NEWS

New Delhi: Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) has pitched for inclusion of natural gas under GST so as to help producers contain cost and aid in moving towards a gas-based economy.

In letter to Finance Minister ArunJaitley, industry body Ficci has said that keeping natural gas out of the Goods and Services Tax is causing hardships and having adverse impact on the producers as it is increasing their costs.

Currently, crude oil, petrol, diesel, jet fuel or aviation turbine fuel (ATF) and natural gas are not included in GST, which kicked in from July 1.

New Delhi: The Indian Army needs futuristic armoured vehicles like main-battle tanks, with requisite firepower and mobility, which can operate both on the plains of the western front with Pakistan as well as the mountainous terrain of the northern border with China.

Battlefields of the future will be "complex" and warfare "hybrid" in nature, and the Army needs to systematically modernize its combat capabilities to tackle all such scenarios, said General BipinRawat, speaking at a seminar on 'Future Armoured Vehicles India 2017'.

While fighting battles in the conventional domains, the sub-conventional domain also "cannot be overlooked", as also the use of space and cyberspace. "There will be information warfare," Gen Rawat said.

New Delhi: Zimbabwean military officers have asserted that they are  not launching a coup but are "targeting criminals around" President Robert Mugabe.

"It is not a military takeover of government," said one general reading a statement live on state TV. 

"We wish to assure the nation that his excellency the president... and his family are safe and sound and their security is guaranteed”, he said.

"We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes... As soon as we have accomplished our mission we expect that the situation will return to normalcy," he added.

New Delhi: National Highways in India will shortly get star ratings on a scale of zero to five based on a survey of their safety parameters.

The results of one such pilot survey will be out for Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Chennai corridors of Golden Quadrilateral in the next few months. The survey is being carried out more than a decade after the country's fast ever mega highway programme was completed.

International Road Assessment Programme (IRAP) is carrying out the survey funded by World Bank and Bloomberg Philanthrophies.