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India’s real gross domestic product for the financial year 2024-’25 grew by 6.5%, showed a provisional estimate released by the Union government. This was the slowest growth since the Covid-19 pandemic year of 2020-’21 and significantly lower than the rate of 9.2% in 2023-’24.

The real GDP grew by 7.4% between January and March, lower than the 8.4% expansion during the same period in the previous financial year. Read on.

An Uttarakhand court has sentenced a former Bharatiya Janata Party leader’s son and his two associates to life imprisonment in the 2022 Ankita Bhandari murder case. A fine of Rs 50,000 each was also imposed on Pulkit Arya, son of former BJP leader Vinod Arya, and his associates Saurabh Bhaskar and Ankit Gupta.

Bhandari, a receptionist at a resort in Rishikesh owned by Pulkit Arya, went missing in September 2022. Pulkit Arya, along with Bhaskar and Gupta, initially filed a missing person report but later confessed to killing Bhandari by pushing her into a canal after an altercation.

Messages sent by Bhandari to a friend, which were uncovered during the investigation, suggested that the men had allegedly tried to force her into prostitution. Read on.

The Supreme Court ordered journalist and YouTuber Ajay Shukla to remove a video in which he made “scandalous allegations” about a retired judge. The court initiated suo motu contempt proceedings against Shukla, the editor-in-chief of Varprad Media, and issued a notice to him.

While the court did not name the judge about whom the allegations were made, Shukla had on May 18 uploaded a video on his YouTube channel about the retirement of Justice Bela M Trivedi. While Trivedi is officially slated to retire on June 9, her last working day was May 13.

The bench said that “such scandalous allegations” were likely to bring disrepute to the court, adding that the freedom of expression was subject to “reasonable restrictions”. Read on.

Israel has agreed to a new temporary ceasefire with Palestinian militant group Hamas proposed by the United States, the White House announced. Hamas said that the proposal was “still under discussion”, but claimed that in its current form, it would only result in “the continuation of killing and famine” in Gaza.

The details of the proposal have not been made public, but Israeli media reported that it would entail Hamas releasing 10 Israeli hostages and bodies of 18 others during a 60-day ceasefire.

In return, Israel would release 125 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and 1,111 persons detained since October 7, 2023, and hand over the bodies of 180 Palestinians. The Israeli military will also withdraw from certain areas of Gaza, according to the proposal. Read on.

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