THE SPOKESPERSON

  India is set to export its indigenously developed Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers (MBRL) for the first time. Pinaka has been developed by the Defense Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and manufactured by indigenous private sector firms. India is set to export one of its prized possessions, the “Pinaka” missile system, to conflict-ridden Armenia, just days after recording the highest-ever defense export that swelled by a staggering 334% over the last five years.As Armenia grapples with managing a surge in violence with Azerbaijan in a new flare-up of tensions, India has decided to export missiles, rockets, and ammunition, including indigenous Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers, Economic Times reported. The system figured in India’s export list published in February 2021. The Ministry of Defense authorized the export of weapons via a government-to-government channel, under which the two countries signed agreements to deliver weapons and ammunition to Armenia...

  The Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) successfully conducted two test flights of the Very-Short Range Air Defence System (VSHORADS) missile on Tuesday from a ground-based portable launcher at the Integrated Test Range, Chandipur, off the coast of Odisha. As per DRDO, VSHORADS is an indigenously designed and developed Man Portable Air Defence System (MANPAD). It was created by the Research Centre Imarat (RCI), Hyderabad, in collaboration with other DRDO laboratories and Indian Industry Partners. The VSHORADS incorporates a number of novel technologies, including a miniaturised Reaction Control System and integrated avionics, which have been successfully tested, reported news agency ANI.  A dual thrust solid motor propels the missile, which is designed to counter low-altitude aerial threats at short ranges.In the multilayered air defence network, VSHORAD is the soldier's last line of defence against enemy combat aircraft and helicopters.  These ...

  In a big win for security forces, two terrorists have been killed in an encounter on Wednesday in Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar, police said. Both the terrorists were affiliated with the terror outfit Ansar Gazwatul Hindu. Based on specific inputs, security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Dangerpora area under the Nowgam police station area, a police official said. During the operation, terrorists opened fire. The security forces retaliated, triggering an encounter.They were involved in a recent terror attack on an outside labourer namely Muneer ul Islam from West Bengal on September 2, 2022, in Pulwama," ADGP Kashmir Vijay Kumar said. A migrant worker was shot at outside his rented accommodation in the Newa village. He was rushed to the hospital where his condition was said to be stable.Incriminating materials, arms and ammunition including one AK series rifle, two pistols and one grenade were recovered from the site of the encounter. "In this ...

  Pakistani Health authorities have sought the government's permission to procure around 7.1 million mosquito nets from India due to a surge in the vector borne diseases in the wake of the devastating floods in several parts of the country, a media report said on Thursday. The development came after a deadly malaria onslaught wreaked relentless havoc in flood-affected regions of the country, where hundreds of cases of deadly 'Plasmodium falciparum' species of the disease are being reported on a daily basis, The News International reported. "The National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHS, R&C) has sought the permission of the Ministry of Commerce to procure around 7.1 million mosquito nets from India," an official of the NHS, R&C was quoted as saying in the report. "Actually, the Global Fund, which is the major donor for the National Malaria Control Programme, has offered to provide funds for the procurement of mosquito nets fr...

  As its name suggests, the NAMICA (Nag Missile Carrier)) is a tracked, amphibious, armored ‘missile-carrier’ vehicle based on the BMP chassis. The new prototype was developed by the Ordnance Factory Medak in conjunction with DRDL, Hyderabad, and has an import substitution of Rs. 260 cr. In the first phase, and expected to rise up to Rs.3000 Cr.First revealed in 2008, the Nag Missile and its Carrier share parallel development processes. The earlier versions of the Nag missile had the uncooled LWIR sensors which failed to correctly identify their targets’ heat signature during testing in the hot desert conditions of Rajasthan. According to sources, only one of the four missiles fired during trials in July 2012 had hit the target. NAMICA Undaunted by the failures of the early NAMICA prototypes, the Defense Research & Development Organization (DRDO) went on to produce the improvised version of the platform called the NAMICA-2, housing not one but two CoMPASS Electro-Optica...

  An ISI agent who was the biggest supplier of fake currencies in India was shot dead in Nepal's Kathmandu on September 19. A man who worked as an agent of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was shot dead outside his hideout in Nepal’s Kathmandu on September 19. Intel agencies told India Today that he was the biggest supplier of ISI's counterfeit notes in India. The incident was caught on camera and India Today got access to the CCTV footage where unidentified assailants shot the ISI agent. Viewer discretion is advised for the following video. The video includes instances of violence.The ISI agent has been identified as Laal Mohammad (55) alias Mohammad Darji. At the behest of the ISI, Lal Mohammad used to get fake Indian currency from Pakistan and Bangladesh to Nepal and then supply it to India from there. According to the authorities, Laal Mohammad also assisted the ISI with logistics support and had links to underworld gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s D-gang. He al...

