India

Chhattisgarh Declares Dry Day On Jan 22 To mark Ram Temple Consecration

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Chhattisgarh Declares Dry Day On Jan 22 To Mark Ram Temple Consecration

Like Diwali, lamps will be lit in homes on January 22, Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai said.

Raipur:

The Chhattisgarh government has decided to observe a ‘dry day’ on January 22 on the occasion of the consecration of Shri Ram Lalla at the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya, Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai said on Tuesday evening.

While speaking to reporters in the state capital, CM Sai stated that it is a fortune for Chhattisgarh to be the home of the maternal grandparents of Lord Ram, with Chandkhuri being considered their home.

“It is our fortune that Chhattisgarh is the maternal birthplace of Lord Ram, and it is our fortune that the consecration of the Ram temple is going to take place in Ayodhya on January 22. There will be an atmosphere of enthusiasm across the state on that day. Like Diwali, lamps will be lit in homes, and the Chhattisgarh government has decided to declare January 22 as a dry day in the entire state,” the CM said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to attend the Pran-Pratishtha (consecration) of Shri Ram Lalla in Ayodhya on January 22.

Vedic rituals for the ceremony in the temple town will begin on January 16, a week before the event. A priest from Varanasi, Lakshmi Kant Dixit, will perform the main rituals of the consecration ceremony.

A 1008 Hundi Mahayagya will also be organised, in which thousands of devotees will be fed. Several tent cities are being set up in Ayodhya to accommodate thousands of devotees who are expected to arrive in the temple town of Uttar Pradesh for the grand consecration.

According to the Sri Ram Janambhoomi Trust, arrangements will be made for 10,000-15,000 people.

Local authorities are gearing up for the anticipated surge in visitors around the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony and are in the process of implementing enhanced security measures and making logistical arrangements to ensure a smooth and spiritually enriching experience for all attendees.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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3 More Nepalese Die Fighting For Russia Against Ukraine: Government

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3 More Nepalese Die Fighting For Russia Against Ukraine: Government

As of now, 10 Nepalese have died in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Kathmandu:

 Nepal government on Tuesday said three more Nepalese nationals fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war have died, taking the number of such deaths to ten.

According to the Foreign Ministry sources, details are awaited about these Nepalese, who were fighting for the Russian side.

Apart from the three deaths confirmed in 2024, the Foreign Ministry confirmed the death of seven Nepali nationals fighting for Russia in mid-December.

Before that, it was claimed that four Nepalese nationals fighting on the Russian side were kept in captivity by the Ukrainian Army but no other details were available.

The government has estimated that more than 200 Nepalese who went to Russia on tourist and student visas have joined the Russian Army without permission of the Nepal government.

The Foreign Ministry has repeatedly reiterated its policy that no Nepali national is allowed to join any foreign army except those recruited in friendly countries like India under a traditional agreement.

The ministry has also maintained that it has requested the Russian government to send back the bodies of Nepalese soldiers who died in the war at the earliest and to provide due compensation to those injured and other victims of the war.

On December 26, Nepal’s Foreign Minister N P Saud said that around 100 Nepali nationals, who joined the Russian Army, have been reported missing. The Foreign Office had discussed the matter with the Russian ambassador in Nepal.

Saud had also said that there were at least four Nepalese Prisoners of War in Ukraine, and the government had contacted the Ukrainian government to release them.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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Jennifer Lopez flaunts toned abs, bikini style on New Year vacay

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JLo was photographed wearing a black string bikini that highlighted her toned abs and arms, along with a flowy patterned robe, reports ‘People’ magazine.

Published Date – 03:02 PM, Tue – 2 January 24


Jennifer Lopez flaunts toned abs, bikini style on New Year vacay

PHOTO: SPREAD PICTURES/MEGA

Los Angeles: Singer-songwriter Jennifer Lopez wrapped up 2023 by showing off her abs. The singer was spotted taking a casual stroll down a white-sand beach in St. Barts in the Caribbean on Saturday, ahead of the new year.

JLo was photographed wearing a black string bikini that highlighted her toned abs and arms, along with a flowy patterned robe, reports ‘People’ magazine.

She paired the look with a cream-coloured, wide-brim hat. Late Sunday evening, the star marked New Year’s Eve with an Instagram post featuring a series of photos of herself dressed in a cream-coloured silk suit, dark furry jacket and black, flat-brimmed hat.

