India and Pakistan will Thursday hold their first meeting to finalise the modalities for setting up of a corridor linking Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistani town of Kartarpur with Gurdaspur district in Punjab, three months after the two countries agreed on the project. Pakistan’s Deputy High Commissioner to India Syed Haider Shah arrived today at Amritsar, while the delegation will come tomorrow, reported ANI.

Shah said that Pakistan wants to open the Kartarpur corridor so that Indians can visit the Gurudwara. “It is an initiative of Pakistan. We want to open the Kartarpur Corridor so that Sikh people from here can visit it in Pakistan. The meeting will be held tomorrow,” he was quoted as saying by ANI.

The meeting comes amid heightened tensions between the two neighbours following India’s air strike on a terrorist training camp of the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Pakistan’s subsequent retaliation.

The bilateral meeting will see both sides finalising the draft agreement which will link Baba Nanak village in Punjab to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Narowal in Pakistan.

The Ministry of External Affairs in a statement on March 6 had said that the meeting with Pakistan was being held with the view of the Centre to get the corridor operational on the occasion of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak.

Chronic kidney disease is one of the leading causes of death globally. According to the World Health Organisation, the estimated prevalence of chronic kidney disease worldwide is 8-16 % in adults above 30 years of age. A study by the BioMed Central Nephrology Journal confirms that over 17% of the Indian population is affected by chronic kidney disease.

Commonly found in Indians, Diabetes, obesity and uncontrolled hypertension are major risk factors of kidney disorder. Stressful lifestyles and unhealthy eating habits also contribute to the disease. A balanced, healthy diet plays an important role in combating the major causes of chronic kidney disease. Consuming the right food in the right proportion can certainly help prevent the onset of kidney disease.

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Wednesday reserved its order on a petition by Reliance Communications seeking the release of income-tax refunds to clear dues of Ericsson India. Lenders of Reliance Communications have opposed the plea.

After hearing both the sides, the NCLAT bench headed by chairperson SJ Mukhopadhyay reserved the order in the case.

Senior lawyer Neeraj Kishan Kaul, appearing for State Bank of India, argued for rejection of Reliance Communications’ appeal, contending that it will lead to outgo of public money for settling payment of a private party.

He said Reliance Communications asset monetisation deal failed because RJio refused to take responsibility of past dues of the Anil Ambani-led firm before the department of telecommunications and hence, it is not liable to make payment on behalf of Reliance Communications.

India and the US said they have agreed to build six American nuclear power plants in India, in a boost to bilateral civil nuclear energy cooperation.

The two countries said this in a joint statement issued at the conclusion of the 9th round of India-US Strategic Security Dialogue, co-chaired by Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and Andrea Thompson, the US under secretary of state for arms control and international security, on Wednesday.

"They committed to strengthening bilateral security and civil nuclear cooperation, including the establishment of six U.S. nuclear power plants in India," the joint statement said.

Joining an ever-growing list of countries, India has decided to ban Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes following the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157 people. Current Indian airlines that operate these aircraft are SpiceJet that has twelve of these planes in its fleet and Jet Airways that has five. "DGCA has taken the decision to ground the Boeing 737-MAX planes immediately. These planes will be grounded till appropriate modifications and safety measures are undertaken to ensure their safe operations," the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a tweet.

"As always, passenger safety remains our top priority. We continue to consult closely with regulators around the world, airlines, and aircraft manufacturers to ensure passenger safety," it added.

On Sunday, a 737 MAX 8 aircraft operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed near Addis Ababa killing 157 people, including four Indians. This was the second such major crash in less than five months involving a 737 MAX 8. An aircraft operated by Lion Air crashed in Indonesia killing over 180 people.

The indigenously developed Pinaka guided rocket system was successfully test fired on Monday at Pokhran desert in Rajasthan, in a boost to artillery capability of the Army, the defense ministry said.

The weapon system is equipped with state-of-the-art guidance kit comprising of an advanced navigation and control system.

"The indigenously developed guided Pinaka, developed by DRDO, will significantly boost the capability of the artillery to make precision hits," the defence ministry said.

About the tests, it said the weapon systems impacted the intended targets with high precision and achieved desired accuracies.

After eight years of holding the position of the largest importer of weapons, India has been superseded by Saudi Arabia and dropped down to become the second largest importer of weapons in the world, a report said on Monday.

According to the annual report released by the Swedish-based think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), titled ‘Trends in International Arms Transfers-2018’, “India was the world’s second largest importer of major arms in 2014-18 and accounted for 9.5 per cent of the global total.”

The assessment was done for a five-year period (2014-2018). Last year (for the period 2013-17), India accounted for 13 per cent of all imports and was the world’s largest importer, The Tribune reported. 

SIRPI attributed to the gradual lowering of imports by India to delayed deliveries. “Imports decreased by 24 per cent between 2009-13 and 2014-18 (two five-year blocks), partly due to delays in deliveries of arms produced under licence from foreign suppliers, such as combat aircraft ordered from Russia in 2001 and submarines ordered from France in 2008,” the report said.

Scientists, using NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), have observed water molecules moving around the dayside of the Moon, the US space agency said, an advance that could help us learn about the accessibility of water that can be used by humans in future lunar missions.

Measurements from the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) instrument aboard the LRO of the sparse layer of molecules temporarily stuck to the surface helped characterise lunar hydration changes over the course of a day, according to the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Up until the last decade, scientists thought the Moon was arid, with any water existing mainly as pockets of ice in permanently shaded craters near the poles.

More recently, scientists have identified surface water in sparse populations of molecules bound to the lunar soil, or regolith, NASA said in a statement.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina, Monday jointly unveiled e-plaques for development projects in Bangladesh, through video conferencing. 

Both the leaders unveiled e-plaques for the supply of buses and trucks, the inauguration of 36 community clinics, 11 water treatment plants, and extension of National Knowledge Network to Bangladesh. 

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Modi said Ms. Hasina’s vision is the biggest inspiration for stronger connectivity between India and Bangladesh. He said today’s unveilings will boost not just transport connectivity, but also knowledge connectivity. 

Mr Modi said the National Knowledge Network will connect scholars and research institutes in Bangladesh, to India and the world. 

He said the buses and trucks would assist the efforts towards affordable public transportation; water treatment plants will help supply clean water; and community clinics will benefit about two lakh people, in Bangladesh. Mr Modi said these projects show that the India-Bangladesh relations are playing a key role in improving the quality of life of people. 

Google on Tuesday celebrated 30 years of World Wide Web (WWW) with a doodle. English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the WWW in 1989 and wrote the first web browser in 1990.

Working at CERN, Switzerland, Berners-Lee laid out the basic concepts of the WWW in a proposal which included ideas like HTML, URL and HTTP.

In a document titled "Information management: a proposal", he envisioned the use of hypertext to link documents.

The first web browser was released in 1991 -- first to the research institutions and then to the general public on the Internet in the same year.

The WWW is the primary tool billions of people today use to interact on the Internet.

In addition to text, web pages may contain images, video, audio and software components that are rendered in the user's web browser as coherent pages of multimedia content.

Before the WWW, remote computers communicated directly for the first time in 1969 and in 1983, TCP/IP standard was adopted.