After damaging crops in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, swarms of locusts entered Uttar Pradesh’s Jhansi district Wednesday and could head towards Maharashtra’s Ramtek city amid what is being described as the worst attack in 26 years. Punjab, usually unaffected by the menace, is also gearing up for the possibility of a locust attack. “It is not a new problem and we had been facing it for a long time. This year, the locusts attack is the worst in 26 years,” an official at the Faridabad-based Locust Warning Organisation (LWO) told PTI. According to the Union agriculture ministry, 21 districts in…
Author: Our Correspondent
Despite the limitations, the sanctions amounts to the first concrete step by a government to penalize China over the treatment of Uighur Muslims since the existence of the mass internment camps became widely known in recent years. Congress has voted to toughen the US response to a brutal Chinese crackdown on ethnic minorities, adding another factor to the increasingly stormy relationship between the two countries. The House passed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday that would impose sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the mass surveillance and detention of Uighurs and other ethnic groups in the western Xinjiang region, a campaign…
As extreme heat, hunger and dehydration add to the woes of returning migrant workers, nine passengers have been found dead in ‘Shramik Special’ trains since Monday and they included a woman whose toddler son was seen trying to wake her up in a heart wrenching scene at a railway platform in Bihar. While a few deaths on board the non-air conditioned trains were also reported earlier after they were launched on May 1 to ferry migrant labourers to their home states, the Railways on Wednesday said most of the deceased had pre-existing health conditions. The nine deaths on different trains…
Ram temple trust chairman Mahant Nritya Gopal Das has offered prayers at the Ram Lalla shrine here on what is said to be his first visit to the makeshift temple in nearly three decades. His visit Monday comes days after workers began levelling the site where a Ram temple will be constructed, following the Supreme Court verdict last year. In a brief interaction later with the media, he said construction of the temple has begun . In March, the Ram Lalla deity was ceremoniously moved to a new spot, clearing the way for the construction of the temple to start.…
The Indian Council of Medical Research has removed the price cap of Rs 4,500 for the real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test used to detect COVID-19, asking states and UTs to negotiate with private labs to fix “mutually agreeable” rates for the test. In a letter to the state chief secretaries on Monday, ICMR Director General (D-G) Dr Balram Bhargava said the COVID-19 diagnostic supplies are stabilising because of the indigenous production of the kits. “In this backdrop and keeping in view the evolving prices of testing commodities, the earlier suggested upper ceiling of Rs 4500 vide letter dated March…
The Venice festival is on its course to carry the 2020 edition this September, the region’s governor has confirmed. Luca Zaia, governor of Veneto, said on Sunday that the festival, which was scheduled to happen September 2-12, are going to be held as planned, reported Variety. The official’s confirmation comes days after the Venice Biennale, which oversees the world’s longest-running festival among variety of other arts events, moved its Biennale of Architecture to 2021, but maintained the film festival’s dates. Previously, the architecture and film festivals were meant to overlap. Zaia said that the Biennale of Architecture was postponed thanks to…
President of Haiti’s football federation was suspended for 90 days pending an investigation into a allegations as he sexually abused teenage girls at the national training center. Yves Jean-Bart, 73, categorically denies accusations that he raped several young female footballers at a training facility outside Port-au-Prince throughout the past five years. “In accordance with articles 84 and 85 of the FIFA Code of Ethics, the investigatory chamber of the independent ethics panel has provisionally banned Mr. Yves Jean-Bart, President of the Haitian Football Federation (FHF), from all football-related activities at both national and international levels, for a period of 90…
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday headed a meeting with National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat and the three Service Chiefs to discuss the ongoing border standoff with China in Ladakh. The military brass is learnt to have apprised Modi about the evolving situation in eastern Ladakh although officials maintained the agenda of the pre-scheduled meeting was to discuss the ambitious military reforms and ways to boost India’s combat prowess. Government sources said India will not stop infrastructure development projects in strategic areas along the nearly 3,500-km Sino-India border notwithstanding China’s well-coordinated…
The site at which military forces of India and China were found involving in skirmish on May 5 and May 6th is now a place where China has been making extensive construction activity at a high altitude expanding its airbase. The Chinese air base is located just 200 kilometres away from the Pangong Lake, the site of the skirmish. Photos sent by exclusive intelligence agencies show the Ngari Gunsa airport in Tibet. The first image is dated April 6, 2020 while the second one, dated May 21, this year, shows massive construction activity including the addition of what appears to…
Pakistan Army on Tuesday resorted to firing and shelling on forward areas along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district, drawing befitting retaliation from Indian soldiers, a defence spokesperson said. “Pakistan army initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation by small arm firing with mortar shelling along LoC in Balakote sector in Poonch district early Tuesday morning”, he said. He said the Indian Army retaliated befittingly. The cross-border shelling between the two sides was going on when last reports were received, the officials said. However, there was no immediate report of any casualty during the shelling.