Former India opener and national selector VB Chandrasekhar passed away in Chennai on Thursday following a massive cardiac arrest.

The dashing Tamil Nadu left-hander of yesteryears, who was only six days short of his 58th birthday, is survived by his wife and two daughters.

Chandrasekhar played 7 ODIs between 1988 and 1990, scoring only 88 runs, but at the domestic level he was prolific for a few seasons, aggregating 4999 runs in 81 games with a highest score of 237 not out.

A qualified engineer, Chandrasekhar made his first-class debut at the age of 25 and played in a formidable Tamil Nadu team, which comprised WV Raman, Diwakar Vasu, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan and Bharath Arun.

In a piece of big news for cricketing fans around the world, the Commonwealth Games Federation today announced that women's T20 Cricket has been confirmed for inclusion at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022. 

Eight teams will compete across eight match days, as cricket returns to the Commonwealth Games for the first time since 1998 when South Africa won the gold medal in a men's 50-over format competition in Kuala Lumpur. 

Edgbaston, the venue of England's semi-final victory over Australia in the men's 50-over World Cup, will play host to all the matches. The 2022 Commonwealth Games will take place in England from 27th July to 7th August.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Dynamic Facade Lighting of the Parliament House Estate yesterday. As many as 875 energy-efficient LED lights have been installed in the Parliament Complex. These are power efficient and uses only one-fifth of the electricity compared to other types of lights. 

The long-lasting, excellent intensity LED bulbs are capable of creating 16 million colour combinations and the LED lighting is programmable and electronically controlled through computers. The dynamic lighting system through intermittent multi-colour lights creates an aura and enhances the grandeur of Parliament House. These beautiful lights will illuminate the beautiful Parliament building all round the year. Earlier, such lightings were installed in North Block and South Block.
 
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, and Union Ministers including Hardeep Puri and Jitendra Singh were present on the occasion.

President Ram Nath Kovind will address the nation on the eve of the 73rd Independence Day today. It will be broadcast on the entire network of All India Radio and Doordarshan from 7 PM. This can be heard on FM Gold, FM Rainbow, Rajdhani, Indraprastha channels and all other additional frequencies of the AIR. It will also be relayed on the youtube Channel of AIR News NEWSONAIROFFICIAL. All India Radio will broadcast regional language versions of the President's Address from 8 PM onwards on its respective regional networks. 

All India Radio will also broadcast the message of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on the eve of the Independence Day at 6.15 PM on Rajdhani, FM Rainbow and FM Gold Channels. It will also be relayed on the youtube Channel of AIR News NEWSONAIROFFICIAL.

India's second moon mission Chandrayaan-2 left the earth's orbit early this morning and is moving towards the moon following the successful completion of a crucial manoeuvre by the Indian Space Research Organisation. ISRO said, it has carried out the manoeuvre called 'Trans Lunar Insertion' at 2:21 AM, following which the spacecraft successfully entered the Lunar Transfer Trajectory.

Chandrayaan-2 is expected to reach the moon's orbit on August 20 and land on lunar surface on September 7. After 13 days of Moon-bound orbit phase, the lander 'Vikram' carrying rover 'Pragyan' will separate and after another few days of orbiting will soft land on September 7 in the South Pole region of the Moon, where no country has gone so far. If successful, the mission will make India the fourth country after Russia, the US and China to pull off a soft landing on the Moon.

Following the landing, the rover will roll out from the lander and carry out experiments on the lunar surface for one lunar day, which is equal to 14 earth days. The mission life of the lander is also one lunar day, while the orbiter will continue its mission for a year.

Cab aggregator Ola on Tuesday announced acqui-hiring' Pikup.ai, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup based out of Bengaluru. Acqui-hiring is a term for acquisition plus hiring. As part of the deal, the team at pikup.ai will join Ola, the company said in a statement.

Ola announced earlier this year its intent to set up an advanced technology centre in the San Francisco Bay area in the US, to focus on developing next-generation technologies in mobility like Electric, Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

"By bringing deep domain expertise to Ola, this acquihire will also deliver innovations that continue to improve safety and transform customer experience," Ola said.

Football player José Luis Brown, who scored Argentina's opening goal in their win against West Germany in the 1986 World Cup final, has died at 62.

The defender, known by his nickname "Tata", dislocated his shoulder in the match but refused to be substituted.

That was the only international goal of his career. Argentina, led by Diego Maradona, won the match 3-2 to secure their second World Cup title.

Brown had been battling Alzheimer's disease, media reports said.

Aishwarya Pissay became the first Indian to claim a world title in motorsports, annexing the FIM World Cup ( Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme) in the women's category after the final round of the championship at Varpalota in Hungary.
 
The 23-year old from Bengaluru also finished second in the FIM Junior category yesterday.

Aishwarya, who won the first round in Dubai and was placed third (Portugal), fifth (Spain) and fourth (Hungary) in the subsequent outings, finished with a tally of 65 points, just four ahead of Portugal's Rita Vieira in the final overall standings for women.

She was placed second in the junior category with 46 points, behind championship winner Tomas de Gavardo (60) of Chile.

DTC today cancelled the Delhi-Lahore bus service as Pakistan has decided to discontinue it in the wake of India revoking Jammu and Kashmir's special status.

A DTC bus was scheduled to leave for Lahore at 6 AM this morning but it did not leave due to Pakistan's decision to suspend the bus service. DTC said in a statement that following Pakistan's decision to suspend the Delhi-Lahore bus service, DTC is not able to send bus from Delhi to Lahore.  

Indian Space Research Organisation chairman Dr K Sivan has said, the organization will tomorrow perform a maneuvers called trans-lunar injection by which Chandrayaan 2 will leave earth and move towards the moon's orbit. He said, the maneuver will be performed early morning at around 3:30 am.

Dr Sivan was speaking in Ahmedabad yesterday on the sidelines of an event to mark the birth centenary celebrations of father of India's space programme Dr Vikram Sarabhai. 

The ISRO Chairmans said, the spacecraft will be reaching the moon's orbit on 20th of this month and it will be landing on the moon's surface on 7th of next month by performing a series of maneuvers.

India’s second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 was successfully launched on 22nd of last month.