A look at the headlines right now:

  1. Election Commission favours barring convicts from contesting polls for life: The polling monitor said in an affidavit that special courts should decide on criminal cases against people’s representatives and public servants.
  2. 2016 was the warmest year on record and human activities were to blame, says WMO: The World Meteorological Organisation, in its annual report, said the extremes will continue into 2017.
  3. US plans to bar airline passengers from over a dozen countries from carrying electronic devices larger than a phone: The department of homeland security is expected to announce the new rule on Tuesday, which will apply to some non-US carriers.
  4. Sand mining baron Sekar Reddy in ED’s custody after securing bail in CBI court: He was arrested in December 2016 after I-T raids found Rs 106 crore, of which Rs 10 crore was in new currency notes.
  5. Safety of Indians a priority over partnership with the US, Sushma Swaraj tells Rajya Sabha: The external affairs minister told the Upper House that the attacks on Indians in the US were ‘100% incidents of hate crimes’.
  6. FBI is investigating links between Donald Trump’s campaign associates and Russia, says James Comey: The FBI director also denied the US president’s claims that Barack Obama had bugged his NYC Trump Tower last year.
  7. RSS did not request Yogi Adityanath’s appointment as Uttar Pradesh CM, says Venkaiah Naidu: The Union minister asserted that the right-wing body never interferes or suggests any names for the post and asked the Opposition to be ‘graceful in defeat’.
  8. Third Test ends in draw after stiff resistance from Australia’s Peter Handscomb, Shaun Marsh: India’s Ravindra Jadeja finished with a match haul of 9/178 on a pitch that largely favoured the batters.
  9. Missing Indian clerics return to New Delhi, say Pakistan daily falsely called them ‘RAW agents’: They said they were untraceable because they were meeting devotees in the interiors of Sindh, which does not have phone connectivity.
  10. Idea Cellular, Vodafone India confirm merger to create India’s largest telecom company: Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group Kumar Mangalam Birla will head the merged entity.