10:26 AMSP-ally O P Rajbhar's party to support NDA presidential nominee Droupadi Murmu
Samajwadi Party ally Om Prakash Rajbhar's Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) on Friday announced it will support NDA candidate Droupadi Murmu in the presidential election.
Speaking to reporters here, Rajbhar said the decision was taken after discussions with party leaders and office bearers.
The SBSP has six MLAs in the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly.
10:24 AMCommon University Entrance Test (CUET)-UG gets underway in over 500 cities
The debut edition of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET)-UG began on Friday at test centres in over 510 cities in India and abroad.
The exam for the first slot began on Friday at 9 am.
With 1.49 million registrations, the CUET, the common gateway for undergraduate admissions in all central universities, is now the second biggest entrance exam in the country, surpassing JEE-Main's average registration of nine lakh.
NEET-UG is the biggest entrance test in India with an average of 1.8 million registrations.
"All set to start the first CUET at 9.00 am. Best wishes to all the students who are writing CUET," UGC Chairman Jagadesh Kumar tweeted.
10:13 AMGodavari flood water swells to 1.9 mn cusecs in AP, Dowaleswaram barrage crosses 3rd danger level
Hundreds of villages, mainly the lankas (island villages), along the course of Godavari are reeling under one of the worst floods as the swollen river has been discharging 1.9 million cusecs of water as on Friday morning.
The flood crossed the third danger signal at Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage at Dowaleswaram near Rajamahendravaram in Andhra Pradesh.
Special Chief Secretary (Revenue-Disaster Management) G Sai Prasad, who has been monitoring the situation from the State Emergency Operations Centre here, said the discharge at Cotton Barrage could touch 2.2-2.3 million cusecs over the next few hours.
10:11 AMIndia logs 20,038 fresh coronavirus cases, 47 deaths in 24 hrs
Active cases: 139,073 (Net increase: 2,997)
Deaths: 525,604 (Net increase: 47)
Cured: 43,045,350 (Net increase: 16,994)
Total cases: 43,710,027 (Net increase: 20,038)
Total vaccination: 1,994,734,994 (Increase over previous day: 1,892,969)
9:40 AMPM Modi pays tributes to Kamaraj on birth anniversary
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday paid homage to Congress stalwart K Kamaraj on his birth anniversary, saying he made an indelible contribution to India's freedom struggle and also made a mark as a compassionate administrator.
A former chief minister of erstwhile Madras State, now Tamil Nadu, Kamaraj was a key organisational leader of the Congress and played a crucial role in the elevation of first Lal Bahadur Shastri and then Indira Gandhi to the post of Prime Minister.
Differences between the old guards led by him and Gandhi later led to a split in the party. Born in 1903, Kamaraj died in 1975.
9:25 AMTokyo chosen to host 2025 track world championships
Track and field officials awarded the 2025 world championships to Tokyo on Thursday, bringing runners, jumpers and throwers back to the home of last year's Olympics, where they competed in front of mostly empty stands.
The World Athletics Council awarded the championships in a bidding contest that also included Nairobi, Kenya; Silesia, Poland; and Singapore.
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said it was a close vote, but Japan won on the strength of, among other things, human resource available in Tokyo to put on the event and strong commercial partnerships.
9:24 AMSEC steps up scrutiny over Musk's comments on $44 billion Twitter deal
The U.S. securities regulator quizzed Elon Musk last month over a tweet in which the world's richest person raised doubts over whether he would move ahead with his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc due to concerns over the number of fake users on the platform.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) asked Musk in a letter whether he should have amended his public filing to reflect his intention to suspend or abandon the deal, according to the June 2 letter made public on Thursday.
The agency was referring to his May 17 tweet in which he said the "deal cannot move forward" until Twitter provided more data about how the company handled fake accounts.
9:24 AMIran warns US, allies against making "mistakes" in region
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned on Thursday that any "mistakes" committed by the United States and its allies to stoke a regional crisis will receive a "decisive" response from Iran.
"Unfortunately, some countries in the region are transiting insecurity and terrorism from the West and the United States to the region," Raisi said during a visit to Iran's western city of Kermanshah as reported by the president's website.
"Iran does not accept any insecurity and crisis in the region, and committing any mistake in this region will be responded to with a decisive and regrettable response," Xinhua quoted Raisi as saying.
8:59 AMUS House votes for India-specific CAATSA waiver
The US House of Representative on Thursday passed a legislative amendment that approves an India-specific waiver for punitive CAATSA sanctions.
Authored and introduced by Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna, the amendment urges the Biden administration to use their authority to provide India with a Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAASTA) waiver to help deter aggressors like China.
The legislative amendment was passed on Thursday by voice vote as part of an en bloc (all together as a single unit) amendment during floor consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
8:56 AMUS reports over 1,000 monkeypox cases
The United States had reported over 1,000 confirmed monkeypox cases in 43 states as of Wednesday, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
California had the most cases, with 161, followed by New York with 159 and Illinois with 152, CDC data showed.
Over 132,000 doses of JYNNEOS, the vaccine licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration indicated for the prevention of smallpox and monkeypox, had been distributed nationwide as of Tuesday, according to the latest data of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
8:55 AMChina's economic growth falls to 0.4 pc amid virus shutdowns
China's economic growth plunged to 0.4 per cent over a year earlier in the latest quarter after Shanghai and other cities were shut down to fight coronavirus outbreaks, but the government said a "stable recovery" is underway.
Growth slid from the previous quarter's already-weak 1.3 per cent after restrictions were imposed starting in late March but activity improved in May and June, the National Bureau of Statistics announced Friday.
8:55 AMSri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa steps down, protesters celebrate
Gotabaya Rajapaksa stepped down as Sri Lanka’s president with protesters taking to the streets to celebrate into the early hours of Friday after days of anti-government demonstrations and tense stand-offs with security forces.
The beleaguered leader sent his resignation to the parliament speaker soon after landing in Singapore on Thursday, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The speaker will give an official statement on the matter on Friday.
8:55 AMPM Modi was target of terror module busted in Patna, probe indicates
The five persons arrested in Patna for indulging in anti-national activities following raids in the Phulwari Sharif area, which also led to the recovery of several incriminating documents, including PFI's 'Mission 2047', allegedly had Prime Minister Narendra Modi on their radar, the ongoing probe by Bihar police indicated.
Patna Police have arrested Athar Parvez and Mohammed Jalaluddin -- a retired sub-inspector from Jharkhand -- from the Phulwari Sharif area. Later, three more individuals -- Margoob Danish, Arman Malik and Shabbir -- were arrested.
They were allegedly running a terror module and were engaged in brainwashing the Muslim youth, the police said.
8:52 AMPak PM Shehbaz Sharif slashes fuel prices after 4 rounds of massive hike
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday slashed the price of petrol by PKR 18.50 per litre and diesel by PKR 40.54 per litre respectively, a move that comes after four rounds of massive hikes by the current dispensation since it came to power three months ago.
In his address to the nation, Sharif said the price cut, the first such step by his government was made possible after the price of crude fell below USD 100 per barrel.
The new price of petrol will be PKR 230.24 per litre, while diesel will be available at PKR 236 per litre.
8:49 AMOver 20,000 people shifted to relief camps as heavy rains pound Telangana
More than 20,000 people have been shifted to relief camps at different places in Telangana as officials on Thursday geared up to deal with rising water levels in the Godavari river at Bhadrachalam town in the state.
Several localities in Bhadradri-Kothagudem and other districts in the state remained inundated after heavy rainfall.
An official release said 19,071 people have been shifted to 223 camps in the southern state.
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