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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Tamil Nadu on Sunday for a day-long trip during which he will launch development projects worth over Rs 13,000 crore and inaugurate a key stretch of Chennai Metro's Phase II network. According to an official statement, Modi will ride the Chennai Metro from Porur Bypass station to Poonamallee Bypass and back in the morning before offering prayers at the Jalakandeswarar Temple and touring the Brain Centre at IIT Madras. He will then inaugurate and lay foundation stones for projects across Tamil Nadu and address a gathering. Metro and transport projects lead the agenda The centrepiece of the visit is the Poonamallee-Vadapalani stretch of the Chennai Metro Rail Phase II, built at a cost of around...

Imphal: Fresh violence erupted in Manipur on Friday night, leaving three people dead and several houses torched in clashes between armed Kuki and Naga groups, officials said on Saturday. District authorities imposed prohibitory orders in Kamjong district as gunfire continued into the morning. A 42-year-old woman, identified by officials as Domkhonei Touthang, a Kuki civilian and mother of five, was shot near her neck in Chassad village in Kamjong district on Friday night and died within minutes. According to Kuki civil bodies, she was participating in a protest against the alleged arrest and detention of village volunteers when she was shot around 9:35 PM. The Kuki Human Rights Forum has alleged that she was shot by an officer of the...

New Delhi: Delhi Police detained Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday as a massive security crackdown engulfed the Cockroach Janata Party's planned protest at Jantar Mantar demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Kejriwal shared a video saying he had been detained, while AAP alleged that he was manhandled and that senior party leaders including Manish Sisodia were also taken into custody. Banerjee was detained in Delhi after sitting on a dharna, and five Trinamool Congress MPs were detained along with her, according to live updates from the Hindustan Times. Leaders picked up across the country The detentions began early in the day. CJP...

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) returned to Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego on Thursday, ending what officials describe as a record-setting deployment at sea. A record run at sea The carrier's deployment lasted 321 days according to US reports including USA Today, while Al Jazeera reported 322 days — either figure making it one of the longest deployments in US Navy history. The ship spent a record 265 consecutive days at sea without a port call, with roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard. The Lincoln departed San Diego on November 21, 2025, and supported the US-Israeli war on Iran under Operation Epic Fury. A brief port stop in Thailand in September was its only break before the homecoming on October...

The Supreme Court of India has constituted a Standing Committee on Judicial Well-being to address occupational stress, heavy workloads and mental-health concerns among judicial officers across the country. Constituted on World Mental Health Day The committee was constituted by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on October 10, 2026, World Mental Health Day. Supreme Court judge Justice K V Viswanathan will chair the panel. Its members are Savita Malhotra, former Dean of PGIMER Chandigarh; psychologist Rajat Mitra; Advocate-on-Record Mrinal Kanwar; and Supreme Court Registrar Aarti Singh. Mandate The panel has been tasked with examining prolonged working hours, staffing shortages, administrative pressures and work-life balance among...

New Delhi: Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has opened online applications for 150 Junior Executive posts on a short-term engagement basis, inviting applications from engineering graduates across nine disciplines. The recruitment, notified under advertisement number HAL/CHRC-TAR/RECT-03/2026, offers 150 vacancies across nine engineering disciplines: Aeronautical, Chemical, Civil, Computer Science, Electrical, Electronics, Mechanical, Metallurgy and Production. Mechanical engineering has the largest share with 78 posts, followed by Electrical with 25 and Electronics with 21. Application window and eligibility The online application window opened on 7 October 2026 at 2:00 pm and closes on 17 October 2026 at 2:00 pm. Applications can...

The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a closure report in the 2002 disinvestment of Hindustan Zinc Ltd under the then-NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, with agency officials saying the allegations in the FIR "could not be substantiated" during the probe. A case spanning a decade The CBI first opened a preliminary inquiry in 2013 into the disinvestment of the "mini ratna" company in favour of a private mining major, closing it four years later amid sharp internal divisions among senior officials, prosecutors and the investigating officer over whether to close the matter or file an FIR. In 2022, then-Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud directed the agency to register a regular case while hearing a 2014 public interest...

The Election Commission of India has put a hard ceiling on how many voter-deletion objections a single person can file, fixing the limit at 10 applications per individual for the entire claims-and-objections period during special and summary revisions of the electoral rolls. What the new rule says According to a letter the Commission sent to Chief Electoral Officers on Friday, the cap of 10 applies to Form 7 applications — the form used to object to a voter's inclusion, which is the mechanism for seeking deletions — and it covers both online and offline submissions. During continuous updation of voter lists, a separate limit applies: five applications per month per individual. The Election Commission also laid down a process check...

A year after US President Donald Trump declared the war in Gaza over, few of the long-term promises of the October 10, 2025 ceasefire have materialised. Israeli strikes continue on a near-daily basis, reconstruction has barely begun, and two million Palestinians face an uncertain future. What the deal delivered — and didn't The agreement did halt major military operations and, three days after it was announced, Hamas freed the 20 remaining living hostages seized in the October 7, 2023 attack. Israel has enjoyed a year of quiet from the Gaza front, with no rocket attacks. But the deeper commitments remain unfulfilled. Israel was supposed to withdraw to a "yellow line" retaining 53 per cent of Gaza; instead it now controls about 70 per...

A federal judge in Washington has blocked a Trump administration policy that stopped collecting fingerprints and photographs from detained immigrants applying for legal status, ruling that the government failed to justify a change that left thousands of applicants in legal limbo. What the court decided US District Judge Amir H. Ali of the District Court for the District of Columbia granted a stay of the Department of Homeland Security's December 2025 policy in the case J.Z. v. Department of Homeland Security. The order restores the earlier biometric collection process across the country while the legal challenge continues. The judge found that the department had not properly explained why it stopped collecting biometrics —...

