The 5th Meeting of India-Nepal Joint Commission will be held in Kathmandu on 21- 22 August. Minister for External Affairs of Dr S. Jaishankar and Nepal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Pradeep Kumar Gyawali will co-chair the meeting and lead their respective delegations. 

According to Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Joint Commission Meeting will review the overall state of bilateral relations and various areas of cooperation such as connectivity and economic partnership, trade and transit, power and water resources, culture, education and other matters of mutual interest.
India-Nepal Joint Commission was established in June 1987. Its meetings are held alternately in Nepal and India. The last meeting of the Commission was held in New Delhi on October 2016.

India have won gold at the Under 12 Asian Tennis Team championship held in Kazakhstan. India defeated Chinese Taipei 2-1 in the summit clash to win the title. 

The final was a tie of three matches - 2 singles and one doubles and India won both the singles matches while lost the doubles encounter.

The team comprised Manas Dhamme, Arnav Paprakar and Tamil Nadu's Pranav Rethin. Manas and Rethin won their singles matches. Manas and Arnav, however, lost their doubles encounter. 12-year-old Manas remained unbeaten in the entire tournament.

Top Indian sprinters Hima Das and Mohammad Anas have won a gold each in 300m races at the Athleticky Mitink Reiter event in Czech Republic. While Hima won the gold in women's event yesterday, Mohammad Anas claimed the yellow metal in men's category today. This was Hima's sixth gold in 2019 in European races since last month. 

Mohammad Anas won the gold clocking 32.41 seconds. India’s Nirmal Tom clinched a bronze medal in the same event by clocking a timing of 33.03 seconds.

National record holder Anas has already qualified for 400m event for the World Championships to be held in Doha in September-October while Hima is yet to achieve it.

It is a joint initiative of Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs and Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED). TRIFED will essentially play role of a Service provider & Market Developer .

The theme of the festival is “A celebration of the spirit of Tribal Craft, Culture and Commerce” .

Aadi Mahotsav is scheduled between August 17 to August 25  and will be inaugurated by the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir Satya Pal Malik.

Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Arjun Munda, MoS Renuka Singh and TRIFED Chairman R. C. Meena will be participating in the inaugural.

In a message, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said, "I am happy that the Tribal Affairs Ministry is organising Aadi Mahotsav in Leh, Ladakh, which will showcase tribal culture, cuisine, art, craft, and herbal medicines. The event will help spread these in other parts of the country and provide opportunities to tribals for economic growth and prosperity." 

Ravi Shastri will continue as the head coach of the Indian men’s cricket team, winning a second term on Friday. The three-member Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) instituted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), comprising Kapil Dev, Anshuman Gaekwad and Shantha Rangaswamy, announced the decision after conducting interviews with the prime candidates. This will be Shastri’s fourth stint with the national team, having served briefly as the Cricket Manager (2007 tour of Bangladesh), Team Director (2014-2016) and head coach (2017-2019).

Shastri, who had taken over the coaching role after the 2017 Champions Trophy, is expected to continue to serve in the position till the end of the 2021 T20I World Cup.

Asian and Commonwealth Games gold-medallist wrestler Bajrang Punia was on Friday nominated for the country’s highest sporting honour – the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award.

His name was finalised by a 12-member selection committee on the opening day of a two-day meeting. The panel comprises the likes of Bhaichung Bhutia and MC Mary Kom among others.

“Bajrang has been nominated for the Khel Ratna award. His name was a unanimous choice,” a source close to the development told PTI. The source also said that the 12-member panel may add another athlete for the top honour on Saturday besides finalising the names for the Arjuna and Dronacharya awards.

North Korea today fired two unidentified projectiles into the sea  which is latest in a series of such launches by Pyongyang.

South Korean military said the projectiles were fired from near the city of Tongchon of Kangwon Province into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan. It is an extension of recent streak of weapons tests believed to be aimed at pressuring Washington and Seoul over slow nuclear diplomacy.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectiles launched from the North's eastern coast landed in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. South Korean military is monitoring the situation in case of additional launches while maintaining a readiness posture.

In a major decision for higher level military reforms and tri-service integration, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday announced the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) who will be above the three Service Chiefs. The modalities are expected to be finalised in the next few months, defence sources said.

“I announce that there will be a Chief of Defence Staff going into the future who would be above the three service chiefs. This is going to make the forces even more effective,” he announced in his Independence Day speech from the Red Fort. The creation of the CDS will eventually lead to the formation of tri-service theatre commands intended to create vertical integration of the three forces. However, it is not clear from the announcement if the CDS will be a four-star or a five-star officer.

In recognition of his stellar work in promotion of science and technology, Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman K Sivan was on Thursday awarded the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Award by the Tamil Nadu government.

Kailasavadivoo Sivan, who led ISRO's successful launch of Chandrayaan-2 mission recently, could not receive the award in person but will receive it from Chief Minister K Palaniswami at a later date, the government said.

The Kalam award is to honour those who work for promoting scientific growth, humanities and students' welfare and the awardees should hail from Tamil Nadu.

The award carries 8 gm gold medal, Rs. five lakh in cash and a citation.

A native of Kanyakumari District of Tamil Nadu, the citation hailed him as "Rocket Man" and traced his humble origins to his splendid rise in career which includes a stint as director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and Liquid Propulsion Centre.

For a younger lot of viewers, Vidya Sinha’s name might resonate for her TV appearances in shows like Kkavyanjali, Qubool Hai and more recently Kullfi Kumar Bajewala, but her glory days were in the 1970s when she rode the wave of the middle-of-the-road cinema that balanced itself ingeniously between the outright commercial and the resolutely arthouse.

The veteran actor passed away on Thursday.

The first film to get her noticed was Basu Chatterjee’s Rajnigandha (1974), officially credited as her debut though Raja Kaaka was the first film that she signed for. Her Deepa in Rajinigandha is a role any actor, past or present, would love to dig deep into. As a woman torn between two men with diametrically opposing personalities — one who comes back from the past (Dinesh Thakur) and the other who she is currently in a relationship with (Amol Palekar in his debut too) — Sinha got ample opportunity to make a strong impression even though she had absolutely no grounding in acting. Based on Mannu Bhandari’s story Yahi Sach Hai, the film captured the dilemmas of a young woman with subtlety and sensitivity as did the delicate title track by Lata Mangeshkar — Rajnigandha phool tumhare — written by Yogesh and composed by Salil Chaudhury.