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Blaming him of “impliedly” admitting to having “arranged” a letter from world football governing body FIFA and Asian Football Confederation (AFC) threatening a ban on India, a Committee of Administrators (CoA) appointed by the Supreme Court filed a contempt petition on Wednesday in the apex court against former Indian football chief and NCP leader Praful Patel.

The CoA has requested the court to bar Patel from “holding any football related posts forthwith, including and not limited to positions in FIFA and AFC”, where he is a member of the Executive Council and a Vice-President, respectively.

China calls US 'main instigator' of Russia-Ukraine crisis. "As the initiator and main instigator of the Ukrainian crisis, Washington, while imposing unprecedented comprehensive sanctions on Russia, continues to supply arms and military equipment to Ukraine," Zhang was quoted as saying. "Their ultimate goal is to exhaust and crush Russia with a protracted war and the cudgel of sanctions."

The ambassador`s reasoning closely followed one of Russia`s own justifications for its invasion of Ukraine, which has resulted in thousands of deaths and the devastation of entire cities, as well as driving more than a quarter of the population to flee their homes.

PM Narendra Modi on Wednesday marked world biofuel day by inaugurating a Rs 900 crore plant in Haryana for producing ethanol from farm waste using indigenously developed 2G (second generation) technology, a development he said would help Delhi and its neighbourhood breathe easy by reducing pollution from burning of farm stubble.

The plant, first of its kind in the country, built by state-run IndianOil at its Panipat refinery complex, puts India in league with the US and Brazil, the only countries that had 2G ethanol technology till now. “Instead of following short-cuts, our government is engaged in permanent solutions to the problems. A lot has been said about the problems of stubble burning over the years. But those with a short-cut mentality could not solve it,” the PM said.

India on Tuesday hit out China, Pakistan at the United Nations Security Council meet on terrorism, calling out both on several counts from "double standards" to "hypocrisy" over the issue. Pointing out to the "practice of placing holds and blocks on listing requests without giving any justification", India's Ambassador to UN, Ruchira Kamboj, said, "It is most regrettable that genuine and evidence-based listing proposals pertaining to some of the most notorious terrorists in the world are being placed on hold." 

Earlier this year, China had put a hold on the UN listing of Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba's 2nd command Abdul Rehman Makki. China has put a technical hold on Makki that will last for six months. In the past too, Beijing had put a hold on listing of Maulana Masood Azhar of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and it took a decade for New Delhi to list him as a UN listed terrorist.

Delhi on Tuesday recorded seven deaths from Covid-19 even as the positivity rate dropped to 15.41 per cent from the previous day's 17.85 per cent. A total of 2495 people tested positive according to data released by the health department.

With the fresh infections and fatalities, Delhi's caseload increased to 19,73,394 and the death count to 26343. The total active cases now stand at 8506 Covid patients.

A total of 16187 samples were tested in the city in the last 24 hours.