Monday, 23 December 2024
Monday, 23 December 2024
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday virtually flagged off the Vande Bharat express connecting Howrah and New Jalpaiguri in the presence of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Also present on the occasion were Governor C V Ananda Bose and Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
The seventh Vande Bharat express started its journey at 11.45 am from platform number 22 of Howrah Station to travel to New Jalpaiguri, the gateway to the northeast.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mother Hiraben passed away at a hospital in Ahmedabad early on Friday. She was 99.
A bulletin from the UN Mehta Institute of Cardiology and Research Centre, where she was admitted on Wednesday after her health deteriorated, shared the news of her demise.
Pelé, one of soccer’s greatest players and a transformative figure in 20th-century sports who achieved a level of global celebrity few athletes have known, died Thursday in São Paulo. He was 82.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his manager, Joe Fraga.
India's star cricketer Rishabh Pant had a miraculous escape when his luxury car crashed into a road divider and caught fire after he dozed off at the wheel on the Delhi-Dehradun highway in the early hours of Friday.
The 25-year-old, who was on his way to his hometown Roorkee to surprise his mother, suffered injuries on his head, back and feet but is in a stable condition following the accident that took place in Manglaur in Uttarakhand's Haridwar district around 5.30 am, police said.
The civil aviation ministry on Friday asked airlines to modify their check-in systems for international passengers coming into India as part of the revised Covid guidelines, which makes a negative Covid test report a must for travellers coming from China and five other countries from Sunday.
The ministry's direction comes a day after the health ministry decided to make RT-PCR negative test reports compulsory for passengers coming on all international flights from six high-risk countries --China, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Thailand and Japan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday held a video conference during which the two leaders said they would seek to strengthen relations between their two countries.
Russia has sought to ramp up its political and military ties with its key ally Beijing since Moscow faces unprecedented Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
In view of a spike in air pollution, the Centre's air quality panel on Friday directed implementation of curbs under stage III of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) in Delhi-NCR, including a ban on non-essential construction and demolition work.
Delhi's 24-hour average air quality index stood at 399 on Friday, just two notches below the severe category.
Vanita Sharma, mother of actor Tunisha Sharma who allegedly committed suicide on a television show set in neighbouring Palghar last week, on Friday said her death could be a case of murder, and also accused co-actor Sheezan Khan and his family of trying to force her daughter into religious conversion.
She also claimed that her daughter had checked the mobile phone of Khan, with whom she was in a relationship but broke up recently, and found his WhatsApp chats with some other woman, and when Tunisha confronted Khan about it, he slapped her, stating that she was free to do whatever she wanted.
A large number of tourists stranded in over 400 vehicles near South Portal of the Atal Tunnel in Rohtang Pass following snowfall have been rescued, officials said on Friday.
The vehicles were stuck as slippery conditions prevailed after snowfall at the tunnel on the Manali-Leh highway and adjoining areas on Thursday.
Police teams from Keylong and Manali jointly launched a rescue operation, which took 10-12 hours and concluded around 4 am on Friday, and the vehicles moved to their respective destinations, the officials said.
The prolonged dry spell in Kashmir was broken as the valley received overnight light to moderate snowfall which brought slight relief from the intense cold conditions, even as the flight operations at the Srinagar airport were affected early morning, officials said on Friday.
The snowfall, which was the season’s first in the plains of the valley, however led to the closure of the Srinagar-Leh national highway, the officials said.
