• India, Japan and the United States participated in the ninth trilateral meeting in New Delhi on Wednesday. The meeting focused on connectivity, counter-terrorism and other regional and global issues, a joint press release issued after the talks informed.

• “The officials reviewed the outcomes of the Trilateral Infrastructure Working Group that met in Washington in February and agreed to continue to collaborate to promote increased connectivity in the Indo-Pacific,” the press release stated.

• A Memorandum of Undertaking (MoU) tailor-made to suit the requirements of serving soldiers, pensioners and families, was signed between the Indian Army and HDFC Bank on the defence salary package on Tuesday.

• The first MoU between HDFC Bank and the Indian Army was signed in 2011 and was renewed on 13th March 2015. The signing in ceremony was chaired by the Director General (MP&PS), Lt Gen S K Saini and was attended by the top dignitaries of HDFC Bank headed by Smita Bhagat, Head Government Business and Branch Banking.

The opening ceremony of the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games at Carrara Stadium is underway as 4,000 performers, including the Bangarra Dance Theatre and Ricki-Lee Coulter, put on a display for 35,000 spectators.

• Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the farthest individual star ever seen - an enormous blue stellar body nicknamed Icarus located over halfway across the universe.

• The star, harboured in a very distant spiral galaxy, is so far away that its light has taken nine billion years to reach Earth. It appears to us as it did when the universe was about 30 per cent of its current age.

• Normally, the star would be too faint to view, even with the world's largest telescopes.

• NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Science (IISC) in Bengaluru was adjudged the overall best institution in the country by the Human Resource Development Ministry's national ranking framework (NIRF).

• Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar, while announcing the rankings at an event in the Vigyan Bhavan, said the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) has been adjudged the best engineering college and the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) the best management institution.

• State television TRT showed workers already starting work on the ground as fireworks went off to mark the event.

• Once completed the power station will provide 10 percent of the electricity needs of Turkey, which has few energy resources of its own. 
  

• The first stage is due to come online in 2023, the 100th anniversary of modern Turkey's founding, and be completed entirely in 2026.

•  In line with the Digital IndiaBSE -4.44 % initiative, the government has developed three online portals to make it easier to export farm products from India and reduce transaction costs.

• The digital platforms, developed by the Export Inspection Council, have integrated the entire export food chain by linking primary production, chain catch, aquaculture pond, dairy farms and apiaries. 
  
  
  

•  Former Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni and billiards champion Pankaj Advani today received Padma Bhushan Award from President Ram Nath Kovind. Weightlifter Saikhom Mirabai Chanu and former Asian Games gold medallist tennis player Somdev Devvarman were honoured with the Padma Shri award at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

• Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh -- who had last night hosted a dinner for the 41 awardees who were honoured today -- and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan were also present at the ceremony. 

• China's Tiangong-1 space station fell to Earth above the southern Pacific Ocean today (April 1) at 8:16 p.m. EDT (0016 GMT on April 2).

• It's almost crash time for China's falling space station Tiangong-1. As school bus-sized space station began what should be its last day in orbit today (April 1), experts weighed in on the possibilities of space debris – and whether this situation should have happened in the first place.

• Chinese space officials lost contact with the 9.4-ton (8.5-metric ton) station in 2016 after five successful years of operations, including two visits by Chinese crews of astronauts. China did not make it clear if they cut off contact with the station deliberately, or if they lost telemetry with Tiangong-1 due to a technical issue. Whatever the cause, the result was the same: Tiangong-1 began an inevitable descent into Earth's atmosphere

• Scientists from Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are still trying to find out why they lost contact with the communication satellite GSAT-6A on Saturday after its launch on Thursday.

• Power failure is the most likely cause, according to officials grappling with the second setback in just over half a year.