Sputnik News India

2021-06-30 04:05:32 Catch up on our latest updates:

India's Covaxin effectively neutralises both the alpha and the delta variants of the Covid-19 coronavirus, the US National Institute of Health has said.

The Delhi government has banned fishing in parts of the Yamuna river because of high pollution levels.

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik asks officials to focus on enforcing the coronavirus guidelines, and training doctors in districts with the highest rates of infection. Open / Comment

2021-06-29 19:21:21 Britain’s opposition Labour Party is facing criticism from its own supporters for pandering to Muslim voters with leaflets critical of Indian PM Narendra Modi ahead of the 1 July by-election in Batley and Spen, a parliamentary seat in West Yorkshire.

One poster featuring a picture of Johnson shaking hands with Modi reads, “Don’t risk a Tory MP who is not on your side”.

Another leaflet states, “A Prime Minister who is silent on human rights abuses in Kashmir”. Open / Comment

2021-06-29 16:59:00 Days after India moved 50,000 troops to its border with China, satellite images emerged showing that Chinese troops were just 150 metres away in February from the Indian military in Eastern Ladakh.

DETAILS | https://sptnkne.ws/GDpQ Open / Comment

2021-06-29 15:29:26 Asia's longest racetrack has opened in India.

Divided into four lanes, the high-speed track -- NATRAX -- is 11.3 kilometres long and 16 metres wide. It is now the fifth-largest in the world.

Until now, India had three major tracks in Noida, Chennai, and Coimbatore that are primarily used for racing events. The new track has been opened near Indore in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Open / Comment

2021-06-29 14:43:01 The managing director of Twitter India, Manish Maheshwari, and Amrita Tripathi, the head of global content partnerships, have been the subject of a First Information Report by the police after the microblogging site showed a distorted map of India.

Last week, under the headline "Tweep Life" on Twitter's careers section, a world map showed the Indian regions of Jammu & Kashmir as a separate country and the region of Ladakh as part of China.

After displaying the wrong map for the second time on 25 June and facing a severe backlash, Twitter got rid of the offending image on 28 June but by then a complaint against it had been filed in Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh state by a lawyer, Praveen Bhati. In recent days, #BanTwitter has been trending in India Open / Comment

2021-06-29 14:00:04 Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Tuesday said the second wave of the pandemic is not over, and warned against taking the situation too lightly:

"[The] second wave of COVID-19 is still not over. Cases have definitely gone down sharply in Delhi but our experience of 1.5 years tells us that we shouldn't relax under any circumstances", the minister said during a virtual conference. "People and the society should also not be allowed to relax and we have to be alert". Open / Comment

2021-06-29 13:22:07 Indian security officials on Monday expressed serious concerns over the use of drones by terrorist groups to target strategic and commercial assets, while delivering a statement at the second edition of the Head of Counter Terrorism Agencies of the Member States conference at the United Nations.

"Being a low-cost option and easily available, utilisation of these aerial/sub-surface platforms for sinister purposes by terrorist groups such as intelligence collection, weapon/explosives delivery, and targeted attacks have become an imminent danger and challenge for security agencies worldwide", stated VSK Kaumudi, a special secretary (Internal Security) at India's Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

The Indian official further said that the use of "weaponised drones" by terror outfits called for "serious attention" by member states Open / Comment

2021-06-29 13:07:35 A total of 329,000,000 coronavirus vaccine doses have been administered in India. The testing capacity has been ramped up substantially, with a total of 408,100,000 COVID-19 tests done in the country. Open / Comment

2021-06-29 12:08:15 India's Serum Institute is seeking emergency authorisation in the European Union for its Covishield jab.

The move comes amid reports that Covishield is not yet eligible for the digital green certificate, an EU-wide travel pass, set to launch on 1 July.

The certificate is currently for EU citizens only. Covishield is the Indian-made version of AstraZeneca's Vaxzevria jab, which has been authorised in the EU Open / Comment

2021-06-29 10:57:55 Drones have been spotted near barracks in three different locations in Jammu, days after blasts rumoured to have been caused by UAVs, hit a high-security Indian Air Force station in the region, Indian government sources told Sputnik on Tuesday, citing information the armed forces shared with police.

One of the suspected drones was seen late last night in the Kaluchak cantonment area, another one in the Ratnuchak cantonment area, and a third near the Kunjwani area of Jammu, the sources said.

The Indian Defence Ministry sources told Sputnik the explosions were of serious concern for the country, as the target was an IAF aircraft parked in a dispersal area Open / Comment