India and the United States have agreed to strengthen economic co-operation and bilateral trade by ensuring greater collaboration amongst stakeholders, including government, businesses and entrepreneurs. 

A bilateral trade meeting was held between the two countries in New Delhi yesterday. Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu and US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross co-chaired the meeting. 

An official release said, both leaders appreciated the strong, robust and growing bilateral ties across the entire spectrum of trade and commerce. Both sides also expressed satisfaction over last year's progress, with bilateral trade in Goods and Services registering a growth of 12.6 per cent.

India and US also discussed various outstanding trade issues.

Krishna Das (39) works at the office of the station manager at Bhubaneswar railway station. With Cyclone Fani throwing train schedules off the track, Das has been helping passengers with information about train movement for the past couple of days.

Das is among many government employees working relentlessly to restore order in Bhubaneswar and other parts of Odisha hit by the cyclone.

Thousands of passengers stranded at Bhubaneswar station say uncertainty bothers them more than the delay in departures and arrivals. Das, a resident of Jharkhand, calmly fields hundreds of queries from such passengers.

He has every train’s timing, every cancellation and diversion at the tip of his tongue.

A young girl walks in and says that she remembers her train, but not her coach and seat numbers. She says she cannot board other coaches as they are oveloaded and the stressed passengers are shouting at “trespassers”. This time, Das has no solution.

If Das is engaged in spreading information and preventing confusion, Sumanta Bhoi (24) is working to restore power supply across the city.

A personnel of the Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force, Sumanta is on the frontline of efforts to disentangle power cables from branches of trees uprooted in the cyclone.

Clad in bright orange uniform, Sumanta’s task is tedious and intricate. He has to balance a 20-inch motorised blade at one end of a fifteen-foot-long pole and saw away at small twigs while trying his best not to slice the cable.

Britain's opposition Labour Party on Wednesday called for "real action" after parliament became the first in the world to vote to declare a climate emergency.

"Thanks to pressure from the Labour Party, the UK just became the first country to declare an environment and #climateemergency," the party said on its Twitter page.

State-owned telecom firm BSNL has become the first operator to start optical fibre-based high-speed broadband service in Pulwama with the launch of 'Bharat Fibre', the company said Thursday.

"This is the first such FTTH (fibre-to-the-home) service deployment in the (Kashmir) Valley under this unique revenue share model. Since the Bharat Fibre services are provided on the optical fibre right up to the customer premises, reliable and high-speed internet services are delivered to the customers," BSNL Director (Consumer Fixed Access) Vivek Banzal said in a statement.

He added that the services are generally not affected even during adverse weather conditions.

BSNL provides FTTH service with a monthly charge in the range of Rs 777-16,999 in over 160 telecom districts with a minimum speed of 2 megabit per second (mbps).

"We have plans to roll out this service in all the districts of Jammu and Kashmir. People looking for business opportunities to partner with BSNL should contact local BSNL authorities and our team shall explain the ease of network integration and revenue sharing process," Banzal said.

Former ISRO chairman A S Kiran Kumar was Thursday conferred with France's highest civilian award - Chevalier de l'Ordre national de la Lgion d'Honneur - for his contribution to India-France space cooperation.

According to an official statement, on behalf of the President of France, Ambassador of France to India, Alexandre Ziegler conferred Kumar with the highest civilian honour of France. 

World number one Bajrang Punia won the gold medal as he defeated Viktor Rassadin in the finals of men's 65kg freestyle in the Ali Aliyev wrestling tournament in Kaspiisk, Russia on Thursday.

Bajrang got the better of the local favourite 13-8 in his final bout after being down 0-5 at one stage.

The 25-year-old Indian grappler had won a gold medal last week at the Asian Championships in Xi'an, China.

External Affairs Ministry has said that India is prepared to deal with the impact of the end of waivers from US sanctions on import of oil from Iran. 

Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said at a media briefing in New Delhi on Thursday that there will be additional supplies from other major oil-producing countries based on the plan drawn up by the Ministry of Petroleum. 

He said the decision will be taken keeping in view the country's energy security, commercial consideration and economic interests.

In November, the US had granted a six-month waiver to India, China, Greece, Italy, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey and South Korea to continue importing oil from Iran. 

Extensive safety measures have been taken by the Government with zero casualty target.  

A massive exodus got underway in coastal Odisha as Lakhs of people left their homes in probably the largest evacuation ahead of a natural disaster in the country. 

Our correspondent reports that the Odisha government has moved more than 11 lakh people to safety and advised the public to remain indoors.
  
After crossing Odisha, cyclone Fani is likely to move towards West Bengal. It is also likely to impact parts of the northeast, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. 

There is a forecast of massive tides up to 1.5 metres and fishermen have been advised not to venture into the sea. Our Kolkata Correspondent reports that leaves of the Government employees in the coastal districts have cancelled. 

The extremely severe cyclonic storm Fani has made landfall near Puri of Odisha on Friday morning. 

Heavy rainfall has been recorded at many places over Ganjam, Gajapati, Khurda, Puri and  Jagatsinghpur districts last night.

India's largest bank State Bank of India has moved to a new interest rate regime on large savings account deposits as well as short-term loans.

In March, SBI had announced that it will link its interest rate on savings account with balance above 1 lakh and short-term loans like overdraft and cash credit facility to Reserve Bank of India's repo rate, effective 1 May 2019.

The interest rates on large SBI savings account deposits and interest rate on some short-term loans will automatically change as and when RBI changes its repo rate. This will help in better transmission of RBI's policy rates into the banking system.