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The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh is apparently back to its name changing spree. A tweet by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has sparked off speculations about the name of Lucknow, the state capital, being changed in the coming weeks. In the tweet welcoming Prime minister Narendra Modi to Lucknow on Monday evening, Yogi wrote: "Sheshavatar Bhagwan Laxman ki pawan nagri Lucknow mein aapka swagat aur abhinandan."

This has led to a debate on social media about the name of Lucknow being changed to Laxmanpuri. A grand temple dedicated to Laxman is already being constructed in Lucknow.  demand to change the name of Lucknow to Lakhanpuri or Laxmanpuri has been raised several times by BJP leaders.

G7 and European Union leaders are discussing proposals to seize Russian Central Bank assets and use them to finance aid to Ukraine, Germany's finance minister said Tuesday.

Christian Lindner said he is "politically open to the idea" but acknowledged that "in the case of private assets, we have to see what is legally possible."

"We have to respect the rule of law, even if we are dealing with Russian oligarchs," he told the business daily Handelsblatt and other European media, according to Reuters.

All eyes will be on the Supreme Court on Tuesday, May 17, as it hears the plea challenging the Gyanvapi Masjid survey. Interestingly, Justices D Y Chandrachud and P S Narsimha, who are hearing the case, have experience in dealing with a similar dispute — the Ayodhya Babri Masjid case. One of them, though, had appeared as a lawyer for the Hindu parties then.

In the Gyanvapi matter, the court will hear a petition on behalf of the Anjuman Intezamia Masajid Committee against the survey of the mosque premises. The committee has sought a stay of the Varanasi civil court-mandated survey.

The Reserve Bank of India has rejected the applications of six entities aspiring to get licences for on-tap universal banks and Small Finance Banks (SFBs). These include applications of the Sachin Bansal-promoted Chaitanya India Fin Credit and UAE Exchange and Financial Services, both for setting up universal banks.

The applications of The Repatriates Cooperative Finance and Development Bank (REPCO Bank) and Pankaj Vaish for universal banks, and applications by VSoft Technologies and Calicut City Service Co-operative Bank for SFBs, have all been turned down.

Amidst constant hullabaloo and defection inside Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party's national vice president and former state president Dilip Ghosh in an exclusive interview with Free Press Journal (FPJ) said that Union Home Minister Amit Shah, national president JP Nadda and few other central leaders would often visit the state to boost the morale of the workers ahead of 2023 Panchayat election and 2024 Parliamentary election.

On the question of how much of a challenge is it to bring back the party in shape, Ghosh said that it is a serious challenge and no one could think about the violence that took place in the state after the results of the 2021 Assembly election. People were being killed and some are still displaced. We have tried hard to bring the party on field. Shah already visited once and alternatively Nadda and other leaders will also visit. Shah knows Bengal and he will visit often.