Breaking News, July 5

One person drowned in a water-filled quarry in Mumbai's Dahisar East area while on a picnic on Tuesday evening and search was underway for another, a police official said.

One more person has been arrested in connection with the killings of nine members of the family of two brothers in Sangli district, a police official said on Tuesday. Manoj Kshirsagar (48) a resident of Pune, had made poison pills available to self-proclaimed godman Abbas Mohammad Ali Bagwan and his aide Dhiraj Surawase, both of whom were held earlier.

A South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL) worker was killed on Tuesday when an overhead coal collection container fell on a truck parked underneath in an underground mine in Chhattisgarh's Korba district, officials said.

Amid a massive uproar over the controversial poster of film Kaali in different parts of the country, complaints were filed against the documentary film's director Leena Manimekalai and others in two separate courts in Bihar on Tuesday.

A young couple ended their lives by jumping in front of a running train at Ram Nagar railway crossing near Etawah station here on Tuesday, police said.

The man who sneaked into the Kalighat residence of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee carried an iron rod, police said on Tuesday.

Over 2,600 people lost their lives in more than 3,000 "roll down" accidents in Himachal Pradesh in the past five years, the state police said on Tuesday. The police statement came a day after a bus fell into a gorge in Sainj valley of Kullu, resulting in the death of 13 people and injuries to two.

Telangana on Tuesday saw a substantial rise in new COVID-19 cases with 552 fresh infections being reported, pushing the statewide tally to 8,03,374.

Mumbai on Tuesday logged 659 COVID-19 cases, a 53 per cent spike over Monday, taking the tally to 1,116,132 while the death toll rose by one to 19,620, a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation official said.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is set to join his counterparts from China, Russia, the US and other member nations of the G20 grouping at a meeting in Indonesia this week which is set to discuss the Ukraine conflict that has fuelled a global food and energy crisis.

ABIL group chairman Avinash Bhosale in connivance with another realtor and co-accused Sanjay Chhabria illegally obtained Rs 431 crore in one of his beneficially owned entities, the Enforcement Directorate told a special court here on Tuesday while seeking further custody of Bhosale in a money laundering case.

Around 20 per cent of the 'Agniveers' to be inducted by the Indian Navy this year will be women, Navy officials said on Tuesday. The Navy plans to recruit about 3,000 personnel this year under the 'Agnipath' recruitment scheme and has started the registration process for the aspirants on July 1.

Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has slammed former Prime Minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan for continuing the "politics of hate and intolerance", which he said has divided the whole nation and inflicted damage that might never go away.

Two flights that arrived from Dubai and Dammam and scheduled to land at Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) here Tuesday morning were diverted to Bengaluru due to heavy rains in the coast.

A mentally-challenged person was on Tuesday detained after he was moving in a suspicious manner in a forward village near the Line of Control (LoC) in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.

Pakistani security agencies on Tuesday claimed to have arrested the mastermind of the Karachi University suicide attack in which a burqa-clad Baloch woman bomber killed three Chinese nationals and their local driver in April. The suspect, who was arrested by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) with technical assistance from other law enforcement agencies on Monday, was produced before an anti-terrorism court on Tuesday, Geo TV reported.

The BJP on Tuesday alleged a conspiracy by terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) against the party and its leaders, and demanded a probe by the National Investigation Agency into the recent arrest of a terrorist.

Three persons were charred to death after two trucks caught fire following a collision in the Shergarh area here, police said on Tuesday. The fire was triggered due to a blast in the fuel tank of one of the trucks, they said. Eyewitnesses said the raging flames engulfed the trucks and soon turned them into rubble.

Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is celebrating its 74th birthday on Tuesday with the announcement of a revolutionary trial to cut delivery times for cancer drugs with the use of drone technology.

The Congress on Tuesday attacked the government for its decision to withdraw GST exemptions on items such as pre-packed wheat flour, curd and buttermilk, and asked why further deliberations were ordered for deciding the tax rate for casinos but not for things consumed by lower and middle-income groups.
 

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, on Tuesday, launched the mega plantation drive in Uttar Pradesh by planting a sapling in Chitrakoot.

Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly Ajit Pawar paid a courtesy visit to Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari on Tuesday. NCP leader Pawar had served as the deputy chief minister in the previous Uddhav Thackeray-led government.

The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids of the two nations to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals. The move further increases Russia's strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since.

“This is truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO,” said alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives formally approved the decisions of last week's NATO summit, when the alliance made the historic decision to invite Russia's neighbour Finland and Scandinavian partner Sweden to join the military club.

Odisha has topped the ranking of states for implementation of the National Food Security Act (NFSA), followed by Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, the government said on Tuesday. Union Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Piyush Goyal released the 'State Ranking Index for NFSA' 2022 during a conference of state food ministers on food and nutrition security in India. Among the special category states (the North Eastern states, Himalayan states, and the Island states), Tripura has obtained the first rank. Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim are at the second and third positions. Despite the logistical limitations in these areas, they displayed a high degree of accomplishment in competing with the general category states as well, the report said.

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Anti-Corruption Bureau officials in Karnataka on Tuesday conducted simultaneous raids at five places belonging to Congress MLA BZ Zameer Ahmed Khan following a report of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on disproportionate assets. According to ACB officials, the searches were carried out at his residence near the Cantonment Railway station, a flat in Silver Oak Apartments, a guest house at Sadashivanagar, G K Associates office at Banashankari and National Travels office in Kalasipalya.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, on Tuesday, launched the mega plantation drive in Uttar Pradesh by planting a sapling in Chitrakoot. Nearly 35 crore saplings will be planted across the state by August 15. Once they grow up, these trees will be enough to provide oxygen for the people of the state and will also fulfil 80 per cent of Uttar Pradesh's carbon sequestration target till 2030. The chief minister planted a sapling in Karvi Range in Chitrakoot while Governor Anandiben Patel and minister of state for forests and climate change KP Malik planted a sapling at Kukrail forest in Lucknow.

A 20-year-old man was arrested for allegedly hurting religious sentiments of a community through an objectionable post on Instagram in Madhya Pradesh's Burhanpur, police said on Tuesday. The police on Monday arrested Devraj Thakur, a resident of Indore, after a complaint was lodged by one Sayyad Rafiq, who claimed that the former's post on Instagram had hurt religious sentiments, Superintendent of Police (SP) Rahul Kumar said. After verifying the complaint, the police booked Thakur under section 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion) of the IPC and arrested him within six hours of the complaint, he said. The police's cyber squad has been monitoring objectionable posts on social media in the districts and initiating action.

The Delhi Police has registered a case in connection with the controversial poster of a documentary “Kaali”, officials said on Tuesday. The Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operation (IFSO) unit of the Delhi Police has registered a case under Indian Penal Code sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), a senior police officer said. Under attack for a poster of her documentary “Kaali” showing the goddess smoking and holding a LGBTQ flag, filmmaker Leena Manimekalai on Monday said she will continue to use her voice fearlessly till she is alive.

Three persons from Rajasthan were killed and one injured when a truck transporting livestock hit another truck on a national highway in Gujarat's Banaskantha district on Tuesday, police said. The accident occurred on a national highway near Palanpur city around 7 am, an official from Palanpur taluka police station said. Three persons and at least 20 livestock were killed on the spot and one man sustained injuries in the incident, he said. "The deceased, hailing from Barmer in Rajasthan, were transporting livestock from the neighbouring state and were heading towards Ahmedabad, when the driver lost control of the vehicle and hit another truck in front of it," the official said. The bodies of the deceased were sent for post-mortem, while the injured man was rushed to a government hospital, he said. 

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A man and his 10-year-old nephew died after being struck by lightning amid heavy rains at a village in Chhattisgarh's Korba district, police said on Tuesday. The incident took place on Monday at Badebanka village in Katghora police station area, where the victims, Dilip Rohidas (21) and his nephew Vicky Rohidas, had gone fishing in a pond, an official said. The victims and two others, all hailing from Malda village, had gone fishing when it started raining heavily, he said. The victims, who took shelter under a tree, were struck by lightning and died on the spot, he said. A police team rushed to the spot and the bodies were sent for post-mortem, the official said, adding that an accidental death report (ADR) has been registered in this regard. 

