India

New Delhi, Mar 17: Taking a cue from Australia, India should enact a law to make tech giants such as Facebook and Google pay local publishers of news content, senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi demanded in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. Raising the issue through a Zero Hour mention, the former deputy chief minister of Bihar said, "The government must make Google, Facebook and YouTube pay print and

Kozhikode, Mar 17: The PC Thomas faction of the Kerala Congress on Wednesday left the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance and joined the Congress-led United Democratic Front, Malayam daily the Mathrubhumi reported. The Kerala Congress (Thomas) will now fight the upcoming Assembly elections in the state together with the PJ Joseph faction of the party, which was already an ally

New Delhi, Mar 17: BJP MP from Himachal Pradesh's Mandi, Ram Swaroop Sharma was found dead in his house in Delhi on Wednesday. He was found hanging in his residence and the door was closed from inside, according to Delhi Police. The circumstances of the death are in the initial stages of investigation, police added. "It looks like a case of suicide, but we are continuing to probe. We'll know

New Delhi, Mar 16: Congress on Tuesday hit out at Prime Minister Modi's government for exporting nearly twice the number of coronavirus vaccine doses than immunisations conducted at home, despite a surge in infections. India, the world's biggest vaccine maker, has gifted or sold 59 million locally produced doses compared with 33 million doses given to its own people since its inoculation campaign

Former Congress leader P C Chacko, who quit the party last week, on Tuesday announced that he will formally join the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) headed by Sharad Pawar. "I am formally joining the NCP today", he told reporters in New Delhi after meeting CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury. Chacko, who quit the Congress over his differences with the party leaders in Kerala, said NCP is a

New Delhi, Mar 16: P K Sinha, the principal advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has resigned, sources said on Tuesday. Sinha, a retired IAS officer of 1977 batch, was appointed as Principal Advisor to the Prime Minister in September 2019, after a brief stint as an officer on special duty (OSD). Sinha was made OSD to the Prime Minister in August 2019, after he had served four years as Cabinet

New Delhi was the world's most polluted capital for the third straight year in 2020, according to IQAir, a Swiss group that measures air quality levels based on the concentration of lung-damaging airborne particles known as PM2.5. India was home to 35 of the world's 50 most polluted cities, according to IQAir's 2020 World Air Quality Report, which gathered data for 106 countries. The findings were

New Delhi: More than 30 lakh people were inoculated against COVID-19 on March 15, the highest in a day so far, taking the total number of vaccine doses administered in the country to 3,29,47,432, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated today. The vaccination of beneficiaries aged over 60 has touched 1 crore within 15 days, the ministry said. Of the total 30,39,394 doses given in a span

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, in a letter to the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra government, has said the state is "in the beginning of a second wave of Covid-19 pandemic". Amid concern of rising Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra, the central government team has asked the state to focus on containment strategies and scale up the pace of vaccination campaign, especially in districts

More than 400 people from Myanmar, many of them policemen, have crossed into neighbouring India since late February illegally, an Indian police officer said on Monday, as Myanmar security forces seek to crush pro-Aung San Suu Kyi demonstrators after last month's coup. The policemen said that they had fled because they feared persecution after refusing to obey the military junta's orders to shoot