IndiGo commences Mangaluru - New Delhi daily flight services

Bengaluru, Mar 22: The Congress' first list of candidates for the upcoming Karnataka assembly election will be released in a day or two, party state president D K Shivakumar said on Wednesday.

The Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee chief said initially the plan was to release the list on Wednesday but it has been pushed back to a later date.

"Today, we had thought of releasing the list of candidates. Our general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala is here and our national president Mallikarjun Kharge has come here for celebrating Ugadi festival. It will be released in a day or two," Shivakumar told reporters here.

According to Congress sources, the first list comprising about 120 candidates may be out on Thursday afternoon.

The sources added that the first list will consist of sitting MLAs and those constituencies where there is less opposition to the candidates among the party workers and also stand a good chance to win the election. 

Udupi, Mar 18: A ghastly road mishap involving a truck and a car claimed the life of a lecturer of a private engineering college at Honnavar in Uttara Kannada district.  

The deceased is identified as Anantesha Rao (45). He is survived by wife Sripriya Anantesh, principal of a private college in Mangaluru and a son.

It is learnt that Rao’s car collided with a container truck at Honnavar when he was travelling to Sode Moola Mutt from Udupi. Rao died on the spot due to excessive bleeding. 

Damascus, Mar 22: An Israeli airstrike early Wednesday targeted the international airport of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, causing material damage in the second attack on the facility this month, state media report.

State news agency SANA, quoting an unnamed military official, did not mention if the strike caused any deaths or injuries. It said warplanes fired the missiles toward Aleppo, Syria's largest city and once commercial centre, while flying over the Mediterranean.

The airport has been one of the main channels for the flow of aid into the country after the February 6 earthquake hit Turkiye and Syria, killing over 50,000 people, including more than 6,000 in Syria.

On March 7, an Israeli airstrike put the airport out of service for several days and flights were rerouted to two other airports in the war-torn country until the damage was fixed.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, including attacks on the Damascus and Aleppo airports, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.

Israel has acknowledged, however, that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces.

Israel has targeted airports and seaports in the government-held parts of Syria in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups backed by Tehran, including Lebanon's Hezbollah.