Month: July 2014

A senior executive of a leading business process outsourcing (BPO) provider firm was killed in a road accident on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway Wednesday, police said.

The man was identified as Pankaj Mishra, 32, a resident of Mahipalpur extension in Delhi.

An assistant manager in the BPO, he was returning home around 1 a.m. when an unidentified vehicle hit his bike near the IFFCO Chowk on the expressway.

“His bike was hit by a vehicle and he fell off the flyover in a service lane and was crushed by many vehicles,” police officer Jaipal said.

National Award-winning filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar has been roped in as the chairman of the expert committee on entertainment, media and sports of the Indian Merchants’ Chamber (IMC), the premier trade and industry body.

Before Bhandarkar, Karan Johar, Manmohan Shetty and Balkrishna Shroff had headed the committee.

Prabodh Thakker, IMC president, hopes to build further on the annual flagship event “FUSION”, conference on entertainment, media and sports under the guidance of Bhandarkar, said a statement.

The Juvenile Justice Board Wednesday gave sentence of three years’ stay in a special home to a minor, involved in the 2011 Delhi High Court blast, NIA sources said.

The board, presided over by Principal Magistrate Vishal Singh sentenced the minor to three years’ stay in a special home after holding him guilty in the Sep 7, 2011, blast case.

Fifteen people were killed and 79 others injured in the explosion outside gate number 5 of the court complex.

Ukraine took all possible measures to free its military pilot captured by insurgents, who was reportedly transported to Russia, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema said Wednesday.

“Ukrainian law enforcement agencies do not know how Nadezhda Savchenko was brought to Russia,” Yarema told reporters.

Savchenko, the 31-year-old female pilot, was captured in June by insurgents near the town of Shchastye, north of Lugansk city, Xinhua reported citing the Interfax news agency.

After weeks of speculation, Amit Shah, a Narendra Modi loyalist who scripted the BJP’s spectacular electoral win in Uttar Pradesh, was Wednesday named its new president, with party leaders voicing confidence that he will take the ruling party to greater success.

Prime Minister Modi, who counts the 49-year-old Shah amongst his closest confidants, said Shah’s elevation would help the Bharatiya Janata Party to further expand its influence across the country.

The Himachal Pradesh High Court Wednesday turned down a plea of the Hyderabad-based engineering institute to modify or recall its order to pay an interim compensation of Rs.2.5 lakh to the families of the 24 students each who were washed away in the Beas river last month.

A division bench of Chief Justice Mansoor Ahmad Mir and Justice Tarlok Singh Chauhan, which treated a media report as a public interest litigation, directed the college management to refund the amount of tuition fee of the students within two weeks.

The central government will review the public private partnership (PPP) component involved in setting up of model schools, Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani said here Wednesday.

“The government proposes to undertake a review of the PPP component of the model school scheme for setting up of schools in 3203 non-educationally backward blocks” across the country, she said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

The scheme was launched in November 2008 and was being implemented from 2009-10.

The average annual dropout rate among girl students at the upper primary level has decreased, Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani said here Wednesday.

The average annual drop-out rate 6.08 percent in 2011-12 and it decreased to 4.01 percent in 2013-14, she said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

“The Sarva Siksha Abhiyan programme provides for a multi-pronged approach to check drop out among girls and has enhanced the access to primary and upper primary schools by opening such schools within one and three km respectively.”

The central government is planning to open over 200 polytechnics across India in the next three years, Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani said here Wednesday.

“In coming three years, the (central) government is planning to start 222 polytechnics under the scheme ‘Sub-Mission on Polytechnics’,” she said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

“Due to this, there will be additional enrolment of 119,880 students in polytechnic system of the country,” Irani said.

Kerala Governor Sheila Dikshit today denied receiving any hint from the Centre to quit and said she was not aware of any move to transfer her out of Thiruvananthapuram Rajbhavan.

“No”, she said here when asked whether she was sounded by anyone in the Central government to put in papers after the NDA government assumed power last month.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi Wednesday dozed off in the Lok Sabha during the debate on price rise, with the BJP using the visuals caught on the house TV channel to hit out at the Congress.

The Congress was not serious on the issue of price rise, and Rahul Gandhi “was so bored during the discussion on price rise that he went into sleep”, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shahnawaz Hussain told reporters.

“Rahul Gandhi was seen sleeping in parliament during a debate on price rise. That’s what the Congress was doing during their 10-year rule,” Hussain said in a tweet later.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki Wednesday accused the Kurds of providing a base for the operations of terrorist groups, promising to free all lands seized by the militants.

“We will never be silent that Arbil become a base of operation for Daash (Arabic first letters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria or ISIs), Baath, Al Qaeda and other terrorists,” Maliki said in his weekly televised speech.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has landed in a soup after a petition was filed against him for spending over rupees 226 million on acquiring?two bullet- proof cars and sniffer dogs as part of his security detail.

Advocate Syed Feroze Shah Gilani filed the petition in the Lahore High Court yesterday?claiming Rs 224 million was spent on the purchase of two bullet-proof cars while Rs 2.

Children developing tuberculosis (TB) every year in countries most affected by the disease is “25 percent higher” than the total number of new cases worldwide estimated by WHO in 2012, says a study.

Over 650,000 children develop TB every year in the 22 countries with a high burden of the disease (HBCs), but the World Health Organisation in 2012 estimated the total number of new cases worldwide at 530,000, say researchers at Britain’s University of Sheffield.

A benchmark index of Indian equities markets Wednesday closed the trade 137.30 points or 0.54 percent lower on heavy selling in automobile, capital goods, and information technology (IT) scrips.

The markets turned cautious ahead of the budget even as the economic Survey, tabled in parliament by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, forecast a 5.4-5.9 percent growth.

The annual report card on the state of the country’s economy, however, said price rise remained a cause for worry.

The Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (TSIIC) in technical cooperation with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH launched a first-of-its-kind and novel initiative “Retrofitting Programme (5-point programme) for Information Technology Parks in Cyberabad Zone of TSIIC”.

Information Technology Minister K T Rama Rao launched the program and unveiled an information brochure in a special function held on Wednesday at Tech Mahindra Auditorium, Hi-Tech City Phase-II, Madhapur.

Rahul Gandhi was seen with his head down and eyes shut during a discussion on the price rise issue.

BJP took potshots at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi after he was caught Sleeping in Parliament today during a discussion on the price rise issue.

BJP leader Shahnawaaz Hussain tweeted, “Rahul Gandhi was seen sleeping in Parliament during a debate on price rise. That’s what the Congress was doing during their 10 yr rule.

Comedian Katt Williams was involved in a car accident earlier this week.

He crashed his Rolls-Royce into the rear end of a Honda full of passengers while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway in the state on Monday night, reports tmz.com.

The Honda driver was taken to the hospital with minor back injuries, said the officials. The driver accused Katt of speeding, but cops didn’t buy it.

German authorities Wednesday searched the home and office of a defence ministry employee suspected of spying for the US, media reported.

The searches were carried out in the capital Berlin, BBC quoted a federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe as saying.

This is the second such case involving the US. Earlier, an intelligence agency employee was arrested for passing secret documents to the US intelligence.

Pune’s Shweta Galande carded Wednesday’s lowest total of 1 under 71 at the KGA Golf Course to lead the field on Day 1 of the Rs.5 lakh eighth leg of the Hero Women’s Professional Golf Tour here from July 9-11.

Trailing Shweta by a stroke was Jaipur’s Pallavi Jain in second position after Round 1. Local girl Sharmila Nicollet along with the city’s amateur golfers Nikita Arjun and Anisha Padukone and Pune’s Raksha Phadke were tied third with identical scores of 1 over 73 after 18 holes.

Pakistan’s opposition party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Wednesday filed a petition with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to seek the disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as a member of parliament on the basis of some allegations, media reported.

According to the reports, two members of parliament from PTI, Murad Saeed and Ali Muhammad Khan, filed the petition which called for the disqualification of Sharif as a member of the National Assembly or the lower house of parliament.

Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra Group, Wednesday appealed for immediate measures to check the high number of road accident deaths in the country, a statement said.

In a video message released through SaveLIFE Foundation — a road safety advocacy group, Mahindra described road accident deaths as an “epidemic” and asked people to join him in the campaign for safer roads.

“Most of these deaths could have been prevented. With the right traffic technology, training and public policies, millions of lives can be saved,” Mahindra said in the video.

US Secretary of State John Kerry Wednesday said his country does “not seek” to contain China and, on the contrary, welcomes “a prosperous, stable and peaceful country”, while Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that confrontation with the US would be a “disaster”.

Speaking at the start of the two-day annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue between the two countries here, Kerry called for a China “that contributes to the stability and development of the region and chooses to play a responsible role in world affairs”.

The Delhi High Court Wednesday asked the KVS to respond to a plea filed by Sanskrit scholars against a circular that allows students to study foreign languages instead of Sanskrit as the third language.

A division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice R.S. Endlaw said the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) should submit its response before the next date of hearing Aug 6 or else the KVS commissioner will have to be present in court in person.

KVS had not filed its response on the plea earlier despite court’s order.

A court here has directed Delhi Police to collect voice samples of editors of the Zee media group in the presence of experts in a case of extortion from a company of Congress leader Naveen Jindal.

Additional Sessions Judge Bharat Parashar ordered police to collect the voice samples of Zee editors Samir Ahluwalia and Sudhir Chaudhary in the presence of experts from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL).

The court was hearing a revision plea filed by the editors seeking the court’s direction for collection of voice samples in the presence of a judicial magistrate.