The four astronauts shortlisted for the Gaganyaan project, India’s first manned space mission, will receive training in Russia for 11 months, Union Minister Jitendra Singh has said.
Author: PTI
The Supreme Court today partially stayed the Bombay High Court order allowing shifting of HDIL promoters Rakesh Wadhawan and Sarang Wadhawan, accused in the multi-crore Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank scam case, from Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail to their residence.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif today held extensive talks on the fast-evolving situation in the Gulf region in the wake of frayed Iran-US ties over the killing of Commander Qasem Soleimani.
Rain fell across parts of bushfire-ravaged eastern Australia on Thursday and more wet weather was forecast, giving some relief following months of catastrophic blazes fuelled by climate change. The fires, unprecedented for Australia in terms of duration and intensity, have claimed 28 lives and killed an estimated billion animals. Sustained hot weather and only very rare periods of light rain in the affected areas have deepened the crisis. So authorities had been looking forward to this week’s rain hoping it would help contain or even extinguish some fires. In the state of New South Wales, where many of the worst fires have burnt, there were ‘good falls’ on some blazes early Thursday, the local meteorology bureau reported.
India has slammed Pakistan for again trying to raise the Kashmir issue in the UN Security Council where it failed one more time to find any support, with New Delhi asserting that Islamabad needs to focus on the hard tasks it has to address in order to ensure normal relations with India. China, Pakistan’s “all-weather ally”, on Wednesday stood alone in the Pakistani corner to get the Security Council to focus on the Kashmir issue. The attempt failed as other member countries felt Kashmir is a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan. Earlier on the day, China made the fresh pitch to raise the Kashmir issue under ‘other matters’ during closed consultations in the Security Council Consultations Room.
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday refused to roll back the massive tariff imposed on import of Chinese goods despite having succeeded to sign the first phase of a trade deal with China. During a historic signing ceremony at the White House, Trump said he will roll back the tariffs only if the second phase of the trade deal is signed between the two economic giants. The trade deal, considered as major political and diplomatic victory for President Trump, came on a day when the House voted to sent his impeachment trial to the Senate. Trump has used tariff as a leverage in trade talks with major economic powers of the world, mainly China.
At least 15 passengers were injured as five coaches of the Mumbai-Bhubaneswar Lokmanya Tilak Express derailed and three more were displaced after colliding with a goods train amid heavy fog near Cuttack in Odisha today, railway officials said.
Canadian investigators flying to Tehran on Monday will access the wreckage and black boxes from a Ukranian jetliner downed by a missile strike last week, officials said. “We don’t fully know what the scope of our investigation will be,” Transportation Safety Board (TSB) chair Kathy Fox told a press conference. However, she added, “there have been early signs that Iran is allowing the TSB to play a more active role than is normally permitted.”
Health warnings were issued after a thick haze from the bushfires in Victoria descended on Melbourne Tuesday morning, reducing the air quality in the Australian city to the “worst in the world”. Melbourne’s air quality went down overnight to “hazardous” due to bushfire smoke. Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said, “I think overnight for Melbourne it did reach the worst in the world.”