Now ‘padayatra politics’ seems to be the ‘new mantra’ of political leaders in a bid to catapult their image among the masses obviously with an eye on the 2014 elections!
The Telugu Desam Party President Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu began his marathon padayatra, termed “vastunna mee kosam”, from Hindupur in Ananthapur district on the auspicious occasion of Gandhi jayanthi on Tuesday.
Grooming the royal cub before his assuming a bigger role in the Congress, AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi has become a member of the Parliament standing committee on finance after quitting the HRD panel. The standing committee on finance is considered crucial as it can help Rahul familarise himself with key areas in governance .Rahul and his team are busy acquiring knowledge and experience from different Ministries and getting ready to take full charge of PM mantle.
Hotel heiress Paris Hilton’s beau River Viiperi was arrested for punching a man on his face, but was released later.
Hilton and her 21-year-old Spanish model boyfriend were partying at a Las Vegas nightclub in the early hours of Monday morning, when he punched an onlooker in the face.
According to tmz.com, a male party-goer filed a police report claiming his girlfriend was “making out” with Hilton on the dance floor when a jealous River punched him so hard that he needed medical attention.
Iran will continue to produce 20-percent enriched uranium, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday.
He also said that Iran will stop producing it if other countries supply the material, Xinhua reported. He said the fuel is needed at a medicine plant.
“So far there has been nobody to provide the fuel,” Ahmadinejad told reporters.
Meanwhile, an Iranian lawmaker said Tuesday that Iran would produce 60 percent enriched uranium if negotiations with major world powers prove ineffective.
Gunmen in Nigeria stormed a student hostel and shot dead 25 people, police and rescuers said Tuesday.
The attack took place Monday night near a polytecnic in Mubi town of Adamawa state. Some 20 students were among those killed, Xinhua reported.
Mubi has been under curfew for the past 10 days following a spate of killings.
Chinese-owned Ralls Corp. has sued US President Barack Obama for blocking a wind farm project, claiming that his order gave no detailed explanation.
In a complaint filed Monday in the US District Court here, Ralls Corp. said Obama acted in “an unlawful and unauthorized manner” in issuing the order.
He gave no “reasoned explanation” for his decision to use a defence law in prohibiting the acquisition and ordering the company to divest four wind farms, Xinhua reported.
Continuing his fight against corruption and other social evils Baba Ramdev launched his countrywide ‘ swadeshi movement’ in Haridwar to oppose the central government’s decision to allow FDI in retail.
Baba has bought in Yoga revolution in the country and atleast 5 crore people are following him in his daily routine of Yoga and Watched by hundreds of supporters, the yoga guru lit a bonfire of imported clothes at Libberhedi village near Haridwar. Ramdev has urged Indians to boycott foreign goods and adopt a strict habit of buying all Indian made products .
India crashed out of World Twenty20 despite beating South Africa by one run in their last Super Eights match here today.
Brief Scores:
India: 152 for six in 20 overs (Suresh Raina 45, Rohit Sharma 25; Robin Peterson 2/25, Morne Morkel 2/28).
South Africa: 151 all out in 19.5 overs (Faf du Plessis 65; Zaheer Khan 3/22, Laxmipathy Balaji 3/37)
—————-PTI
Naxals fired a rocket launcher at a police station in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district today, but it missed the target and failed to explode, police said.
The incident took place at Golapalli police station in Naxal-affected Sukma district.
Sukma Superintendent of Police Abhishek Sandilya told PTI that the ultras fired a rocket launcher at Golapalli police station. However, since the projectile missed the target, there was neither damage nor casualties in the incident.
–Agencies
Human Rights activist Prof Haragopal on Tuesday alleged that the state government was trying to defame the Telangana movement citing few violent incidents during the Telangana March.
Speaking at a media conference here, Prof Haragopal reminded that Union Home Minister Susheel Kumar Shinde himself had thanked the Telangana people for conducting the Telangana March peacefully. In spite of this, how can the police file cases against T JAC leaders, he questioned.
Lok Satta Party founder-president Dr Jayaprakash Narayan has said that he whole-heartedly supports formation of Telangana State as part of a comprehensive and amicable solution. The Telangana people have repeatedly expressed their aspiration for a separate State and it cannot be ignored in a democratic society, he added.
New Delhi: Union Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal Tuesday apologised for the derogatory comments he had made on women, but said he had been quoted out of context.
“I apologies if people are upset, but my comments were taken out of context,” Jaiswal, also a Congress Lok Sabha member, told reporters.
He was reacting to criticism of his comments made during a poetry meet at K.K. Girls College in Kanpur Sunday night when he had likened “the joy of a new victory to a new marriage” and said “as the years go by, the celebrations like in a marriage become old”.
Perhaps, for the first time, the Congress has given ‘clarity’ to contentious Telangana issue to all those who watched a national TV channel (NDTV). A day after the successful congregation of T-activists on the Necklace Road in the State capital under the “Telangana March” or “Sagara Haaram”, the national channel rightfully so organized an interesting debate on bifurcation of the State involving a host of pro and anti, besides neutrals during the prime time on Monday night.
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BJP leader Arun Jaitley Tuesday met party leaders in Karnataka to defuse the infighting among them even as former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa slammed Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar’s governance, calling it “scary”.
“The way the government is running is scary. I told the chief minister today that unless his administration focuses on development, I will have no option but to take extreme action,” Yeddyurappa told reporters in his hometown Shimoga.
A former Australian TV personality has been sentenced to 10 months in jail for watching child pornography.
Andy Muirhead, 36, the former presenter of the ABC TV show Collectors, pleaded guilty in Tasmania’s Supreme Court to two counts of accessing child porn via internet and one charge of possessing child exploitation material, The Australian reported.
The court was told that Muirhead had viewed thousand of images over 16 months, at times on a daily basis. Some were described as “sadistic” and featured children as young as three.
Indian security forces Monday shot dead five Pakistani militants in Jammu and Kashmir, police said.
All of them belonged to the Hizbul Mujahideen group, a police officer told IANS. He said the five were from Pakistan and were killed in a gun battle in a forested part of Garderbal district.
A huge cache of arms and ammunition was seized from the site.
The officer said the group had infiltrated into the Kashmir Valley about a month back from Pakistan.
The West is waging economic war on Iran in a vain effort to make it yield on its nuclear activities, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday, amid a steep plunge in the value of his country’s currency. Western sanctions hitting oil exports generating foreign currency revenues and
restricting Iran’s ability to repatriate those revenues “is a hidden and heavy war on a planetary scale,” he told a news conference in Tehran.
“It’s a battle. They have managed to diminish a little our oil sales, but we are going to compensate for that,” he said.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa has strongly protested the unilateral decision of the central government to notify National Board of Examination (NBE) to conduct entrance tests for courses in medicine.
The United States has told India it was going to have a broader relook at its visa regime, but this will have to await the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
This was conveyed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton toIndian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna when he raised the issue at their bilateral meeting here Monday, according to official sources.
There is all possibility of mid-term elections to the Lok Sabha by February-March next and the ruling Congress dispensation would lose badly, Janata Party national president Subramanian Swamy claimed today.
Considering the present situation, there would be mid-term polls to the Lok Sabha in February or March next, he said while briefing reporters on the deliberations of the party’s TamilNadu State General Council meeting, here.
–Agencies
Telangana Political Joint Action Committee leaders Vittal and Srinivas Goud have said that every separate Telangana protagonist has a right to seek the resignation of Minister for Panchayath Raj K. Jana Reddy.
The leaders participated in the ‘Mouna Deeksha’ at Bapu Ghat here today. They condemned Jana Reddy’s remarks against JAC leaders. They asked Jana Reddy as to why he did not attend the JAC meetings, even while the JAC was launched in Jana Reddy’s house.
Housewives in Goa just got a breather from rising inflation — courtesy Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government in Goa Tuesday launched a scheme to provide an allowance of Rs.1,000 a month to housewives in households whose annual incomes are less than Rs.3 lakh.
Speaking to reporters at the launch of the scheme here, Parrikar said the money would be deposited directly into the housewife’s single or joint account.
(IANS) The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), celebrating the 143rd birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Tuesday organised a book exhibition at Raj Ghat here.
The exhibition, aimed at reviving the Gandhian spirit in youngsters through books, was inaugurated by IGNOU’s Vice-Chancellor Gopinath Pradhan.
The university offers Ph.D., M.Phil., Masters’ degree and post-graduation certificate courses in Gandhi and Peace Studies.
With the protests intensifying over the demand for Telangana, the Centre on Monday said there was no forward movement on the issue.
“There is no forward movement,” Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told reporters here when asked about the Central government steps for resolution of the sensitive issue.
Asked about the claim by a senior Andhra Pradesh Police officer that the Left Wing Extremists were supporting the separate state movement, Shinde said, “That was his information. I can’t say anything on it here”.