Breaking News, April 27 | HIGHLIGHTS

As much as 2,076 hectares of farm land was affected due to unseasonal rains while one person and 42 animals lost their lives in related incidents in eastern Maharashtra's Yavatmal district, officials said on Thursday. Yavatmal recorded 24.2 mm of rainfall from Wednesday till 10 am on Thursday, they said. 

As many as 152 houses were also damaged in the showers that lashed the district in 24 hours ending on Thursday morning, as per the primary report issued by the collector's office. Crops like jowar, corn, vegetables, onions were damaged due to rain and hailstorm, it said.

At least eight people were killed in lightning strikes in three districts of West Bengal, which witnessed moderate rainfall on Thursday, an official said. Lightning strikes claimed lives of four people in Purba Bardhaman district, and two each in Murshidabad and North 24 Parganas, a disaster management department official said.

"Deaths of eight people from three districts have been reported so far. They died due to lightning strikes," he said. According to him, the victims were mostly farmers who were killed after being struck by lightning while working in agricultural fields.

Thunderstorms with lightning occurred in several south Bengal districts, including, Kolkata, Howrah, North 24 Parganas, Purba Bardhaman and Murshidabad, he said. "Gusty wind was reported at Alipore at 1645 hrs and the duration was less than one minute with the highest wind gust of 79 kmph. This is not a squall," said an official at Regional Meteorological Centre here.

A Delhi-bound flight in which Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin was scheduled to travel on Thursday was cancelled due to a technical snag, airport sources told PTI. The Chief Minister was scheduled to leave for Delhi to invite President Draupadi Murmu on Friday for a hospital inauguration here. The private carrier was cancelled due to the technical snag following which the Chief Minister returned home. He is expected to leave early on Friday, the sources added.

Rajasthan | A police team was allegedly attacked by miscreants when they went for a raid in the Mandwa police station area of Udaipur. More details are awaited.

 Chithirai festival being celebrated in Tamil Nadu's Madurai.

Eight districts in Jammu and Kashmir got new deputy commissioners on Thursday as the administration carried out a reshuffle and ordered transfer and posting of 21 officers, including 10 IAS officers. Director of Information and Public Relations Akshay Labroo was transferred and posted as deputy commissioner of Budgam district, according to an order issued by the General Administration Department.

IAS officers Sachin Kumar Vaishy, Choudhary Mohammad Yasin, Basharat Qayoom, Syeed Fakhrudin Hamid, Faz Lui Haseeb, Abhishek Sharma and Rakesh Minhas were posted as deputy commissioners of Udhampur, Poonch, Pulwama, Anantnag, Shopian, Samba and Kathua districts, respectively, it said.

IAS officer Baseer-ul-Haq Chaudhary was transferred and posted as Managing Director, Kashmir Power Distribution Corporation Limited. IAS officer Minga Sherpa was transferred and posted as Additional Secretary in the Lieutenant Governor's Secretariat. He shall hold the charge of the posts of Managing Director, Jammu and Kashmir Tourism Development Corporation, and Director, Information, J&K, in addition to his own duties, till further orders. IRS officer Raja Yaqoob Farooq was transferred and posted as Director, Tourism, Kashmir. Ten Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Service officers were also given new postings as part of the reshuffle.

Union Minister Jitendra Singh today visited Satellite Applications Catapult at Oxford in the United Kingdom. "We have a satellite application centre over here. I'm glad to share that UK is looking forward to India for collaboration on a larger scale. In the last 8-9 years under PM Modi, there has been a rapid stride as far as our scientific capabilities are concerned & as far as our space technology is concerned. We are way ahead compared to most other nations of the world. I think now we have arrived at a stage where even the most premier space institutions, like NASA and USA, look forward to India for our inputs, our inferences and our pictures drawn through our space missions...," he said.

Delhi witnesses further dip in Covid cases, reports 865 fresh cases and seven deaths in the last 24 hours. 

Rain lashes several parts of Kalaburagi, Karnataka.

Violation of existing agreements eroded entire basis of bilateral ties: Rajnath Singh during talks with Chinese defence minister Li Shangfu.

