The Indian Air Force (IAF) has successfully carried out a test firing of a new version of an air-launched medium-range ballistic missile that is capable of hitting targets at a distance exceeding 250 km.

The missile, also referred to as ROCKS or Crystal Maze 2, originated from Israel and underwent a test launch from a Su-30 MKI fighter jet in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands last week.

Sources in the defence forces told India Today TV that the missile boasts a strike range of over 250 km and is capable of targeting enemy long-range radar and air defence systems.

With military expenditure worth $83.6 billion in 2023, India was the fourth largest spender globally in 2023, the latest report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) states. This was a result of growing personnel and operations costs that comprised about 80 per cent of the total military budget, the report said.

The latest data showed that the United States, China and Russia remained the top three military spenders globally followed by India and Saudi Arabia.

According to the report, Indian spending was up by 4.2 per cent from 2022 and by 44 per cent from 2014.

Indian Bank has entered into a strategic partnership with Tata Power Solar Systems Ltd. (TPSSL) to boost solar energy adoption by providing financial support to residential consumers for installations.

The collaboration aims to provide financial support under the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana scheme for installations up to 3 KW, and from 3-10 KW under the regular scheme, the public sector lender said in a statement.

Residential consumers can avail loans up to ₹2 lakh at an annual interest rate of 7%, with a nominal margin money requirement of 10% and collateral-free financing. The repayment tenure is 10 years.

Digital payments platform Razorpay on Tuesday launched its own Unified Payments Interface (UPI) infrastructure, or UPI switch, in partnership with Airtel Payments Bank.

The infrastructure is designed to handle up to 10,000 transactions per second, at any given time, and enable five times faster access to UPI innovations for businesses, Razorpay said in a statement.

The infrastructure must be hosted by a bank for businesses to use it. Airtel Payments Bank is Razorpay's banking partner for this.

CWG mixed doubles champion Sreeja Akula on Tuesday became the top-ranked Indian woman table tennis player after rising to career-high rank of 38 in latest ITTF Chart, replacing Manika Batra.

Sreeja climbed a spot while Manika who had been India's number one TT player for a while now, slipped two places to 39 in the latest update.

The 25-year-old Sreeja has enjoyed a good run this year, winning the WTT Feeder Corpus Christi and WTT Feeder Beirut titles in January and March respectively besides reaching the quarterfinal of the WTT Star Contender in Goa.

Air India has entered into a codeshare partnership with Japan's All Nippon Airways.

With the codeshare, effective for travel from May 23, Air India and All Nippon Airways passengers can fly to their desired destination by combining those flights between India and Japan with a single ticket.

Air India will add its 'AI' designator code on ANA's flights between Tokyo Haneda and Delhi as well as Tokyo Narita and Mumbai.

ANA will add its 'NH' designator code on Air India's flight between Tokyo Narita and Delhi, a release said on Tuesday.

NASA has finally heard back from Voyager 1 again in a way that makes sense.

The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data last November. Flight controllers traced the blank communication to a bad computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft’s coding to work around the trouble.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California declared success after receiving good engineering updates late last week. The team is still working to restore transmission of the science data.

State-owned IFCI on Monday said it has received a capital infusion of Rs 500 crore through the issuance of equity shares to the government on a preferential basis.

Allotment of 12,39,77,188 shares to the Government of India was done on April 18, 2024, on a preferential basis, IFCI said in a regulatory filing.

Following the capital infusion, the government holding in the oldest financial institution IFCI has increased from 70.32 percent to 71.72 percent.

The government had infused Rs 100 crore in 2022 in long-term infrastructure financier IFCI Ltd.

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited, expressed his satisfaction with Reliance Jio’s success, which has now become the world's largest mobile operator in terms of data traffic, ahead of China Mobile.

Jio revealed its quarterly results on Monday, showcasing the milestone achieved. As per a press release, the total traffic on the Jio network has reached 40.9 Exabytes, which is a 35.2 percent year-on-year increase. Also, Jio has a very strong and wide subscriber base of 481.8 million.

Indian fintech major BharatPe on Tuesday launched BharatPe One, an all-in-one payment product that integrates POS (point of sale), QR code, and speaker into one device.

The company in a statement said it plans to launch the product in about 100 cities in the first phase. It will further scale it to around 450 cities over the course of the next 6 months.

"Equipped with a high-definition touchscreen display, 4G and Wi-Fi connectivity, and powered by the latest Android operating system, BharatPe One delivers enhanced performance and security.