Indian Sub-continent

New Delhi, Aug 2 (PTI) India and Maldives on Tuesday inked six agreements to expand cooperation in several key areas with Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserting that New Delhi has been and will continue to be the "first responder" to any need or crisis facing the island nation.

After wide-ranging talks with visiting Maldivian President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, Modi announced a Line of Credit of USD 100 million (one million = 10 lakh) for the neighbouring country for the completion of development projects in a time-bound manner.

New Delhi, Aug 1 (PTI) India's biggest ever auction of telecom spectrum received a record Rs 1.5 lakh crore of bids, with Mukesh Ambani's Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold with a Rs 88,078 crore bid.

Richest Indian Gautam Adani's group, whose entry in the auction was billed by some as another flashpoint in the rivalry with Ambani, paid Rs 212 crore for 400 MHz, or less than 1 per cent of all spectrum sold, in a band that is not used for offering public telephony services.

New Delhi, Aug 2 (PTI) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday raided a dozen locations including the head office of the Congress party-owned National Herald newspaper here as part of an ongoing money laundering probe, officials said.

They said the searches are being carried out under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to "gather additional evidences with regard to the trail of funds".

Kanpur: A Class V student died of electrocution in Gajner's Seruva village here on Monday.

He was staying at his maternal home. The relatives who reached the information took the dead body to Tajpur Pali village of Narwal.

Aryan (13) son of Sushil resident of Tajpur Pali village of Narwal area in Kanpur Nagar lived in the house of Nana Bhola Paswan in Seruva village.

He was a student of class V in the primary school of the village.

According to family members, Aryan did not go to school on Monday.

KOCHI, India, Aug 1 (Reuters) - India confirmed its first monkeypox death on Monday, a young man in the southern state of Kerala, in what is only the fourth known fatality from the disease in the current outbreak.

Last week, Spain reported two monkeypox-related deaths and Brazil its first. The death in India is also the first in Asia. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency on July 23.

Tehran, IRNA – Iran's president’s special representative on Afghanistan in a message said that the two countries have formed a joint committee aiming to prevent border conflicts.

In his Twitter message, Hassan Kazemi Qomi referred to a meeting held between Iran's envoy and the Defense Ministry of the governing body of Afghanistan, saying that the Afghan defense ministry has put preventing such conflicts at borders on agenda.

ISLAMABAD, Jul 30 (NNN-APP) – Pakistani Prime Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, held a telephone conversation with Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discussing public health issues, especially the increase of polio cases in Pakistan, the Prime Minister’s Office said.

Sharif expressed concern about the increase in the number of confirmed poliovirus cases this year, in Pakistan and stressed that, the government remained committed to eradicating polio cases, the office said in a statement, last night.

GHAZNI, Afghanistan, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Flash flood has claimed the lives of 10 security personnel in eastern Afghanistan's Ghazni province, Fazludin Omar Haqqani, the province's director for disaster management and humanitarian affairs, said on Saturday.

A vehicle of security forces was trapped in heavy rain and flash flood in the Qarabagh district of the province on Thursday night, causing the death of the 10 security personnel.

ISLAMABAD, July 30 (Xinhua) -- A soldier and six terrorists were killed in a military operation in Kech district of Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province, the military has said.

The operation was conducted by the security forces in Hoshab area of the district, the military's media wing Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement Friday night.

Security forces cordoned the area on a tip-off and started a search operation to apprehend the terrorists, the ISPR said, adding that once surrounded, the terrorists opened fire on the troops.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban on Saturday raised the casualty toll from a hand grenade explosion during a cricket game in the capital of Kabul the previous day, saying two civilians at the stadium died from the blast.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the explosion but the blame is likely to fall on militants from the Islamic State group — the Taliban’s chief rivals since they took over the country a year ago as U.S. and NATO forces pulled out of Afghanistan after 20 years of war.