Delhi: Three people were injured after shots were fired in the office of a property dealer in Narela area. Police on the spot. Injured rushed to hospital, said Police. Further details awaited.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh holds talks with Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu: Officials.

 Union Home Minister Amit Shah today held a meeting in New Delhi with Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia to review passengers' traffic at the airports in the country. Senior officers from Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Civil Aviation and CISF also attended the meeting.

Union Minister Anurag Thakur slams Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge over his remark on PM Modi. "Congress should apologise to the nation," he said.

EAM announces the arrival of another batch of 246 Indians in Mumbai from Sudan under Operation Kaveri.

Delhi's Rouse Avenue Court extends judicial custody of AAP leader & former Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia till 12th May in the Excise policy case being probed by the CBI.

Punjab: Last rites of Shiromani Akali Dal patron Parkash Singh Badal were performed with full state honours in Lambi.

The Congress on Thursday questioned the Modi government's "silence" on the Poonch attack and cited several terror assaults in Jammu and Kashmir recently to accuse the Centre of endangering national security. Five Army personnel were killed and another was seriously injured on April 20 after their vehicle caught fire following a terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch. Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here, Congress' media department head Pawan Khera said seven days have passed, but Prime Minster Narendra Modi has "not uttered a single word" of condolence on the Poonch terror attack for the five Indian Army soldiers but was seen cracking a rather crude joke about a "suicide of a girl" at a media event on Thursday.

A man has been arrested for allegedly kidnapping and raping a 16-year-old girl in a village here, police said on Thursday. SP Dehat Sagar Jain said that 10 days ago, a youth had drugged the family members of the teen girl and then abducted her. The accused took the victim to a nearby forest and allegedly raped her, he said. On regaining consciousness, the family members reached the forest in search of the girl and found her in a bad condition there, the SP said. The accused was arrested and sent to jail on Wednesday. A case has been registered against him under sections of the Indian Penal Code and the POCSO Act, he said.

At least two people were killed and four children were missing after a car on a moving passenger train caught fire overnight in southern Pakistan, officials said Thursday. Railways spokesperson Komal Rashid said the train caught fire in Khairpur, a district about 500 kilometers (300 miles) north of Karachi, the capital of Sindh province. The blaze also badly damaged several other cars in the train, she said, and the cause remained unclear. TV footage showed several burned sections of the train, which was on its way from Karachi to the eastern city of Lahore, when a car caught fire. Local media reported that the flames roared through the train Wednesday night, engulfing several cars.

The Delhi BJP on Thursday staged a protest near Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's house here, accusing him of spending crores on renovation of his official residence. The BJP has accused Kejriwal of spending nearly Rs 45 crore on renovation of his official residence at 6, Flagstaff Road in Civil Lines area, during 2020-2022, while the Aam Aadmi Party has alleged that the BJP was trying to divert attention from real issues. Carrying a model of a mansion, the protesters took out a march from Chandgiram Akhara on Ring Road towards the Delhi chief minister's residence. 

The US has sanctioned former senior Sri Lankan Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda for a gross violation of human rights during the brutal conflict with the LTTE, penalising a second senior defence official of the island nation in the last three years. The 70-year-old Navy Commander from 2005-2009 became the second senior defence official to be sanctioned by the US for handling the final battle with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. He was later appointed Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Japan. In 2020, the US State Department similarly sanctioned the current chief of defence staff Gen. Shavendra Silva. He was a divisional head of the Army during the final battle and later became the Commander. "The US State Department has designated the former Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda for 'a gross violation of human rights'," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday addressed through virtual mode tens of lakhs of BJP workers exhorting them to strengthen booth-level campaigning for the coming Karnataka Assembly elections, and made a strong pitch for ending "revdi culture" (culture of distributing freebies). Modi also hit out at the Congress on the issue, stating what is the meaning of its guarantees when that party's warranty itself has expired. For Karnataka polls Congress has announced ‘guarantees’ that include- 200 units of free power to all households (Gruha Jyoti), Rs 2,000 monthly assistance to the woman head of every family (Gruha Lakshmi), and Rs 3,000 every month for graduate youth and Rs 1,500 for diploma holders (both in the age group of 18-25) for two years (YuvaNidhi), on coming to power in the state.

