A S Kashyap

As part of attracting more Indian students to universities in the United Kingdom in the backdrop of falling numbers, the British government would add 400 more students under its scholarship programme, a cabinet Minister said today.

“You know that there are large number of Indian students going to the UK. But numbers have been falling in the last 2-3 years. We think there is perception problem that they are not welcome in the UK. I have been trying to dismiss that. They are very much welcome in the UK,” Dr Vince Cable who is on a visit to India, told reporters here.

A 24-year-old engineering student from Manipur named T Michael Lamjathang was beaten up by three miscreants in Bangalore and was forced to speak Kannada.

The incident occurred at around 8:30 pm yesterday when Lamjathang was standing along the roadside with his two other friends after returning from a police station where he had gone to take permission for an upcoming cultural festival.

President Pranab Mukherjee extended his birthday wishes to former President APJ Abdul Kalam, who turned 83 years old on Wednesday.

In his message, President Mukherjee, who is currently on state visit to Finland, said, “May the Almighty bless you with happiness, good health and many more years of continued dedicated service to our country.”

An aerospace engineer, Kalam was President of India from 2002 to 2007. (ANI)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday extended his congratulations to Afghanistan President Dr Ashraf Ghani, who was elected to the office on September 21.

In a telephonic conversation, Prime Minister Modi lauded President Ghani’s wisdom and statesmanship, and his commitment to unity, peace and progress in Afghanistan, which had enabled the formation of a broad-based an inclusive government and a peaceful political transition. He paid tribute to the people and the political leaders of Afghanistan for their faith in democracy and will to prevail over violence and terrorism.

India’s first indigenous nuclear submarine INS Arihant and other “critical assets” in the Bay of Bengal are safe from the devastation wrought by cyclonic storm Hudhud in the southern port city of Visakhapatnam, an official said Wednesday.

Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) spokesman Ravi Gupta told India Strategic (www.indiastrategic.in) today that “adequate precautions had been taken to secure INS Arihant and other critical assets off Visakhapatnam and elsewhere on India’s eastern seaboard well before Hudhud’s landfall on Sunday.

Asserting that there is no wave in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Maharashtra, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Supriya Sule expressing confidence on Wednesday said that her party’s vote share will increase in the state this time.

Sule highlighted the fact that a single vote has the power to effect change.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav Wednesday laid the foundation stones of a 1,000-bed super-specialty hospital, a 100-acre Information Technology (IT) city and the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in the state capital.

The hospital will be built by the Medanta group and would be known as Medanta Avadh. It will be equipped with facilities like 30 operation theatres, 300 beds for critical care, a Unani medical centre and an Ayurvedic medical centre.

The hospital would have a separate research wing as well.

The next few days could prove decisive for Kerala’s dream project, Air-Kerala, the southern state’s very own airline.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy told IANS that he along with his cabinet colleague K. Babu, who looks after airports and the proposed airline, will discuss the floating of the airline with the aviation ministry in New Delhi on Thursday.

Sunburn, arguably Asia’s biggest electronic dance music festival, has become the first non-government, commercial event to figure in the Goa Tourism Development Corporation’s online festival listing.

The festival, which attracts hundreds and thousands of music lovers, now figures on the www.goa-tourism.com website with other socio-religious events like the Feast of St. Francis Xavier, Christmas and the Carnaval on the official festivals listing on the website run by the GTDC, the corporate arm of the Goa tourism ministry.

Every Sunday, at around 8.30 p.m., a group of volunteers in green t-shirts heads out in different directions with packed food like vada pav, khichdi and parathas to serve homeless people sleeping under the open skies in the capital.

This is not a government initiative, but a collective effort of two friends who have collaborated with different restaurants and eateries in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bangalore to “serve the poor and destitute” through their Robin Hood Army, a four-month-old initiative in these respective cities.

Popular Tamil actors such as Suriya, Vishal Krishna Reddy and Kajal Agarwal Wednesday announced donations to the Chief Minister’s relief fund for the victims of cyclone Hudhud, which struck the Andhra Pradesh coast Sunday.

Actor Suriya donated Rs.50 lakh on behalf of his entire family. while the “Singam” star has himself donated Rs.25 lakh, his brother Karthi and cousin K.E. Gnanavel Raja donated the rest of the remaining Rs.25 lakh together.

While the claims of Haryana’s ruling Congress in Haryana about the state’s progress may be disputed by the opposition parties, leading politicians across the spectrum have definitely seen a massive upward movement in their financial and material worth in the last five years.

Compared to the 2009 assembly elections, when only 32 percent of the candidates were “crorepatis” (millionaires), the number of such contestants for the Oct 15 polls has gone up to 52 percent out of the 1,351 aspirants in the fray, says a study by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR).