The embattled Indian archers overcame all odds to ensure two medals in the recurve and compound mixed event of the Asian Archery Championships on Tuesday.

Competing under a neutral flag due to the suspension of Indian federation, the Indian archers opened their account with a bronze medal in the recurve mixed pair event where Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari defeated Yichai Zheng and Shaoxuan Wei of China 6-2 without breaking a sweat.

But it was the compound mixed pair team of Abhishek Verma and Jyothi Surekha Vennam who produced a stunner ousting Korea 159-154 in a one-sided affair to set up a gold medal clash with Chinese Taipei, slated for Wednesday.

Haryana's Sangram Dahiya and Varsha Varman of Madhya Pradesh clinched double trap titles, winning gold at the 63rd National Shotgun Shooting Championship in New Delhi today.

 In men's category, Sangram shot 142 out of 150 targets to leave behind former world champion Ankur Mittal, who managed 137 hits over the five rounds of 30 targets each to win a silver.  Punjab's Prithvi Singh Chahal won bronze with a score of 135.

Varsha, in the women's category of 120 targets each, had 97 to her name to clinch the gold ahead of state-mate Manisha Keer, who had 93 hits winning Silver. Mahima Vishwakarma ensured a Madhya Pradesh sweep in the category, winning bronze with 92.

The International Film festival of India, IFFI at Goa is seeing all the hustle and bustle expected of its 50th edition. Various sections like World Panorama, Foreign Kaleidoscope and Soul of Asia have acquainted delegates with the gems of world cinema. IFFI will also present films by renowned filmmaker Takashi Miike. AIR correspondent reports that the golden jubilee edition of IFFI honours a well known auteur in its Filmmaker in Focus section.

This time, Japanese Takashi Miike has been chosen. He is considered one of the foremost filmmakers today. His work has achieved cult status due to his films mixing distinctly different genres and creating exceptional movies.

Today, the festival will showcase one of the Director's most popular films. Audition, released almost two decades ago is a disturbing Japanese thriller. A son sets up a fake audition to get a date for his widowed father. But, things take a dramatic and deadly turn.

Uttar Pradesh government is launching a massive immunisation campaign against the filariasis or Filaria from today. Central government has set year 2021 as the deadline for complete eradication of filaria in country.

AIR correspondent reports that under this campaign more than 65 thousand teams of health workers will distribute medicines to around 6.5 crore people till 10 December in 19 districts.

Campaign will be launched by Health and Family Welfare Minister Jai Pratap Singh who told AIR that at present there are 1.25 lakh cases of filaria in these 19 districts.

Hosts Spain made light work of a youthful Canadian side to win the inaugural edition of the new-look Davis Cup and claim the team trophy for a sixth time, on Sunday.

Fittingly it was Spain's talisman Rafael Nadal who sealed the triumph, beating 20-year-old Denis Shapovalov 6-3 7-6(7) to rack up his eighth victory in eight matches during a gruelling week.

Playing for the fourth successive day, the 33-year-old was surely tired and it began to show as Shapovalov fought to keep Canada alive in their first Davis Cup final.

In badminton, India's Lakshya Sen has won the Scottish Open men's single title, defeating Brazilian Ygor Coelho to seal his fourth title in three months.

Entering the tournament as the top seed, the world number 41 registered an 18-21, 21-18, 21-19 win in 56 minutes to claim the title in Glasgow.

The 18-year-old Indian started his year with a silver medal at the Polish Open International Challenge in March. After a series of disappointing exits, Sen went on to win the Belgian International in September, his first title of the year.

Within a month, Lakshya won his first BWF Super 100 title at the Dutch Open, with the second one coming soon after, at the SaarLorLux Open in Germany. He will be next seen in action in the Syed Modi International Championship, starting tomorrow in Lucknow.

New Delhi: The first flight from Kalaburagi Airport took off today, headed for Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru, after the inauguration of Kalaburagi airport by the Chief Minister of Karnataka. The airport has been built under the ‘Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik‘ Regional Connectivity Scheme (UDAN-RCS) of the Government of India and is spread across 742 acres and developed at an estimated cost of Rs. 176 crores.

Kalaburagi Airport is at a distance of 13.8 km from Kalaburagi City and is a DGCA licensed Aerodrome for VFR/Day operations. Three flights per week will be operated by Star Air on Monday, Friday and Sunday. It will depart Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) at 12:20 pm and land at Kalaburagi at 1:25 pm. From Kalaburagi it will depart at 1:55 pm, and reach at 3 pm.

Last month, Star Air had launched a flight from Hubballi in Northern Karnataka to Hindon, Delhi’s second airport. This is the longest commercial air travel route under the UDAN-RCS scheme.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation undertook the task to develop the Kalaburagi airport as it will pave the way for direct connectivity to North Karnataka with state Headquarters and other commercial centres.

Kalaburagi Airport will act as a gateway for tourist destinations including Buddha Vihar, Sharana Basaveshwara Temple, Khwaja Banda Nawaz Dargah, and Gulbarga Fort.

The thrum of a hovering helicopter with a Minister on board was what hooked Shivangi, a wide-eyed 10-year-old from Bihar’s Muzzafarpur, to flying.

But then, as a regular moffusil girl born to a school teacher and a housewife, life moved on and she went on to graduate in mechanical engineering from the Sikkim-Manipal Institute of Technology.

While in college, a naval presentation made as part of a university entry scheme again stoked the latent desire in her to fly. She cleared the Service Selection Board (SSB) at Bhopal, but failed to get a call thanks to fewer vacancies.

Oxford Dictionaries has named “climate emergency” as its 2019 Word of the Year, choosing it from an all-environmental shortlist that also included “climate action,” “climate denial,” “eco-anxiety,” “extinction” and “flight shame.”

The Word of the Year citation is intended to highlight “a word or expression shown through usage evidence to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year, and have a lasting potential as a term of cultural significance.” Recent winners have included “toxic,” “youthquake,” “post-truth” and “vape.”

Normally, the shortlist includes a variety of different words that illustrate new trends in language usage. While the choices are often politically inflected, Katherine Connor Martin, an editor at Oxford Dictionaries, said the unusual decision to focus on climate-related terms reflected a “demonstrable escalation” in the language around climate.

“When we were looking through the evidence, it was just clear that issues relating to the climate were running through all the different lexical items we were working with,” she said. “It reflects it was a real preoccupation of the English-speaking world in 2019.”

Veteran actor and Shabana Azmi's mother Shaukat Kaifi passed away here on Friday evening due to age-related illness at the age of 93.

Kaifi's son-in-law, veteran writer-lyricist Javed Akhtar, confirmed the news of the death of the theatre and film actor.

"She was 93 and was having one problem after another. She was admitted to Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital. For certain days she was in the ICU and then she was out of ICU. It was all age related," he said.

"Ultimately they brought her home. She wanted to come back to her own room where she stayed for a day or two and then passed away. Shabana is in Mumbai," Akhtar, who is in the US, told PTI.

The last rites will be held on Saturday noon.

Many Bollywood celebrities paid their last respects to the Ms Kaifi at her family residence. Pics from the day were shared by paparazzi Viral Bhayani. Manish Malhotra, Tabu, Shabana, Boney Kapoor, Urmila Matondkar, Satish Kaushik and others arrived at the venue. Check their pics below: