Breaking News, August 4 | HIGHLIGHTS

Key parliamentary panels, including the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), have started taking shape, mostly by consensus as against elections witnessed during the previous Lok Sabha.

President Droupadi Murmu on Sunday left for a six-day visit to Fiji, New Zealand and Timor-Leste. According to officials, she will visit Fiji from August 5-7 at the invitation of its President Wiliame Maivalili Katonivere.

A total of 87 roads are closed in Himachal Pradesh due to incidents of cloudbursts, flash floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains in the past five days. The local meteorological office has issued a yellow alert of heavy showers, thunderstorm and lightning at isolated places in Himachal Pradesh till August 8 (Thursday).

Former chief minister and Leader of Opposition Jai Ram Thakur on Sunday urged the Himachal Pradesh government to make necessary arrangements to provide immediate relief to the disaster affected people. At a press conference, Thakur said the Opposition is ready to extend all possible support to the state government to cope up with the disaster.

Former Jharkhand Minister Saryu Roy has joined the JD(U), party's national working president Sanjay Kumar Jha said on Sunday. Jha shared the news on X, noting that Roy, an independent MLA from Jamshedpur East, joined the party in the presence of senior JD(U) leaders and ministers Shrawan Kumar and Ashok Choudhary, who is also the JD(U)'s in-charge for Jharkhand.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday said his government will soon introduce a law for life imprisonment in cases of ‘love jihad'. He also said several measures have been initiated to “protect” the land rights and government jobs for indigenous people.

The Met office has forecast heavy rain in the sub-Himalayan districts of West Bengal till August 8, while some places in south Bengal are likely to receive significant downpour on August 6 and 7. On Sunday, south Bengal saw a break from the heavy rainfall it had received until Saturday morning, Met officials said.

Three coaches of an empty MEMU passenger train derailed while it was heading back to the yard in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur on Sunday, officials said. No one was injured in the derailment, they said. It was an empty rake, and neither the main line nor train operations have been not been affected, according to the Northern Railways.

Two young men died after a truck rammed into their motorcycle in Saifai area, police said on Sunday.

Senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala on Sunday said several programmes will be held to mark the birth anniversary of late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on August 20 in which party president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi will take part, while MVA allies Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray have been invited.

Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Brijesh Pathak on Sunday said that the culprits of the Ayodhya rape case will get such harsh punishment that their future generations will remember it. Attacking the Samajwadi Party, Pathak also alleged that hooliganism and anarchy are in the DNA of the SP. The party last week had called for the DNA testing of the accused.

Delhi Police has rescued two girls who were allegedly being made to work in a brothel in the GB Road area by portraying them as adults using forged Aadhar cards, officials said on Sunday.

A 24-year-old kanwariya died after being hit by a car at JLN in Jaipur on Sunday, police said. Suraj Sharma, a resident of Sheetla Mata of Chaksu, was returning from Galtaji Teerth after filling water when a speeding car hit him from behind on JLN Marg, they said.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday (August 4) made a prediction for the BJP as well as the Opposition for the 2029 Lok Sabha Elections and said that Narendra Modi will return as the Prime Minister of the country and the INDIA bloc will sit in the Opposition after the next general elections also. His remarks came while addressing a gathering in Chandigarh after inaugurating the 24x7 Manimajra water supply project. "I want to assure you that whatever the opposition wants to say, you do not worry. In 2029 also, the NDA will come (to power), (Narendra) Modi ji will come," Shah said. "They (opposition) feel that with some success, they have won elections. They do not know that in three elections, the number of seats the Congress got, the BJP won more than that in this election (2024 Lok Sabha poll),” he said. "They do not know it. NDA's only one member, the BJP, has more than the total number of seats which their whole alliance has. These people, who want to create uncertainty, say again and again that this government will not run,” the Home Minister added.

Large-scale international assessment data suggests a negative link between excessive use of technology and student performance, yet less than one in four countries have banned smartphone use in schools, according to the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report.