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned the wife and son of Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan for questioning in a money laundering case being probed against him, officials said. Khan, 73, is also a SP MLA from Rampur seat. His son Abdullah Azam Khan, MLA from the Swar assembly seat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly, and wife Tazeen Fatma have been asked to depose separately before the ED's regional office in Lucknow this week. The agency wants to record their statements under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the case being probed against Azam Khan, they said.

At least six people, including women and children, were killed when the roofs of their homes collapsed in heavy rains lashing southwestern Pakistan and other parts of the country, a provincial disaster management agency said Tuesday. There were fears the death toll could be higher as several people went missing after flash flooding hit southwestern Baluchistan province's remote areas overnight, according to a statement from the agency. Authorities say the latest spell of torrential rains, which started on Monday and continued on Tuesday, also damaged dozens of homes in Baluchistan.

A day after the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government won the trust vote in the Assembly, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the state cabinet expansion will be done soon. Speaking to reporters at the Nagpur airport on Tuesday, Fadnavis expressed his determination towards the development of the state's Vidarbha region. "The cabinet expansion will be done soon," Fadnavis said. On his arrival to his hometown Nagpur following the formation of the new government in the state, BJP workers accorded a grand welcome to the deputy CM, who was accompanied by his wife Amruta Fadnavis. From the airport, the BJP leader embarked on a 'jallosh yatra' (victory celebration) organised by his supporters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the golden jubilee celebrations of the Agradoot group of newspapers on Wednesday via video-conferencing.  The PMO said Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who is the chief patron of Agradoot's golden jubilee celebration committee, will also be present on the occasion. Agradoot was started as an Assamese bi-weekly. It was established by Kanak Sen Deka, a senior journalist of Assam. In 1995, Dainik Agradoot, a daily newspaper, was started and it has developed as a trusted and influential voice of Assam, it said. 

The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday conducted searches at 44 places across the country in a money-laundering investigation against Chinese smartphone manufacturing company Vivo and related firms, officials said. The searches are being carried out under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The agency is conducting searches at 44 places related to Vivo and associated companies, they said.

Delhi Assembly proceedings were briefly adjourned on Tuesday as AAP MLAs raised slogans against the BJP government at the Centre over the transfer and posting case of DTC staff. Two AAP MLAs- Mukesh Ahlawat from Sultanpur Majra and Sanjeev Jha from Burari- have come under the scanner of the CBI in connection with the matter. The CBI officials on Monday said deputy chief general manager of DTC Shakil Ahmed, arrested in a bribery case, claimed during questioning that many MLAs used to interfere in the transfer and posting-related issues of drivers and other DTC staff.

Electric vehicle company Tesla has confirmed that its vehicles can now scan for rough roads, like potholes, to help avoid them damaging the vehicles by adjusting the suspension. In a new 2022.20 software update, the automaker wrote about a new feature of the "Tesla Adaptive Suspension" system, reports the auto-tech website Electrek. "Tesla Adaptive Suspension will now adjust ride height for an upcoming rough road section. This adjustment may occur at various locations, subject to availability, as the vehicle downloads rough road map data generated by Tesla vehicles," the company was quoted as saying. This is the first confirmation of the Tesla vehicle fleet scanning the roads to evaluate its conditions.

India's services sector activities touched the highest mark since April 2011 amid current improvements in demand conditions, even as cost pressures in the service economy remained stubbornly high, a monthly survey said on Tuesday. The seasonally adjusted S&P Global India Services PMI Business Activity Index rose from 58.9 in May to 59.2 in June -- its highest mark since April 2011. For the eleventh straight month, the services sector witnessed an expansion in output. In Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) parlance, a print above 50 means expansion while a score below 50 denotes contraction.

