India

Mumbai, Sep 3 (PTI) NCP president Sharad Pawar on Thursday said the Chinese are "surreptitiously" encircling the Indian sub-continent, and India must keep a close watch on developments in Sri Lanka and Nepal.

He had invited former foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale and Air Marshal Bhushan Gokhale (Retd) for interaction with NCP MPs Supriya Sule, Praful Patel, Amol Kolhe and Vandana Chavan against the background of the stand-off in eastern Ladakh, Pawar tweeted.

Jaipur, Sep 3 (PTI) Expressing concern over the state of economy, former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot claimed on Thursday that the Centre does not have a roadmap to revive the country's economy.

He said several months have passed but so far, only announcements of incentives have been made by the Union finance minister.

Kolkata, Sept 2 (PTI) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said 75 per cent of JEE-Main candidates in the state could not appear for the exam held on September 1 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and blamed the Centre's "ego" for it.

In other states, only half of the examinees managed to turn up due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation, she claimed.

New Delhi, Sep 3 (PTI) Twitter on Thursday said the account linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal website was hacked, and it has now been restored.

"We're aware of this activity and have taken steps to secure the compromised account. We are actively investigating the situation. At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted. Advice on keeping your account secure can be found here," a Twitter spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The compromised account has about 2.5 million followers.

Patna, Sep 2 (PTI) Former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi on Wednesday announced that his Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) has joined NDA in Bihar where assembly elections are due in October-November.

The party had earlier in the day said that it will become part of the ruling coalition on Thursday, but the announcement was made this afternoon itself by Manjhi at a peess conference he held at his residence here.

New Delhi, Sep 2 (PTI) India has joined the group of top 50 countries in the global innovation index for the first time, moving up four places to the 48th rank and keeping the top position among the nations in central and southern Asia.

Ghaziabad, Sep 2 (PTI) The Indira Puram police here claimed to have busted a fake call centre, which was allegedly duping youth who lost their jobs during the coronavirus lockdown.

Police also arrested a man, identified as Sumit Kumar, Deputy Superintendent of Police Anshu Jain said, adding that his two accomplices Vikas and Ankit managed to escape.

Mumbai, Sep 2 (PTI) The Criminal intelligence Unit of the Mumbai Crime Branch has arrested a 30-year-old man who was allegedly part of a racket which duped US and Canadian citizens by posing as tax or immigration officials.

Nishant Shirsikar, a key accused, was arrested from Evershine Nagar, suburban Malad and Rs 40 lakh in unaccounted cash and four gold biscuits weighing 200 gms were also seized, the police said.

Noida (UP), Sep 2 (PTI) A 14-year-old girl was allegedly raped by her neighbour on Wednesday in Uttar Pradesh's Greater Noida and the accused has been arrested, police said.

The incident took place at the rented accommodation of the accused, around 22, in a village under the Beta 2 police station limits around 12 pm, police said.

New Delhi, Sep 3 (PTI) Under pressure for weeks over its handling of hate speech, Facebook on Thursday said it has banned BJP politician T Raja Singh from its platform and Instagram for violating its policy on content promoting violence and hate.

"We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform, a Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement.