Sex, violence, song or dance -- the monsoon serves multiple purposes in Hindi movies. With the onset of the rains, it's the perfect occasion to highlight all the cool, crazy reasons Bollywood uses it as an excuse for.

Naidu claimed that he never saw such a situation like how it was when Reddy, the YSRCP chief, ruled during the past five years.

The IMD issued a 'red alert' for Pune district and asked people to take precautions.

Debutant Ankita Bhakat left behind seasoned campaigners like Deepika Kumar to emerge as the best-placed Indian archer at 11th in the women's individual recurve qualification.

Rediff.com spoke to registered investment advisors to figure out how best the extra Rs 17,500 saved ever year can be invested to create a decent corpus in the years ahead. This is what they said.

The flight test fully met all the trial objectives validating complete network centric warfare weapon system, the defence ministry said.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget proposals lay out a comprehensive road map for transforming India into a developed nation, focusing on key priorities that aim to generate ample opportunities for all citizens in "Viksit Bharat". It sets the stage for sustained economic growth, social development, and technological advancement.

There are a number of steps taken that will leave more money in the hands of the taxpayers.
These include the reduction in tax rates under the new tax regime, increase in standard deduction, allowing tax collected at source to be adjusted against tax deducted at source from salaries, notes Harsh Roongta.

The total allocation to the defence sector is 12.9 per cent of the total budget of the government of India for the financial year 2024-25.

An exasperated Justice Chandrachud asserted he will not allow any lawyer to "dictate" the procedure of the court.

The Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies on Tuesday welcomed the Union Budget and said it focussed on youth, farmers, women, and has 'substantial allocations' for Maharashtra, but the opposition slammed the annual financial statement, claiming it neglected the western state and only seeks to please the saffron outfit's partners in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.

The government proposes to cut custom duties on Trastuzumab Deruxtecan, Osimertinib and Durvalumab from 10 per cent to nil.

'I think of that young baby, still in her diapers, balancing with her arms held up by her mother, a Tamil woman wearing a salwar kameez and a dupatta, seated on a stoop,' recalls Aseem Chhabra.

The Secret Service has acknowledged it denied some requests by Trump's campaign for increased security at his events in the years before the assassination attempt.

The health department said two of the persons on the contact list are from Palakkad, while four are from Thiruvananthapuram.

While most of his rivals prepared for the 50 kilometre race walk at the 2019 Doha world championships by warming up in full track suits in the 32 degrees Celsius heat, Evan Dunfee did the polar opposite.

India's GDP is likely to grow at 6.5 to 7 per cent in the current fiscal year amid global challenges which may impact exports, said Economic Survey 2023-24 tabled in Parliament on Monday. The growth projected for 2024-25 is lower than the economic growth rate of 8.2 per cent estimated for the previous financial year. The Reserve Bank has projected the GDP growth for the fiscal year ending March 2025 at 7.2 per cent.

Capital markets are becoming more prominent in India's growth story, with an expanding share in capital formation and investment landscape on the back of technology, innovation and digitisation, according to the Economic Survey 2023-24 tabled in Parliament on Monday. Further, Indian markets are resilient to global geo-political and economic shocks, it added. "Despite heightened geo-political risks, rising interest rates and volatile commodity prices, Indian capital markets have been one of the best performing among emerging markets in FY24," the Economic Survey said.

The outlook for India's financial sector appears bright, but it needs to brace for likely vulnerabilities, said Economic Survey 2023-24 tabled in Parliament on Monday. The Indian financial sector is at a "turnpike moment", it said, adding that the dominance of banking support to credit is being reduced, and the role of capital markets is rising. For a country that aspires to be a developed nation by 2047, this is a long-awaited and welcome development, it said.

