There will be no National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) as of now, Home Minister P Chidambaram hinted on Saturday after the government failed to convince dissenting chief ministers over the need to have an all-powerful one-stop anti-terror hub.
After day-long deliberations with state chief ministers failed to break the logjam over NCTC, the home minister said: “No decision has been taken as yet. The final decision has not been taken.”
Delhi: Anshuman Mishra, who was in the news recently when his candidature for a Rajya Sabha seat from Jharkhand was endorsed by some BJP MLAs, today wrote a letter to party leader LK Advani asking him to hang his boots and give way to younger leaders.
Describing Advani as the tallest leader and mentor of the party in his letter, Mishra asks the octagenarian leader to give an opportunity to leaders like Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Narendra Modi to “lead the nation”.
Terming the government’s justification for the recent hike in petrol price a “gigantic fraud”, the CPI(M) on Thursday warned that UPA-II could meet the fate of several European ruling parties which recently suffered electoral defeat as they were pursuing ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies.
“This UPA-II government and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may well meet a similar fate (like in Europe) unless they reverse the current trajectory of economic policies,” senior party leader Sitaram Yechury said while referring to the defeat of nine ruling parties in Europe so far.
India’s cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Thursday said that Team India was open to playing against arch-rivals Pakistan if the two boards agreed to have a bilateral series in India.
Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Zaka Ashraf, who was invited to watch the IPL final between the Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders, had fruitful talks with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) officials to revive cricketing ties between the two countries.
Cash amounting to Rs.14.25 lakh was found stolen from the district office in Ghaziabad on Thursday morning, police said.
The money was kept in a cash box in the sub-registrar’s office. The incident came to light in the morning when the sweeper came to clean the office and found the main gate open and the lock damaged.
A case has been lodged and security increased at the office, a police officer said.
The city magistrate would probe the incident and departmental action would be initiated if any official was found guilty of negligence, said the police official.
The demonstrators, who took to the streets on Thursday, promised not to end their protest rallies against the regime in Manama.
On Sunday, anti-regime demonstrators in the northern village of Dair blocked roads and burned tires in a protest action against the ruling Al Khalifa family.
Bahrain is in the midst of an ongoing popular revolution that started in mid-February 2011.
The Bahraini regime has harshly cracked down on the protests, killing scores of people and jailing many others.
There will be no National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) as of now, Home Minister P Chidambaram hinted on Saturday after the government failed to convince dissenting chief ministers over the need to have an all-powerful one-stop anti-terror hub.
After day-long deliberations with state chief ministers failed to break the logjam over NCTC, the home minister said: “No decision has been taken as yet. The final decision has not been taken.”
State-owned oil companies on Thursday cut jet fuel prices by 2 percent, the fourth straight reduction in rates since April.
The price of aviation turbine fuel (ATF), or jet fuel, in Delhi was reduced by Rs 1,376.81 per kl, or 2 percent, to Rs 65,670.14 per kl with effect from midnight tonight, Indian Oil Corp, making the announcement on behalf of the industry, said.
The reduction comes on back of Rs 753.8 per kl cut in rates in three previous fortnights.
Even after today’s reduction, ATF prices are still not at level before the steep increases effected in March and early April.
The Delhi High Court Thursday issued notice to the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, the government and the Archaeological Survey of India on a plea seeking to restrain any construction on land allegedly encroached by him near the mosque.
Justice Vipin Sanghi, seeking a response from Shahi Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari, also asked his three brothers to reply on the plea along with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the police commissioner of Delhi by July 12.
A Saudi Arabian military officer was assaulted by security personnel after he refused to pass through a walk-through gate at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport in the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi on Thursday.
Personnel of the Airport Security Force assaulted the Saudi officer after a heated exchange.
TV news channels reported that problems began when Saudi official Shakeri Saeed Al-Shehri refused to pass through a walk-through gate.
The ASF personnel sent him back and the Saudi national reportedly pushed an ASF official.
President Barack Obama’s campaign intensified criticism of Mitt Romney’s record as Massachusetts governor on Thursday, attempting to build on assertions that the Republican nominee does not relate to the troubles of America’s broad middle class.
Romney, meanwhile, was trying to show a sharp contrast between his record in the private sector and the Obama administration’s support for green energy companies.
An Iranian living in Sweden, suspecting his wife of having an extra-marital affair, chopped off her lips with a knife and ate them. He has been arrested and faces trial.
The 52-year-old man had worked as an associate professor and done post-doctoral research in 2010 at a prestigious Swedish medical institute in Stockholm, Daily Mail reported.
Subsequently, he was employed by a university in Tehran but he continued to live partly in Stockholm, where he collaborated with his old research group at the university.
Tehran: Affirming that Iran was not after nuclear weapons, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said enriching uranium to 20 percent was his country’s right.
Ahmadinejad said related countries should explain why Tehran is not allowed to enrich uranium to 20 percent and how they will reciprocate if Iran stops uranium enrichment to that purity, Xinhua reported citing IRNA news agency.
Speaking during an interview with France 24 television, Ahmadinejad said enriching uranium to 20 percent is Iran’s right and Tehran is not after nuclear weapons.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav Thursday accused the previous Mayawati government of corruption and alleged that it had “cheated” people.
