposed `242.14-crore Ayodhya airport in Uttar Pradesh. However, the Government is making sure that nature does not pay for the developmental projects in Ayodhya . The plantation of more than 7,87,00,000 trees has been stipulated under compensatory afforestation as per the projects. The Yogi Government’s pet project, Ayodhya Airport, is planned to be developed in Faziabad city. It will be serving the districts of Bahraich, Gonda, Sultanpur, Amethi and Basti in eastern Uttar Pradesh The proposed airport, to be known as Maryada Purushottam Sriram Airport, Ayodhya, will be spread over  347.62 acres (140.67 ha) of land, including 177.62 acres needed for existing runway. About 170 acres (68.79 ha) of additional land has already been hand over by the district administration for the proposed development activities. The pact for the development o...

  The Bombay High Court on Wednesday granted interim protection from arrest to businessman Raj Kundra in connection with a porn films racket case registered by the city police in 2020. A single bench of Justice S K Shinde directed the police to respond on August 25 to the pre-arrest bail plea filed by Kundra. "Interim protection granted till then," Justice Shinde said. Kundra, the husband of actor Shilpa Shetty, is currently in jail after being arrested in July in another case related to production and distribution of pornographic clips on some mobile apps. He filed the anticipatory bail plea in the HC last week in connection with the 2020 case, after a sessions court rejected his application seeking pre-arrest bail. In his plea, Kundra claimed that another accused in the case was granted bail and hence, he too should be given bail on parity. Opposing the plea in the HC on Wednesday, Additional Public Prosecutor Prajakta Shinde submitted that Kundra's role  in the case w...

  The Taliban seized the city of Jalalabad early Sunday, cutting off Afghanistan's increasingly isolated capital Kabul to the east as the insurgents' blitz across the country continued ahead of the withdrawal of U.S. And NATO forces from the country after two decades of war. The collapse of Jalalabad, which had been the last major city standing besides Kabul, leaves Afghanistan's central government in control of just the capital and seven other provincial capitals. In a nationwide offensive that has taken just over a week, the Taliban has defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swathes of the country, even with some air support by the U.S. Military. President Ashraf Ghani, who spoke to the nation Saturday for the first time since the offensive began, appears increasingly isolated as well. Warlords he negotiated with just days earlier have surrendered to the Taliban, leaving Ghani without a military option. Ongoing negotiations in Qatar, the sit...

  Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan's second child is not even two years old, but his name has been dragged into an unseemly Twitter troll attack. So much so, riding on the hate campaign, the hashtags #saifalikhan and #aurangzeb are trending on the social media platform. The world knew that the child had been named 'Jeh' -- his maternal grandfather Randhir Kapoor, in fact, had also referred to him as 'Jeh' when someone asked him for his name in response to the Bollywood veteran's recent tweet that he was visiting his grandchild. But then, reports started circulating that Kareena and Saif's second son was named Jehangir -- and that made the troll army see red. The couple had named their first son Taimur after he was born in 2014 and then, too, they were greeted with negativity. Those circulating the information that Kareena and Saif's second child is named Jehangir quoted from Kareena's just-released book, 'Pregnancy Bible: The Ultimate Man...

  Two days after they showed a “united face” over a breakfast meeting, several leaders of Opposition parties, including former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, on Friday extended their solidarity to protesting farmers and joined their Kisan Sansad at Jantar Mantar in Delhi asserting that  the three “black” agri laws will have to be withdrawn. Leaders of 14 Opposition parties met at Parliament House and then reached the nearby Jantar Mantar on a bus to participate in the Kisan Sansad, which began on July 22 to mark over seven months of the farmers’ protests at Delhi’s border points. The leaders neither spoke from the podium of the Kisan Sansad nor were they seated on the dais. Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and several other Congress leaders besides members from other Opposition parties were present at the meeting at Parliament House. Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut, RJD leader Manoj Kumar Jha, CPI (M) leader Elamaram Kareem, CPI leader Binoy...

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday slammed opposition members for tearing papers in Parliament and making " derogatory " remarks on the way bills have been passed as he accused them of insulting the legislature and the Constitution with their conduct. Briefing reporters on Modi's speech at the BJP parliamentary party meeting, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said the prime minister expressed anger at the conduct of some opposition members. While a TMC member in Rajya Sabha had torn the statement of IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on the Pegasus issue, several opposition members had torn papers in Lok Sabha and threw it in the air and towards the Chair. A tweet of TMC leader Derek O'Brien criticising the manner of bills' passage in Parliament also drew Modi's ire, Joshi and another Union minister V Muraleedharan told reporters, without naming the TMC member. He had tweeted, "In the first 10 days, Modi-Shah rushed through and passed 12 Bil...

