Indian Sub-continent

COLOMBO, Jan 28 (NNN-XINHUA) – Sri Lanka will reclaim nearly 100 acres of land adjacent to the southern port of Galle, to be leased to investors for mixed development projects, the state-owned Daily News reported today.

Head of Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), Prasantha Jayamanna, was quoted as saying that, the total required investment for the project would be between 175 and 200 million U.S. dollars, which are expected to be funded by local and foreign private players.

NEW DELHI, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- An aircraft of the Indian army with two trainee pilots on board crashed Friday in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, local media reports said.

Both the pilots were found to be safe.

The aircraft belonging to the officers' training academy crashed immediately after take-off in Gaya district, about 100 km south of Patna, the capital city of Bihar.

27 Jan 2022; MEMO: Qatar has resumed operating passenger evacuation flights from Afghanistan, a senior Qatar government source told Reuters on Thursday, after a halt of nearly two months.

The first flight, operated by Qatar Airways and chartered by the United States government, departed Kabul for Doha on Wednesday. Onboard were 227 civilians, including US citizens, green-card holders and their dependents, the source said, reported Reuters.

Kanpur: Plenty of sun at today's afternoon comforted the Jajmauites as they collected in open spaces after Friday prayer.

The minimum temperature was recorded around 5° Celsius at 3 pm.

Such a scene was witnessed near a mosque along the road.

They were even overheard saying it was a good relief after many cold days.

The denizens found it hard to face the extremely cold weather during the past few days. Not only the cold air but the cloudy sky also kept them confined within indoors bearing the wintry brunt.

New Delhi, Jan 28 (PTI) Internet giant Google will invest USD 1 billion in telecom major Bharti Airtel which includes equity investment as well as a corpus for potential commercial agreements, to be identified and agreed on mutually agreeable terms over the course of the next five years.

Google made the investment as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund.

New Delhi, Jan 28 (PTI) With 251,209 people testing positive for the coronavirus infection in a day, India's total tally of cases increased to over 4.06 crore, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Friday.

The death toll has climbed to 492,327 with 627 fatalities reported during the 24-hour period, the data updated at 8 am showed.

New Delhi, Jan 28 (PTI) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi when will India's land "occupied by China" be returned.

His tweet came after China returned missing Arunachal teen Miram Taron to India.

New Delhi, Jan 27 (PTI) Ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, leaders of the Samajwadi Party and the Congress from the poll-bound state joined the BJP here on Thursday.

Samajwadi Party's sitting MLA Sharadveer Singh and former minister Shivakant Ojha, and former Congress MP Rakesh Sachan joined the Bharatiya Janata Party at its headquarters here.

They were welcomed into the party fold by Union minister and Uttar Pradesh election in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan and his cabinet colleague Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

Lucknow, Jan 27 (PTI) A special court on Thursday rejected the bail plea of former minister and Samajwadi Party MP Mohammad Azam Khan in a 2014 case.

Special MP/MLA Court judge Ambrish Kumar Srivastava passed the order observing that Khan had published such facts that might cause fear in the public, and a person or a community might be incited to breach the peace in the society.

An FIR was lodged against Khan in February 2019 following a complaint by one Allama Zameer Akhtar Naqvi with the Hazratganj Police.

New Delhi, Jan 28 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Friday held that a resolution suspending 12 BJP MLAs from the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly beyond the period of the remainder of the session held in July 2021 is unconstitutional and irrational .

The apex court delivered its verdict on the pleas filed by the 12 BJP MLAs, who had challenged their one-year suspension from the state assembly for allegedly misbehaving with the presiding officer.