As per ‘People’, JLo and husband Ben Affleck, who rang in 2024 together, could be seen swaying arm-in-arm as they watched a fireworks display outside their window in a video Lopez posted on her Instagram Story on Sunday night.

The singer and actress opted for a more laid-back style while on vacation, which was a stark contrast from the glamorous ensemble she donned for her and Affleck’s star-studded Christmas bash at their Los Angeles home last month. For that soiree, Lopez wore a long red Magda Butrym gown, which featured rose appliques on her right shoulder.

She shared three pictures featuring the festive Christmas look on her Instagram at the time. One photo included a shot of Lopez putting on her lip gloss while she showed off her long-sleeved gown. Another closeup shot captured the ‘Marry Me’ star staring directly at her reflection, displaying her glam: a dark bronzed smokey eye, bright peach blush and nude metallic lip gloss. Lopez’s hair was styled with an Old Hollywood glamour-inspired blowout.

Middle East

Hezbollah vows that Hamas leader's assassination 'won't go unpunished'

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File photo of the Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah’s fighters

The Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah vows that the Israeli regime’s earlier assassination of senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri “will undoubtedly not go unanswered and unpunished.”

The Lebanese group made the remarks in a statement on Tuesday.

The statement came shortly after an Israeli drone attack against a southern Beirut suburb led to the martyrdom of six people, including al-Arouri, who used to serve as the deputy head of the Political Bureau of the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas.

“Our resistance remains firm, proud, and faithful to its principles and commitments that it has made to itself, ready with its hand on the trigger and its fighters at the highest level of readiness and preparedness,” Hezbollah asserted.

The movement described al-Arouri’s assassination as a “dangerous attack” on the Lebanese sovereignty, and a “dangerous development” in the course of the war between the Israeli enemy and the regional Axis of Resistance.

The “heinous crime,” Hezbollah added, will only increase the regional resistance fighters’ faith and boost their resolve to keep on their path “until victory and liberation” from Israeli occupation and aggression.

Hezbollah’s statement, meanwhile, considered the targeted killing attack targeting al-Arouri to be a continuation of the assassination of Brigadier General Seyyed Razi Mousavi.

Mousavi, a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, was martyred in a missile attack by the occupying regime against the Sayyeda Zeinab neighborhood of the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday. He was martyred while serving as part of Iran’s military advisory mission in the Arab country.

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"What He Needs To Aspire Is…": Ex-India Star's Honest Take On KL Rahul

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KL Rahul finished 2023 with 1203 runs in 30 matches across all formats for India.© AFP

Despite being critical of him in the past, former India pacer Venkatesh Prasad was full of praise for KL Rahul, saying that the wicketkeeper-batter enjoyed playing ODI cricket in 2023. Rahul finished 2023 with 1203 runs in 30 matches across all formats for India, and finished the year on a high with a century in the first innings of the 1st Test against South Africa in Centurion. The batter also played a crucial role in India’s journey to the World Test Championship and World Cup finals. Prasad, who has been critical of Rahul in the past for his inconsistent performances, feels the player should also stake his authority when it comes to Test cricket.

“He has had a great year in one day cricket and in his comeback test in centurion played a wonderful knock in the first innings. Happy for him. Consistency in Test Cricket and realising his true potential is what he needs to aspire for imho,” Prasad wrote on X (formerly Twitter) while responding to fan’s query.

Rahul smashed 101 in the first innings of the first Test against South Africa last week, but India lost the game by an innings and 23 runs at the SuperSport Park in Centurion.

Following his knock, legendary India skipper Sunil Gavaskar was all praise for Rahul and even called the century among “Top 10 in the Indian history of Tests.

“Watching cricket for 50 years, I can surely Say this hundred by Rahul is in the Top 10 in the Indian history of Tests,” Gavaskar said on Star Sports.

The 31-year-old will hope to kick start 2024 on a high when India take on the Proteas in the second Test in Cape Town, starting January 3.

India hope to level the two-match series with a win at the Newlands.

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Middle East

Haniyeh: Israel will be held responsible for Arouri assassination

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Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh says Israel will be held responsible for the assassination of senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri, calling it “a complete act of terrorism and a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.”