The short-term inflation outlook for India is benign, and the expectation of a normal monsoon and moderating global prices of key imported items give credence to the projections made by the RBI and IMF, the Economic Survey said on Monday. However, to ensure long-term policy stability, the Survey 2023-24 suggested making focused efforts to increase the production of major oilseeds, expanding the area under pulses, and assess the progress in developing modern storage facilities for specific crops.

The production linked incentive scheme (PLI) for automobile and auto components has so far attracted a proposed investment of Rs 67,690 crore, said Economic Survey 2023-24 tabled in Parliament on Monday. A capital of Rs 14,043 crore has been invested till end-March 2024, it stated. Applicants have proposed employment generation of 1.48 lakh, against which 28,884 of jobs have been generated till March 31, 2024, the Economic Surevy 2023-24 stated.

Now both men have made history for their country, leaving a permanent mark on the history books.

The fire on a merchant vessel off the Karwar coast has been brought under control after more than 24 hours but one of the ship's 21 crew members was missing, the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) said on Saturday.

The country's largest private lender HDFC Bank on Saturday reported a 6.51 per cent decline in its consolidated net profit to Rs 16,474.85 crore in the April-June quarter compared to the previous January-March quarter. The city-headquartered lender, which merged its mortgage major parent HDFC into itself in July last year, had reported a net profit of Rs 17,622.38 crore in the March quarter. On a standalone basis, the net profit declined to Rs 16,174.75 crore in April-June 2024-25 from Rs 16,511.85 crore in January-March 2023-24.

Private sector lender Yes Bank on Saturday reported a 46.7 per cent growth in net profit to Rs 502 crore for the June 2024 quarter, helped by a reduction in provisions. The city-headquartered bank's core net interest income rose 12.2 per cent to Rs 2,000 crore. Its net interest margin stayed flat at 2.4 per cent.

In India, 11.9 lakh excess deaths occurred in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, 17 per cent higher compared to 2019, an international study has found.

Please get up and walk for five minutes every 1 to 2 hours, advises rediffGURU Nidhi Gupta.

The decline in life expectancy was higher among young individuals and those aged 50 to 60.

Rafael Nadal last appeared in a semi-final at Wimbledon in 2022.

The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has demonstrated the integration of multiple forces in domains of air, land, sea, cyber, information and space, and how they are "united" to achieve the goal, Vice Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal A P Singh, said on Friday.

The consistently heavy downpour of films, shows, events, videos and whatnot is causing economic disruption.

Rafael Nadal trailed in the second set before overcoming No. 5 seed Cameron Norrie of Great Britain.

The gunfight, lasting more than an hour, took place at Jaddan Bata village in the Kastigarh area around 2 am when the terrorists opened fire on a temporary camp established in a government school for the ongoing search operation, they said.

An article on 'State of the Economy' in the monthly Bulletin also said the improvement in the outlook for agriculture and the revival of rural spending have turned out to be the bright spots in the evolution of demand conditions. Consumer price inflation ticked up in June 2024 after three consecutive months of moderation as a broad flare-up in vegetable prices halted the overall disinflation that had been underway, it said.

As milk prices rise, analysts have an optimistic view on dairy stocks such as Heritage Foods and Dodla Dairy, hoping the companies' margins will grow in the near to medium term. From a long-term perspective, they believe that a growing population, increasing disposable income and health consciousness will strengthen dairy consumption in India.

Developers in India now have expanded access to Google's powerful AI models with the 2 million token context window in Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemma 2, the next generation of open models.

The Delhi high court reserved on Wednesday its order on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's pleas challenging his arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the excise policy case and seeking interim bail.

Nadal on the US Open entry list

To boost domestic manufacturing under the Make in India initiative and reduce dependency on imports, the government is expected to announce in the Budget an increase in the minimum local content requirement for public procurement, with certain sectors being granted exceptions. Currently, firms producing goods, services, or works with at least 50 per cent local content are classified as Class-I local suppliers and are preferred the most in government procurement.

'We are confident that over the next few years the government will strike a fine balance between populist measures and growth, and manage coalition partners well.'