GS-II

Militants include Haqqani leader in it The Taliban announced on Tuesday a 14-member team to meet American negotiators this month in Doha, including five former Guantanamo Bay inmates and a high-profile militant behind bars in Afghanistan. U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has undertaken extensive recent peace talks with the Taliban …

The piece was about denial of rights to the ethnic Pashtuns An opinion piece in the International New York Times criticising Pakistan’s powerful Army was censored by its local publisher on Tuesday, replaced with blank space in a country where it can be dangerous to reprimand the military.The article by …

The Bench, then, ordered both the officers to “please sit at the corner of the court (till the rising of the Bench).” The court was hearing a contempt case initiated by it on February 7 against Mr. Rao for transferring the joint director. In his apology letter, Mr. Rao said, …

The BJP-led Manipur government on Tuesday imposed restrictions under Section 144 in Imphal East and West districts besides suspending mobile internet services as protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, intensified. The Bill seeks to hasten the process of granting citizenship to six non-Muslim groups from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. …

Relief for expatriates, students and medical patients after 2018 freeze India and Maldives on Tuesday exchanged an agreement to facilitate visas for travel between the two countries in a number of categories, easing a bilateral stand off which had resulted in thousands of Indian job seekers being denied work permits …

Terms recent hacking claim of EVMs in London a ‘circus’ Amidst Opposition parties often raising doubts over the credibility of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora on Tuesday said “most parties” had reposed their faith in them but some sections made it a part of …

Former CBI interim Director and agency’s legal counsel fined and punished The Supreme Court on Tuesday held the former interim Director of the CBI, M. Nageswara Rao, guilty of contempt for disobeying its order not to transfer Joint Director A.K. Sharma, who was probing the Bihar shelter home cases, from …

Sunderland, a city near the prosperous northern English city of Newcastle, had for many years been the place that won the race to first declare general election results, though its results rarely surprised, it being a firm Labour stronghold. However, when it came to the June 2016 referendum, the city …

States in the U.S. have the practice of emblazoning their vehicle license plates with their mottos. New York plates have ‘Empire State’ on them, California’s have ‘Golden State’ on them and New Jersey’s, ‘Garden State’. And then there is the rather incongruous ‘Taxation without Representation’ license plate from Washington DC. …

It takes around three hours to fly from Tokyo to Naha, the southern tip of Okinawa island in the East China Sea. Naha’s subtropical charm can be mesmerising. At the airport, the sight of giant-sized phalaenopsis orchid — in shades ranging from deep pink to crispy white — are a …