India

Kolkata, Jan 14 (PTI) Days after demanding that the amended citizenship act be scrapped, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has stressed the importance of opposition unity to carry out any protest for a cause.

However, he said even in the absence of opposition unity, protests can continue.

The economist was answering journalists here over the countrywide CAA-NPR-NRC protests.

Haldibari (WB), Jan 14 (PTI) More than 95 per cent work of laying tracks on the Indian side of the Haldibari- Chilahati India-Bangladesh railway link project has been completed, a top Northeast Frontier Railway official said.

The distance between Haldibari railway station in West Bengal's Coochbehar district till the international border is 4.5 kilometres while that from Chilahati in northern Bangladesh till the zero point is around 7.5 kilometres.

Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 14 (PTI) A day after it moved the Supreme Court against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the Kerala government on Tuesday said it would continue its fight against the legislation as it "destroys" the secularism and democracy in the country.

The CPI(M)-led government had on Monday moved the apex court challenging the CAA and sought to declare it as 'ultra vires' of the Constitution.

Dehradun, Jan 14 (PTI) Uttarakhand government is contemplating a ban on mobile phones in college classrooms, if a majority of students feel it is a good move.

"A poll will soon be conducted in colleges of the state to take the opinion of students on a proposed ban on use of mobile phones in classrooms and if 51 per cent of them vote in favour of the ban, we will go ahead with it," Uttarakhand's Higher Education Minister Dhan Singh Rawat said.

Hyderabad, Jan 14 (PTI) A team of researchers from IIT- Hyderabad along with others have developed an efficient combination therapy for the treatment of cancer.

The researchers in collaboration with those from the University of Hyderabad, IIT-Bombay and Bose Institute in Kolkata have developed a synergetic combination of Photothermal therapy and chemotherapy using a naturally derived anticancer agent and shown its efficacy in destroying cancer cells, a press release said on Tuesday

New Delhi, Jan 14 (PTI) The Supreme Court Tuesday dismissed the curative petitions filed by two of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case.

A 5-judge bench headed by Justice N V Ramana rejected the curative petitions filed by Vinay Sharma (26) and Mukesh Kumar (32).

NEW DELHI, January 14. /TASS/: The first contract to supply Russian-Indian BrahMos cruise missiles to a third nation is planned to be signed in spring, said Praveen Pathak, the chief general manager for marketing and export of the Russian-Indian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace.

"We expect [signing the agreement] sometime in April or May," he told reporters on Monday, without elaborating what country plans to acquire the Russian-Indian cruise missile.

According to Pathak, BrahMos Aerospace is currently discussing possible contracts with a number of other nations.

New Delhi, Jan 13 (PTI) The students and the teachers of the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Monday boycotted classes amid standoff with the administration over the fee hike issue.

The classes were supposed to begin on Monday but could not start due to the collective boycott.

Prashant Kumar, a PhD student at the varsity, said the masters and graduation students have decided to boycott classes.

Mumbai, Jan 12 (PTI) A 40-year-old man has moved the Bombay High Court against his biological mother and sought a compensation of Rs 1.5 crore from her for abandoning him in Mumbai when he was two years' old and later refusing to accept him as her son.

The petitioner, Srikant Sabnis, a make-up artist, has said he underwent a life full of agony and mental trauma after being intentionally abandoned in an unknown city, for which his mother Aarti Mhaskar and her second husband Uday Mhaskar (Sabnis's step-father) need to compensate.

Mumbai, Jan 12 (PTI) A 26 year-old man was arrested on Sunday for allegedly raping and making pregnant a 17-year-old girl by threatening to make viral her aunt's sex video with him, Mumbai Police said.

The accused, Azmal Lashkar alias Ashish Dubey, had allegedly raped the 23-year-old woman under the pretext of marriage and filmed the act without her knowledge, a Bangur Police station official said.

According to police, the accused got acquainted with the woman and her niece at a party by posing himself as Ashish Dubey.