Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, while launching the statewide Jan Suraksha Santrupti Abhiyan on Tuesday, said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has consistently placed the common citizen at the heart of all welfare initiatives.

According to the Gujarat CMO, the government is committed to ensuring that no eligible individual is left out of the benefits of social security schemes under the Prime Minister's leadership.

Patel further stressed that the administration is actively identifying and reaching out to underserved beneficiaries at their doorsteps to extend the full range of socio-economic entitlements.

Former India cricketer and head coach Ravi Shastri was among 11 sportspersons who were honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Sports Journalists Association of Mumbai here on Wednesday.

The others included former India women's cricketer Shubhangi Kulkarni, three-time Amateur World Champion in English billiards Michael Ferreira, Niraj Bajaj (table tennis), GM Pravin Thipsay (chess), shooters Anjali Bhagwat, Suma Shirur and Deepali Deshpande.

Hockey Olympians Mervyn Fernandes and Joaquim Carvalho as well as former national badminton champion and national team captain Sanjay Sharma were also honoured with the award.

The Quad grouping has launched an ambitious initiative to ensure a stable supply of critical minerals under a broader goal to strengthen economic security amid concerns over China's coercive tactics, including price manipulation and restrictions on the export of the vital resources.

The decision on rolling out the "Quad Critical Minerals Initiative" was announced after a meeting of foreign ministers of the member nations of the grouping in the US capital on Tuesday.

Critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and graphite are considered vital for high-end technology products, including electric vehicles (EVs), drones, and battery storage. China has been a dominant player

Jal Shakti Minister CR Patil today inaugurated a Unified Inundation Forecasting System C-FLOOD in New Delhi. This is a web-based platform that provides two-days advance inundation forecasts up to village level. The platform will act as a unified system integrating flood modeling outputs from national and regional agencies, offering a comprehensive decision-support tool for disaster management authorities. At present, the system covers the Mahanadi, Godavari, and Tapi river basins.

The Minister directed the concerned agencies to widely popularize the C-FLOOD portal to enhance public awareness and preparedness, and to prepare a comprehensive plan for inundation studies covering all river basins. The project marks a transformative step towards strengthening India’s flood management and disaster response framework. The initiative, executed under the National Supercomputing Mission jointly steered by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Department of Science and Technology.

In a groundbreaking step towards food self-sufficiency, Ghana has launched a climate-resilient wheat initiative in collaboration with India’s Arima Farms and CSIR-Crops Research Institute. With wheat imports crossing $400 million annually, this project aims to cut dependency and boost local farming. Arima Farms MD, Saalai Manikam, highlighted how South-South cooperation is driving agricultural innovation. She also shared how many Ghanaians admire and follow Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. A new chapter in India-Ghana partnership is being sown.

Strengthening India-Sri Lanka cultural and educational ties, General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) in Colombo has launched a Hindi Language Learning Programme in partnership with the Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre (SVCC), the cultural arm of the High Commission of India.

The programme was jointly inaugurated by Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha and KDU Vice Chancellor Rear Admiral HGU Dammika Kumara in the presence of senior military officials, faculty, and students.

High Commissioner Jha highlighted that Hindi, spoken by over 600 million people globally, provides access to India’s literature, cinema, media, and professional opportunities. The Vice Chancellor emphasised the role of Bollywood and Hindi music in deepening cultural bonds between the two countries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Thursday conferred with Ghana’s national honour, The Officer of the Order of the Star of Ghana, in recognition of his distinguished statesmanship and influential global leadership.

The prestigious award was presented by President John Dramani Mahama during PM Modi's visit to the West African nation.

Expressing gratitude, PM Modi posted on X, "Honoured to be conferred with ‘The Officer of the Order of the Star of Ghana’.” In his acceptance speech, the prime minister said the honour was not just a personal achievement but one that he accepted on behalf of the 140 crore people of India.

A team of students from the Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), a unit of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), which took part in the International Rocket Engineering Competition 2025 held in Midland, Texas, secured second place in the SDL Payload Challenge category.

The team, ‘thrustMIT’, took part in the competition from June 9 to June 14 and won a cash award of $750. The MIT team competed with 138 teams, which passed the Flight Safety Review (FSR) test, a MAHE release said on Monday.

Participating in the highly competitive 30K COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) launching category, the team’s rocket ‘Vayu Vega’ successfully completed all safety protocols during the first two days of competition. The culmination of the efforts came on June 12 when ‘Vayu Vega’ was launched to the desired altitude and executed a flawless landing using parachute deployment systems.

The Union Cabinet approved a Research and Development fund for research and innovation in the private sector. The Research, Development and Innovation scheme with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore is intended to encourage the private sector to scale up research, development and innovation in sunrise domains and in other sectors whose indigenization is important for strategic reasons or for economic security or for Atmanirbharta or in public interest, according to government sources.

Within sunrise sectors, the scheme will focus on energy-security, climate-action, deep-tech, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and digital economy.

This corpus of rupees one lakh crore will be established as a fifty-year interest free loan

Scheme will focus on funding projects at higher Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs).

The Union Cabinet has approved the construction of a four-lane highway along the Paramakudi - Ramanathapuram Section of National Highway-87 (NH-87) in Tamil Nadu.

The project, with a total capital outlay of ₹1,853.16 crore, was approved on Tuesday, 1 July.

Currently, connectivity between Madurai, Paramakudi, Ramanathapuram, Mandapam, Rameshwaram, and Dhanushkodi relies on a two-lane stretch of NH-87 and associated State Highways, which experience significant traffic congestion.