NEWS

With China making deep inroads into Africa, India now plans to institutionalise a biennial conclave with the defence ministers of different countries of the continent.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh will host the second India-Africa Defence Dialogue (IADD) on the sidelines of the DefExpo scheduled at Gandhinagar in Gujarat in March next year, said an official on Monday.

The first-ever IADD was held at Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh in conjunction with DefExpo in February last year, which was co-organized by the defence and external affairs ministries.

The National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the students’ wing of Congress, on Sunday proposed to appoint Rahul Gandhi as the party chief.

In its two-day National Executive ‘Sankalp’, the NSUI resolved and proposed in “one voice” that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi should be appointed the next President of the Indian National Congress.

“Mr Rahul Gandhi is the foremost and honest leader who took a stand and strengthened the voice of students for their betterment, and also helped in garnering enough support by raising matters of students’ importance and also look for adequate justice for the students’ fraternity on varied subjects to fight for democracy and transparency,” the NSUI’s statement read.

It took two decades for a marriage, which could not take off and was never consummated with spouses' starting litigations just a fortnight after marrying, to be legally dissolved with the Supreme Court on Monday allowing the divorce plea of a husband holding that multiple litigations initiated by wife against him amounts to cruelty.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Hrishikesh Roy invoked special power under Article 142 of the Constitution to grant divorce on the ground of irretrievable breakdown of marriage and also on account of cruelty in light of conduct of the wife for filing multiple cases in courts against him including plea in HC for disciplinary action against her husband who was working as an assistant professor in a government college.

Days after Maharashtra Minister Nitin Raut claimed that the third wave of coronavirus has arrived in Nagpur, leading experts have cautioned that the third wave may be around the corner in Madhya Pradesh as the number of active cases in the state rose by more than 38% in this month so far. As per the reports, Jabalpur district accounts for 33 per cent of Madhya Pradesh's total active COVID-19 cases which have seen a significant rise in the last 11 days.

Speaking to media, AIIMS-Bhopal director Dr Sarman Singh said that unless there is 100% vaccination, there will always be the possibility of another wave. "Given the recent rise, it could be the beginning of the third wave", he stated, adding that the infection will probably not be as severe unless a new version of the virus is there.