Heena Sharma Blog

  After providing coronavirus vaccines to several countries including Bangladesh, Nepal and Maldives, India on Thursday established its position as a reliable partner in COVID-19 assistance by dispatching Covishield vaccines to Bahrain and Sri Lanka. A consignment of 50,400 doses of coronavirus vaccines will be provided by India to Sri Lanka under the Vaccine Maitri initiative, while Bahrain will receive get 10,800 doses. The Covishield vaccine developed by Serum Institute of India (SII) was loaded to the cargo aircraft at Mumbai and left as per schedule at 7:55 am for Manama. The vaccine consignment for Colombo was delayed for 15 minutes and is scheduled to leave at 9:00 am. Read More

The 1992 cricket World Cup reserves a special place in the living memory of the cricket fan. The coloured jerseys, the white balls, and the day-night matches are remembered for their then novelty; you can still find fans holding on to memorabilia from that tournament as if an ethereal truth about cricket was woven into them. When the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced a return to the 1992 format for the 2019 edition— each team was to play everyone else in the round-robin stage —fears about a ten-team World Cup were mitigated by nostalgia for a time when everything seemed just right. But like many fond memories from younger days, even the 1992 World Cup is tarnished now. Nostalgia, it turns out, can deceive one badly. As the 2019 competition makes the case for it to be called the most boring World Cup ever, the myth about the essentially good format is busted. There is nothing inherently great about a long phase where each team faces off against the others. In fact, i...

India have dropped three places to fifth in the expanded men's Twenty20 International team rankings while Pakistan have consolidated their top position, according to the latest list issued by the ICC. The ICC Friday unveiled an expanded T20I team rankings table with 80 teams who will now be able to gauge their progress in a format, recognised by the world body as the vehicle for the growth of the game. Pakistan, ICC T20 World Cup champions in 2009, are now on 286 points while the next four teams are within two points of each other -- South Africa (262), England (261), Australia (261) and India (260). South Africa and India have swapped positions two and five in the expanded table, whose launch coincides with the annual rankings update in which series results from 2015-16 are removed and outcomes from 2016-17 and 2017-18 are weighted at 50 per cent. In other significant changes, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have moved up one place each to seventh and eighth positions, re...

A blast was heard on Thursday from vacant land behind the magistrates court in the town of Pugoda, 40 km (25 miles) east of the capital Colombo, police and local residents said. Police said they were investigating the explosion, which came at a time of high tension in Sri Lanka following the Easter Sunday suicide bomber attacks on the island state that killed 359 people and wounded about 500. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

Sri Lanka observed a nationwide three-minute silence Tuesday to pay homage to more than 300 people killed in the gruesome Easter Sunday bombings, the country's worst terror attack blamed on a local previously little-known Islamist outfit. National flags were lowered and people bowed their heads as the silence began at 8:30 am local time, the time the first of the attacks occurred on Sunday. "We have declared today a day of national mourning, we urge people to raise a white flag in honour of the victims," said Kamal Padmasiri, Secretary to the Ministry of Home Affairs. He said a 3-minute silence was observed nationwide and the national flag will be flown at half-mast. Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said the death toll in a series of devastating blasts that tore through churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka had risen to 310. "The death toll has now gone up to 310", Gunasekera said. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

A string of eight powerful blasts, including suicide attacks , struck churches and luxury hotels frequented by foreigners in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, killing over 290 people, including five Indians, and shattering a decade of peace in the island nation since the end of the brutal civil war with the LTTE. Article Source -> Business Standard

The toll in a series of eight blasts targeting mostly churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Sunday has risen to 290, a police spokesman said on Monday. More than 500 people were wounded in the blasts, he added, in the deadliest violence since the end of the country's long-running civil war a decade ago. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Donald Trump and other world leaders condemned the attack and offered support. Sri Lanka confirmed that 11 foreigners who died in the attacks had been identified -- including citizens of India, Portugal, Turkey, the UK and US -- and said 25 unidentified bodies believed to be foreigners were in a Colombo morgue. Most were targeted at the Shangri-La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand hotels in the capital. Several blasts occurred hours after the first explosions on Sunday, and experts detonated a pipe bomb found on a road near Colombo’s airport. Authorities imposed a nationwide curfew and blocked platforms like Facebook and Whatsapp. R...