This is the complete summary of The Hindu, important from the perspective of government exams like UPSC CSE, CDS, and others. You can make your own notes from it. The idea is to help you steer through The Hindu newspaper in under 5 minutes through this summary. Use it as a base to prepare your current affairs notes.
- Amid the surging second wave of COVID-19 infections across the country, the States are grappling with a vaccine shortage, with several running vaccination centres below capacity and demanding that the Centre give them stocks to last at least seven days.
- The Supreme Court on Friday said people are free to choose their religion, even as it lashed out at a “very, very harmful kind” of “public interest” petition claiming there is mass religious conversion happening “by hook or by crook” across the country. The Bench led by Justice Rohinton F. Nariman, said people have a right under the Constitution to profess, practise and propagate religion. The fundamental right under Article 25 of the Constitution allows to freely profess, practise and propagate religion, subject to public order, morality and health.
- India said on Friday it has protested the U.S. decision to conduct a patrol in the Indian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the western Indian Ocean, rejecting the U.S.’s claim that its domestic maritime law was in violation of international law. In a rare and unusual public statement, the U.S. Navy announced that its ship, USS John Paul Jones, had carried out Freedom of Navigation Operation (FONOP) in the Indian EEZ, adding that its operations had “challenged” what the U.S. called India’s “excessive maritime claims”. This poses a reality check to the US intentions in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere. The U.S. similarly carries out FONOPs against several other countries including its allies and partners.
- Farmer unions have advanced the 24-hour blockade of the 135-km-long Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway by three hours to start at 8 a.m. on Saturday. This comes on the sides of the supreme court statement that the protests must not lead to closure of roads or infrastructure of public utility.
- The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has pulled up the Haryana government and Gurugram civic bodies over the lack of remedial action taken pertaining to the legacy waste which is dumped at the Bandhwari landfill site. Legacy wastes are the wastes that have been collected and kept for years at some barren land or a place dedicated for Landfill.
- The 11th round of the Corps Commander talks are under way between India and China to work out an agreement for the second phase of disengagement in Eastern Ladakh. Talks were still on at the time of going to print.
- Supreme Court judge and chairperson of its e-committee, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, on Friday said live-streaming of court proceedings was on the brink of becoming a reality.
- China and Pakistan have pledged to back each other’s “core and major interests” in the United Nations after holding bilateral consultations on UN affairs. China in 2019 and 2020 raised the Kashmir issue at the UNSC on at least three occasions, calling for discussions in the wake of India’s dilution of Article 370, reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir and revocation of special status. Pakistan, meanwhile, has lobbied for China’s support amid increasing criticism from western countries over Xinjiang. In October, Pakistan also made a joint statement on behalf of 55 countries at the UN “opposing interference in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of Hong Kong.”
- Bhutan and China have agreed to set up the next round of much-delayed boundary talks between them “as soon as possible” and discussed a roadmap for expediting the boundary resolution, a joint release of the 10th Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on the Bhutan-China Boundary held in Kunming announced on Friday. The upcoming talks, the 25th round of the boundary talks mechanism, will be the first since the Doklam standoff in 2017, and the first since China made new claims on Bhutan’s eastern boundary bordering Arunachal Pradesh in June 2020.
- The Renewables arm of Larsen & Toubro’s Power Transmission and Distribution Business has bagged an order to set up Sudair Solar PV project of 1.5 GW in the Riyadh province of Saudi Arabia.
