Breaking News, August 23 | HIGHLIGHTS

A business jet en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed Wednesday, killing all 10 people on board, Russian emergency officials said.

One person died in a landslide in Pauri district on Wednesday while water levels of the Pindar river and its tributary Pranmati in Chamoli district rose again following heavy rains in Uttarakhand, threatening to flood places located along their banks.

A delivery executive was attacked with a knife allegedly by a woman after he asked her for an address in southwest Delhi's Dwarka area, police said on Wednesday.

The Himachal Pradesh government has decided to immediately stop the operations of all stone crushers on both perennial and non-perennial rivulets of the Beas river basin and its tributaries, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said on Wednesday.

Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras on Wednesday claimed that he received a threat call, and urged the Union Home Ministry to look into the episode behind which he suspected the hand of his nephew Chirag Paswan.

A 20-year-old sanitation worker died after allegedly inhaling poisonous gas while cleaning a septic tank in a sugar mill in Modinagar area on Wednesday, police said. According to police, contractor Rohit had hired six workers for the job but failed to provide safety equipment to them.

A man was injured on Wednesday when some low-intensity explosive material, used for illegal hunting of animals, went off inside a house here, a senior police officer said. The blast took place at Chatha on the outskirts of the city and further investigation is on, Jammu Senior Superintendent of Police Chandan Kohli said.

A police constable was shot at by unidentified suspects near Sikandra in Rajasthan's Dausa district, officials said on Wednesday. The constable was admitted to Jaipur's Sawai Man Singh Hospital where his condition is said to be stable, police said. Dausa Superintendent of Police Vandita Rana said policemen were chasing some suspects based on information about their movement in the area when the accused opened fire in which one constable got injured.

The ongoing tussle between the Nitish Kumar government and the Raj Bhavan further escalated with the Bihar education department inviting applications for the post of vice-chancellors (VC) in different universities days after Governor (Chancellor) Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar's secretariat issued a similar advertisement. The chancellor's secretariat earlier invited applications for the post of VCs in Patna University, Lalit Narayan Mithila University (Darbhanga), Kameshwar Singh Darbhanga Sanskrit University, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University (Muzaffarpur), Jai Prakash University (Chapra), BN Mandal University (Madhepura) and Aryabhatta Knowledge University (Patna), while the education department on Tuesday invited applications for only five, leaving the last two.

ISRO on Wednesday said it is all set to initiate the Automatic Landing Sequence (ALS) for its ambitious third Moon mission Chandrayaan-3's Lander Module (LM) to touch down on the lunar surface this evening. The LM comprising the lander (Vikram) and the rover (Pragyan) is scheduled to make a touch down near the south polar region of the Moon at 6:04 pm on Wednesday, a feat not achieved by any country so far.

Two workers died and another suffered injuries after a pressure pipe exploded at a spare parts-manufacturing company in Noida, police officials said on Wednesday. The incident took place on Tuesday inside the factory of United Drilling Tools private limited located in Sector 81, under Phase 2 police station area, they said. "Three workers suffered injuries and were taken to a hospital where two were declared dead by doctors while the third is undergoing treatment," a police spokesperson said. Those killed in the explosion have been identified as Manoj Kumar Singh, 45, and Ishwar Dutt Sharma, 60, while the injured worker is Rajveer Singh, 45, the official said. The bodies were sent for postmortem and other legal proceedings were being carried out in the case, the police said.

At least 17 workers were killed on Wednesday after an under-construction railway bridge collapsed near Sairang area of Mizoram, police said. Several others are feared trapped at the site, as 35-40 workers were present when the incident occurred around 10 am, about 21 km from Aizawl, they said. “Seventeen bodies have been recovered from the debris so far... many others are still missing,” a police officer said. 

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday conducted searches at the premises of Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel's political advisor Vinod Verma and an Officer on Special Duty (OSD), sources said. The searches were also held at the premises of a businessman in Durg, they said.

A private bus carrying around 38 passengers was involved in an accident near Sreekrishnapuram in Palakkad district on Wednesday, resulting in the loss of two lives and injuries to more than 20 people, police said. The incident occurred at around 8:00 am, they said.
 

The Delhi Police on Wednesday held a carcade rehearsal from various points to Pragati Maidan ahead of the G20 summit scheduled in the national capital next month. The police had asked commuters to plan their journey accordingly as they said certain roads would remain affected till 11 am on Wednesday.

The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday conducted multiple searches at premises linked to Jharkhand Finance Minister Rameshwar Oroan's son Rohit Oraon and some others as part of a money laundering investigation linked to an alleged liquor scam in the state, official sources said.

The Centre has asked all universities and higher education institutions, including IITs and IIMs, to organise special assemblies to watch the live-streaming of Chandrayaan-3’s landing on moon. “The landing of India’s Chandrayaan-3 is a monumental occasion that will not only fuel curiosity but also spark a passion for exploration within the minds of our youth. It will generate a profound sense of pride and unity as we collectively celebrate the prowess of Indian science and technology.

Jharkhand’s top technical institutions and several schools are all geared up to organise live streaming of the soft landing of ISRO’s Moon mission Chandrayaan-3 on Wednesday, seeking to ignite a passion for space exploration among budding scientists.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BRICS leaders have discussed major global developments and leveraging the five-member bloc's platform to find solutions to global challenges during a key meeting here. Modi arrived here on Tuesday on a three-day visit to South Africa and Greece. In South Africa, he will attend the 15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg from August 22-24 at the invitation of the country's President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa.

The rupee was trading in a narrow range and appreciated by seven paise against the US dollar in early trade on Wednesday, amid a muted trend in domestic equities. Forex traders said the rupee is trading in a narrow range as investors remain cautious ahead of the BRICS summit and US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's speech at Jackson Hole Symposium this week.

Three Lunar missions in 15 years! It seems the Moon truly beckons ISRO. And why not? Scientists found frozen water deposits in the darkest and coldest parts of the Moon’s polar regions for the first time using data from the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in 2009.

Authorities have denied permission to hold on August 28 the VHP's Brij Mandal Jalabhishek Yatra in Haryana's Nuh that was disrupted after communal violence in July, police said on Tuesday.

Firefighters on Tuesday found the burnt bodies of 18 people believed to have been migrants who had crossed the Turkish border into an area of northeastern Greece where wildfires have raged for days. The discovery near the city of Alexandroupolis came as hundreds of firefighters battled dozens of wildfires across the country amid gale-force winds. On Monday, two people died and two firefighters were injured in separate fires in northern and central Greece.

A man has been detained for allegedly beating Alwar district council head Balbeer Singh Chhillar who had given the accused and his elderly mother a lift in his car on Tuesday, police said. The incident occurred when Chillar was going to Mundawar town in Alwar from Behror in his car driven by his driver, they said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday attended the BRICS Leaders Retreat and deliberated on global developments with other leaders of the five-member bloc.

Mumbai reported 14 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, taking the overall tally to 11,64,222, while no fresh death linked to the infection was recorded in the metropolis, said the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). For the fourth time since last Wednesday (August 16), the city has witnessed more than 10 cases in a day. On August 17, the city reported 16 cases, while 12 infections each was logged on August 19 and August 20. According to a BMC bulletin, the death toll remained unchanged at 19,776.