faheem Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh Yadav was not averse to a “slight climbdown” on union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee as president but was completely against Vice President Hamid Ansari, his party indicated Thursday as suspense built up on who could be the next occupant of Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The CBI special court on Thursday adjourned the hearing on CBI petition seeking permission to conduct Polygraph, Narco and BEAP (Brain Electrical Activation profile) tests on both YSR Congress president and Kadapa MP Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy and his auditor Vijay Sai Reddy to June 19.
The court posted the petition as the counsels of Jagan Mohan Reddy and Vijay Sai Reddy raised serious objection for conducting Narco test on tgheir clients.
After hearing the arguments and counter arguments, the special court adjourned the petition to June 19.
Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Thursday strongly condemned the killing of a 15-year-old girl, who was allegedly attacked with acid by an unknown assailant at her home in Antampally village of Nizamabad district.
While condemning the incident, the Chief Minister directed the Nizamabad District Collector and Superintendent of Police to book cases against perpetrators of crime and make strong efforts to prevent recurrence of such incidents in future.
Mehdi Hassan, the legendary Pakistani ghazal maestro born in India, passed away at a Karachi hospital Wednesday and his son says that the funeral will take place Friday.
“My father’s funeral will take place Friday in Karachi,” Arif Mehdi told IANS on phone from Karachi, adding that they have yet to finalise the place.
“We have asked for the permission from the government to bury him at Quaid-e-Azam mazar (Mazar-e-Quaid) in Karachi, but we are waiting for the approval,” he added.
Three Saudi women were barred from entering France for refusing to remove their face veils, it was reported here Wednesday.
A 2011 French law bans people from wearing Islamic face-covering veils anywhere in public.
French police asked the women to remove their veils when they arrived at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport Monday on a flight from Doha.
However, when the women refused, the authorities refused them entry. The women returned to Doha Tuesday night, Daily Mail reported.
A group of girl college students in Pakistan handed over their bags to authorities during a board exam but were in for a rude shock when their belongings were returned minus cells phones and cash.
The incident took place during the intermediate exams at the Government Degree College for Women at the Wah Cantt military city in Punjab province, Dawn News reported.
The students said that at the beginning of the exam, they handed over their bags and purses to the centre in-charge. However, when they got their bags back after the test, their cell phones and cash were gone.
A Pakistani woman doctor has been charged with poisoning female school students in Takhar province of Afghanistan, an official said.
The incident came to light after dozens of schoolgirls mysteriously fell unconscious in the province over the past three weeks, Geo News reported Sunday.
At least 11 suspects were arrested, including a Pakistani woman doctor named Gulnaz, hailing from Punjab province, provincial media in-charge Mustafa Rasuli told the Afghan Islamic Press.
Gulnaz was working at a health clinic in Rustaq district, but did not have the required medical certificates.
Three personnel of Pakistan’s Border Military Police force and two civilians have been accused of raping five women after stopping their car at a check post for routine check in Punjab province. All the policemen have denied the charges but are absconding.
The incident took place at the border force police station Fort Munro, 85 km from Dera Ghazi Khan, one of the most populous cities in the province, Geo News reported.
The five women hail from Lahore and were visiting Dera Ghazi Khan, said Border Military Police commander Tariq Basra.
n what could be seen as an example of Bollywood celebrities increasingly lending their mite for social causes, actor and filmmaker Pooja Bhatt has said that the proceeds of the wardrobe of her next film ‘Jism 2’ will go to PETA India, an organisation working for the welfare of animals.
Four people, including a cashier in a cooperative credit society in Bangalore, were arrested Thursday for the fatal attack on a Karnataka government officer known to have exposed scams in several such financial societies, police said.
S.P. Mahantesh, 48, was killed on a contract given by the cashier, Kiran Kumar, who feared that his misappropriation of the society’s cash would be exposed as the officer had begun auditing the accounts, Bangalore City Police Commissioner B.G. Jyothiprakash Mirji told reporters here.
The Supreme Court Thursday rejected dentist Nupur Talwar’s petition for review of its earlier order that she and her husband Rajesh be tried for the murder of their daughter Aarushi and their domestic help Hemraj. It also turned down the plea for further investigation in the case.
The court, however, allowed Nupur Talwar to move a fresh bail plea as the Allahabad High Court earlier rejected her application. While Nupur Talwar is lodged at the Dasna jail in Ghaziabad, her husband, also a dentist, is out on bail.
Stating that life was full of challenges, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Thursday urged the student community to develop mental strength to fight frustration.
“Life is full of challenges but I never thought I cannot…I always believe I can. Why should you get frustrated? One should never lose his mental strength. Swami Vivekananda used to say strength is the medicine for all diseases. I urge you all not to get frustrated but develop strength to fight,” said Banerjee.
A jobless Pakistani national bludgeoned his Filipina ex-girlfriend to death with a hammer after a split with the 37-year-old mother of his two-year-old daughter, a British court heard.