Haniyeh made the remarks on Tuesday, shortly after an Israeli drone attack against a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut led to the martyrdom of six people, including Arouri.

“We mourn the martyrdom of the fighting leader and great national figure, Sheikh Saleh Al-Arouri, as well as Al-Qassam commanders Samir Fandi and Azzam Al-Aqra’, and a group of martyrs, following a cowardly Zionist operation in Beirut,” said Haniyeh.

“The Zionist occupation’s assassination of leader Al-Arouri and his brothers is a complete act of terrorism and a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, expanding the scope of its aggression on our people and our nation,” he stated.

“The Nazi-Zionist occupation bears responsibility for this aggression,” he added.

“The pure blood of the martyred leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri and his brothers has mingled with the blood of tens of thousands of martyrs of our people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and abroad,” he said.

The Hamas political bureau chief went on to say that “a movement that offers its leaders and founders as martyrs for the dignity of our people and nation will never be defeated.”

“These attacks only strengthen its strength, resilience, and unwavering determination. This is the history of the resistance and the movement: following the assassination of its leaders, it becomes even stronger and more determined,” he said.

Arouri, who used to serve as the deputy head of the Political Bureau of the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas, was known as the “architect” of the October 7 operation by Gaza’s resistance groups, during which hundreds were taken captive.

Meanwhile, the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement also condemned the Israeli act of terrorism.

In his statement, commander Ziad al-Nakhalah said, “Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri was one of the distinguished and devoted leaders of the Palestinian people.”

“We have lost him when we needed his presence the most. He was a leader who instilled confidence and tranquility in those around him and those he dealt with,” he stated.

“We have lost him as a leader and a person who believed in the justice of the Palestinian people’s fight until martyrdom, and he achieved it in the glory of Palestine and the resistance, in its glory that is manifested today in the jihad and heroism of the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank, across Palestine, and beyond. We pray to Allah to accept him graciously,” he said.

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US Condemns Israeli Ministers' Call For Palestinians To Emigrate From Gaza

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US Condemns Israeli Ministers' Call For Palestinians To Emigrate From Gaza

“Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land,” US official said.

Washington:

The United States on Tuesday denounced controversial comments by two Israeli ministers who said Palestinians should be encouraged to emigrate from Gaza and for Jewish settlers to return to the besieged territory.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington “rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza.”

“This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible,” added Miller, who reiterated the “clear, consistent, and unequivocal” US position that “Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and with no terror groups able to threaten Israel.”

Ben Gvir, Israel’s firebrand national security minister, had called on Monday for promoting “a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s residents.”

Israel unilaterally withdrew the last of its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, ending a presence inside Gaza that began in 1967 but maintaining near complete control over the territory’s borders.

The government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not officially suggested it has any plans to evict Gazans or to send Jewish settlers back to the territory since the current war broke out on October 7.

But Ben Gvir argued that the departure of Palestinians and re-establishment of Israeli settlements “is a correct, just, moral and humane solution.”

“This is an opportunity to develop a project to encourage Gaza’s residents to emigrate to countries around the world,” he told a meeting of his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit, or “Jewish Power,” party.

His comments came the day after Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Smotrich also called for the return of settlers to Gaza, equally saying Israel should “encourage” the territory’s approximately 2.4 million Palestinians to leave.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war was triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

After the worst attack in its history, Israel began a relentless bombardment and ground offensive that has killed at least 22,185 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

With heavy combat raging on, 85 percent of people in the besieged Gaza Strip have been internally displaced, according to the United Nations.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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151 Myanmar Soldiers Who Fled To Mizoram Last Week, Sent Back: Sources

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151 Myanmar Soldiers Who Fled To Mizoram Last Week, Sent Back: Sources

Myanmar has been in turmoil since 2021 after the military took power. (Representational)

Over 150 soldiers from Myanmar, who fled to Mizoram last week after their camps were captured by armed pro-democracy ethnic groups, were flown back home on a Myanmar military aircraft today, official sources said.

A Myanmar Air Force aircraft landed at the Lengpui airport in Mizoram today to take back the soldiers, the arrangements were overseen by New Delhi. The transport aircraft took off from Mandalay in Myanmar and landed in Mizoram and airlifted 151 soldiers to Akyab in the neighbouring country in two sorties.

