About 80 chartered flights have landed at the new international airport of India’s holy city of Ayodhya for Monday’s partial opening of the controversial grand temple for one of Hinduism’s most revered deities, Lord Ram.

Ayodhya’s airport can barely accommodate the influx of private jets. “The planes will depart after dropping guests,” airport manager Saurabh Singh said.

The temple was built over a razed mosque, and most political opposition leaders are boycotting the temple’s opening, saying it doesn’t befit a secular India.

Former President Obama in an upcoming interview with CNN says it is “appropriate” for President Biden to challenge foreign leaders on issues in their country that are “troubling.”

Obama gave his comments ahead of the official state visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been criticized for his government’s treatment of Muslims and a weakening of press freedoms.

A nixed event to be hosted by Google News has potentially revealed gaps in its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

To honor the Dalit History Month in April, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, executive director of the US-based social justice organization Equality Labs, was scheduled to speak about caste-based discrimination in newsrooms at an internal Google News event. This event, which had been planned for three months, was abruptly postponed shortly before its scheduled date, according to a report in The Washington Post.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai has urged Indian leaders to "stop the marginalization of Muslim women" amid mounting protests over a college's ban on students wearing the traditional Islamic headscarf, or hijab. 

Authorities in the southern Indian state of Karnataka on Tuesday ordered schools and colleges to close for three days, and on Wednesday they banned gatherings near all educational institutions for two weeks in a bid to curb the protests, which have drawn counter-protests by Hindu students. 

Nepali Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli has said that Hindu deity Ram was born in the Himalayan nation and not India, as he accused New Delhi of "encroaching on cultural facts" amid frayed diplomatic relations between the two South Asian neighbours.

"We have been oppressed a bit culturally. Facts have been encroached," Oli said at a function at his residence in the capital, Kathmandu, on Monday, according to Nepali news website setopati.com.

KATHMANDU, Nepal—In Nepal, Muslims, who make up about 4 percent of the population, have lived peacefully alongside the majority Hindu population for centuries, arriving as immigrants from elsewhere but establishing strong communities. Nepalis pride themselves on a history of religious tolerance, even in a region where faith has often had bloody consequences.

But India’s right-wingers are trying hard to change that.

In what many are calling a case of "apartheid" during a global pandemic, a government-run hospital in Ahmedabad, the main city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, has segregated coronavirus patients based on their religion, claiming the order came from the government.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A Hindu group hosted a cow urine drinking party on Saturday as they believe it wards off the coronavirus, as many Hindus consider the cow sacred and some drink cow urine believing it has medicinal properties.

Experts have repeatedly asserted that cow urine does not cure illnesses like cancer and there is no evidence that it can prevent coronavirus.

India's opposition politicians have slammed the Hindu nationalist government for the deadly anti-Muslim violence in the capital New Delhi, with the main opposition Congress party calling for the resignation of the interior minister.

But the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defended its handling of the worst violence in New Delhi in decades that killed 52 people, mostly Muslims.

NEW DELHI – President Donald Trump took his battle with CNN overseas on Tuesday, as he and correspondent Jim Acosta clashed over truth-telling and reports over Russian interference in U.S. elections. After Trump attacked CNN during a wide-ranging news co