Breaking News, February 9 | HIGHLIGHTS

Two persons were found dead in an apartment building at west Delhi's Kirti Nagar area on Thursday afternoon, police said. The police received information regarding the incident on the second floor of a building in Ramesh Nagar at 3.31 pm. When they reached the spot, they found a man hanging from a ceiling fan while a woman was found dead on the bed, Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Ghanshyam Bansal said.

As many as 57 students from a school in Khed tehsil of Pune district fell ill due to suspected food poisoning on Thursday, a government official said. All of them were recovering, he added. "The children are from Hutatma Rajguru School in Khed and are currently admitted to the rural hospital. They are all stable and will be discharged after the necessary observation period," said Ayush Prasad, Chief Executive Officer of Pune Zilla Parishad. Students complained of nausea and stomach ache after consuming rice during midday meals in the school, a local official said.

The US Treasury Department on Thursday announced a joint US-UK effort to sanction Russian cybercriminals as the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine nears and Treasury tightens its efforts to financially punish violators of existing sanctions. The US coordinated with the United Kingdom to impose sanctions on seven people that it said are part of the Russia-based cybercrime gang Trickbot. All members are listed as living in Russia or Russian-occupied Ukraine.

A day before the Global Investors' Summit in Uttar Pradesh, opposition parties on Thursday alleged that the state government was signing MoUs with companies being run from a single room. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the summit on Friday. The three-day event is expected to be attended by several Union ministers and a host of leading industrialists. Taking a dig at the state government, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said, "The BJP government is taking the state towards destruction instead of development. MoUs (Memorandums of Understanding) are being signed with industrialists to cheat the public and show off. "This government is signing MoUs with such companies, which are running in a single room." During the previous summit, it claimed to have signed MoUs worth Rs 5 lakh crore but nothing materialised on the ground, Yadav said in a statement.

A person was detained on Thursday after unaccounted cash of around Rs 18 lakh was recovered from his possession during a search operation against drug smuggling in Odisha's Ganjam district, an official said. The unaccounted cash was recovered during the raid at a Jajpur-bound bus on Lanjipalli bypass road, he said.

A number of tourism-related activities will be held in India in the next few months under the country's presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), officials said on Thursday. Uzbekistan, in September last year, had handed over the rotating presidency of the eight-member SCO to India in the historic city of Samarkand.

Tens of thousands of people who lost their homes in a catastrophic earthquake huddled around campfires in the bitter cold and clamoured for food and water Thursday, three days after the temblor hit Turkiye and Syria and killed more than 19,300. Emergency crews used pick axes, shovels and jackhammers to dig through twisted metal and concrete — and occasionally still pulled out survivors. But in some places, their focus shifted to demolishing unsteady buildings.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot will present the State Budget 2023-24 in the assembly on Friday. This will be the last budget of the present government as the state is going for assembly elections later this year. For the first time, the budget will be shown live in all government and private colleges of the state.

A group of G20 delegates, including three from Turkiye, who are currently in Gujarat's Rann of Kutch for the influential bloc's first meeting under the tourism track, is slated to visit on Friday an iconic memorial in Bhuj built after the deadly 2001 earthquake. Their visit will take place days after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake and several powerful aftershocks hit Turkiye and Syria, killing over 17,000 people and flattening thousands of buildings.

The Himachal Pradesh Excise and Taxation Department inspected an Adani Group company, scrutinising records and checking the stock at the Adani Wilmar warehouse in Parwanoo, officials said on Thursday. The department was apparently investigating possible Goods and Services Tax violations by the company, a 50:50 joint venture between the Adani conglomerate and Singapore-based Wilmar.

A court here on Thursday sent an advertising company director, who is alleged to have run the AAP's campaign during the 2022 Goa assembly polls, to ED's custody for "detailed and extensive interrogation" in a Delhi excise policy-related money laundering case. Rajesh Joshi, director of Chariot Productions Media Pvt Ltd, was produced before Special Judge M K Nagpal, who sent him for custodial interrogation till February 13. He was arrested by the ED on Wednesday.

A man from Uttarakhand who had gone to Turkiye on an official trip has been missing since the catastrophic earthquake hit the country flattening several buildings and killing thousands of people, his family said on Thursday. According to Vijay Kumar Gaud's family, the hotel in which he was staying collapsed following the earthquake on February 6 and efforts to contact him ever since have gone in vain. "His phone rings but no one responds," Vijay Kumar Gaud's elder brother Arun Kumar Gaud told PTI.

Trinamool Congress MLA Madan Mitra on Thursday courted controversy by allegedly saying that party activists will make 'seekh kebab' during the upcoming panchayat elections in West Bengal. The purported remark drew sharp criticism from the BJP and CPI(M), as they alleged that the comment was indicative of the possibility of political violence during the rural polls, while the TMC tried to make light of the comment, claiming it was made allegorically.

7 schoolchildren were killed and four other kids suffered grievous injuries after an autorickshaw ferrying them was hit by a truck in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district on Thursday, a police official said. The accident took place at Korar, nearly 20 km from the district headquarters, said the official. The injured students were rushed to the government health centre at Korar, he said.

The Sukhoi fifth-generation fighter jet, the Checkmate light tactical fighter and Orlan-30 drones will be among 200 types of the most advanced Russian-made armaments and military hardware that will be displayed at the upcoming Aero India 2023 international air show, Russia's state arms seller said on Thursday. The 14th edition of the biennial air show would be held at the Air Force Station at Yelahanka in Bengaluru from February 13-17.