The report on "Technology in education" published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has flagged that assessment data has found that mere proximity to a mobile device distracts students and has a negative impact on learning.

Four members of a family were killed and five others injured when their car rammed into a truck on the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway in Rajasthan's Sawai Madhopur district on Sunday, police said. The deceased had gone to Rishikesh in Uttarakhand for a religious programme where a woman of the family died. After cremation, the family members were returning to Vikramgarh-Alot in Madhya Pradesh's Ratlam district when the accident occurred.

A bill to provide reservation to Scheduled Tribes in the Goa Legislative Assembly is likely to be introduced in the Lok Sabha this week. As of now, the ST community has no seats reserved in the Goa assembly.

Amid demands from the community, the 'Readjustment of Representation of Scheduled Tribes Bill, 2024 has been listed in the government business for the remaining part of the Parliament session. The session is scheduled to conclude on August 12.

The law ministry bill will empower the census commissioner to notify the population of STs in Goa.

Two men from Arunachal Pradesh have been missing for nearly two years from a remote location in the state along the India-China border and are believed to be in the custody of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which so far has not acknowledged the duo’s presence in their territory.

Batelum Tikro (35) and his cousin Bainsi Manyu (37) went missing from the Chaglagam area in the Anjaw district of Arunachal Pradesh on August 19, 2022, while looking for medicinal herbs at a high altitude area along the border with China and since then they have not been found.

In a tragic incident, a 50-year-old house wall collapsed in Madhya Pradesh's Sagar district, leading to the deaths of eight children and half a dozen others getting injured. The officials said the incident occurred at the Hardaul temple in Shajapur, where a Parthiv Shivling was being constructed. However, the wall of a house adjacent to the temple premises suddenly gave way, burying the children under debris. 

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday will inaugurate the e-evidence, Nyay Setu, Nyay Shruti and e-summon systems built to augment the criminal justice apparatus in Chandigarh.

Shah will also inaugurate a 24x7 water supply project under the Smart City Mission in Manimajra in Chandigarh.

A fresh batch of over 1,100 pilgrims left a base camp here early Sunday for the Amarnath cave shrine in the south Kashmir Himalayas, officials said.

Over 4.9 lakh pilgrims have so far paid obeisance at the 3,880-metre-high cave shrine since the commencement of the annual yatra on June 29. Last year, a total of 4.5 lakh pilgrims visited the shrine.

The 38th batch of 1,112 pilgrims left the Bhagwati Nagar base camp at 3.25 am in a convoy of 40 vehicles escorted by the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and police, the officials said.

Rescue operations will continue in the landslides-hit areas in this north Kerala district on the sixth day with more force and equipment being deployed in spots where chances of recovering bodies were high, state Tourism Minister P A Mohamed Riyas said on Sunday.

Riyas said that search operations will continue in the 40-kilometre stretch of the Chaliyar river, which flows through Wayanad, Malappuram and Kozhikode districts, as many bodies and remains were recovered from it near Nilambur in Malappuram.

According to official figures, 206 people are still missing, and this figure could be even higher. 1500 personnel from the Indian Army and various agencies and social organizations are engaged in rescue and relief operations. With the help of two effective radar-based equipment called Zevar 400 and Reko, efforts will continue to search for life in the debris or to locate bodies. Today, the search center is the Chalayar river, about 28 km from the land slide site. The administration believes that most of the bodies reached this river by flowing from the mountains in the strong current of water, more than 40 bodies have already been recovered from this river.

Amid the escalating tensions in the Middle East, Hezbollah has claimed of launching a barrage of rockets into Israel.

With the recovery of a body from Rajban village in Himachal's Mandi, the death toll due to flash floods triggered by cloudbursts in three districts has increased to nine as the rescuers continue to search for about 45 missing people.

According to officials, 410 rescuers from teams of the Army, NDRF, SDRF, ITBP, CISF, Himachal Pradesh Police and home guards are involved in the hunt with the help of drones.