A look at the headlines right now:

  1. Samajwadi Party deals blow to BJP in bye-elections– wins Phulpur, Gorakhpur: The Rashtriya Janata Dal retained the Jehanabad seat as well as Araria Lok Sabha seat in Bihar.
  2. RBI has ‘very limited authority’ over state-run banks, says Urjit Patel: The central bank chief said it was infeasible for the regulator to be in every nook and corner of the banking activity to avoid frauds.  
  3. Supreme Court dismisses all intervention applications in Ayodhya dispute: The bench also rejected 32 pleas urging to put the disputed land to ‘secular use’.  
  4. VHP chief Pravin Togadia writes to Modi, seeks to meet him for ‘heart-to-heart discussion’: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad claimed people were disappointed with the government as the promise of a ‘Hindu Bharat’ had not been fulfilled.  
  5. After nerve agent attack on former spy, Theresa May orders 23 Russian diplomats to leave the United Kingdom: This is the biggest expulsion in three decades, the prime minister said.  
  6. Kerala HC stays order of a CBI inquiry into Youth Congress worker’s murder in Kannur: The state government had appealed against the single bench’s order of an investigation by the central agency.  
  7. Maran brothers, five others discharged by CBI court in illegal BSNL telephone exchange case: The CBI said it will challenge the order in the High Court.  
  8. India’s GDP will grow at 7.3% in 2018-’19, says World Bank: A report by the bank said the country would have to boost private investments and exports if it wanted to sustain higher rates of growth.
  9. UP topped list of states with most number of communal incidents in 2017, Centre tells Lok Sabha: In 2016 too, the state had recorded the highest number of such incidents.  
  10. British physicist Stephen Hawking dies at 76: The physicist’s insights reshaped modern cosmology.