Breaking News, November 17 | HIGHLIGHTS

The Union government on Thursday gave a fresh one-year extension in service to ED director Sanjay Kumar Mishra, according to an official order. This is the overall the third extension given to the officer. The latest order issued by the Personnel Ministry said the 1984-batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer will be in office till November 18, 2023. Mishra, 62, was first appointed director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for a stipulated period of two years by an order on November 19, 2018. Later, by an order dated November 13, 2020, the central government modified the appointment letter retrospectively and his two-year term was replaced by three years. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that she will not seek a leadership position in the new Congress, a pivotal realignment making way for a new generation of leaders after Democrats lost control of the House to Republicans in the midterm elections. Pelosi announced in a spirited speech on the House floor that she will step aside after leading Democrats for nearly 20 years and in the aftermath of the brutal attack on her husband, Paul, last month in their San Francisco home. The California Democrat, who rose to become the nation's first woman to wield the speaker's gavel, said she would remain in Congress as the representative from San Francisco, a position she has held for 35 years, when the new Congress convenes in January. “Now we must move boldly into the future,” Pelosi said.

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi will step down as the Democratic leader in the chamber a day after Republicans secured a narrow majority: Reuters

A 30-year-old man was arrested for allegedly killing his girlfriend in Southeast Delhi's Madanpur Khadar area over suspicion that she was having an affair with another man, police said on Thursday. They said the accused has been identified as Rahul, a local. The police said they received a call at around 2.50 pm last Friday, informing them that a woman was lying unconscious in a room which was locked from outside. The woman was later identified as Gulshana (22). She had separated from her husband and was living with her one-year-old daughter.

The recent blast on the Udaipur railway bridge was a conspiracy by some local residents to protest the lesser compensation for land acquisition for the railway track, Rajasthan Police's Anti-Terrorism Squad said on Thursday. According to ATS officials, four people, including a minor, have been detained. This also includes the seller of explosives. More information will come out after questioning, officials said. Addressing a press conference here, Additional Director General of Police, ATS-SOG, Ashok Rathore said Dhulchand Meena, 32, Prakash Meena, 18, and a 17-year-old boy have been taken into custody. All three are residents of Eklingpura in Jawar Mines, Udaipur. Ankush Suwalka, who sold explosives to them, has also been detained. In the interrogation so far, the accused have said that their aim was not to cause loss of life, he added. ADG Rathore said that the explosives were planted by the accused after the train left, making it clear that there was no intention to harm people. After planting the explosives, all three left. The explosives for the blast were taken from Suwalka in Dholki Pati area and the conspiracy was hatched only to attract the attention of the government system, he added. However, the accused said that they have no connection with this incident.

AAP MLA Akhilesh Pati Tripathi was on Thursday questioned for nearly 11 hours by the Delhi government's Anti-Corruption Branch in connection with the MCD polls ticket bribery case, officials said. During the questioning, a senior official said, Tripathi refuted the allegations against him and his associates, including his relative, who were arrested by the ACB on Wednesday. The ACB had arrested Tripathi's brother-in-law and his two associates for allegedly demanding Rs 90 lakh as bribe for arranging a ticket for the wife of an AAP worker, Gopal Khari, to contest the upcoming Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections.

The Punjab Congress on Thursday extended its support to farmers who have decided to hold 'Victory Day' celebrations on November 19 to commemorate the withdrawal of the three contentious farm laws by the Centre. The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) earlier in Delhi said it would celebrate November 19 as 'Fateh Diwas' or 'Victory Day' as the Union government had on that day last year ordered the repeal of the farm laws following their year-long agitation.
The Congress suggested that along with 'Victory Day', the farmers should also observe it as a "betrayal day", saying the BJP government at the Centre had "betrayed" them and "completely backed out" of all the commitments it m

People in small groups, backed by the Vishva Hindu Parshad (VHP) and other outfits, took out candle marches in South Delhi on Thursday evening and demanded capital punishment to Aaftab Amin Poonawala arrested by Delhi Police recently for allegedly killing a 27-year-old woman living with him. People participating in the candle marches, taken out from eight different locations in South Delhi's Mehrauli area, also demanded that the Delhi government bring stringent laws against "illegal religious conversion and love jihad". "The marches were taken out peacefully by the people belonging to Hindu society who are angry over the gruesome murder of Shradha Walkar in Mehrauli," VHP national spokesperson Vinod Bansal told media. The candle marches were supported by the VHP and other outfits, he added.