NDA presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu reached Patna on Tuesday morning to seek support for the July 18 election. She landed at the Jay Prakash Narayan International Airport at 11.13 am in a special aircraft. Murmu will visit the state BJP office, and also meet Chief Minister Nitish Kumar during the tour. "Later, she would go to a hotel near Gandhi Maidan where she would meet senior leaders of all NDA constituents, including the MPs and MLAs, and appeal for their support in the election," a BJP leader said. She is scheduled to fly out of Patna in the afternoon to reach Agartala via Guwahati, he said. 

The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) has issued a notice to the district magistrate of Guna in Madhya Pradesh, seeking details of action taken after a tribal woman was allegedly set on fire over a land dispute. According to reports, the 38-year-old woman belonging to the Saharia tribe, a particularly vulnerable tribal group, and her husband had complained to local police about a threat to their lives, claiming some powerful men wanted to grab their land in Dhanoria village.   

An alert pet dog foiled an ATM robbery in Jharkhand's Hazaribag district, police said on Tuesday. A gang of robbers reached the Axis Bank ATM, located on the ground floor of a house on GT Road in Chaithi village in Chouparan police station, with gas cutters, LPG cylinders and hammers to rob it in the dead of the night, they said. The house, where the ATM is located, is owned by one Sudhir Barnwal. The robbers almost finished cutting open the machine, when Barnwal's pet dog Samba began barking, alerting his owner and the neighbours, police said. As people woke up, the robbers left the damaged machine behind and fled, they said. A case has been filed and an investigation started into the incident, Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Nazir Akhtar said. The ATM had Rs 27 lakh in it, he said. Police said they suspect robbers from outside the state involved in it. 

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In flood-hit Assam, LPG delivery vans of PSU major Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) have been replaced by boats for the seamless supply of the fuel to keep the burner flames on, a senior official said on Tuesday. At least 180 people have died and more than 89.13 lakh people suffered cumulatively across 34 districts since April 6 in one of the worst floods Assam witnessed in recent times. The challenge increased manifold with severe landslides in several neighbouring states such as Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, Indian Oil Corp Executive Director (IndianOil-AOD) G Ramesh said.

Two persons were arrested with 12.59 gm of heroin in Nagaon district of Assam, police said on Tuesday. A man was arrested from Chokitup Fasiroad in the first raid, they said. He was nabbed while trafficking the drugs. Sixteen plastic vials containing 1.8 gm heroin and 20 empty plastic vials were seized from him, they added. In the second incident, a team of the Batadrava police station conducted a raid, acting on a tip-off, and apprehended another man, police said. A soapbox containing 10.79 gm heroin was seized from him, they said. 

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A satellite the size of a microwave oven successfully broke free from its orbit around Earth on Monday and is headed toward the moon, the latest step in NASA's plan to land astronauts on the lunar surface again. It's been an unusual journey already for the Capstone satellite. It was launched six days ago from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula by the company Rocket Lab in one of their small Electron rockets. It will take another four months for the satellite to reach the moon, as it cruises along using minimal energy. Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck told The Associated Press it was hard to put his excitement into words. “It's probably going to take a while to sink in. It's been a project that has taken us two, two-and-a-half years and is just incredibly, incredibly difficult to execute,” he said. “So to see it all come together tonight and see that spacecraft on its way to the moon, it's just absolutely epic.”

Hundreds of homes have been inundated in and around Australia's largest city in a flood emergency that was impacting 50,000 people, officials said Tuesday. Emergency response teams made 100 rescues overnight of people trapped in cars on flooded roads or in inundated homes in the Sydney area, State Emergency Service manager Ashley Sullivan said. Days of torrential rain have caused dams to overflow and waterways to break their banks, bringing a fourth flood emergency in 16 months to parts of the city of 5 million people.

