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A day after India banned 59 apps with Chinese links for engaging in activities which are "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity" of the country, Beijing on Tuesday voiced strong concern over the move, and said the Indian government has the responsibility to uphold the "legitimate and legal rights" of international investors. China is strongly concerned about the relevant notice issued by the Indian side. We are checking and verifying the situation," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Tuesday, in response to India's decision. The government of India on Monday banned 59 Chinese apps including popular ones like TikTok,…

Natasha Bhat learned in late February that her father-in-law had suddenly died. Bhat, 35, recently recalled how she grabbed a backpack and hustled her U.S.-born 4-year-old son to the San Francisco airport to catch a midnight flight to India, her home country. She didn't anticipate being stuck there indefinitely. Bhat works at a tech company in Silicon Valley on an H-1B visa, and her documents were due for renewal. So she threw them in the bag, knowing she'd have to get the chore taken care of before flying back to the U.S. in a few weeks. But she said her…

The COVID-19 pandemic is not even close to being over, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing on Monday. Tedros noted that, six months after China first alerted the WHO to a novel respiratory infection, the grim milestones of 10 million confirmed infections and 500,000 deaths had been reached. "Most people remain susceptible, the virus still has a lot of room to move," he said. "We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is that this is not even close to being over. Although many…

Impressing upon the Central government that despite staggered timings, staff strength at 33 percent in government offices, the West Bengal transport services are heavily strained and so treating it as a “very special case”, the metro train services may be allowed in Kolkata. The Centre on Monday issued guidelines for the second for the second of a three-phase plan amied at lifting restrictions imposed to stop the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), announcing that educational institutions, Metro rail services and large gatherings will continue to remain banned. “We have introduced staggered timings, reduced the daily attendance in government offices…

Srinagar: In another huge success, the security forces on Tuesday gunned down two terrorists, who were responsible for the killing of CRPF personnel and five-year-old child in Jammu and Kashmir's Bijbehara district three days ago. In a statement, the security forces said that a joint search operation was launched by the Indian Army, CRPF and the Jammu and Kashmir police at the Waghama area in the Anantnag district after they received specific information about the presence of militants in the area. The search operation turned into an encounter after militants fired upon a search party of the forces, who retaliated, the officials noted.    "In…

Mumbai: Security has been tightened at and around Mumbai’s Taj Hotel and Taj Lands End hotel after the authorities received a bomb threat call from Pakistan. A person who claimed to be a member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror outfit made a call to the two iconic hotels at around 12 midnight on Monday and threatened to blow them up. Following the bomb threat call, heavy security forces have been deployed outside the hotels and all roads leading to them have been closed. Security tightened outside Taj Hotels and nearby areas after a threat call was received yesterday from Karachi, Pakistan…

New Delhi: A potential COVID-19 vaccine, the first to be developed in India, has been given DCGI (Drug Controller General of India) approval for Phase I and II human clinical trials that are scheduled to start across the country in July. Developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, in association with ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research), COVAXIN is an inactivated vaccine, created from a strain of the infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus, that has shown promise in preclinical studies, demonstrating extensive safety and effective immune responses. Drug manufacturers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus; a novel virus…