Taking a cue from the Saudi Arabia, the Uttarakhand government has relaxed the rules for women Haj pilgrims from the state. The state government has adopted a flexible approach this time by giving special exemption to women Haj pilgrims.

The Uttarakhand Haj Committee has started preparations for Haj 2023. The last date to apply is March 10.

Last year, 739 applicants from nine districts of the state had applied for Haj. The highest number of 284 applications came from Haridwar district.  As many as 194 applications came from Udham Singh Nagar and 33 in Dehradun, of which 30 per cent were women.

Communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power.

Emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, the International Energy Agency reported on Mar 2. (The mass of one gigaton is equivalent to about 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers, according to NASA.)

Carbon dioxide is released when fossil fuels such as oil, coal or natural gas are burned to powers cars, planes, homes and factories. When the gas enters the atmosphere, it traps heat and contributes to the warming of the the climate.

The US has approved the sale to Taiwan of $619 million in munitions for F-16 fighter jets, the Pentagon announced on Mar 1, in a move likely to anger Beijing.

The package includes 100 AGM-88B High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM), 200 AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles(AMRAAM), and launchers and dummy missiles for training. Taiwan has been self-ruled for over seven decades, but Beijing regards it as a renegade province.

Election officials declared Bola Tinubu the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election on Mar 1 , keeping the ruling party in power in Africa’s most populous nation and raising the specter of protests by opposition supporters who already have called for the vote to be voided.

Tinubu, 70, the former governor of Lagos state, appealed for reconciliation with his rivals in a pre-dawn victory speech in the capital, Abuja. The running mate of one opposition candidate, though, signaled a court challenge was imminent.

Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and one of the continent’s top oil producers, has seen deadly violence erupt after previous presidential elections. Tinubu urged Nigerians to unite behind his administration after he takes office on May 29.

Tinubu, though, received only 37% of the votes or nearly 8.8 million, the first time that a president takes office in Nigeria with less than 50% of the vote, analysts say. Main opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar won 29% with almost 7 million, and third-place finisher Obi took 25% with about 6.1 million, according to official results.

Tinubu is a Muslim from the south and chose a fellow Muslim as his running mate in order to secure votes from the Muslim-dominated north, which has more registered voters than the Christian south, a strategy that proved effective.

President Muhammadu Buhari congratulated his successor in a statement on Mar 1, but said the election wasn’t perfect.

The Supreme Court of Nigeria has never overturned a presidential election, though court challenges are common, including by Buhari, who doggedly fought his past election losses for months in vain.

The West African regional bloc, known as ECOWAS, called on political parties to appeal to their supporters to exercise maximum restraint and refrain from using provocative language, which would only “exacerbate political tensions, divisiveness, and violence at this critical stage,” the group said in a statement.

Indian-American Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has said that Pakistan is home to at least a dozen terrorist organisations and it should not receive any aid from the US, ramping up her attack on America's adversaries.

The 51-year-old two-term Governor of South Carolina and the former US Ambassador to the United Nations formally launched her 2024 presidential bid last month.

Over the past few days, Haley has been speaking on US foreign policy and asserting that the US should not give any financial assistance to countries that are friends and allies of China and Russia.

Haley, who announced her candidacy on February 14 is all set to appear at Conservative Political Action Conference as a star speaker along with her former boss and former president Donald Trump.

She said that as the US ambassador to the UN, she strongly supported then-president Donald Trump's decision to cut nearly USD 2 billion of military aid to Pakistan because that country supported terrorists who kill American troops.

Born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa to immigrant Punjabi Sikh parents, Haley is the third Indian-American to run for the US presidency in three consecutive election cycles.

Bobby Jindal ran in 2016 and Vice President Kamala Harris in 2020.

State-owned CIL produced 619.7 million tonnes (MT) in the April-February period of the current fiscal, registering a year-on-year growth of 14.3 per cent.

The maharatna firm had produced 542 MT of coal in the year-ago period.

All the subsidiaries of the coal behemoth have logged growth over previous year. The Dhanbad-based Bharat Coking Coal Ltd has already wrapped up its annual production target of 32 MT on 27 February.

On progressive basis, CIL has consistently maintained a high double-digit production growth since the beginning of the fiscal.

CIL began its 700 MT target chase with an asking growth rate of 12.4 per cent.

Despite being a shorter month, CIL's output last month stood at 68.8 MT, the highest for the month in any year till now.  This represents a growth of seven per cent compared to February last year.

Kamarajar Port Limited (KPL) has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Citroën India to commence the export of Made-In-India ‘New C3’ B-hatch vehicles to countries in Association of South east Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Africa.

The MoU marks a key milestone in Citroën India’s journey, which began with export of power trains from its Hosur facility in 2019. 

Akasa Air, India’s newest airline, will place an order for aircraft numbering in three digits by the end of this year. Akasa’s decision to purchase aircraft comes close on the heels of Air India’s 470 aircraft order to Airbus and Boeing.

Akasa has ordered a fleet of 72 aircraft, of which 18 have been delivered and remaining 54 will be delivered subsequently ‘between now and March 2027. Akasa also has plans to go international by the year-end and intends to set up a learning academy in Bengaluru.

To support its growing fleet, Akasa is going to hire 300 pilots in next 12 months.