Taken by surprise by the decision of an Italian judge to include Defence Minister AK Antony as a possible witness in a trial relating to corruption.
In the Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland chopper deal, India tonight ruled out his appearance in the court.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived here Monday on a short visit during which he was expected to meet with Egyptian interim President Adli Mansour.
Abbas’ visit aims to “affirm the constant contact between the Palestinian leadership and its Egyptian counterpart”, reported Xinhua citing Palestinian presidency’s spokesman Nabil Abu Radina.
Abbas will hold talks with Egyptian officials on the Middle East peace process and the Palestinian people’s conditions in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas, which is a rival movement to the president’s Fatah party.
With the aim of reducing its power bill, railways is actively considering setting up captive nuclear power plants to meet the rising demand of energy for train operation.
“Talks are going on with Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) for setting up captive nuclear plants to cater to the growing demand of power for running increased number of trains,” said a senior Railway Ministry official in the elctrical department.
There are about 42,00 electrical locomotives operational and out of the total 65,000 km long rail route, 23,541 km has been electrified.
Expressing concern over a survey that puts Sikh youths among the most unemployed in the country, a Congress leader has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to raise the issue in the upcoming Parliament session.
Jagmeet Singh Brar, who was also a former MP, has also sought a meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee to discuss the report of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).
Myanmarese Navy chief Thura Thet Swe on Monday met his Indian counterpart Admiral D K Joshi to discuss strengthening cooperation in areas of operations, capability building and material support.
The two navy chiefs met here and also discussed various proposals to further strengthen Navy-to-Navy cooperation in training and take the existing relationship to another level and promote capability enhancement, Navy officials said here.
India on Monday said the deep hurt felt by Indian people over the beheading of soldiers on the border has to be addressed for “unqualified movement forward” on the bilateral ties with Pakistan.
On the Islamabad proposal on the talk schedule for remaining secretary-level meetings in the third round of resumed dialogue, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said steps will have to be taken carefully.
With Lok Sabha polls due next year, a tracker poll conducted by a TV channel shows BJP-led NDA making significant gains even as the Congress-led UPA is projected to be hit by anti-incumbency factor.
The poll projections also reveal that no single pre-poll formation looks in a position to form the government and will have to work very hard to get the support of key allies.
It, however, says in this election the shots will be called by regional party leaders like Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav, AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa, TMC leader Mamata Banerjee and BSP’s Mayawati.
Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath on Monday said her Ministry is in favour of providing free surgery and treatment to acid attack victims even in private hospitals.
She said that the Ministry had written a letter to the Health Ministry some time back about bearing the cost of surgery and treatment of the victims of acid attack.
“We had written a letter to the Union Health Ministry asking them to make surgery and treatment of the victims of acid attack free of cost and they had reverted back saying that it is already free in government hospitals.
The indefinite strike of urban bodies’ employees in Chhattisgarh was called off Monday, official sources said.
“A delegation of urban bodies’ striking employees called on Chief Minister Raman Singh here Monday and agreed to withdraw the strike which had begun July 18,” sources said.
The BJP government was under pressure to reach an agreement with the striking employees, as the state goes to assembly polls by November this year.
Reports say that government has conceded several key demands of the striking staff.
—-IANS
Legendary composer, singer and songwriter A.R. Rahman is all set for his India road tour “Rahmanishq” in October, the first such event in two decades.
The tour will be encompass cities like Kolkata, Visakhapatnam, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. A concert will also be held in Sydney in August.
Rahman is very excited about the concert.
“It will be an experience of music, great production, joy and fun,” he said at a press conference on “Rahmanishq” here Monday.
Protests rocked coastal Andhra and Rayalseema regions Monday, a day before a UPA panel and the Congress’s highest decision-making body discuss the issue of carving out a separate Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh amid indications that a final decision could be taken.
Additional paramilitary forces have been despatched to the state.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) panel will meet at 4 p.m. Tuesday, followed by a meeting of the all powerful Congress Working Committee, informed sources said.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Monday expressed his “strong support” for the resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Ban made the statement as he met Israeli justice minister and chief negotiator in the peace talks, Tzipi Livni, Xinhua reported.
“The secretary-general expressed his strong support for the resumption of credible negotiations to achieve the two-state solution and his appreciation for the recent courageous decision of (Israeli) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this regard,” the UN’s Deputy Spokesman Eduardo del Buey said.
US President Barack Obama Monday hailed the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians as “a promising step forward”, but said “hard work and hard choices” lie ahead.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry named Martin Indyk, former American ambassador to Israel, as his special envoy to guide the peace talks, Xinhua reported.
Industry leaders Monday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and called for removing hurdles to investments and convert decisions to action in a bid to propel economic growth.
Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, Infosys chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy, Wipro chairman Azim Premji, Bajaj Group chairman Rahul Bajaj and chief of leading industry chambers among others attended the meeting held at the prime minister’s official 7 Race Course Road residence. The meeting lasted for nearly three hours.