Uzbek authorities said Monday 14 civilians and four police were killed in mass unrest that erupted in the capital of the Karakalpakstan over a proposed new constitution that would strip the region of its right to vote on secession. Rustam Dzhurayev, commander of the National Guard for the region, said that 243 people were injured in the clashes Friday and Saturday in the city of Nukus. He said 516 people were arrested. After the outbreak of violence, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev ordered that clauses allowing the region to conduct a referendum on secession be restored to the proposed new constitution. Karakalpakstan is a sprawling, mostly desert region that makes up Uzbekistan's northwest. The region borders the Aral Sea, which has mostly dried up due to Soviet-era projects to divert rivers feeding the sea in order to irrigate cotton fields; the shrinkage resulted in heavy storms of dust laden with chemicals. 

Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych has described as "successful" Ukraine's military operation in the key cities in the eastern Lugansk region. "The defence of the Lysychansk-Severodonetsk agglomeration is a successful military operation," Arestovych wrote on Facebook. He added that Ukraine has performed all four key tasks of the defensive operation, including interdicting key enemy forces, inflicting losses on the enemy forces, buying time for receiving weapons and creating conditions for offensive operations in other sectors of the frontline, Xinhua news agency reported. Currently, Ukraine is carrying out counterattacking actions in the eastern Donetsk region and in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, Arestovych said.

A jail inmate, arrested in a dowry death case, ended his life by suicide. This comes a day after an inmate in Hardoi jail - also charged in a dowry case - had allegedly ended his life by slitting his throat. Jail Superintendent Brajesh Kumar Singh said Hari Singh, a resident of Mardaura under the Baldeo police station area, was in jail since May 23, 2021, in connection with the dowry death case of his daughter-in-law. On Monday late afternoon, he hanged himself from a pillar outside barrack number 7 with a rope. His fellow inmates brought him down and rushed him to the jail hospital. He was referred to the district hospital in a serious condition and died on the way, the superintendent said.

The Congress on Monday expressed strong support for the Samyukta Kisan Morcha's  (SKM) call for protests against the government for allegedly reneging on its promises to the farmers and for bringing in the Agnipath military recruitment scheme. The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) on Sunday expressed its disappointment against the Union government and accused the Centre of completely reneging on the written promises made to the farmers when the farmers protest was withdrawn on December 9 last year. "It has been seven months since the Samyukta Kisan Morcha ended the agitation. Till now MSP and other demands have not been guaranteed. Ajay Mishra is still part of the cabinet," Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said in a tweet in Hindi.

In a shocking incident, two groups of minor students hurled bombs at each other at Sangam in Prayagraj where one group was celebrating a birthday. The incident took place around midnight on Monday. Three youths of a group have suffered serious injuries in the bombing incident. On receiving information about the incident, SP City Dinesh Kumar Singh, along with police force, reached the spot. The injured youths were sent to the hospital for treatment and the matter is being investigated.

The Rajasthan government on Monday transferred 36 officers of the Indian Forest Service (IFS). Along with this, the government has assigned additional work to seven such officers. The Department of Personnel issued an order in this regard on Monday night. Munish Kumar Garg was appointed as the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Work Planning and Forest Settlement-Jaipur). Similarly, IFS Arindam Tomar has been appointed as Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden. Namita J. Priyadarshi has been posted as Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Administration-Jaipur) and Venkatesh Sharma has been posted as Secretary to the Government (Forest Department, Jaipur).

One month's salary of class IV employees of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, including sanitation workers, was released on Monday, officials said. The MCD released Rs 226.95 crore for one month salary of "safai sainiks and Rs.97.88 crore for other class IV employees, it said in a statement. The civic body has also released Rs 47.15 crore for the salary of class III employees, it said. "The MCD is fully committed to welfare of employees and will leave no stone unturned for timely payment of their salaries. It has released a total amount of Rs 371.98 crore for the salary of class III and class IV employees," the statement said read.

AAP National Convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday congratulated party MLAs who were inducted as ministers in the Punjab government and asked them to work hard with complete honesty. Five Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators were inducted as ministers in the Punjab government earlier in the day as Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann expanded his cabinet. "Many congratulations to all the new ministers who have joined the Punjab cabinet. Serve the people of Punjab with complete honesty. Work hard for the betterment of people's lives," Kejriwal said in a tweet in Hindi.