On December 29, 151 Myanmarese soldiers, also known as ‘Tatmadaw’, fled from their camps and crossed into Mizoram’s Lawngtlai district with their arms and approached the Assam Rifles after their camp near the Indo-Myanmar border was overrun by the Arakan Army fighter, an armed pro-democracy group in Myanmar.

The Assam Rifles provided medical treatment to Myanmarese soldiers who were critically injured in the gun battle while fleeing the camps. The soldiers were in the custody of Assam Rifles at Parva in Lawngtlai.

An officer from the Assam Rifles said earlier that the soldiers from Myanmar will be sent back to their country in some days as talks are going on between the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Myanmar military government,

Earlier in November, 104 soldiers from Myanmar, including officers, fled to Mizoram in different phases after their camps near the border were overrun by pro-democracy armed groups.

They were airlifted by the Indian Air Force to Moreh in Manipur, from where they crossed the international border and entered Tamu, the nearest border town in Myanmar.

Crisis In Myanmar 

Myanmar has been in turmoil since 2021 after the military took power from Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi-led government in a coup, ending decades of democratic reform. The country was ruled with an iron fist of the military for 50 years after seizing power in 1962 and projected itself as the only institution that could hold Myanmar’s diversity together.

The coup dashed all hopes of democracy prevailing in the country, forcing pro-democracy and other rebel groups along with ethnic minorities to resist the military junta’s rule and fight for self-determination in the hinterlands.

Myanmar’s military junta is facing stiff resistance from armed militias and resistance groups who have posed the biggest threat to the ruling faction since the military coup.

A parallel government formed by pro-democracy politicians to oppose the military, and allied with some insurgent factions, has launched a “Road to Naypyitaw” campaign which it says is aimed at taking control of the capital.

Top News

US Condemns Israeli Ministers' Call For Palestinians To Emigrate From Gaza

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US Condemns Israeli Ministers' Call For Palestinians To Emigrate From Gaza

“Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land,” US official said.

Washington:

The United States on Tuesday denounced controversial comments by two Israeli ministers who said Palestinians should be encouraged to emigrate from Gaza and for Jewish settlers to return to the besieged territory.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington “rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza.”

“This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible,” added Miller, who reiterated the “clear, consistent, and unequivocal” US position that “Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and with no terror groups able to threaten Israel.”

Ben Gvir, Israel’s firebrand national security minister, had called on Monday for promoting “a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s residents.”

Israel unilaterally withdrew the last of its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, ending a presence inside Gaza that began in 1967 but maintaining near complete control over the territory’s borders.

The government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not officially suggested it has any plans to evict Gazans or to send Jewish settlers back to the territory since the current war broke out on October 7.

But Ben Gvir argued that the departure of Palestinians and re-establishment of Israeli settlements “is a correct, just, moral and humane solution.”

“This is an opportunity to develop a project to encourage Gaza’s residents to emigrate to countries around the world,” he told a meeting of his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit, or “Jewish Power,” party.

His comments came the day after Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Smotrich also called for the return of settlers to Gaza, equally saying Israel should “encourage” the territory’s approximately 2.4 million Palestinians to leave.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war was triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

After the worst attack in its history, Israel began a relentless bombardment and ground offensive that has killed at least 22,185 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

With heavy combat raging on, 85 percent of people in the besieged Gaza Strip have been internally displaced, according to the United Nations.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

India

Narrow Escape For Doctor Couple As Car Catches Fire In UP

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Narrow Escape For Doctor Couple As Car Catches Fire In UP

The incident took place in the Akhandnagar police station area (Representational)

Sultanpur, UP:

A doctor couple had a miraculous escape on Tuesday when the car in which they were travelling caught fire on the Purvanchal Expressway, officials said.

The incident took place in the Akhandnagar police station area of this district when Dr Praveen Kumar, along with his wife Dr Sapna Bharti, was going to Lucknow from Patna, said Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) assistant security officer Prabhunath Yadav.

The doctor couple saved their lives by jumping from the car after its engine caught fire due to heating, he said.

UPEIDA brought the fire under control by summoning two water tankers, Yadav said, adding that soon after getting information, the safety team and ambulance rushed to the spot.

Dr Praveen Kumar is owner of a private hospital in Barabanki district, the official said. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)