If an Indian hockey lover wanted to see one of the most calm and collected defensive plays by an Indian team in recent memory, senior or junior, he or she had to be at the Kalinga Stadium here on Wednesday. India, the defending champions of the Junior Men's World Cup, beat Belgium 1-0 to take their title defence into the semifinals, where they will now face Germany on Friday.

The prospect of playing a Test in front of his home crowd at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday - after an eight-and-a-half year Test career - should have got Ajinkya Rahane excited. Instead, the Mumbaikar is staring at a future as gloomy as the Mumbai weather was on Wednesday.

WTA Tour chairman Steve Simon said Wednesday the women's tennis circuit is suspending all tournaments in China over concerns about the safety of Chinese player Peng Shuai. The WTA had planned 11 events in China this year before Covid-19 forced them to be relocated or cancelled.

A person in California who had been vaccinated against Covid-19 became the first in the United States to have an identified case of the Omicron variant, the White House announced Wednesday as scientists continue to study the risks posed by the new virus strain. Stay with TOI for all updates:

The prime accused in the lynching of an All Assam Students Union (Aasu) leader in Jorhat two days ago was accidentally killed early on Wednesday when he allegedly jumped out of a police car in a bid to escape and was fatally hit by an escort vehicle. Neeraj Das, alias Kola Lora, was to be produced in court during the day.

A day after Maharashtra introduced stringent air travel curbs in the backdrop of rising concerns over the Omicron variant of Covid, the Centre pointed out that the restrictions were in divergence with guidelines from the Union health ministry and urged the state to scale back its orders.

Regular international flights to and from India are unlikely to resume from December 15, as originally scheduled, due to uncertainty over the impact of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 on the course of the pandemic, the country's civil aviation regulator said on Wednesday.

The 13-lakh strong Army is going in for a change in its combat uniform by adopting a new digital disruptive pattern, which is lighter, more climate-friendly and suitable for the terrains in which the force operates. The new camouflage fatigues, with a mix of colours from earthen to olive, will be showcased for the first time during the Army Day Parade on January 15.

After a lull in the first pandemic year, crore-plus job packages returned with a bang on premier IIT campuses. On the opening day of the season, several IITians entered the crore-plus salary club, as the highest domestic package touched an all-time high of Rs 1.8 crore and international offers crossed the Rs 2 crore mark.

GST collections touched Rs 1,31,576 crore, the second highest monthly mop up since the introduction of the new tax regime in mid-2017 on the back of strong festival sales. The kitty in November (for transactions in October) was a shade higher than the Rs 1.3 lakh crore deposited in the treasury last month and 25% higher than a year ago.

Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Wednesday that he would speak to Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya in Delhi on Thursday about giving booster shots to healthcare workers and frontline workers in the state.

The Centre on Wednesday asked Maharashtra government to align its international travel guidelines with those issued by it to ensure uniform implementation across the country. The Maharashtra government has imposed guidelines making RT-PCR testing mandatory for all international travellers at the Mumbai airport, irrespective of country of origin.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee targeted the Congress on Wednesday saying what is UPA, there is no UPA now amid signs that her party is opposed to a Congress-led opposition front to take on the NDA. Banerjee also took a swipe at the Congress leadership saying politics required continuous endeavour, if you are going abroad to enjoy, how will people trust you.

A parliamentary panel, headed by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, has expressed concern over lack of government data on the number of internet shutdowns in India or their effectiveness in achieving the purpose for which they were imposed.

The government should set up an all-encompassing Media Council and give it statutory powers to check irregularities in all forms of media print, electronic and digital, the parliamentary committee headed by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has said.

While Lok Sabha conducted business on Wednesday despite a couple of adjournments and disruptions by TRS MPs, the deadlock persisted in Rajya Sabha which was unable to transact any business in the morning session as opposition MPs with placards assembled in the well and shouted slogans against the suspension of 12 opposition MPs.

eninsular India recorded the highest ever rainfall in November since 1901, said the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Wednesday while noting that even the heavy, very heavy and extremely heavy rainfall events last month were the highest over the last five years.

Taking up the case of a Maoist leader charged under the tough UAPA law, the Supreme Court on Wednesday held that an undertrial cannot be indefinitely detained in prison if there is a delay in concluding the trial. The courts would ordinarily be obligated to grant bail if timely trial is not possible and the accused has been in jail for long, it added.