The Hong Kong government has approved over $900,000 for relief and rehabilitation work in cyclone-hit Odisha that could benefit around 45,100 victims, China's official media reported on Friday.

'Very severe cyclonic storm' Fani battered Odisha in May and killed 64 people and damaged more than five lakh dwelling units in the state's coastal districts.

Three grants totalling 7.032 million Hong Kong dollars (about $902,278) from Hong Kong's Disaster Relief Fund to three agencies has been approved for the cyclone victims in Odisha, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported quoting a spokesperson of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government as saying.

UNESCO's World Heritage Committee voted on Friday to list the sprawling Mesopotamian metropolis of Babylon as a World Heritage Site after three decades of lobbying efforts by Iraq.

Iraq had been trying since 1983 to have the site — a massive 10-square-kilometre complex of which just 18 pe rcent has been excavated thus far — recognised by UNESCO.

Straddling Iraq's Euphrates River about 100 kilometres south of Baghdad, the city was the centre of the ancient Babylonian empire more than 4,000 years ago.

"What is the world heritage list without Babylon? How to tell the history of humanity without the earliest of old chapters, Babylon?" said Iraq's representative to UNESCO's World Heritage Committee ahead of the vote.

Eighteen hundred Bangladeshi mid-career civil servants will be trained at the National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG) in Mussoorie between 2019-2025.

The first batch of 30 civil servants leaving for a two-week long training programme in Mussoorie paid a visit to the  Indian High Commission in Dhaka yesterday.

The Bangladeshi civil servants are being trained at the National Centre for Good Governance based on the Memorandum of Understanding signed in February this year in the Fifth meeting of the India-Bangladesh Joint Consultative Commission (JCC).

Army Chief General Bipin Rawat has released a Kargil Tribute Song to honour, salute and pay homage to the Kargil martyrs and war veterans.

The song was released at a function organized in New Delhi yesterday as part of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Kargil Vijay Diwas on 26th of this month.

The song, a tribute to the soldiers has been composed by eminent Hindi lyricist Sammer Anjaan and sung by Shatadru Kabir.  

Operation Vijay involved major operations to evict Pakistani intruders from Indian territory on the icy heights of Dras, Kargil, Batalik and Turtuk.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is presenting the first budget in the second term of Narendra Modi government, for the fiscal year 2019-20 in the Lok Sabha. This is the first budget being presented by a woman Finance Minister.

Starting her budget speech, Ms. Sitharaman said, with the verdict of the general election, the people of India have validated their two goals for the country's future - national security and economic growth.

She said that first term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi led NDA govt stood out as a performing govt. Between 2014-2019 Prime Minister provided a rejuvenated centre-state dynamics, cooperative federalism, GST council and strident commitment to fiscal discipline and set the ball rolling for NewIndia.

The Indian Rupee will now be accepted for transaction at all airports in Dubai, according to a media report, in a good news for Indian tourists who form the highest number of international overnight visitors in the emirate.

According to a report in the Gulf News, the Indian currency is now acceptable at all three terminals of the Dubai International Airport and at Al Maktoum Airport. “Yes, we have started accepting the Indian rupee,” a Dubai duty free staff was quoted as saying by the paper. The acceptance of Indian currency is good news for Indian tourists as earlier they lost a sizeable amount due to exchange rates, sources said.

Out of the nearly 90 million passengers passed through Dubai aiports last year, 12.2 million were Indians, the report said. Indian travellers had to earlier convert the Rupee into Dollar, Dirham or Euro before they could shop at Dubai’s duty free shops.

The EU’s new president-elect Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday made her first trip to Brussels since being nominated, as senior officials sought to shore up support for her appointment in the European Parliament.

Current German defence minister von der Leyen met Jean-Claude Juncker, the man she is to replace as European Commission president, for talks a day after pledging to present her “vision for the next five years for Europe” within a fortnight.

She must win the approval of the highly fragmented European Parliament, where there have been grumblings about the deal to appoint her, which was cooked up by EU national leaders over three days of tortuous summit wrangling.

Juncker and von der Leyen -- the first woman to be named to the head of the EU’s executive arm -- embraced warmly for the cameras as they met at commission headquarters in Brussels, but neither made any comment.

The latest Henley Passport Index 2019 ranks the Indian passport on the 86th position with a mobility score of 58. The score points out that Indian passport holders can access 58 countries around the world without a prior visa.

India shares the 86th position with Mauritiana and Sao Tome and Principe.

Asian countries dominate the rankings with Japan and Singapore holding onto the top spot with a score of 189, after they unseated Germany from its first position at the beginning of 2018.

IN a red T-shirt and pink shorts that she wore to sleep on Monday night, Priya Nanavare (8) stood outside Goregaon crematorium on Wednesday, clutching a water bottle. The bodies of nine people who died in the Kurar wall collapse had been brought to the crematorium for final rites. Five of them were from Priya’s family.

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has invested around $250 million in Ola Electric Mobility. With this, the electric vehicle unit of ride sharing aggregator Ola has become the newest unicorn from India, at par with the likes of Flipkart, Zomato, Paytm, as well as its parent company.

As per regulatory documents filed with the Registrar of Companies, Ola Electric issued "4,326 fully and compulsorily convertible series B preference shares of face value of Rs 10 each having the rights, privileges and preferences..." to SB Topaz (Cayman) Ltd. The Japanese investor paid a total of Rs 1,725.04 crore (around $250 million) to the Indian company, the filing further said.

The SoftBank funding was received on Tuesday in light of a special resolution passed by the board of Ola Electric on June 25.