Social media shy CBI has made a maiden appearance on Twitter and Instagram ahead of the upcoming Interpol General Assembly in which 195 countries are likely to participate.

The agency created its accounts on both platforms with user ID CBI_CIO for the three-day-long 90th General Assembly starting October 18.

Unlike its peers, the Enforcement Directorate and the National Investigation Agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had kept social media at an arm's length, sticking to the age-old practice of issuing press releases.

The General Assembly will focus on cybercrime, financial crimes and Child Sexual Abuse Material peddled on the internet among other issues.

Having already organised a General Assembly in 1997, India was given an out-of-turn chance to organise the event through a vote on the eve of the 75th anniversary of its independence.

Home Minister Amit Shah had made a proposal in this regard to Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock, who called on the minister during his visit to India.

The General Assembly is Interpol's supreme governing body, comprising representatives from each of the 195 member countries which meets annually.

Each member country may be represented by one or several delegates who are typically ministers, chiefs of police, heads of their Interpol National Central Bureaus and senior ministry officials.

India, which joined the organisation in 1949, is one of the oldest members of The International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.

Headquartered in Lyon, France, Interpol was founded in 1923 as the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC).

The name Interpol served as the agency's telegraphic address in 1946, and was chosen as its common name in 1956.

The CBI is designated as the National Central Bureau of India for Interpol.

The agency has actively participated in two recent operations based on Interpol inputs-- Operation Megha Chakra against online Child Sexual Abuse Material and Operation Garud against narcotics.

In the Railways' new timetable, about 500 Mail Express trains have been speeded up.

In addition, 130 services (65 pairs) have been converted to 'superfast' category.

Overall, the average speed of all trains has increased by about 5 per cent leading to the availability of nearly 5 percent additional paths for the operation of more trains.

The Indian Railways released its new All India Railway Time Table known as "Trains At A Glance (TAG)" on its official website -- indianrailways.gov.in -- that came into effect on October 1.

In the new timetable, a slew of premium trains like the Vande Bharat Express between New Delhi-Varanasi and New Delhi-Katra, have also been introduced.

Another Vande Bharat Express train has also been introduced between Gandhinagar and Mumbai.

The punctuality of Indian Railways for Mail Express trains during the year 2022-23 is about 84 per cent which is about 9 per cent more than the punctuality of about 75 per cent achieved during 2019-20.

Indian Railways runs about 3,240 Mail/Express trains which include Vande Bharat Express, Gatimaan Express, Rajdhani Express, Shatabdi Express, Humsafar Express, Tejas Express, Duronto Express, Antyodaya Express, Garib Rath Express, Sampark Kranti Express, Yuva Express, Uday Express, Janshatabdi Express and others.

In addition, about 3,000 passenger trains and 5,660 suburban trains are also operated over the Indian Railways network.

The volume of passengers carried daily is about 2.23 crore.

To clear extra rush and meet passenger demand, more than 65,000 special train trips were operated during 2021-22.

About 566 coaches were permanently augmented to increase the carrying capacity and maximize the utilisation of rolling stock.

The EU on Oct 3 summoned Russia's top diplomat in Brussels as part of a coordinated move with member states to condemn President Vladimir Putin's "illegal annexation" of more Ukrainian territory.

EU nations  began calling in Russian envoys after Putin formally claimed four regions of Ukraine occupied by his troops since the invasion in February as Russian territory.

Belgium  hassummoned the Russian ambassador, and Italy and Austria were among those that have since followed suit.

EU leaders have vowed that they "will never recognise this illegal annexation" carried out by Moscow and the bloc is readying fresh sanctions.

EU diplomats were trying to overcome objections from Hungary to agree a new package of economic punishment that would include moves to impose a price cap on Russian oil sold around the world.

The bloc has already imposed seven waves of unprecedented sanctions on Russia and supplied military aid to Ukraine worth billions of dollars.

SacheenLittlefeather, the Native American activist and actress who was booed in 1973 as she refused an Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando, has died aged 75, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said.

Two weeks ago, the Academy held a ceremony at its new Los Angeles museumhonoringLittlefeather and publicly apologizing for her treatment at the Oscars ceremony nearly 50 years ago.

Envoys from the West African bloc ECOWAS were heading to Burkina Faso on Oct 3 after the jihadist-torn Sahel state underwent its second military coup in less than nine months.

The streets of the capital Ouagadougou were quiet after a two-day showdown between military rivals jousting for power and a spurt of violent anti-French protests.

The country's latest self-proclaimed leader is a 34-year-old captain, Ibrahim Traore, who seized the helm from Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri SandaogoDamiba, in power since January.

Religious and community mediators said Damiba on Oct 2 had agreed to step down, two days after Traore declared he had been forced out. Regional diplomats said he had fled to Togo.

ECOWAS -- the Economic Community of West African States -- issued a statement welcoming "a peaceful settlement of their differences" and announced it would dispatch a delegation to Ouagadougou on Oct 3.

The team is headed by Guinea-Bissau Foreign Minister Suzi Carla Barbosa and includes former Niger president Mahamadou Issoufou, the bloc's mediator on Burkina Faso.

Burkina is struggling with a seven-year-old jihadist campaign that has claimed thousands of lives, forced nearly two million people to flee their homes and left more than a third of the country outside government control.