Film: B.A. Pass; Starring: Shilpa Shukla, Shadab Kamal; Directed by Ajay Bahl; Rating: ****
Somewhere towards the end of the protagonist Mukesh’s descent into a self-created hell, we see him standing shamelessly at the roadside soliciting sex, being picked up by three drunken burly men.
A little later, Shadab Kamal sobs in the bathroom, blood dripping to his feet in a trail of tell-tale brutality.
The intense implicit violence that underlines this sequence reminded me of a similar process of sexual debasement undertaken by Mark Wahlberg in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights”.
Legendary composer, singer and song-writer A.R. Rahman, who Monday announced an India road tour in October, said he keeps getting motivated to make more and more music thanks to the audiences’ love.
“This is what keeps me going. Their love makes me want to make more and more music,” Rahman said at a press conference on his road tour “Rahmanishq”.
The artist, known for his humility, said it was important for a singer to have a creative ego but to keep the personal ego aside.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has asked party leaders from Gujarat to build pressure on the Narendra Modi government by strongly raising issues concerning people, party sources said Monday.
They said that Gandhi told senior party leaders from Gujarat including Arjun Modhwadia and Shankarsinh Vaghela to forcefully raise issues which will build pressure on the Modi government.
Gandhi is also leant to have discussed agitational programmes with Gujarat leaders.
West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress romped towards a massive victory in the rural polls, regarded as a curtain raiser to the next general elections and the biggest test of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s popularity since she came to power in 2011.
The Trinamool has won or is on the verge of winning majority of the gram panchayats and the panchayat samilties (the lowest and the middle levels, respectively, of the three-tier rural council system) in 12 of the 17 districts of the state.
Amid ongoing protests and public demand for ouster of the Islamist-led transitional government, Tunisian Prime Minister Ali Larayedh Monday declared to hold general elections Dec 17 , Xinhua reported.
Larayedh stressed that his government was not clinging to power, rather fulfilling its duty. The Monday’s announcement came four days after the assassination of a prominent opposition figure Mohamed Brahmi, a strong opponent of the ruling Ennahdha in the Constitutional Assembly.
Since the assassination, thousands of people have marched in the streets, calling for government’s resignation.
In its largest crackdown on child prostitution to date, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Monday announced to have arrested 150 people and rescued 105 children from different parts of the country.
The nationwide operation over the weekend, authorities said, took investigators to race tracks and truck stops and target the use of social media sites for child prostitution activity, the CNN reported Monday.
Overall, the three-day undercover roundup Operation Cross Country took place in 76 cities and involved 230 law enforcement units, the FBI said .
The Pakistan Army was called in after an unknown number of militants carrying heavy weapons stormed a central jail in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province late Monday, Geo News reported.
The Central Jail, located in Dera Ismail Khan city, was housing as many as 5,000 prisoners including 250 inmates belonging to various banned outfits.
Later, proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack on jail, saying 100 militants, including suicide bombers took part in it.
Mamnoon Hussain, the India-born nominee of ruling PML-N, is set to become the 12th President of Pakistan on Tuesday, succeeding incumbent Asif Ali Zardari.
The election, which was preponed from August 6, will see a one-to-one contest between Hussain and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tenreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate Justice (retd) Wajihuddin Ahmed.
Pakistan People’s Party withdrew its candidate Raza Rabbani and boycotted the election in protest to the date of polls being changed.
–PTI
Saudi Arabia has unveiled a $22.5-billion project for a “driverless” Metro here in the capital city, the construction of which will begin in the first quarter of 2014, a media report said on Monday.
The Riyadh Metro — dubbed the “Miracle of the Desert” — will consist of six lines with a length of 176 km and 85 stations, Xinhua cited Arab News as saying.
The proposed Metro will pass through areas near government buildings, commercial and health centres, educational centres and major universities in Riyadh and its suburbs.
A 63-year-old jeweller in Rajasthan has penned religious books including Surah Yasin Sharif, said to be the heart of the Holy Quran, literally in golden words.
Bhomraj Soni, a resident of Bikaner town in the state, some 350 km from Jaipur, used gold to pen down Yasin Sharif and Hanuman Chalisa – a prayer for Hindu god Hanuman – on paper.
He used 45 grams of gold in writing the holy books, which are of 17 pages each.
Soni, a jeweller by profession, had to practise for months before actually getting down to the ‘holy’ work.
Israeli chief negotiator Tzipi Livni Monday expressed “great hope” for the long-stalled peace talks with Palestine, before heading to the US to meet her Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erekat.
The two negotiators are scheduled to meet Tuesday at the house of US Secretary of State John Kerry, in a meeting aimed to create a friendly atmosphere ahead of the talks, Xinhua reported.
“I’m leaving on this mission with heavy responsibility but also with great hope,” Livni said prior to her flight to Washington.