Former BJP MP from Panchmahal constituency in Gujarat, Prabhatsinh Chauhan has joined Congress in the presence of party's general secretary Mohan Prakash and other state leaders.

Well-known broadcaster, actor and theatre director Upinder Khashu passed away on  Nov 1 at a Gurugram hospital after a brief illness.

Srinagar-born Khashu read news in Urdu and Kashmiri on the erstwhile Radio Kashmir until 1990 when threats from militants forced him to migrate to Delhi.

He was provided police protection for a considerable time.

A special court has sentenced a 22-year-old to five years simple imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 for making derogatory comments on Facebook posts after the terrorist attack on CRPF jawans in Pulwama in 2019.

The accused, Faiz Rasheed, was 19 and a college student at the time of the crime and has been in custody for three-and-a-half years.

The court found him guilty under Section 153A (Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion,) and Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence).

However, the trial was not conducted on Section 124A (Sedition) and it was kept in abeyance as per the Supreme Court directions keeping it in suspension.

He was sentenced to undergo simple imprisonment for a period of three years and pay a fine of Rs 10,000 for the offence under Section 153-A of the IPC.

Exit polls by all the leading Israeli TV channels on Nov 2 following the fifth general elections in the country in less than four years predicted a comeback for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led right-wing bloc.

The exit polls were broadcast soon after polling booths closed at 10 pm local time on Nov 1.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid led bloc was put at 54-55 seats as per the exit polls.

Israel has been locked in an unprecedented period of political stalemate since 2019, when 73-year-old Netanyahu, the country's longest-serving leader was charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

On Nov 1, Israelis voted for an unprecedented fifth time in four years to break the political impasse that has paralysed the country.

North Korea fired more than 10 missiles on Nov 2 , including one that landed close to South Korea's waters that President Yoon Suk-yeol said was "effectively a territorial invasion".

One short range ballistic missile crossed the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border between the two countries, prompting a rare warning for residents on the island of Ulleungdo to seek shelter in bunkers.

The military said it was the "first time since the peninsula was divided" at the end of the Korean War hostilities in 1953 that a North Korean missile had landed so close to the South's territorial waters.

Canada has unveiled plans for a big increase in the number of immigrants entering the country, with a goal of seeing 500,000 people arrive each year by 2025 as it seeks to address a critical labor shortage.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser revealed the new plan on Nov 1. It puts a heavy emphasis on admitting more permanent residents with needed work skills and experience, alongside more-modest targets for family members and refugees. The opposition Conservative party welcomed the plan.

The new plan envisions a flood of new arrivals that will see 465,000 people come in from outside the country in 2023, rising to 500,000 in 2025. By comparison, the immigration department says 405,000 permanent residents were admitted last year.

Most of those new arrivals will be what are known as economic immigrants, who will be expected to fill some of the roughly 1 million jobs that are currently sitting empty across various sectors of the economy.

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman is under fire from the Opposition and refugee activists for classifying an increase in the number of refugees landing on the country's shores seeking asylum as an "invasion" by migrants on the border.

The Indian-origin Cabinet minister told Parliament on Oct 31 evening that illegal migration to the country "is out of control" and that the asylum system is "broken," with the sheer numbers arriving via the English Channel in small boats making it impossible to provide accommodation for all.

Her statement followed a violent incident involving a petrol bomb attack at one of the migration centres on England's southern coast over the weekend.

In a bid to make tax return filing simpler and less time-consuming, finance ministry has proposed a common ITR form by merging all the existing returns of income except ITR 7.

However, the current ITR 1 and ITR 4 will continue, according to the ministry notification. With this, the taxpayers will have an option to either file the return in the existing (ITR1 or ITR4) or the proposed common ITR, at their convenience.

Under the common ITR, all the taxpayers will have to give certain basic information and details of bank accounts. Schedules for computation of total income, computation of tax, and a schedule for the tax payments will be applicable for all.

The tax department says that new proposed ITR has been designed in a much user-friendly way.

Under the existing system, there are seven kinds of Income Tax Returns forms – ITR-1 to ITR-7. taxpayers can choose from one of the seven depending on their source of income.