President Ram Nath Kovind has rejected the mercy plea of Vinay Kumar Sharma, one of the four men facing the gallows in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case, Home Ministry officials said on Saturday.

The Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday approved the Budget for the financial year beginning April 1, that may see measures to lift the economy from the worst economic slowdown in 11 years.

The US said Friday it was declaring a public health emergency and temporarily banning the entry of foreign nationals who had traveled to China over the past two weeks to contain the spread of a deadly new virus.

Child specialist Kafeel Khan who was accused of making an inflammatory speech at AMU was remanded to judicial custody and later transferred to Mathura jail, officials said on Saturday.

A group of over 30 people held a brief protest in south Mumbai, seeking a fresh probe into the alleged suspicious death of special CBI judge B H Loya in 2014. The protest was held near the Gateway of India on Thursday, the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

 The Indian economy experienced some abrupt slowdown in 2019 due to turbulence in non-banking financial institutions and major reform measures such as GST and demonetisation, but it is not in a recession, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has said.

The death toll from the novel coronavirus outbreak in China has risen to 259 with total confirmed cases surging to 11,791 amid stepped up efforts by a number of countries to evacuate their nationals from Hubei province, the epicentre of the virus, officials said on Saturday.

Air India's jumbo B747 plane, evacuating 324 Indian nationals from the novel coronavirus-hit Wuhan in China, landed here on Saturday morning, officials said.