A week after Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s first official bilateral visit to India after he was voted to power late last year following a campaign centred on an ‘India out’ policy, senior diplomat Aishath Azeema is set to replace Ibrahim Shaheeb as Maldives’ top envoy to India.

The decision to appoint a new ambassador to New Delhi comes as the island nation looks to strengthen and restore its relationship with India, which the news portal Sun.mv described as one of the Maldives’ “closest bilateral partners.”

On Monday, Muizzu sent a letter to the Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee seeking approval for Azeema’s appointment. The Committee granted its approval on Tuesday, the PTI reported.

India was on Sunday awarded the hosting rights of ISSF junior world Cup next year by the international shooting federation, with its president Luciano Rossi saying the sport's world governing body will back the country if it is interested in hosting more big-ticket tournaments in near future.

Rossi is in the national capital to attend the season-ending World Cup Final of the International Shooting Sport Federation, in which the year's top performers compete against each other.

"I would like to congratulate India for their stellar performance at the recently concluded Junior World Championship in Peru. I would also like to inform that we at ISSF will support India's application to host the Junior World Cup in 2025 and other future international events as and when we are approached by NRAI," Rossi told the media.

Navi, a fintech company owned by Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, has become India's fifth-largest ecosystem player on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), clocking 120.41 million transactions amounting to Rs 6,549.1 crore in September.

The Bengaluru-based company, which surpassed Amazon Pay’s UPI volumes in August, was just shy of 20 million transactions from the fourth-largest player, Cred, which processed 140 million transactions last month, data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) shows.

In August, Navi processed 88.71 million transactions with a cumulative value of Rs 4,651 crore, reflecting a 35.7 per cent growth in volumes on a month-on-month basis.

India has surged to become the second-biggest supplier of restricted critical technologies to Russia, US and European officials said, highlighting the challenge in efforts to choke off exports fueling President Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

Indian exports of restricted items such as microchips, circuits and machine tools surpassed $60 million in both April and May, about double from earlier months this year, and leaped to $95 million in July, according to the officials, who asked not to be identified discussing private assessments. India is exceeded only by China.

Even more frustrating to Ukraine’s allies, some of them said, is that envoys who raise the issue have received little response from their Indian counterparts. India’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment when asked about the trend.

SpaceX in its fifth Starship test flight on Sunday returned the rocket’s towering first stage booster back to its Texas launch pad for the first time using giant mechanical arms, achieving another novel engineering feat in the company’s push to build a reusable moon and Mars vehicle.

The rocket’s first stage “Super Heavy” booster lifted off at 7:25 a.m. CT (1225 GMT) from SpaceX‘s Boca Chica, Texas launch facilities, sending the Starship second stage rocket toward space before separating at an altitude of roughly 70 km (40 miles) to begin its return to land – the most daring part of the test flight.

The Super Heavy booster re-lit three of its 33 Raptor engines to slow its speedy descent back to SpaceX‘s launch site, as it targeted the launch pad and tower it had blasted off from. The tower, taller than the Statue of Liberty at over 400 feet, is fitted with two large metal arms at the top.

With its engines roaring, the 233 foot (71 metres)-tall Super Heavy booster fell into the launch tower’s enclosing arms, hooking itself in place by tiny, protruding bars under the four forward grid fins it had used to steer itself through the air.

The Telangana government has officially commenced a comprehensive household caste survey, marking the state as the third in the country to undertake such an initiative, following Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.

This survey is aimed at ensuring targeted and equitable distribution of resources across all communities.

Orders to begin the door-to-door survey were issued by Chief Secretary Santhi Kumari on Friday. The government has set a timeline of 60 days for the survey’s completion, with the Planning Department appointed as the nodal agency for its execution.

“This survey is crucial for planning and implementing various opportunities- socio-economic, educational, employment, and political—for the upliftment of Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and other marginalized groups within the state,” the order stated.

In IWLF National Weightlifting Championships, Harmanpreet Kaur set a new national record in 76 kg Senior section women category at Rainbow Khelo India Residential Academy, Nagrota Bagwan in Himachal Pradesh yesterday. Harmanpreet lifted 127 kilograms in clean and jerk and 223 kilograms in total. Meanwhile in the Junior section, Heena lifted 123 kg in clean & jerk and 211 kg in total to set a new record in the 76 kg category.

In the total category, G. Ravishankar also set a new national record with a combined lift of 311 kg, surpassing the previous record of 304 kg held by Ramkaran Prajapati in the Junior section.

In Table Tennis, India’s top-ranked pair of Ayhika Mukherjee and Sutirtha Mukherjee have scripted history by clinching the first-ever medal for the country in Women’s Doubles of Asian Championships 2024 at Astana in Kazakhstan. The Indian pair settled for the bronze medal after losing to the Japanese combination of Miwa Harimoto and Miyuu Kihara 0-3 in the semi-finals today.

India was a notable exclusion from a letter signed by 104 countries, including European and African countries, as well as much of the Global South that “condemned” Israel for banning United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres from entering Israeli territory.

While India has broken with the Global South on a number of resolutions that are critical of Israel, abstaining in at least four such major resolutions on Palestinian issues, the decision not to sign the letter circulated by Chile, and supported by Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Uganda, Indonesia, Spain, Guyana and Mexico is particularly significant given it is seen as a defence of the U.N. Secretary General and the U.N. itself, not any of the parties in the conflict.

Most neighbouring countries in South Asia, as well as West Asia, South America and Africa — making up the developing world — signed the letter that was circulated at the U.N. last week.

The maharaja of the erstwhile princely state of Jamnagar and former cricketer Shatrushalyasinh Jadeja declared his nephew and former cricketer Ajay Jadeja as his heir to the throne on the auspicious eve of Dussehra on Saturday.

Jadeja, 53, will now be named the new Jamsaheb, the titular head of Jamnagar.

Known as a family of cricket legends, Jadeja’s great grand uncle Ranjitsinh and grand uncle Duleepsinh, both former Jamsahebs, have trophies named after them.

In a statement, Shatrushalyasinh, titular head of the former Nawanagar state, said on Saturday, “It is a blessing for Jamnagar that Ajay Jadeja has accepted to be my heir.”