  The government has amended the  Foreign Trade Policy  to allow international trade invoicing, payment and settlement in the Indian rupee, activating the mechanism announced by the  Reserve Bank of India  ( RBI ) to facilitate trade in the domestic currency. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry notified the changes to the policy. The central bank allowed authorised banks in India to open special rupee Vostro accounts of correspondent banks of any partner trading country to facilitate trade in the Indian currency. Under the arrangement, Indian importers will make payment in rupees into the special Vostro account of the partner country bank against the invoices for the supply of goods or services from the overseas seller or supplier, the trade policy said.Indian exporters undertaking exports of goods and services through this mechanism shall be paid the export proceeds in Indian Rupees from the balanc...

Emirates Mars Mission "Science Lead" Hessa Al Matroushi has called ISRO an "important voice among the world’s younger space nations". This is the third set of unique observations Hope has made of Mars’ aurora – we had previously made planetary scale observations of the discrete nightside aurora, which map to the planet’s unique crustal magnetosphere, as well as a mysterious and huge auroral effect called the sinuous discrete aurora, which stretches almost halfway across the planet. All of these new phenomena give us insights into the interaction between the Martian atmosphere and the solar wind, which are critical to our understanding of how Mars’ atmosphere has been lost – at one time, we believe Mars had a rich atmosphere capable of supporting life, with running water on the planet’s surface. How this transformed into today’s dead planet is one of the questions that Hope has set out to better understand. The data from MAVEN gave us context for our observat...

  It's bulletproof buses, snipers on the rooftops and guards with machine guns as the England cricket team return to Pakistan for the first time in 17 YEARS with presidential-level security. An England team arrived on Pakistan soil for the first time in 17 years on Thursday bearing gifts but wrapped in presidential-level security. Within a couple of hours of a 20-man squad landing in Karachi for a seven-match Twenty20 series, it was announced that the players had donated a five-figure sum to the country's official flood fund and that their ECB bosses were doubling it.  Addressing a media conference that attracted more than 60 local reporters and two dozen television cameras, England captain Jos Buttler explained they wanted to play a 'small part' with their relief money, adding: 'We hope that us being here can uplift things a little bit and raise people's spirits by seeing us play cricket.  Sport has a great power to unite people.'England last played ...

  According to   reports , the purchase of Russian oil at a discounted price has benefited India to the tune of 35,000 crores. This comes after India began purchasing Russian crude at a discount since the commencement of the Russia-Ukraine war. After the Ukraine War forced Moscow’s usual buyers to forsake large quantities of oil, forcing Russian oil companies to offer significant discounts to new buyers, India started looking for cheap Russian oil. India chose to buy oil from Russia in defiance of intense pressure from Western countries. In July, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as India’s second-largest oil supplier as a result of its purchases of crude, a report in the Times of India states. However, the latter quickly reclaimed its former position, and now Russia is the third-largest oil supplier, according to trade figures cited by  Reuters . India is now the second largest buyer of Russian oil after China.Even Indian foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, backed the mo...

World leaders will be back in New York this week as they address the world at the 77th session of the   UN General Assembly . The UN’s 193-member states will be provided with a platform and 15 to 20 minutes to address the international community.  The United Nations General Assembly.   The annual meeting will be held at the UN’s headquarters in New York and top officials will discuss the yearly agenda and global issues. The war in Ukraine is expected to dominate discussions, along with the rising cost of living globally and the energy crisis, both of which have been exacerbated by the war. The UN’s 193-member states will be provided with a platform and 15 to 20 minutes to address the international community. As is customary, Brazil's leader will make the famous first address on Tuesday, September 20 to begin the proceedings. Brazil will be followed by the US's Joe Biden giving his second address as president. After that will be a quick succession of world leaders ...

 The main features of INS Arihant, India's first indigenous nuclear submarine that has been inducted in the Indian Navy. * Arihant is a 6,000 tonne nuclear propelled submarine. * It is a SSBN (ship submersible ballistic, nuclear submarine), or a submarine that can carry ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.Its design is based on the Russian Akula-1 class submarines and its 83mw pressurised water reactor has been built with significant Russian assistance. * On July 26, 2009, on Vijay Diwas, the anniversary day of Kargil War victory, Arihant was launched into the water at the ship-building centre in Visakhapatnam. * In 2013, the nuclear reactor of the submarine went 'critical'. * The sea trials started in December 2014. * It was declared fit for operations in February 2016, and quietly inducted in the Indian Navy later. * It is part of Indian Navy's secretive Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) project, under the supervision the Prime Minister's Office and in...