A woman sarpanch of a village here has been booked for allegedly indulging in celebratory firing, police said on Thursday. The case was registered on Wednesday after a video of Darba Kalan village sarpanch Santosh Beniwal went viral on social media, they said. In the purported video, Beniwal is seen dancing with two other women and firing in the air with a pistol. "A video went viral on social media platforms in which Santosh Beniwal, the sarpanch of Darba Kalan village, is seen indulging in celebratory firing. She was elected as sarpanch last week," Station House Officer of Nathusari Chopta police station Sub-Inspector Ram Kumar told PTI over the phone.

Facing criticism from the Congress, the government on Thursday moved the Supreme Court seeking a review of its order for premature release of six convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The Centre said the order granting remission to the convicts, who had assassinated the former prime minister, was passed without affording it adequate opportunity for hearing despite it being a necessary party to the case.

In a bid to strengthen the critical mineral supply chain for emerging technologies, the government is taking several proactive measures to secure such minerals, including lithium from Australia and Argentina, a top official said on Thursday. The government has “commissioned consultants to identify assets and companies” in the critical mineral sector in countries such as Australia, and is sending a team of geologists to Argentina by the end of this month to evaluate lithium varieties, Mines secretary Vivek Bharadwaj said.

Seized illicit liquor worth Rs 85 lakh was destroyed in Indore in Madhya Pradesh on Thursday. Country liquor, whisky and beer in 3,146 cartons were crushed under the wheels of a road-roller, Sub Divisional Magistrate Akshay Markam told PTI. The liquor was seized by authorities over a period of 31 years and was destroyed as per the rules, he said. 

A woman was arrested and three persons, including two teen girls, were rescued after a sex racket was busted in Kopri in Maharashtra's Thane city, a police official said on Thursday. Acting on a tip off, the Anti Human Trafficking Cell of Thane Crime Branch arrested a woman on Wednesday while she was allegedly striking a deal, he said. "We have rescued two girls in 16-17 age group and a 28-year-old woman. The racket was going on in a residential area of the city. A case under Indian Penal Code and Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act has been registered in Kopri police station," he added.
 

The Supreme Court said on Thursday it is "troubling" that 454 seats in medical courses have remained vacant because the open round of INI-CET counselling has stopped. The Institute of National Importance Combined Entrance Test (INI-CET) is for admission to the Post Graduate (PG) courses of certain All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and some other medical institutions. A bench of Justices SK Kaul and A S Oka observed this while hearing a petition which said INI-CET is conducted by AIIMS, New Delhi, and a notice was issued by the premier medical institute on September 19 this year conveying its decision to cancel the open round for INI-CET July 2022 session. "What is troubling us is that stopping of the open round has resulted in 454 seats being vacant," the bench orally observed, adding, "we do feel that seats should not go vacant".

A Varanasi court on Thursday rejected Gyanvapi Masjid committee's objection to a petition seeking right to worship 'Shivling' claimed to have been found in the mosque complex and fixed December 2 as the next date of hearing in the case. Fast track court Judge Mahendra Kumar Pandey found the petition filed by Kiran Singh worth hearing and fixed December 2 for taking up the matter, Assistant District Government Counsel Sulabh Prakash said. The court rejected objection filed by Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee questioning maintainability of the plea. 

Around 13 percent of the those involved in drug and substance abuse in India are below 20 years of age, which calls for stepping up community intervention and preventive mechanisms targeting adolescents, an UN official said here on Thursday. Children face increased risk of drugs and alcohol abuse due to their poor mental and physical health resulting from violence, exploitation and sexual abuse against them, Billy Batware, Programme Officer of United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said at the International Forum on ‘Children Matter-Right to a Drug-Free Childhood.’

78 countries and multilateral organisations are participating in the third edition of the 'No Money For Terror' Conference being organised in the national capital on November 18-19, said Dinkar Gupta, Director General, NIA. 

Traditional methods of Hawala money and new ways of terror financing would be part of the discussion in the conference. Over 20 Ministers of all countries are participating in the conference, he added.

There is no doubt that there has been a huge reduction in terrorism and violent extremism but the battle has to be fought. Social media platforms are used as crowdfunding platforms, & finances raised through such sources are ultimately used for terror purposes. This is an issue which needs to be discussed. 

