In a bid to galvanise its air defence capabilities, India on Tuesday successfully test fired a new, long range surface-to-air missile jointly developed with Israel from a defence base off Odisha coast.
According to a 2021 Redseer report, India's overseas education market is estimated to more than double to $80 billion by 2024.
As the train which started from Howrah slowed down as a mark of caution running across freshly repaired tracks, a few muttered 'Jagannath, Jagannath', the name of the presiding deity of Puri, the destination of the train, but most were too stunned to speak.
The Opposition party asked whether the prime minister will take responsibility for the 'deadliest rail tragedy' of this century.
India on Friday successfully test-fired the new surface-to-air missile, developed jointly with Israel, with a strike range upto 70 km, from a defence base off Odisha coast, a day after two similar trials were conducted.
The power infrastructure and the farm sector have also suffered a considerable damage, Chief Secretary A K Tripathy said. However officials said the telecom infrastructure is largely intact.
The MRSAMs were test-fired from the Integrated Test Range launch pad-III at Chandipur near here before noon
The state-of-the-art advanced missile, a product of joint venture between India and Israel.
The missile positioned at launch pad-3 of the ITR swung in to action after getting signal from the radars to intercept a moving aerial target supported by an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) 'Banshee' over the Bay of Bengal, officials said.
The missile was launched from a mobile autonomous launcher at 11.45 am and it successfully flew in its pre-set trajectory 'fulfilling its mission objectives', the ministry said.
'Yaas' is likely to cross the Odisha-West Bengal coasts between Paradip and Sagar Islands around noon on May 26 as a very severe cyclonic storm with wind speeds of 155-165 kmph, Kolkata's Regional Meteorological Centre Deputy Director Sanjib Bandopadhyay said.
Despite the hope that lessons will be learnt, the next accident invariably shows that nothing has been learnt -- or if learnt, they have been ignored, observes Prosenjit Datta.
Berhampur, the biggest city in southern Odisha, on Monday looked like a war zone as Cyclone Phailin left behind a trail of destruction. The cyclone accompanied by heavy rain hit Gopalpur, about 15 km from Behrampur, and battered the city and its nearby areas.
The system lay centered at 5.30 am over Southeast Bay of Bengal, about 450 km west-northwest of Car Nicobar (Nicobar Islands), 380 km west of Port Blair (Andaman Islands), 970 km southeast of Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and 1030 km south-southeast of Puri (Odisha).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday reviewed the post-cyclone situation and damages caused by Cyclone Yaas in the state at a meeting in Bhubaneswar where Odisha government demanded long term solutions to mitigate problems of repeated cyclones and provision of disaster resilient power systems.
The weather system moved west-northwestward and concentrated into a depression on Saturday at 8.30am, close to west of Andaman Islands, the bulletin said.
The orange alert has been issued for moderate or heavy thunderstorms and wind speed with 30-40 km per hour to reach some districts of Odisha within the next three hours.
The MeT department warned of heavy to very heavy rainfall in Gangetic West Bengal till Saturday, ahead of Durga Puja festivities.
The deep depression over central Bay of Bengal is likely to intensify into a cyclonic storm by Sunday evening and after changing course in a northeastward direction from northwest.
The South Central Railway as well as the East Coast Railway cancelled several trains while some were terminated midway, officials said, adding a few express trains were also diverted.
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Agitators squatted on railway tracks at various places, leading to cancellation, short-termination and diversion of several trains.
In an interview with an Odia video magazine some time ago, Murmu revealed that her Santhali name 'Puti' was changed to Droupadi by a teacher in school.
As the mid-day meal school tragedy in Bihar fuelled food safety concerns, more cases of children falling ill after consuming free food or contaminated water have come to light from Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Delhi and Maharasthra.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said all families in Puri and in those parts of Khurda, which had been 'extremely severely affected' in the storm, will get 50 kg of rice, Rs 2,000 in cash and polythene sheets, if covered under the Food Security Act (FSA).
The cyclonic storm is likely to move nearly westwards and cross north Andhra Pradesh-south Odisha coasts between Kalingapatnam and Gopalpur around Sunday evening, the Cyclone Warning Division of the IMD said.
It is a complete mayhem in West Bengal, Manipur and Odisha with more than 60 dead
Earlier, the IMD had predicted light to moderate rainfall accompanied by wind with 40 to 50 kmph in north coastal Odisha under its impact, he said.
The latest trend issued by the State Election Commission showed the BJD had already won or was leading in 762 Zilla Parishad seats, as compared to BJP's 46 and Congress's 36 seats.
An Indo-French proposed joint venture expected to be worth around Rs 30,000 crore to develop short range air defence missiles seems to have run into rough weather as Indian Air Force feels that its requirements could be met by indigenous Akash surface-to-air missile weapon system.
While man and a woman were reported killed when trees came crashing down on them in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, a 13-year-old girl died in a similar incident in adjoining Howrah. No casualties have been reported from Odisha yet.
The cyclone, according to an IMD report early Sunday, is developing into a severe cyclonic storm over the Bay of Bengal and can potentially become a very severe cyclonic storm in the next 24 hours, S N Pradhan, the chief of NDRF said in New Delhi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to vote in large numbers. "Today, there are bypolls taking place in various places across India. I urge those voting in these seats to vote in large numbers and strengthen the festival of democracy," he said in a tweet.
The Eastern Railway has cancelled the departure of Howrah-New Delhi AC Special Express for Wednesday.
Heavy rains in the aftermath of Cyclone Phailin triggered floods in Odisha on Monday with over 2.5 lakh people being marooned in Balasore -- one of the two worst-hit districts along with Mayurbanj -- and several rivers were in spate.
According to an official statement, Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari said the 19 other places in the country include Phalodi-Jaisalmer road and Barmer-Jaisalmer road in Rajasthan, Kharagpur-Balasore road in West Bengal, Hashimara-Guwahati road in Assam, Bhuj-Naliya road in Gujarat, Leh/Nyoma area in Assam and on the Jorhat-Baraghat road, among others.
The extremely severe cyclonic storm, which made landfall at Puri on Friday, unleashed copious rain and windstorm that gusted up to 200 kmph, blowing away thatched roofs of houses, swamped towns and villages, before weakening and entering West Bengal
Banerjee said the state is targeting to shift at least 10 lakh people to safer places in a bid to avoid any loss of life.
An unspecified number of people were evacuated from coastal areas of Odisha where Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Bhadrak and Balasore were likely to experience heavy rainfall accompanied by high-velocity winds, particularly on May 19 and 20, IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said.
Flood condition worsened in Orissa on Friday with four major rivers submerging around 600 villages in the state.
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