India’s indigenous COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin from Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech has been taken off the clinical trial mode and is now authorised for emergency use on a par with Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covishield, NITI Aayog’s member (health) V.K. Paul said on Thursday.

Access to COVID-19 vaccines, cooperation on technology, and climate change are at the top of the agenda as Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join U.S. President Joseph Biden, Australian PM Scott Morrison and Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga for a virtual summit of the Quadrilateral Framework (Quad) on Friday — the first time leaders of the Indo-Pacific grouping are meeting.

A day after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was rushed to hospital in Kolkata after suffering injuries during her campaign in Nandigram, the Trinamool Congress leadership reiterated allegations that the party chief was targeted as part of a conspiracy.

After multiple rounds of talks, the DMK completed identification of constituencies for the CPI, the Congress and the CPI(M) on Thursday, a day before the filing of nominations begins for the Tamil Nadu Assembly election.

One year after the nation was brought to a near-standstill by the coronavirus , President Joe Biden used his first prime-time address to outline his plan Thursday night to make all adults vaccine-eligible by May 1 and get the country “closer to normal” by the Fourth of July. He offered Americans fresh hope and appealed anew for their help.

Assam’s mandate 2021 is likely to go into the record books as the first among three blocs rather the major parties that lead them. For the bloc headed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the other two are like a double-edged sword.

Three police personnel were suspended in Kanpur on Thursday after a preliminary probe found them culpable of negligence in the death “in an accident” of the father of a minor girl who was allegedly gang-raped on March 8.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared that the world was facing its first-ever pandemic from a coronavirus. Its Director General, Tedros Adhanom, said then: “Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will flag off a march from the Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi on Friday to kick off celebrations of the 75th year of Independence, Culture Minister Prahlad Singh Patel said on Thursday.

The Biden administration once again signaled that the Quad ( the Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue between India, the U.S., Japan and Australia) is not a group about China and the agenda for Friday’s first ever Quad Summit meeting is not China-focused.

Marking a year of loss and disruption, President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law the $1.9 trillion relief package that he said will help the U.S. defeat the coronavirus and nurse the economy back to health.

Roger Federer squandered a match point and was knocked out of the Qatar Open by Georgia’s Nikoloz Basilashvili on Thursday in just his second match since a 13-month injury absence.