Aftab Ameen Poonawalla has confessed to investigators that it took him 10 hours to chop his live-in partner's body into 35 different pieces and that he had burnt her face until it was unrecognizable, informed sources said. AS the investigation is still underway, police teams have visited and conducted searches to recover more remains of the 27-year-old victim, Shraddha Walkar, at the Mehrauli forest. The South district police teams have also contacted their counterparts for in east district's Pandav Nagar police station to help out in a DNA test after some remains, including a head, were recovered in Trilokpuri area in June. The samples collected from the Mehrauli area have been sent for a DNA test. The police will match both the DNA reports. Following the lack of evidence, the police teams on Wednesday had also visited the rented house in Chattarpur which the accused and the victim shared. The weapon of offence, which has been missing since Aftab's arrest on November 12, was also looked for, said the sources.

A nine-year-old girl died in a crude bomb explosion in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district, police said on Thursday. The blast occurred when she picked up the bomb out of curiosity at her maternal uncle's house in Bakchora village in Minakhan area on Wednesday evening, a senior police officer said. Minakhan Sub-division Police Officer (SDPO) Aminul Islam said that the class 2 student hails from Basanti area of South 24 Parganas district and had come to visit her maternal uncle's house two days before the incident.

The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on the issue of whether a lower court has the power to summon additional accused even after having decided a criminal case against the others involved. A five-judge constitution bench headed by Justice S A Nazeer heard submissions from Additional Solicitor General S V Raju, amicus curiae S Nagamuthu and others on questions of reference. "Arguments heard, Judgment reserved," the bench, also comprising justices B R Gavai, A S Bopanna, V Ramasubramanian and B V Nagarathna said. The top court had in 2019 framed three questions of law on the scope and ambit of section 319 (power to proceed against other persons appearing to be guilty of offence) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and referred the matter to a larger bench for adjudication.

Ahead of the Mainpuri Lok Sabha bypoll, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday met PSPL chief and his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav along with his wife and party candidate Dimple Yadav. The bypoll on the seat has been necessitated due to the demise of Samajwadi Party (SP) patron Mulayam Singh Yadav and the area is considered to be the party's stronghold. In a tweet after the meeting, Akhilesh Yadav said, "Along with the blessings of Netaji and elders of the family, the people of Mainpuri are also with us." Akhilesh Yadav also shared a picture with Shivpal Singh. Shivpal Yadav on Wednesday held a meeting with party workers and exhorted them to ensure the victory of the SP candidate in the bypoll.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday dissolved all committees formed in Uttar Pradesh for the assembly elections this year, and the state unit of the party is likely to be reconstituted. Party sources said office-bearers of the unit would be replaced under the leadership of state Congress president Brijlal Khabri. "The Congress president has approved a proposal to dissolve all the committees formed for the purpose of the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2022, with immediate effect," as per an official communication from the party. The Congress won just two out of 403 assembly constituencies in Uttar Pradesh and managed to secure 2.33 per cent of the total votes polled in the elections held in March 2022. The BJP came back to power in the state led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is the AICC general secretary in-charge for Congress affairs in Uttar Pradesh. 

Winter is slowly setting in Rajasthan with the night-time temperature falling below 10 degrees Celsius at many places in the state.
Fatehpur in Sikar district recorded a minimum temperature of 8 degrees Celsius on Wednesday night -- the lowest in the state.
In the 24 hours ending at 8.30 am on Thursday, Jaipur recorded a maximum of 27.4 degrees Celsius and a minimum of 14 degrees Celsius.

Opposition parties have hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claims at the G20 Summit that India was making digital access public, alleging that the country shut Internet connectivity more often than any other. On Wednesday, Modi said India was making digital access public, but there was still a "huge digital divide" at the international level.

Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday laid the foundation stone of three national highway projects worth Rs 1,206 crore in the Siliguri area of north Bengal. Gadkari, who is on a whirlwind tour of the state, said that infrastructure development in north Bengal is key to boosting the region's tourism industry.

The western air Commander, Air Marshal Sreekumar Prabhakaran on Thursday inaugurated the new complex of the Indian Air Force (IAF) school here, officials said. Flanked by Rekha Prabhakaran, president of Air Force Wives Welfare Association (Regional), air officer commanding-in-chief (AOC-in-C), Western Air Command visited IAF station at Jammu on Thursday, a defence spokesperson said.

Social media giant Meta has appointed Sandhya Devanathan as the Vice President of Meta India, the company said on Thursday. She comes in place of Ajit Mohan who resigned from Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, early this month. "I'm pleased to welcome Sandhya as our new leader for India.

A court in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district has sentenced a man to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment for raping and impregnating his minor cousin sister. District and Sessions Judge Narendra Dutt on Wednesday convicted Virendra Lal (35) and imposed a fine of Rs 50,000, to be given to the 11-year-old girl as compensation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Saturday formally inaugurate the month long Kashi-Tamil Samagam in Varanasi, a senior official said.
He will also address the gathering during about three hours stay in his parliamentary constituency, Mahanagar Chairman Vidyasagar Rai said.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has registered a suo-moto case in the stone quarry collapse in south Mizoram's Hnahthial district and directed authorities concerned to appear before it on November 28. Seven officials, including the member secretary of Mizoram pollution control board and the director of the state's disaster management directorate, have been asked to appear at the tribunal's Faridkot House office in Delhi, according to the notice issued by the NGT on Wednesday.

India has expressed hope that the UN-facilitated Black Sea grain and fertilizer package deal, that allowed food exports from Ukraine amid the ongoing conflict with Russia, will be renewed in the coming days and will be fully implemented by all parties earnestly. The UN-brokered deal expires on November 19. The agreement on July 22 allowed grain shipments to resume from certain Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, leading to some 10 million tonnes in shipments and helping to reduce international prices.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in poll-bound Gujarat on Friday, the CM's office said today. His cabinet colleagues Narottam Mishra, Vishwas Sarang, Arvind Bhadoria and Inder Singh Parmar have already been campaigning for the ruling BJP in Gujarat, where polls for the 182-member Assembly will be held in two phases - in 89 seats on December 1 and in 93 seats on December 5.

Two women were killed and as many others were injured critically when a mound of mud fell over them while they were taking out soil from a pit in Salempur village here, police said on Thursday. The incident occurred on Wednesday evening in Bisauli police station area, said Superintendent of Police (Rural) Siddharth Verma.

The Congress in Karnataka on Thursday demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, alleging he is directly responsible for a corrupt electoral practice by assigning a private entity to collect door-to-door voter information. The Congress in Karnataka on Thursday demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, alleging he is directly responsible for a corrupt electoral practice by assigning a private entity to collect door-to-door voter information. Congress general secretary and the party's Karnataka in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala said at a press conference here that Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, the civic agency, authorised a private firm in August to carry out a door-to-door survey of voters 'free of cost' who gathered information about their gender, mother tongue, collected voter ID and Aadhaar details.
 

An Indian fisherman sustained injuries to his eye after being allegedly attacked by the Sri Lankan Navy which also arrested 14 fishers for alleged maritime boundary violation, an official said. The injured fisherman was identified as Johnson of Rameswaram and he was injured in his eye when the Lankan naval personnel attacked him late on Wednesday, he said.

• SC to hear bail pleas of Christian Michel James in AgustaWestland chopper scam cases lodged by CBI and ED. 
• SC to hear pleas related to grant of quota in Maharashtra local bodies elections. 
• SC to hear a plea related to 'problems and miseries of migrant labourers' during COVID-19 curbs and lockdown.
• SC to hear a plea of BJP leader and former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat against a journalist in a criminal case.

The devotees in Kerala have thronged to Sabarimala Temple to offer prayers. This comes after the temple opened today for the public.

A 26-year-old Indian national, who first came to Singapore in 2018 to study, was jailed for nine weeks after he pleaded guilty to three counts of dealing with the benefits of criminal conduct, involving more than SGD 26,000 that was traced to three fraud victims in the United States.
In exchange for at least SGD 100, Bhambri Kunal had withdrawn the cash from Singapore bank accounts, which were sums later traced to three fraud victims in the US.

Republicans won control of the US House on Wednesday, returning the party to power in Washington and giving conservatives leverage to blunt President Joe Biden's agenda and spur a flurry of investigations. But a threadbare majority will pose immediate challenges for GOP leaders and complicate the party's ability to govern.

A fire broke out at a closed godown in Uttar Pradesh's Hardoi district. According to reports, the reason of the incident is said to be a short circuit.