“The previous government cheated the people of the state in the name of law and order, and grave injustice was been done to the people,” Yadav said in the House, replying to the governor’s address.
Referring to the allegations of the opposition parties on the law and order in the state, Yadav said that course correction had been initiated and in the future it would further improve.
A special CBI court will on Friday give its judgement on the bail petition of Member of Parliament YS Jaganmohan Reddy, who is in jail in a disproportionate assets case.
The Central Bureau of Investigation court on Thursday reserved the orders after hearing the arguments of the lawyers of Jagan and the probe agency.
Jagan’s counsel Ranjit Kumar argued for his conditional interim bail so that he could campaign for his party in the June 12 by-elections.
He told the court that Jagan was arrested when he was in the midst of the campaign.
The first private spaceship, the Dragon, undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) Thursday, and landed in the Pacific Ocean.
The Dragon’s bell-shaped capsule plunged into the water about 400 nautical miles (740 km) southwest of Los Angeles at 1542 GMT.
Astronauts Andre Kuipers and Joseph Acaba detached the cargo craft that has brought back 600 kg of redundant items from the ISS to Earth, with the help of the station’s 17-metre crane Canadarm.
Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh was shot dead on Friday morning when he has stepped out of his house for a morning walk. The police say a probe is on to find out the culprit.
Singh was on a morning walk when he was accosted by gunmen who pumped several bullets into him, killing him on the spot at Katira Mohalla under Nawada police station, 71 kms from Patna, they said.
Singh alias Mukhiya ji, who was earlier facing life imprisonment in various carnage cases, was acquitted and released from jail in April this year.
Syria on Thursday blamed up to 800 rebel fighters for the massacre in central Syria last week that killed more than 100 people, nearly half of them children, in its most comprehensive explanation to date of the bloodshed.
The narrative starkly contradicted accounts of witnesses who blamed “shabiha” or the shadowy gunmen who operate on behalf of President Bashar Assad’s regime.
The UN also said it had strong suspicions those pro-regime gunmen were responsible for much of the carnage on Friday in a cluster of villages known as Houla.
After offering new age IT solutions to the world, Microsoft founder Bill Gates has now set his eyes on achieving his ‘ultimate’ dream – low cost toilets.
Come August and he will host the world’s best scientists and engineers in Seattle, US, to see if they can design cheap, dry toilets which don’t hitherto exist.
This public health innovation, says the co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is his “ultimate dream” though it is “not the only one”.
He has endorsed almost every consumer product right from hair oil to cars, but megastar Amitabh Bachchan says he is not a salesman.
The 69-year-old actor is amused by Bollywood`s current obsession with marketing films and the crores spent to draw attention of the audience.
“Now… Gosh I fail to even imagine the various `technologies` that are put into use for attention to be drawn towards a particular film.
Any and every medium that has the patronage or attention of the masses, is exploited for the benefit of a film on release.
A delegation of Andhra Pradesh unit of Jamiat Ulama today met Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and presented a memorandum of demands for the uplift of the of Muslims in the state. The delegation, comprising all district Presidents of the organisation, was led by Jamiat Ulama Andhra Pradesh chief Maulana Hafiz Peer Shabbir Ahmed, who is also an MLC. During discussion with the Chief Minister, Ahmed raised issues like the Centre’s 4.5 per cent sub-quota for minorities under the OBC reservation in Government jobs and educational institutes, according to a Jamiat release here.
Anshuman Mishra, who was in the news recently when his candidature for a Rajya Sabha seat from Jharkhand was endorsed by some BJP MLAs, today wrote a letter to party leader L K Advani asking him to hang his boots and give way to younger leaders. Describing Advani as the tallest leader and mentor of the party in his letter, Mishra asked the octagenarian leader to give an opportunity to leaders like Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Narendra Modi to “lead the nation”.
Impressed with India’s successful effort in polio eradication, Pakistan is keen to emulate the model to achieve polio-free status even as it allayed fears of exporting the virus to the Indian side. A nine-member Pakistani delegation today met India’s Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and senior officials of the Ministry and took tips on the polio eradication programme.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray today said that poaching of tigers here could not have taken place without the support of local people. Thackeray, who was here to collect facts regarding poaching of tigers said that “It is impossible for any outsider to lay traps in deep forests without help from local people. It is the local people responsible for the act”. Talking about tiger conservation, Raj observed that awareness level about wildlife and forests is low in our society. Political parties call bandh against hike in petrol price but keep mum when tigers are killed.
Heatwave conditions prevailed in the districts of Guntur, Krishna, of Coastal Andhra Pradesh and Adilabad, Warangal, Karimnagar, Khammam, Nalgonda and Nizamabad of Telangana during the last 24 hours. The highest maximum temperature of 47 degrees celsius was recorded in Khammam. A bulletin from Meteorological Centre here today said Heat wave conditions would continue to prevail in the districts of Guntur, Krishna and Prakasham of Coastal Andhra Pradesh and Adilabad, Warangal, Khammam, Nalgonda, Nizamabad and Karimnagar of Telangana during the next two days.