Breaking News, May 14 | LIVE UPDATES

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party national convener Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday reached here to take part in a public meeting organised by Twenty20, a political party promoted by the Kitex Group. AAP party sources said Kejriwal will visit Twenty20's food security market, God's Villa and address a public meeting at Kitex ground at Kizhakkambalam in Kochi on Sunday.

A 12-year-old boy died in a celebratory firing during a marriage procession in Naisarai locality under the Kotwali police station area here on Saturday, police said.

Gusty wind accompanied by light to moderate rainfall in parts of southern West Bengal on Saturday evening brought relief from the heat that prevailed during the daytime, the Met office said.

As the IMD has predicted red alert for two districts on Saturday and orange alert for the southern districts in Kerala till May 16, Chief Secretary V P Joy called a high-level meeting of the district collectors and issued directions to open relief camps if necessary.

The Congress deliberated on wide-ranging reforms on the second day of its Chintan Shivir here on Saturday with the party set to unveil big-ticket changes including providing 50 per cent representation to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs and minorities at all levels in the organisation as part of its social engineering efforts.

Unavailability of firefighting systems, no alternative escape route and rapid spread of fire due to presence of highly combustible materials led to higher casualties in the tragedy at the building in outer Delhi’s Mundka, senior fire officials said on Saturday.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu will visit the UAE on Sunday to offer India's condolences over the demise of Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said.

Sounding the poll bugle in Telangana, Union Home Minister and BJP veteran Amit Shah on Saturday hit out at the TRS government in the state for alleged corruption and unkept promises and said his party is ready to face the polls, due in the state next year.

A salt trader was shot dead by around six men in broad daylight in Rajasthan's Nagaur district on Saturday, police said. The incident happened in Nawan town of the district when trader Jaipal Poonia was going in his car, Assistant Superintendent of Police (Kuchaman) Ganesha Ram said.

Scant regard for fire safety norms, buildings functioning without required clearances and illegal factories have led to the loss of precious lives in fire incidents in Delhi in recent years, with the blaze in Mundka on Friday being the latest.

In a relief to wheat growers, the Centre has relaxed procurement norms for shrivelled wheat grains in Punjab and Haryana after the crop suffered damage due to the early onset of heatwave.

Maharashtra Tourism Minister and Shiv Sena MLA Aaditya Thackeray will visit Ayodhya on June 15 instead of June 10 as scheduled earlier in view of the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, Sena MP Sanjay Raut said on Saturday.

Two young sisters, both below five years of age, were allegedly raped by a 25-year-old man in the Badshahpur area near here, police said on Saturday. Accused Aadil, a daily wager belonging to Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh and living here as a building whitewasher, however, was caught in the middle of his act by people, who handed him over to the police after a "sound thrashing", they said.

Three policemen were killed after poachers opened fire on them in Guna district of Madhya Pradesh in the wee hours of Saturday, while two of the assailants were also killed, officials said. One of the accused was believed to be killed in retaliatory fire by the policemen, while another was killed in an encounter with police later in the evening, they said.

South Africa is experiencing a surge of new COVID-19 cases driven by two omicron sub-variants, according to health experts. For about three weeks the country has seen increasing numbers of new cases and somewhat higher hospitalisations, but not increases in severe cases and deaths, said Professor Marta Nunes, a researcher at Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Analytics at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.

Single-use plastic items will be banned in the Delhi Secretariat from June 1, a month before the nationwide ban on SUP comes into force, Environment Minister Gopal Rai said on Saturday. It will be ensured that only alternatives to SUP items such as paper plates, cups, straws are used in the Delhi Secretariat premises, he said. Staff will be asked to avoid SUP water bottles and use kulhads, stainless steel glasses or paper cups to drink water, the minister said.

After discovering that about 30 per cent of students have not returned to schools as classroom teaching resumed after a gap of two years due to the pandemic, the Odisha government has asked the district collectors to try reverse the alarming trend.

Analysing the daily attendance data from schools collected by District Education Officers (DEOs), it was seen that around 70 per cent of students are attending the classes, School and Mass Education Department secretary BP Sethi said in a letter to district heads.

On detailed analysis, it was seen that the attendance in classes 1 to 5 in districts such as Malkanagiri, Boudh, Gajapati, Sambalpur and Nuapada was less than the state average, he wrote.

A jawan of the Chhattisgarh Armed Force (CAF) was injured when a pressure improvised explosive device (IED), planted by Naxals, exploded in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh on Saturday, police said. The incident occurred around 11 am near Pandemurga village under Nelasnar police station limits, where a road opening party (ROP) of the CAF's 8th battalion was out for patrolling, Inspector General of Police (Bastar range) Sundarraj P said. When the patrolling team, that had launched the operation from Nelasnar camp, was cordoning off the route ahead of Pandemurga, constable Ramnath Maurya stepped on the pressure IED connection, triggering the blast, he said.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday condoled the loss of lives in a fire that ripped through a four-storey building in outer Delhi's Mundka and said the incident was "heartbreaking". Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati also expressed grief over the "unfortunate" incident and called for a thorough investigation into the matter. At least 27 people were killed and 12 injured after the fire broke out in the building near Mundka metro station on Friday. The fire started on the first floor of the building that housed the office of a CCTV cameras and router manufacturing and assembling company, police said.

Three people have been shot in downtown Milwaukee following the Bucks game, authorities said. The Milwaukee Fire Department said authorities took two people to a hospital, a 30-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl, and a third person drove to a hospital. All three people have non-life-threatening injuries. Police said a 29-year-old man is in custody. Witnesses told WTMJ-TV that they saw a fight outside a bar following the basketball game.

The Congress on Saturday hit out at the government over the ban on the export of wheat, saying it was an "anti-farmer" measure as it deprives farmers of reaping the benefit of higher export prices. According to an official notification, India has banned wheat exports with immediate effect as part of measures to control rising domestic prices. Asked about the government's move at a press conference on the second day of the Congress' ongoing 'Chintan Shivir' here, senior leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram said, "I presume that it is because the central government has failed to procure enough wheat. It is not that wheat production has come down, it is more or less the same.

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Saturday said he will soon take a call on his visit to Swiss ski resort town of Davos, to take part in World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting. He said he will have to decide on the days and schedule considering the upcoming Rajya Sabha and Legislative Council polls, also the possibility of local body polls being announced.

A man allegedly beheaded his 60-year-old maternal uncle over black magic suspicion and walked around two kilometers with his severed head and axe in hands in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh before being nabbed by the police, an official said on Saturday. The incident occurred on Friday in Karimati village located in the jurisdiction of Jamodi police station, around 10 kms from the district headquarters, he said, adding that the 26-year-old accused suspected his uncle to be creating problems for him by performing black magic on him.

Seventeen plastic scrap godowns located in a warehouse complex at Shil Phata in Thane city of Maharashtra were gutted in a major fire early on Saturday, an official said.There was no report of any injury in the blaze that erupted around 4 am, chief of the Thane civic body's Regional Disaster Management Cell (RDMC), Avinash Sawant, said.

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A SpaceX rocket carried 53 satellites for the Starlink internet constellation into orbit Friday after blasting off from California. The Falcon 9 booster lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base at 3:07 pm and minutes later, the first stage landed on a droneship in the Pacific Ocean while the second stage continued toward low Earth orbit. SpaceX later tweeted that the satellites were successfully deployed.

India has banned wheat exports with immediate effect as part of measures to control rising domestic prices, according to official notification. However, the export shipments for which irrevocable letters of credit (LoC) have been issued on or before the date of this notification will be allowed, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said in a notification dated May 13.

The State Investigation Agency (SIA) of Jammu and Kashmir has submitted its chargesheet in a court here in connection with a terror-financing case, in which three associates of terror operatives were arrested from the Sidhra bridge area last year and cash amounting to Rs 43 lakh was recovered from their possession. The money was being transported from Punjab to South Kashmir. The case was transferred to the SIA from the Jammu and Kashmir police last year.

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The Enforcement Directorate (ED) have filed a supplementary chargesheet against two leaders of the Popular Front of India (PFI) under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) before a special PMLA Court, Lucknow, officials said. Earlier, a prosecution complaint (chargesheet) had been filed by the ED on February 6, 2021 against five members of PFI and its student wing Campus Front of India. Cognizance of the offence of money laundering was taken by the court against all the accused.

Some research scholars have written to Delhi University vice-chancellor Yogesh Singh to withdraw an order which announced that researchers will be charged a fee for using various sophisticated analytical instruments. The also protested over the issue in the university on Friday. Delhi University's Dean of Colleges Professor Balaram Pani said that the university is charging a nominal fee. The charges are applicable for sophisticated analytical instruments maintained by the University science instrumentation center (USIC) and range from Rs 20 to Rs 300. The charges came into effect from May 1.

Punjab has rescheduled summer holidays in all schools, which will now close from June 1 to 30 instead of from May 14, Education Minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer said in a statement. He said the decision was taken after demands from the students, parents and the teachers to schedule the summer holidays on the pattern of previous years. The Education Department has reconsidered its decision and decided that the classes in the offline mode would be held from May 15 to May 31, in all the government, aided, private schools while the summer holidays have been scheduled from June 1 to June 30, he said. A fortnight ago, the Punjab government had declared summer vacation in all schools from May 14 in view of the severe heatwave scorching the state.

Police in central California were searching for the driver of a pickup truck that struck a woman walking her dog Friday and kept going, dragging her more than 8 miles (13 kilometers) to a hotel parking lot, where she was found dead. The 29-year-old woman was pushing a shopping cart and had her dog on a leash when she was hit by a gray or silver pickup truck at the intersection of Herndon and Millburn in Fresno, said Fresno Police Lt.Bill Dooley. The man kept driving with the woman trapped under his truck and stopped at a hotel, where he parked in the parking lot, got out of the pickup truck and went to the lobby to ask for a room, Dooley said.

Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Friday said he is examining the matter of airlines charging passengers a fee for issuing boarding passes at check-in counters inside the terminals. A passenger named Neeti Shikha said on Twitter: "New rule of SpiceJet. If you wish to get a boarding card at the check in counter, you need to pay extra. This is like telling a customer in a restaurant that if you want eat in a plate, you will be charged. Wonder what's consumer forum doing!" Journalist Madhavan Narayanan called this practice of airlines as "ridiculous".