News updates

After missing several deadlines, Railways has finally got the mandatory safety clearance from the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) to commission the much-awaited train service to Katra, the base camp of Mata Vaishno Devi shrine, before the Rail Budget 2014-15. The 25-km long Udhampur-Katra rail section in Jammu and Kashmir is slated to be inaugurated [...]

BANGALORE:  India is leading the way in combating the challenges of global warming while skeptical Americans still question climate change, according to a new global survey by Time magazine. Of the six countries polled, Indians were the likeliest to express deep concerns about energy and consumption and were the most committed to conservation and the [...]

NEW DELHI: The Indian government plans to plant 200 crore (2 billion) trees along the entire 1 lakh km ( hundred thousand) National Highways network across the country to employ jobless youth. “The length of National Highways in the country is one lakh kilometer. I have asked officials to come out with a plan to [...]

Throwing waste in Ganga river is likely to be made a punishable offence and can land you behind bars. According to a proposed law which needs the approval of Union Water Resource Ministry, spitting, throwing garbage, polythene or waster in the holy river will be a punishable offence, as per news reports.  The central government [...]

The Supreme Court Monday directed Uttar Pradesh Police to provide protection to a young couple belonging to different religions and who married in Delhi recently. The apex court bench of Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice C. Nagappan directed the police to provide security cover to the young couple from Firozabad district of Uttar Pradesh. [...]

Narendra Modi, who was unwelcome here only a few years ago, is now a “fashion icon” to the American media. After his stunning electoral triumph, three major US publications — Time, New York Times and the Washington Post — have lauded the new Indian Prime Minister’s dressing style from his “trademark Modi Kurta” to his [...]

India last Wednesday said it expects Australia to return a 900-year-old ‘Dancing Shiva’ statue and another stone sculpture bought from a disgraced Indian antiquities dealer. “We are satisfied with the steps taken and cooperation extended by the Australian government in response to this issue,” India’s High Commissioner Biren Nanda said in Melbourne. “We had formally requested [...]

This will no doubt come as a shock to the advocates of secularism in India . Dawkins’ statement is a frank confession of how far from being devoid of ‘religion’, secularism has always been an intimate twin of Christianity. The term "secularism" was first used by the agnostic (not ‘atheist’) British writer George Jacob Holyoake [...]

WASHINGTON: Close on the heels of the spectacular BJP win in the general election, Hindu-American activists in the United States have for the first time, under the banner of a political action committee, publicly endorsed a slate of congressional candidates in the 2014 US primaries. Leading the list of candidates winning support from the Hindu [...]

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi rehabilitation of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) was not just an empty poll promise made in the heat of elections. Less than a week into office, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), under the guidance of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), has initiated an ambitious project to rehabilitate people who [...]