The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has issued a notice to the city police in connection with the alleged kidnapping of the one-and-a-half-year-old daughter of a Delhi BJP youth president. The panel has sought a copy of the FIR and an action taken report on the matter by February 11. The DCW said that it learnt that two motorcycle-borne persons abducted the girl and then left her at a distance.

The outlawed Pakistani Taliban has refuted former prime minister Imran Khan's claim that the outfit's militants from South Waziristan province were hatching a plot to assassinate him. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) asserted that it was waging a war against Pakistan's security forces and intelligence agencies and was not against any political personality. “We have received information that the head of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf in a meeting with the party’s provincial spokespersons claimed an assassination attempt was being planned by the TTP, and South Waziristan residents have been tasked with executing the task,” the Dawn newspaper reported, quoting a TTP statement on Wednesday.

Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Minister Giriraj Singh on Thursday launched the Mission Antyodaya Survey 2022-23 to assess the outcome of various development schemes in rural areas. Singh also launched a portal and a mobile application linked to the survey. The Department of Rural Development has been conducting the Mission Antyodaya Survey across all gram panchayats in the country since 2017-18 to measure the outcomes through a convergence of various schemes.

Domestic airlines reported 2,613 significant technical snags in their planes in the last five years, Union minister V K Singh told the Lok Sabha on Thursday. The Minister of State for Civil Aviation said the regulations require occurrences relating to system and component failure to be reported to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Rajya Sabha proceedings were adjourned briefly till 4.30 pm on Thursday as MPs from both opposition and treasury benches engaged in sloganeering. Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi finished his nearly 90-minute speech on the motion of thanks in the President's address, MPs belonging to the BJP and other NDA constituents started raising "Modi, Modi" slogans and thumping desks.

The US State Department has quietly implemented recommendations of a presidential commission which has suggested steps like opening up American diplomatic missions outside India for visa appointments to reduce the visa backlog in the country. India was one of the very few countries where applications for US visas saw a major upswing after coronavirus-related travel restrictions were lifted.

A boy was apprehended with 15 kg of heroin on him in Amritsar, the top official of the state police force said on Thursday. Police also found Rs 8.4 lakh cash on the minor who was detained at a police checkpoint on Ram Tirath Road in Amritsar. "In an intelligence-led operation #CI Amritsar arrested a juvenile and recovered 15 kg heroin along with Rs 8.4 lakh drug money from him at naka on Ram Tirath Road, Amritsar," Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav said in a tweet.

Telecom equipment maker Nokia on Thursday said it will extend manufacturing of PON optical line terminals (OLTs) to its factory in Sriperimbudur near Chennai to cater to rising demand from local customers in India and global markets. PON stands for Passive Optical Network.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is wrapping up a whirlwind tour of his major European backers, already heading home with heaps of goodwill, promises of more military aid and, as hardware goes, France's highest medal of honour.

Scores of All India Mahila Congress members staged a protest at Jantar Mantar on Thursday against the Centre and Adani group over allegations of financial irregularities and market manipulation. The women raised slogans and held placards demanding investigations into the matter.

 Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday held a discussion with IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva and urged the multi-lateral funding agency to develop a globally coordinated approach to the regulation of crypto assets.

A catering staff was allegedly beaten to death by two people over dinner plates during a function in Rohini's Sector-12 area early Thursday, police said. At 12.58 am Thursday, Prashant Vihar Police Station got a call reporting a fight behind Sawariyan Tent near Japanese Park in Sector-12 of Rohini, a senior police officer said.

The rupee depreciated 12 paise to 82.66 against the US dollar in early trade on Thursday, weighed down by sustained foreign fund outflows and a muted trend in domestic equities. Firm crude oil prices and a strong American currency further dented investor sentiments, forex traders said.

 A report of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the threat posed by ISIL to international peace and security has taken note of the “Delhi Declaration” adopted at a special meeting of the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee in India last year on combating the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes.

Three siblings were among four people burnt alive after a fire broke out in two huts in Amb sub-division of Una district, officials said Thursday. SHO, Ashish Pathania, said the thatched huts of Bhadeshwar Das and Ramesh Das, who hail from Bihar's Darbhanga district, caught fire on Wednesday night.

The Indian Space Research Organisation, along with Indian Navy, carried out initial recovery trials of Crew Module in the Water Survival Test Facility (WSTF) as part of preparations for the Gaganyaan mission.

The Delhi high court on Wednesday said that an application to vacate the stay has been filed and that the petitioner challenges the jurisdiction of the Lokpal of India in Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) President Shibu Soren's plea against the Lokpal's notice in a disproportionate assets case. The court listed the matter for the next hearing on March 15.

Australia's Defense Department will remove surveillance cameras made by Chinese Communist Party-linked companies from its buildings, the government said Thursday after the US and Britain made similar moves.

South Korea's opposition-controlled parliament voted to impeach Interior and Safety Minister Lee Sang-min holding him responsible for government failures in disaster planning and the response that likely contributed to the high death toll in a crowd crush that killed nearly 160 people in October.

Five climate change protesters were fined Wednesday for glueing themselves to the frame of a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" in the Royal Academy of Arts. The five activists from the group Just Stop Oil glued their hands to the painting's border and one sprayed graffiti on the wall at the London museum in July, as part of a series of disruptive protests aimed at raising awareness about climate change.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought Western support for his country in surprise visits to Britain and France on Wednesday, pushing for fighter jets to battle Russian invaders in a dramatic speech to the UK Parliament, and then flying to Paris to meet the French and German leaders over dinner at the Elysee Palace.