The ex-Real Madrid star admits he struggled to hold his own in the English top tier upon his arrival but believes the challenge has made him better Arsenal star Mesut Ozil believes that playing in the Premier League has made him a tougher player, such is the ruthlessness of the league. The Germany international spent his first six years in professional football plying his trade in the German top flight before switching to Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid in 2010. Ozil is currently in his fourth full season at Arsenal, which many believe will be his last as contract negotiations at the Emirates continue to drag on, and the playmaker believes it has been his most difficult spell in the game. "The Premier League is the toughest challenge I’ve experienced in football," Ozil says in his new book, Gunning for Greatness: My Life. "If you can’t take it here, without whining, then you’re history. It’s something I had to get to grips with in the first few weeks and months after my switch from Real Madrid. "Whereas in Spain the entire game is based on elegant ball play — even teams from lower leagues try the same — in England you have scratching, biting and fighting. In England, football is one tackle after another. There’s barely any respite.

Promising Indian shuttler B Sai Praneeth clinched his maiden Super Series title at the Singapore Open after defeating compatriot K Srikanth in a historic all-Indian final on Sunday. World No.30 Praneeth, who had won the Canada Open Grand Prix last year and reached the Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold final this year, outmaneuvered Srikanth 17-21, 21-17, 21-12 in the summit clash of the $350,000 event. "It's always difficult to play someone with whom you play everyday. I am very happy to win today. The way I played in the tournament, I'm very happy. The support here for the Indians has also been very nice," an overwhelmed Praneeth said after the 54-minute clash. It was the first time in the history of international badminton that two Indians were playing a Super Series final and it turned out to be a thrilling contest. The two trainees of the Gopichand academy exploited every chink that they were aware of in each other's game.

Russia should end its support for "toxic" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Monday ahead of a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Italy. "It's time for (Russian President) Vladimir Putin to face the truth about the tyrant he is propping up," Johnson said, according to a foreign ministry spokeswoman. "We need to make it clear to Putin that the time to back Assad has gone," he said, warning that Putin was "damaging Russia" by supporting Assad.

A North Korean missile "blew up almost immediately" on its test launch on Sunday, the US Pacific Command said, hours before US Vice President Mike Pence was due in the South for talks on the North's increasingly defiant arms programme. The failed launch from the east coast came a day after North Korea held a military parade in its capital, marking the birth anniversary of the state founder, in which what appeared to be new long-range ballistic missiles were on display.

In the face of several people asking him this question, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor wants to let everyone know once and for all that he's not joining the BJP. It's unclear where this conjecture emerged from, but perhaps it was because last month he wrote an essay about the merits of a Presidential system of government versus a Parliamentary system.

At least 34 people were injured, including two critically, after a massive gas explosion flattened several buildings, in Merseyside area of north-west England last night. A Chinese restaurant, which had about 15 people inside, and a dance studio for children, which was unoccupied at the time of explosion, were among the buildings destroyed in the blast at Bebbington town. Merseyside fire and rescue service said the explosion was a major incident. "It's what we would describe as a total collapse, or the explosion has blown the walls out, which has caused the roof to collapse. It's a very significant debris field and (there is) lots of structural damage to the surrounding buildings," said Dan Stephens, chief officer at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service. There was a huge police and ambulance response with at least 10 ambulances seen at the scene.

There comes a moment in some lives when a sudden, unexpected event makes you look at the world with greater clarity than before. It could be a happy moment: a childhood friend proposes to you, or you stumble into parenthood. It could be a sad one: you are diagnosed with cancer and told you have six months to live. It makes you look at the world differently, and some things seem so clear that you wonder why you did not notice them before. In the life of our nation, the rise of Yogi Adityanath to the chief ministership of Uttar Pradesh+ might well be one such unexpected yet clarifying moment. I was stunned when it was announced; and yet, it makes so much sense that any counterfactual now seems absurd. It was, I have come to believe, a decisive and inevitable event in a conflict that has been simmering in India for at least a century. The great battle that took place on our peninsula was not between the natives and our colonial overlords, but between a new way of thinking and an old way of existing. While the Enlightenment swept its way across Europe and the US in the 18th century, its influence was felt in India only in the 19th. Liberalism, however one tries to spin it, was an import from the West, and it is ironic that many of our finest freedom fighters were influenced by British thinkers. The great early figures of our resistance — heroes of mine such as Naoroji, Ranade, Agarkar and Gokhale — were essentially British liberals.

"We are suspending 2% charge on credit cards for adding money to wallet keeping users' convenience in mind," the digital wallet player said in a blog post. "We are conscious that this move caused inconvenience to a large segment of our users, including those who are using their credit card for genuine transactions."

Earlier Paytm had levied a 2% fee for adding money to Paytm wallet using credit cards. This it said was a result of multiple users using Paytm to get free credit by using credit cards to top up their digital wallets and transferring the money back to their bank accounts at zero transaction cost.

The wallet said that it would introduce new measures to prevent misuse. "We will introduce new features to prevent credit card misuse in add money," the Paytm blog post said.