BJP President JP Nadda will reach Lambi, Sri Muktsar Sahib district of Punjab to pay last respects to Shiromani Akali Dal patron Parkash Singh Badal around 12 noon today.

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Thursday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over a joke made by him involving a suicide note, saying the PM and those laughing heartily at his joke ought to educate themselves better rather than "ridicule" mental health issues in an "insensitive" manner. Prime Minister Modi, while speaking at a media channel conclave on Wednesday, narrated a joke about how a professor reading a suicide note by his daughter remarked how she had got a spelling wrong despite his efforts for so many years. 

While BJP candidate Ramesh Jarkiholi was busy campaigning in neighbouring constituencies, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivaraj Chouhan was in Gokak assembly segment to campaign for him and urged the voters not to fall for "false promises" made by the Congress. In place of Ramesh, his brother Balachandra Jarkiholi -- a BJP candidate from Arabhavi assembly seat - was present during the campaign along with senior local saffron party leaders on Wednesday. Ramesh, a six time MLA, is an influential political leader not only in his home turf but also the entire Belagavi district. He was among the 17 MLAs who defected from Congress to the BJP in 2019 toppling the Congress-JDS coalition government. He is said to have orchestrated the defection of MLAs, which helped the BJP come to power. Addressing the gathering, Chouhan said the development works are undertaken ony by the BJP government and not the Congress which has only given "corruption, crime and commission" besides its anti-Lingayat approach in Karnataka.

An alert has been sounded in all seven districts of the Naxal-hit Bastar division in Chhattisgarh following the deadly attack by Naxalites in Dantewada which claimed the lives of 10 police personnel and one civilian, police said on Thursday. Security forces have been asked to stay cautious while moving in a vehicle and conducting de-mining exercises to detect the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) planted by Naxalites after the attack on Wednesday, they said.

A 45-year-old man was killed and another injured after a speeding SUV hit two scooters in the Police Lines area here in Uttar Pradesh, police said on Thursday The SUV's driver first hit Mohit Sharma's scooter and in an attempt to flee, rammed Mukesh Saini's vehicle, an official said. Both were rushed to a hospital where Saini succumbed to injuries. The condition of Sharma is said to be stable, he said. The SUV's driver has been arrested, the official said.

After being hit by summer cyclones for three consecutive years since 2019, the Odisha government began preparations for any such eventuality this season even as the IMD forecast no possibility of a low-pressure area over the Bay of Bengal in a fortnight. The government decided to open a round-the-clock control room across the districts from May 1 for monitoring the situation, a senior official said. The decision was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary P K Jena on Wednesday where the state government’s preparedness was reviewed.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will hold bilateral meetings with four Defence Ministers including his Chinese and Russian counterparts, in Delhi today.

A 19-year-old teenager was killed after a massive boulder came crashing onto his house following a landslide in Jammu and Kashmir's Kishtwar district on Thursday, officials said. The boulder rolled down from the hills due to the landslide triggered by rains in Thakuria area. The teenager who died was identified as Arshad. Arshad’s house was extensively damaged by the landslide, but the rest of his family members were reportedly safe, officials added.

The strategic Jammu-Srinagar National Highway was closed for traffic on Thursday following a major landslide in Ramban district, leaving more than 300 vehicles stranded. The 270-km highway, the only all-weather road linking Kashmir with rest of the country, was blocked by a landslide at Shalgari area in Ramban district, officials said. “Over 300 vehicles are stranded at different points of the highway,” an official told PTI. Workers have been deployed to clear the area, but incessant rain along the Ramban-Banihal sector was proving to be an impediment, an official said. People have been advised not to travel on the highway without confirmation from the traffic control units, they added.

U.S. health officials on Wednesday approved the first pill made from healthy bacteria found in human waste to fight dangerous gut infections — an easier way of performing so-called fecal transplants. The new treatment from Seres Therapeutics provides a simpler, rigorously tested version of stool-based procedures that some medical specialists have used for more than a decade to help hard-to-treat patients.