Anger within the army at failures to roll back the bloody insurgency prompted Damiba's coup against the elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kabore, on January 24.

Appointing himself transitional president, Damiba vowed to make security the country's top priority -- but after a brief lull, attacks revived, claiming hundreds of lives.

The mounting toll was cited by Traore as justification for the latest coup.

Damiba on Oct 2  set "seven conditions" for stepping down, the religious and community leaders said.

These included security guarantees for him and his allies in the military; and that the pledge he had given to ECOWAS for a return to civilian rule within two years be respected.

Speaking on the French radio station RFI, Traore spelt out that he would uphold the July 2024 timeline for restoring civilian rule.

This could even happen "before that date" if conditions were right, Traore said.

He said that he would simply carry out "day-to-day business" until a new civilian or military transitional president was appointed.

Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Paabo, who sequenced the genome of the Neanderthal and discovered the previously unknown hominin Denisova, on Oct 3 won the Nobel Medicine Prize.

Paabo, director of the department of genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, found that gene transfer had occurred from these now extinct hominins to Homo sapiens following the migration out of Africa around 70,000 years ago.

Covid-19 patients with a snippet of Neanderthal DNA run a higher risk of severe complications from the disease, Paabo reported in a 2020 study.

Paabo, 67, who takes home the award sum of 10 million Swedish kronor ($901,500), will receive the prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.

With states after states competing to offer freebies, a report has suggested that the Supreme Court-led panel could cap such welfare schemes at 1 per cent of the state's GDP or 1 per cent of its own tax collection.

Citing the examples of just three states, a report penned by Soumya Kanti Ghosh, the group chief economic adviser to the State Bank of India, said annual pension liabilities of the poor states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan are estimated at Rs 3 lakh crore.

When looked at in relation to these states' own tax revenue, pension liabilities are quite high for Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh at 217, 190 and 207 per cent respectively.

While for states contemplating the change, it would be as high as 450 per cent of their own tax revenue in case of Himachal Pradesh, 138 per cent of their own tax revenue in case of Gujarat and 242 per cent of their own tax revenue for Punjab, which is also planning to revert to the old pension system wherein the beneficiaries pay nothing.

Ghosh also points out that according to the latest available information, the off-budget borrowings of states, which are loans raised by state-owned entities and guaranteed by the states, have reached around 4.5 per cent of GDP in 2022 and the extent of such guarantees has achieved significant proportion of GDP for various states.

The report suggests that the apex court panel fix a band, say 1 per cent of GSDP or 1 per cent of state own tax collections or 1 per cent of state revenue expenditure for these welfare schemes, he says.

Such a guarantee amount is significant at 11.7 per cent of GDP for Telangana, 10.8 per cent for Sikkim, 9.8 per cent for Andhra, 7.1 per cent for Rajasthan, and 6.3 per cent for UP.

While the power sector accounts for almost 40 per cent of these guarantees, other beneficiaries include sectors like irrigation, infrastructure development, and food and water supply.

On the cost of the election promises made by various political parties in the poll-bound states as a percentage of revenue receipts and own tax revenue of these states it is 1-3 and 2-10 in Himachal 5-8, and 8-13 in Gujarat respectively.

The unfunded pension liabilities of the state which have gone back to the old pension scheme or pay-as-you-go scheme, or planning to do so as a percentage of own tax revenue, it's a staggering 450 for Himachal, 138 for Gujarat, 207 for Chhattisgarh, 190 for Rajasthan, 217 for Jharkhand and 242 for Punjab.

The combined liabilities of the states which have reverted to the old pension scheme/or have promised to do so stood at Rs 3,45,505 crore in FY20 and the same will go up as a percentage of the GSDP of Chattisgarh to 1.9 and an incremental burden of 60,000 crores from Rs 6,638 crore in FY20.

For Jharkhand it was Rs 6,005 crore and will be 1.7 per cent of GSDP and will increase by Rs 54,000 crore; Rajasthan Rs 20,761 core, 6 per cent and will jump by Rs 1.

87 lakh crore; Punjab  Rs 10,294 crore, 3 per cent and will rise by Rs 92,000 crore, Himachal Rs 5,490 crore, 1.6 per cent of GSDP and will rise by Rs 49,000 crore and for Gujarat, the pension burden was Rs 17,663 crore in FY20 and will jump to 5.1 per cent of GDP and will rise by 1.59 lakh crore.

A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched 5G services, telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that many of the technology required for development of 6G are available with Indian developers and the country will lead in the next generation technology space.

The minister visited the IIT Hyderabad booth at the India Mobile Congress in New Delhi.

The institute is showcasing 6G technology prototypes and claims to have achieved 2-3 times more spectral efficiency and in turn the network speed compared to 5G.

He said that the prime minister has said in 6G India should take the lead.

According to the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), 5G technology is expected to deliver ten times better download speed than that of 4G and up to three times greater spectrum efficiency.

IIT Hyderabad professor Kiran Kuchi, who is heading the 6G development project, said that the institute has been granted some of the patents that will help create 6G standards and the process is on to apply for new patents as the technology advances.

IIT Hyderabad was among the institutes that created the Indian 5G technology standard, 5Gi.