Author: Punit Panchal

New Delhi: The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) on Thursday demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar within 48 hours as he was violating the rights of the voters. In his absence, the party cautioned there would be a “Jantar Mantar 2.0”. Abhijeet Dipke, who is the founder of CJP, made the demand in a press conference citing the turmoil in the electoral rolls due to Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll. Dipke claimed the election was rigged and people had lost their right to vote. He termed Kumar as the country’s ‘biggest anti-national’. If Kumar does…

New Delhi, September 24: The Ministry of Culture, will organise the BRICS Theatre Festival 2026 from 12 to 14 October 2026 in New Delhi under India’s BRICS Presidency 2026. The three-day festival, themed “Shared Stories, Shared Futures”, will bring together over 100 theatre practitioners, scholars, students and cultural representatives from nine BRICS Member and Partner Countries. Addressing the media, Shri Vivek Aggarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Culture, highlighted its significance as an important cultural engagement under India’s BRICS Presidency and its role in advancing people-to-people connections through theatre. The Secretary said that the festival builds on the Bhopal Declaration adopted at…

New Delhi: India is positioning itself on a new part of the sustainable finance space. Sagarmala Finance Corporation Limited (Sagarmala) has planned the first ever Blue bond in the country to be released on 28 September. The state-owned maritime lender has scheduled a base issue of ₹600 crore, which has a greenshoe option of ₹500 crore and a 10-year tenor. This implies that it may be able to sell as much as ₹1,100 crore if the demand is high. SBI Capital Markets is the arranger and ICRA and CARE have assigned AA+ ratings to the bonds. The funds collected will…

New Delhi: On December 16, India is scheduled to sign its free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union in Brussels, where it will be implemented in early 2027. Sources close to the Indian government said PM Modi is likely to attend the ceremony. The signing date comes after a critical procedural step. The European Commission earlier this month launched the EU Council’s consideration of the text of the deal in preparation for a signing next December. If the Council gives it the go-ahead, it will be the biggest trade deal either side has ever signed, the Commission said. The…

New Delhi: Xiaomi has recently introduced a Transparent Special Edition for its Xiaomi 18 Pro and Xiaomi 18 Pro Max, and it’s red. Xiaomi 18 Pro goes for 9,999 yuan (about $1,492). The Pro Max is 10,999 yuan, or roughly $1,642. It’s a lot of cash for a mere paint job. There is no choice for all models of the phones, just 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. No cheaper tiers. The back panel is the most important one. According to Xiaomi, they have obtained a textured and embossed appearance in red using a micron scale film process. The…

New Delhi: The government is looking to come up with regulations that will cap the sale of foods rich in fat and sugar within a 50-metre radius of schools, amid concerns about the country’s rapidly growing obesity rates, especially in children. The rules would impact family stores; restaurants and street vendors around 1.5 million schools in the country where products such as sugary drinks, chips, samosas, pizzas, burgers and other items are sold. The plan is being spearheaded by the food safety regulator, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). The goal is to divert children from unhealthy eating…

New Delhi: Meta’s next VR headset barely looks like a headset. It looks like glasses, costs $1,299, and won’t ship until spring 2027. Mark Zuckerberg showed off the Meta VR Glasses on Wednesday at the company’s Connect conference in Menlo Park. He spent nearly as much time on a second gadget, a small handheld called Muse Charm, meant to give people a quick line to Meta’s new Muse AI agent. The glasses first. They weigh about 100 grams, which Meta says is roughly five times lighter than a Quest 3. The trick is a tethered puck that holds the Qualcomm…

New Delhi: On Wednesday, China’s President Xi Jinping made it to Washington to kick off a three-day state visit. On the tarmac the president, Donald Trump, shook his hand, an unusual courtesy for a foreign head of state. The plane landed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland just before 6 p.m. EDT, before Xi was able to reach Maryland. The two children gave bouquets to Trump and First Lady Melania Trump as they met Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan at the bottom of a 100-foot red carpet. A cannon salute, a colour guard and 21 man honour cordon, each…

New Delhi: Samsung’s Galaxy Watch has an odd little origin story tied to Indian traffic. When engineers at Samsung Research Institute-Noida tested the watch’s automatic cycling detection, it kept logging rides that never happened. The culprit was auto-rickshaws. Bumpy roads, a vibrating three-wheeler, and the software concluded its wearer was pedalling. The team dug into the false positives and reworked the algorithm. It’s a small story, but it explains what the Noida centre is actually for. Set up in 2007, SRI-N works with Samsung’s global R&D teams on phones, wearables, tablets and software. Now it’s contributing to the Galaxy Watch9…

New Delhi: Indian officials are probing the possibility that hefty OLED television makers like LG Electronics and Samsung paid too little in import duties on some vital parts, Reuters reported, quoting five sources close to the investigation. The glass display panels (also known as “open cells”) used for making OLED TVs are the focus of the probe. The authorities claim the two South Korean firms brought them in under a concessional 5% tariff which only previously applied to older LCD and LED display components that make up the bulk of mass-market TV sales. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence reckons OLED…