Overnight coverage stayed with NPCI's 0.4% MDR on merchant UPI payments above Rs 2,000 from October 15, with explainers and government denials of foreign pressure, alongside Washington advancing a Russia sanctions bill authorising 100% tariffs on Russian-oil buyers and Saudi claims of intercepting a Houthi drone near Mecca.
By morning focus shifted to the northern Arabian Sea, where an Indian warship and Pakistan's PNS Hunain collided September 15 after what Delhi called an unsafe high-speed manoeuvre, prompting summoning of Pakistan's charge d'affaires for violating the 1991 incidents-at-sea agreement.
Afternoon turned to an NIA court sentencing all 10 convicts to death in the 2013 Jhiram Ghati ambush that killed 29, the Cabinet raising the EPFO wage ceiling to Rs 25,000, and Delhi rejecting a Pakistan-China boundary commission while the UPI fee hardened into a Rahul Gandhi versus BJP dispute with no rollback.