Prime Minister Narendra Modi today addresses a combined commanders' conference onboard the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya off the Kochi coast. The Combined Commanders' Conference is an annual three services event and it is being held for the first time outside Delhi.
Three service chiefs and other senior officers of the army, navy and air force will brief the prime minister about military issues.
The prime minister's other engagements include unveiling of  statue of Kerala's former chief minister R Shankar at Kollam and pay floral tributes to Sree Narayana Guru Mahasamadhi at Sivagiri.

IT has issued notices in National Herald case
Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday said Income Tax Department has issued notices in National Herald case and now it is its duty to assess the parties allegedly involved in it.
"When Income Tax has already issued notices asking for details, Income Tax is under the duty to assess. It has to assess Congress party, it has to assess the Associated Journal, it has to assess Young Indian. There is certain proceeding, and notices and that process is on," he said in an interview to NDTV.
"I have never said that process is not on. I have never said that process will stop or its not on. They issue notices, they hear assessees. These are quasi-judicial authority. I don't even know who is the assessing officer," he said when asked why ED and Income Tax department were not taking action in the matter related to National Herald.
He, however, denied that the Enforcement Directorate reopened case.

RTI website will be available in Hindi, govt seeks suggestions
A website meant for filing of RTI applications will be converted into Hindi language as well, the government said on Monday.
At present, the portal-- www.rtionline.gov.in-- is available in English language only.
The website, launched in August 2013 by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) for all Central government ministries with a view to provide a facility to citizens to file RTI applications, and first appeals online.
Till now, 463 public authorities have been aligned to the portal. It is proposed to extend the RTI online portal to more public authorities and also to make technical improvements in it during the next year, an order issued by the DoPT said.
Users will also get auto sms alerts and email if any modification is done in their account, it said.
Besides, there will be more features for both the public authorities and citizens to improve interface and easy processing of RTI applications. The DoPT has sought comments from people on the proposed changes from people within 15 days.

Supreme court orders review of selections for Delhi judiciary
he supreme court has appointed one of its ex-judges to re-evaluate the answer papers of 659 candidates who appeared for the Delhi Judicial Service (main) Examination 2014, effectively reopening the selection process. The exam was held to select district-level judicial officers in Delhi.
The court on Monday asked ex-judge P Venkatarama Reddi to re-evaluate the papers on the same parameters that were applied for the 15 candidates who were selected on 21 August 2015. Sixty-five of the total 80 vacant positions were not filled through the exam.
A bench of justices Dipak Misra and PC Pant was considering a public interest litigation, filed by non-profit organization Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), which alleged irregularities in the evaluation.
The court, in its order, said that while employers were not required to fill vacancies if suitable candidates were not found, re-evaluation was being done to “assuage the demands of the petitioners”.

Pulses push up inflation numbers in November
Pulses played the culprit again in pushing up both the November wholesale price index (WPI) and consumer price index (CPI) even as cost and demand pressures put a downward pressure on both inflation numbers.
The WPI and CPI figures for November released on Monday by the government were -1.99% and 5.41% respectively against -3.81% and 5% a month earlier.
The jump in WPI was primarily due to food inflation that rose to 5.20% in November compared with 2.44% in October. Within it, pulses and onions saw maximum increase of 58% and 53%, respectively.
Data on CPI released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed that the retail inflation for rural areas was much higher at 5.95% as against 4.71% in urban India. For pulses, the combined inflation rate was a whopping 46.08%.

Home ministry to create database on terror funding
The Centre has called a meeting of the governments of Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Meghalaya, Manipur and Delhi to create a central database on terror funding. The eight states have recorded movement of funds for terror activities by members of ISIS, Lashkar-e-Taiba and IM, said officials.
MHA had urged state governments and central agencies to report transactions which have suspected links to terrorism. The government is also planning to upgrade the reporting mechanism on terror funding under the National Crime Records Bureau and create a dedicated portal that will help develop intelligence against terror groups and their members, reports Economic Times.

Foreign Contributions Regulations Act services for NGOs go online
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which have faced strong scrutiny from the Narendra Modi government, finally have some good news as the ministry of home affairs (MHA) on Monday rolled out the Foreign Contribution Regulation Rules (FCRR), 2015 that will make all the services of FCRA online, reducing human interface to zero. Home minister Rajnath Singh launched the revamped website that will cater to NGOs seeking FCRA licences.
Under the new rules, applications for registration, prior permission and renewal of registration under Foreign Contributions Regulations Act (FCRA), 2010 will be accepted online and fee for the services will be paid through payment gateway.

Govt digitises characters of 20 lakh records, seeks to crowdsource work
The government has digitised about 20 lakh characters of citizen and public records using its Digitize India Platform (DIP) as part of the Digital India programme. DIP, launched in July by the Department of Electronics and IT, aims to digitise physical records and reduce piles of papers stored in record rooms or offices of government departments, public sector organisations and autonomous bodies. Instead of outsourcing the entire digitisation process to a third party, the government is  hoping to crowdsource the effort.
Organisations can submit their records for digitisation to the DIP, preferably as scanned images. In case they submit physical records, they will have to pay for the scanning separately, reports Economic Times.
It is here that crowdsourcing kicks in. Anyone with an Aadhaar number can register and log in to the DIP. The algorithm breaks down every word or phrase in a document and sends it to two randomly chosen users. Each user digitises the word and submits it back. If the digitisation efforts of both persons match, they get rewarded as per number of characters digitised. The user keeps accumulating rewards and whenever he or she wishes, the amount can be credited to their bank account.

Saudi Arabia forms counter-terrorism coalition
Saudi Arabia says 34 Muslim-majority nations have agreed to form a new military alliance to fight terrorism with a joint operations center based in the kingdom's capital, Riyadh.
The announcement carried early Tuesday by the Saudi Press Agency says the Saudi-led alliance was established because terrorism ''should be fought by all means and collaboration should be made to eliminate it.'' The alliance brings together diverse Muslim countries from several continents, including Mali, Malaysia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Egypt as well as neighboring Gulf countries such as the United Arab Emirates.