President Donald Trump has launched a furious attack on Norway after being passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming at a rally that he deserves not one but eight of the medals. "Today they gave out the Nobel Peace Prize to a person — I never heard of the person. Nobody did. It's a mystery person," Trump said at a rally in Syracuse, New York. He dismissed the winner, South African jurist Navi Pillay, as a "liberal person who works at the United Nations," before adding, "I never heard of this particular person, but congratulations anyway." Attack on the Nobel committee Trump tore into the five-person Norwegian Nobel Committee that honoured Pillay, arguing: "The United States of America, represented by me as your president...

GULF BREEZE, Florida — Hurricane Isaias crashed into the US Gulf Coast on Friday night as a dangerous Category 2 storm, lashing the Florida Panhandle and Alabama with damaging winds, heavy rain and life-threatening storm surge. The first hurricane of the Atlantic season made landfall near Destin, Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (169 kph), the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. The storm weakened slightly just below major-hurricane status before coming ashore. Widespread outages and flooding More than 400,000 customers in Florida and Alabama were without power Friday evening, according to poweroutage.com, and the tally kept climbing through the night — the Associated Press reported more than half a million...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The International Criminal Court has ruled that former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is fit to stand trial, clearing a major procedural hurdle ahead of proceedings over alleged crimes against humanity linked to his anti-drug crackdown. Trial Chamber III said it was satisfied that the 81-year-old can understand the charges against him, follow the course of the proceedings, grasp the evidence presented and instruct his lawyers in preparing his defense. The court added that he is able to effectively exercise his fair-trial rights, making him fit to stand trial. Panel rejects defense health challenge The ruling was based on reports from a panel of three medical experts appointed by the chamber in June. The...

Ukraine has struck and partly disabled a major data centre operated by Russian technology giant Yandex, marking the second such attack in successive days and a widening of Kyiv's campaign against targets inside Russia. What happened Yandex said its data centre in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, was struck by Ukrainian drones and partly put out of action on Friday. The company, which is heavily involved in Russia's artificial intelligence development and is sometimes described as Russia's Google, said on Thursday it could not yet determine whether the damaged equipment could be restored. The strike follows another hit on a major Russian tech site a day earlier. Together, the two attacks signal a shift in Ukraine's targeting...

All 22 Indian seafarers aboard the Panama-flagged crude oil tanker MT GEM NO. 2 are safe after the vessel was hit in a drone attack at Sharjah Anchorage on October 9, Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal confirmed on Saturday. The attack occurred off the United Arab Emirates coast in the Arabian Gulf. Sonowal said authorities are monitoring the situation closely and are in contact with the ship's management company. What happened The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported that a vessel was struck by an unknown projectile about 13 nautical miles west of Al Jazeera off the UAE coast, triggering a fire on board that was later extinguished. Shipping and security sources identified the vessel as the Panama-flagged...

President Donald Trump has named conservative commentator Katie Zacharia as the next White House press secretary, filling a post that has stood vacant since Karoline Leavitt left at the end of August. The announcement, made on Friday, October 9, ends a six-week search for the administration's top communications official. Zacharia told Fox News she will begin in the role on Monday, October 12. Who is Zacharia Zacharia previously served as a senior communications adviser to Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the president's social media platform Truth Social. Earlier, she completed a two-month stint as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Kristi Noem. Trump said Leavitt was...

Panama City: A powerful earthquake struck Panama on Friday, October 9, prompting tsunami warnings for coastal areas of Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Alerts were also issued for El Salvador and Easter Island, Chile. As the quake made headlines, a viral video of large waves crashing onto the shore at Huntington Beach in Southern California sparked false claims that a tsunami had struck the area following the Panama earthquake. The footage does not show a tsunami: no tsunami warning was issued for California or other US states after the earthquake. Tropical Storm Rachel behind the big waves The large waves in the viral footage were linked to high tides and ocean swells associated with Tropical Storm Rachel, which...

Washington: The United States has described China's maritime activities off Taiwan's east coast as "deeply destabilising", responding to a Reuters report of the first known sighting of a Chinese maritime militia boat in those waters in August. A US State Department spokesperson said Beijing's actions only worsened tensions and urged China to stop pressuring Taiwan and instead engage in "meaningful dialogue with Taiwan's democratically elected authorities". China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has stepped up activity off the island's east coast since June with regular coast guard patrols. Taiwan rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims. Why the east coast matters Officials in Taiwan say they believe China is practising for a...

The US military will livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting that killed 13 people and wounded 32, a Pentagon official confirmed on October 8. The execution is scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood, Texas — and would be the first US military execution since 1961 and the first by firing squad since World War II. Unprecedented and controversial "It will be livestreamed. Details will follow," the Pentagon official told AFP on condition of anonymity, a day after Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that the execution would be carried out "in public." Hegseth, who recommended the firing squad, later confirmed...

Anti-migrant protests in Johannesburg's Soweto township and the coastal city of Durban turned violent on Thursday, with cars set alight and foreign-owned shops looted, Reuters reported. Police mobilised additional officers in both cities as the unrest, which followed demonstrations over asylum processing, left a trail of burned vehicles and damaged property. Cars burned in Durban, looting in Soweto In Durban, a Reuters reporter saw five torched cars in the city centre, where shops owned by foreign nationals were also looted. The unrest followed a protest by a group demanding that a refugee centre stop processing asylum applications. Police said in a statement that they had mobilised more officers in Durban, where at least 14 vehicles...