  With continuous disruptions in the conduct of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat has made a significant change by deciding to list in the bulletin for “public domain” the matter proposed to be raised by the Parliamentarians either in Zero Hour or Special Mentions. This has been done to send a message across that matters of public interest could not be taken up due to the disruptions.  Earlier only the Business List was made public and transmitted to members as well for public domain. The first Bulletin with complete details of Zero Hour and Special Mentions was transmitted to members on Wednesday and Thursday and will be continued as of now for the entire Monsoon Session. The Rajya Sabha Bulletin — which so far was the sole propriety of the Chairman — tabled during the conduct of the proceedings, will be made available to members and thereafter to the public. Sources said all these matters were admitted by Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to be raised o...

  In a major flare-up of tension along the Mizoram-Assam border , at least six Assam Police officials were killed and 50 others, including an SP, were injured on Monday. The two Chief Ministers blamed each other’s police for the violence and sought the Centre’s intervention. Union Home Minister Amit Shah spoke to the Chief Ministers of Assam and Mizoram, Himanta Biswa Sarma and Zoramthanga respectively, and urged them to ensure peace along the disputed border and find an amicable settlement. Assam’s Barak Valley districts of Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi share a 164 km long border with Mizoram’s three districts of Aizawl, Kolasib and Mamit. This is third time in less than two years that violence has erupted following the territorial dispute. The inter-State border dispute saw violence in August 2020 and February this year also. The Assam Chief Minister announced on Twitter that six personnel of the Assam Police were killed in firing by “miscreants” from Mizoram along the inter...

  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 Patil, the official said. Two of the builder's partners, Sunil Jain and Sanjay Punamia, have been arrested in the case, he said. According to the complaint, Jain and Punamia had conspired with police officials and demanded Rs 15 crore from the builder to withdraw some cases against him, he said. The builder had named former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh along with others in his complaint, the official said. The case has been registered under Indian Penal Code Sec...

Three phone numbers belonging to the Supreme Court staffer, who had accused former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment in April 2019, were selected as potential targets for surveillance by an official - but unidentified - Indian agency that is a customer of the Israel-based-NSO Group, The Wire reported. NSO is best known for its Pegasus spyware, which it says it only sells to "vetted governments" and not to private entities, though the company will not confirm which governments it sells its controversial product to. The staffer, whose name is being withheld, was dismissed from service in December 2018, weeks after she said she rebuffed the judge's advances. She recorded her allegations in a sworn affidavit on April 20, 2019 and was marked as a person of interest just days after this, an analysis of a leaked list of phone numbers accessed by French media non-profit Forbidden Stories revealed. The leaked records show that eight other phone numbers belo...

  Haiti's police chief on Wednesday accused a Venezuelan businessman who owns a security company in Florida of travelling to Haiti numerous times as part of a plot to assassinate President Jovenel Moise, who was killed last week. Leon Charles, head of the Haiti's National Police, said Antonio Intriago of CTU Security signed a contract while in Haiti but provided no other details and offered no evidence. “The investigation is very advanced,” Charles said. Intriago could not be immediately reached for comment. Colombia's national police chief has said that CTU Security used its company credit card to buy 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for the Colombian suspects allegedly involved in the killing. During a news conference Wednesday evening, Charles pleaded with Haitians to help officials track down suspects who remain on the run, including a former senator he described as a key suspect and is accused of providing weapons used in the July 7 attack. Former Sen Joh...

  Southwest Monsoon rains reached the desert district of Jaisalmer and Ganganagar, its last outposts, on Monday, but gave Delhi and parts of Haryana a miss. It rained in the periphery of Delhi -- Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh and Karnal in Haryana -- but clouds hovered over the national capital, without giving any relief from the heat. The rains also covered west Rajasthan, Punjab and other parts of Haryana. In 2002, monsoon reached Delhi on July 19. This is the most-delayed monsoon in the city since then. The Northern Limit of the Southwest Monsoon (NLM) currently passes through Jaisalmer, Nagaur, Bharatpur, Aligarh, Karnal and Ganganagar, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said. The Southwest Monsoon covers Ganganagar and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan after it has covered almost the entire country. "In association with continued prevalence of moist easterly winds from the Bay of Bengal in the lower levels since the past three days, enhanced cloud cover and scattered to fairly widespr...

The drone strikes in Jammu airbase was an act of terror that was aimed at targeting key military assets, Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria said on Friday asserting that the Indian Air Force is in the process of bolstering its capabilities to deal with such security challenges. The Chief of Air Staff said the IAF has carried out a detailed analysis in terms of implications of drones and other similar capabilities falling into the hands of non-state actors, and taking a series of measures to counter them. "What happened at Jammu was essentially a terrorist act which attempted to target our assets there. The attempt failed of course. The assets were not damaged. Two explosives were used," he said in an interactive session at a think tank. Explosives-laden drones were used to carry out an attack on the Jammu Air Force station on Sunday in the first such instance of suspected Pakistan-based terrorists deploying unmanned aerial vehicles to strike at vital military installations in I...

  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...