News in Short

• Dismantling of the world’s longest serving warship, INS Viraat, will begin in Alang, three years after it was decommissioned by the Indian Navy.
• The Centaur-class aircraft carrier of Indian Navy that remained in service for almost 30 years and holds the Guinness record for world’s longest serving warship will be dismantled here at one of the largest shipbreaking yards globally.
• Efforts were made to convert INS Viraat into a museum and several consultations were done but the plan could not materialise as an expert committee reported that it won’t last for more than a decade.
• INS Viraat was commissioned in 1959 as Royal Navy’s HMS Hermes and decommissioned in 1984 and subsequently it was sold to India and commissioned into Indian Navy on May 12, 1987.

• Sina Corp, owner of social media platform Weibo, will be taken private in a $2.6 billion deal with Chief Executive Officer Charles Chao.
• U.S.-listed shares of Sina rose more than 6% in premarket trading. Chao's holding company, New Wave, is the largest shareholder of Sina, with a 12.15% stake as of July 10.
• Many Chinese companies are opting out of U.S. stock exchanges, following rising tensions between the world's two largest economies, by considering go-private deals or returning to equity markets closer to home.

• Amnesty International has halted its operations in India and said it had to let go of its staff after its accounts were frozen earlier this month by the government.
• The government, however, says the global rights watchdog has been receiving foreign funds illegally and that it never registered under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act.
• Amnesty India did get the government's permission to receive around Rs 1.69 crore from Amnesty UK in 2011-12. But since 2013, that permission has been denied, say sources.

• A rare butterfly, which had not been spotted in the Nilgiris for over 130 years, was documented along the Kotagiri slopes recently.
• The Branded Royal (Tajuria melastigma), a species of lycaenid, was last recorded in the Nilgiris in 1888 by G.F. Hampson, and there is only one other record in Tamil Nadu.
• The Branded Royal is very rarely seen in India, with only four or five records in existence – in the Nilgiris, Dindigul and two in Kerala and Karnataka.
• The Branded Royal is also hard to identify as it could be mistaken to be a different species, as many Royals look strikingly similar.

• Syeda Anwara Taimur, the only woman to have become the Chief Minister of Assam till now, passed away in Australia. She was 84..
• Taimur, a Congress politician then, was the CM from December 1980 to June next year. At that time, the anti-foreigner movement in the state (1979-85) was at its peak.
• Taimur became an MLA in 1972, 1978, 1983, and 1991; was a minister in Assam twice, and a Rajya Sabha MP twice (nominated in 1988 and elected in 2004).
• In 2011, Taimur joined the Badruddin Ajmal-led AIUDF, reportedly after being denied a ticket from Congress.