An alert has been sounded in Saharanpur, Shamli and Muzaffarnagar districts of Uttar Pradesh bordering Haryana in the wake of communal violence in the neighbouring state.

Checking is also being conducted in areas along the Haryana-Uttar Pradesh border to keep an eye on anarchic elements.

Mobs killed a cleric, torched an eatery and vandalised shops as communal violence that began in Haryana's Nuh spilt over into neighbouring Gurugram on  Aug 1.

Six people have died so far in the violence, 116 people have been arrested and 90 detained.

Prohibitory orders were clamped in the adjoining districts.

A bill that seeks to allow the private sector to mine six out of 12 atomic minerals, including lithium, and deep-seated minerals such as gold and silver was passed by Rajya Sabha, amid a walkout by opposition members demanding a discussion over the Manipur violence issue.

Union Minister for Coal and Mines Pralhad Joshi moved the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2023, when Rajya Sabha reassembled for the post-lunch period.

The bill was passed by the Upper House of Parliament by voice vote.

Earlier, all 12 atomic minerals were reserved for mining and exploration by state-owned entities. The bill amended The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957.

The atomic minerals which will be opened for private sector exploration are lithium (used for manufacturing batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage devices), beryllium, niobium, titanium, tantalum and zirconium.

The bill also empowers the central government to exclusively auction mining leases and composite licences for certain critical minerals.

Deep-seated minerals include gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead, nickel, cobalt, platinum group of minerals and diamonds. They are difficult and expensive to explore and mine as compared to surficial or bulk minerals.

India’s wildlife crime control agency has busted an illegal tiger trade syndicate and arrested its alleged kingpin, a former retired forest official from the Delhi-National Capital Territory forest department.

Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), an apex body to combat organised wildlife crime and illegal wildlife trade, along with a Maharashtra forest department team, arrested Mishram Jakhad (81) from Delhi’s Dwarka locality, on July 30.

According to WCCB, Jakhad controls the tiger poaching and illegal trade of tiger body parts syndicate. He also takes huge amounts of money from the poachers, smugglers and blackmails them.

Renowned film art director Nitin Desai was found dead at his studio in Maharashtra's Raigad district.

Desai was found hanging at his N D Studios in Karjat area of Raigad, located about 50 km from Mumbai.

He was known for his artwork in films like "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam", "Jodhaa Akbar", "Prem Ratan Dhan Payo" and "Bajirao Mastani", among others.

He was a four-time National Award winner for Best Art Direction. Over his two-decades-long career in Bollywood, he has worked with celebrated directors including Ashutosh Gowarikar, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

Besides art direction, Nitin also turned producer in 2003 with the film "Desh Devi Maa Ashapura". He also produced the immensely popular Marathi serial Raja Shivchhatrapati. In 2005, he opened ND Studios on the outskirts of Mumbai. The 52-acre spread studio has been used for several film sets, the most notable one being Jodha Akbar.

In a major relief to the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government, the Patna High Court has  dismissed a batch of pleas challenging the caste-based survey in the state. A bench of Chief Justice K Vinod Chandran and Justice Partha Sarthy upheld the state government’s action as “perfectly valid, initiated with due competence, with the legitimate aim of providing development with justice.”

The order came less than three months after the court had stayed the survey saying it was in fact a census that only the Centre can carry out. The petitioners said they will challenge it in the Supreme Court. 

The British government on  Aug 1  officially acknowledged that the Islamic State group committed "acts of genocide" against the Yazidi people in 2014, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

So far, the UK has acknowledged only four other instances where genocide has occurred, the Holocaust, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and acts of genocide in Cambodia.

The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said the announcement comes ahead of events marking nine years since the "atrocities" were committed by the Islamic State against the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority in Iraq.

The Yazidis, whose pre-Islamic religion made them the target of IS extremists, were subjected to massacres, forced marriages and sex slavery during the jihadists' 2014-15 rule in the northern Iraq province of Sinjar, the Yazidis' traditional home.

The official recognition follows a German Federal Court of Justice judgement which found a former IS fighter guilty of acts of genocide in Iraq.

The verdict was delivered in 2021 and upheld this January after the court rejected the defendant's appeal.

UK's lower house of parliament, the House of Commons, had unanimously voted to condemn the IS's treatment of Yazidis and Christians in Iraq as amounting to genocide in 2016, in a rare instance of parliamentary determination of genocide.

Donald Trump was indicted on  Aug 1  over his efforts to upend the results of the 2020 US election - the most serious legal threat yet to the former president as he campaigns to return to the White House.

It is the third criminal indictment of the 77-year-old Trump since March and charges him with three counts of conspiracy and one count of obstruction.

Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is already scheduled to go on trial in Florida in May of next year for allegedly mishandling top secret government documents.

The new charges, two of which carry maximum sentences of 20 years in prison, raise the prospect of Trump being embroiled in more legal proceedings at the height of what is expected to be a bitter and divisive presidential campaign.

The indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith accuses Trump of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding -- the January 6, 2021 joint session of Congress held to certify Democrat Joe Biden's election victory.

Trump is also accused in the 45-page indictment of seeking to disenfranchise American voters with his false claims that he won the November 2020 presidential election.

India’s crude from Saudi Arabia crude slipped to a multi-year low of 480 kbd (thousand barrel per day) in July 2023, according to energy intelligence firm Vortexa monthly data.

India imported 4.6 mbd crude in July 2023. Meanwhile, India’s crude import from Russia posted a record high of 1.9 mbd (million barrels per day) in July 2023, nearly double from its traditional buyers combined from the middle-east. Supplies from others include 891 Kbd from Iraq, 484 Kbd from Saudi Arabia, 290 kdb from UAE, 219 kdb from USA and 298 Kbd from Africa.

India, world’s third-largest crude importer, has increased its purchases from Russia following the war between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022.  Western countries put in sanctions on Russian crude, after that Russia has diversified its export to India and China at discounted rates. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, India used to import less than 2% of its total imports from the country. Since October 2022, Russia has been top crude supplier, overtaking Saudi Arabia and Iraq.