  The discussion over India’s oil purchases from Iran has been revived four years after New Delhi decided to “zero out” or cancel its oil imports of Iranian sweet crude under the threat of U.S. sanctions. However, soaring oil prices and the U.S.’s current focus on sanctions against Russia may trigger a rethink, analysts have suggested. When asked, an Iranian official said India’s decision to buy oil was a purely sovereign decision, but added that “illegal, unilateral sanctions” should not weigh with India. The United States foreign military sales worth $450 million for the upgrade of the F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan were part of the country's long-standing policy, the US Department of States said on Monday, downplaying the funding that attracted India's strong objections. The department stressed the jets after the proposed upgrades will support Pakistan's "sustained action against all terrorist groups". India protested the decision to sell spares to Paki...

  India has designed a top secret weapon, KALI, which will be an answer to any uninvited missile aimed to disturb the peace of India. KALI stands for Kilo Ampere Linear Injector. The weapon is designed so that it can be used to destroy missiles and aircrafts through soft-kill. It has been developed by the Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). The project was initially started for industrial purposes but its various abilities helped in making it a powerful weapon.Facts you should definitely know about the weapon: The Kali project was first initiated by the then Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Dr. R. Chidambaram in the year 1985 Work on the project began in 1989 The project was initially developed for industrial applications. Its use as a defence weapon was later suggested by the designers of the project The KALI series which are KALI 80, KALI 200, KALI 1000, KALI 5000 and KALI 10000 are described a...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the Shanghai cooperation organisation (SCO) summit in Samarkand on Friday.  Uzbekistan   is the current chair of SCO 2022 whereas India will be the next chair of the SCO. Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev welcomed PM Modi to the Congress Centre in Samarkand for the 22nd SCO summit. Russian President  Vladimir Putin   congratulated India for assuming the presidency for next year. Apart from the Russian President, Chinese President Xi Jinping also congratulated India for the SCO presidency in 2023 during the meeting of the expanded circle of the heads of SCO.Notably, this is the first in-person SCO summit after the Covid pandemic hit the world. The last in-person SCO heads of state summit was held in Bishkek in June 2019. The SCO currently comprises eight member states (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajik...

  Pakistan  PM  Shehbaz Sharif  has presented a bleak picture of the country's dwindling economy, regretting that even friendly countries had started looking at Pakistan as one that was always begging for money.  "Today, when we go to any friendly country or make a phone call, they think that we have come [to them] to beg for money," Dawn news quoted the prime minister as saying in an address to a lawyers' convention on Wednesday. Sharif  said even small economies have surpassed Pakistan, "and we have been wandering for the past 75 years carrying a begging bowl".According to the prime minister, the country's economy was facing a "challenging situation" even before the floods, whi-ch had made it more "complicated".A third of the country is submerged in water and one in every seven persons is badly affected by the floods that have led to an estimated USD 12 billion in losses that have left about 78,000 square kilometres (21 millio...

  New Delhi:  For IIT-Roorkee research scholar Prateek Tripathi, it was a proud moment when his internship research at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) required him to use lunar data of Chandrayaan-1. The 28-year-old, who is a fifth-year doctoral student of Geomatics Engineering Group in the Civil Engineering Department, was selected for NASA’s 10-week summer internship and got an opportunity to work on the first crewed moon landing mission of the Artemis programme and the first crewed flight of the Starship Human Landing System (HLS) Artemis 3.The internship, starting from 31 May to 5 August, is funded by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and accepted five students. “It was such a moment of pride… We used data on the moon’s mineralogy collected by a device on the Chandrayaan-1 called the ‘moon mineralogy mapper’. Data analysed and used from this will help astronauts from the Artemis 3 to decide where to land on the moon,” Tripath...

The Indian Railways will introduce its first hydrogen-powered train by December 2023, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday.  "By end of next year, we would have our first hydrogen train, designed in India," Vaishnaw said. He was speaking at a meeting of the Apex Monitoring Authority of the National Industrial Corridor Development and Implementation Trust. The minister did not give any further details on the hydrogen-powered trains which are part of Indian Railways' target to achieve net-zero carbon emission by 2030. In August 2021, Indian Railways had invited bids to convert two diesel-powered trains, to be followed by two hybrid or diesel-electric trains, into hydrogen-powered trains, which would operate on the 89-km Sonipat-Jind section of the Northern Railway. Railways had said the project is expected to lead to savings of 23 million rupees annually. Media reports also said that the Railways has finalised plans to introduce hydrogen fuel cell-based...