The court heard that 28-year-old Muhammed Niazi savagely murdered Charito Cruz in September 2011 after discovering she was flirting with an ex-boyfriend on Facebook.
He became depressed and asked police to deport him. But he was turned away and told to contact the Home Office, the Daily Mail reported.
UN observers trying to reach the scene of the latest reported massacre of Syrian villagers were shot at with small arms, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly on the latest situation in Syria, the secretary-general called the new massacre “shocking and sickening”, Xinhua reported.
The unarmed monitors from the UN Supervision Mission in Syria were initially denied access to the massacre site in al-Qubayr village in the country’s northern Hama province, and “were shot at with small arms” while trying to get there, Ban said.
Five children were injured Thursday when a bomb went off in a village in this Uttar Pradesh district — the second blast in about a fortnight, police said. All five are out of danger.
The children, residents of Ghoorpur village, were taking their cattle to graze when they spotted a “ball like object” and picked it up. Minutes later there was a deafening explosion in which Mausam Yadav, Sushma Yadav, Jyoti Yadav, Sashi Yadav and Ajay Singh — all aged between 7 and 12 were injured.
Telugu Desam Party leader Shobha Rani has declared Oscar Award for the YSR Congress honorary president Y S Vijayamma “for her acting with glycerin-aided tears at losing her husband in an accident and having her son in jail”.
Talking to the media here on Thursday, she alleged that all the tears of Vijayamma were for winning the by-elections. She said that the good name Vijayamma earned as a good housewife had evaporated after she started supporting her son, who was involved in criminal activities. She posed some questions to Vijayamma and her daughter Sharmila.
The TDP has requested Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy to order investigation into a news report published in the Sakshi newspaper that some persons died due to shock on hearing that the YSR Congress chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was arrested by the CBI.
Home Minister P. Sabita Indra Reddy on Thursday met Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy in the CM’s camp office and conferred wit him for over two hours. Sabita Reddy’s meeting with the Chief Minister attained importance as six ministers, who had received notices from the Supreme Court in connection with the YSR Congress chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s disproportionate assets case, were being called by the CBI one after another for inquiry.
TDP Chief N. Chandrababu Naidu has alleged that Prathipadu former MLA Mekathoti Sucharitha tendered her resignation to the Assembly taking Rs 10 crores from YSRCP Chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. He also alleged that Jagan was influencing the MLAs to tender resignations by declaring packages to them.
The leader of a banned Islamist outfit in Bangladesh and his wife were Sunday sentenced to 37 years in prison for possessing weapons and bullets.
Zahidul Islam alias Boma Mizan, leader of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, and his wife Halina Begum alias Sharmin, were handed down the punishment by a Dhaka sessions judge, the Daily Star reported on its website.
An explosives expert of the outlawed group, Islam was captured by the Rapid Action Battalion in May 2009 in the city’s Mirpur area.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) questioned jailed YSR Congress Party leader Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy in the illegal wealth case Sunday, the first day of the five-day custody.
The questioning was on at the officer’s mess in the office of director general of prisons, adjoining Chanchalguda Central Jail, where Jagan is lodged since May 28.
The Kadapa MP, emerged from the jail gate around 10.30 a.m. With his trademark smile, he greeted mediapersons with folded hands before the CBI officials led him into the waiting vehicle. Clad in white shirt, he was clean shaven and looked fresh.
Shakeel Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA track down Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, has refused to eat meals provided by the jail authorities in Peshawar fearing he may be poisoned.
Sources told Geo News, Afridi has refused to eat prison food, and that on his demand, prison authorities have provided him with essential items and cooking utensils so that he could prepare his own food.
Afridi was charged with treason for helping the US track down and kill bin Laden. He has been jailed for 30 years.
A fire broke out at the One World Trade Center tower in New York Saturday but firefighters managed to put it out in about an hour, media reports said Sunday.
“The fire was on the 89th, 90th and 91st floors, and our job was to extinguish that,” CBS New York television channel quoted Manhattan firefighting chief Jim Esposito as saying.
He said that luckily the fire was small with some construction materials burning, but firefighters had hard time fetching water 89 floors up, RIA Novosti reported.
Launching a joint agitation against corruption and black money, yoga guru Ramdev and anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare started a day-long fast at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar Sunday.
The fast has been called to mark one year of Ramdev’s last agitation at Ramlila ground, from where he was arrested in the middle of the night between June 3 and 4 last year.
An indefinite curfew continued Saturday in Kosi Kalan town along the Delhi-Agra highway here after communal violence a day earlier left two people dead in widespread rioting.
The small Uttar Pradesh town wore a ghostly look as residents remained indoors, witnesses and police sources said. Few people got off from trains Saturday at the Kosi station in Mathura district.
The more than a dozen people injured in the riots were warded in hospitals in Mathura and Agra towns and in Faridabad in neighbouring Haryana, officials said.