Akki meets his match in Kane

Mumbai, June 12: Bollywood’s khiladi No. 1 Akshay Kumar met a bigger khiladi in size, at least in his Mumbai home yesterday morning. WWE superstar Kane, an idol of Akki’s son Aarav, visited the actor’s family, and the six-year-old was almost sleepless the night before, overcome with excitement.

Racist attacks spread to Adelaide, student assaulted

Melbourne, June 12: Racial attacks on Indian students spread to South Australia with a 22-year-old being allegedly assaulted by a teenager in Adelaide after making “rude” comments about his turban, even as the state premier warned he will not tolerate any form of racism.

Police said the Indian student suffered a broken nose and sore jaw in the incident in Adelaide’s busy market area of Rundle Mall yesterday and that they have arrested a 17-year-old youth in this connection.

The attacker has been bailed to appear in the Adelaide Youth Court.

Father kills two daughters, confesses crime

Greater Noida, June 12: In a startling revelation, a father confessed murder of two daughters alleging his wife to have illicit relationship, here.

A man, resident of Mangrauli area, killed his daughters. The ‘frustrated’ father went to the police station and confessed the crime saying that his wife had illicit relationship. He alleged that the girls were not his children and were born out of his wife’s illegal relationship.

Satyam floats ‘pool’ plan to cut staff cost

Hyderabad, June 12: The board of Satyam which met on Thursday has announced that to address the issue of excess employees, it is launching a Virtual Pool Program (VPP), an one-time programme, effective June 2009, which is aimed at addressing staff costs while retaining talent within the company.

Vedanta arm to buy Dempo’s biz

Mumbai, June 12: Anil Agarwal’s shopping spree continues. Even as the pursuit for Arizona-based copper firm Asarco is on, Agarwal has sealed a deal back home.

Sesa Goa, a subsidiary of Agarwal’s Vedanta Resources, is buying the Dempo group’s oldest and most priced asset its mining business in Goa for Rs 1,750 crore in an all-cash deal. A few months ago, the Dempos separated the mining business and investment portfolio from the holding company, V S Dempo & Co (VSD), to make way for a new investor.

Deepika and I are very different types: Saif Ali Khan

Mumbai, June 12: Saif Ali Khan is just five minutes away before he addresses the Indian media on his maiden venture into production for his film Love Aaj Kal in which he stars opposite the beautiful leggy Deepika Padukone. But inside the PVR theatre, the room temperature is high and our mind is on overdrive. He has it all.

A successful career and a blissful relationship with Kareena Kapoor. Media keeps waiting for more than an hour but they don’t complaint because the man in question is a ‘nawab’.

Ragging punishable, ASP warns students

Hyderabad, June 12: Adilabad Assistant Superintendent of Police Tarun Joshi on Thursday warned that ragging by students outside the college premises also attracted the stringent penal sections of the AP Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997. He said students who indulged in ragging of juniors can face problems even later in life once they are found to be guilty under this Act.

Only time will tell how long this ‘change’ lasts? News Analysis

Hyderabad, June 12: Both Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy and Leader of Opposition N. Chandrababu Naidu are changed persons after the general elections, at least going by what they said about each other.

Mr. Naidu said “I am told the Chief Minister has changed his ways of late and I hope to see a different Rajasekhara Reddy”.

The Chief Minister observed about his rival, “I found a change in his attitude. I welcome it totally”. As these compliments were traded on the floor of the Assembly, they cannot be treated lightly.

Woman ‘falls’ from 10th floor of building, dies

Hyderabad, June 12: A 22-year-old woman, Chinna, working with the housekeeping section of My Home Navadeep apartment complex beside Cyber Towers in Madhapur, died after falling from the 10th floor of one of the buildings on its premises on Thursday.

–Agencies

I’d let my work speak for myself: Rajeev

Mumbai, June 12: Happy maintaining a low profile, Rajeev Khandelwal tells TOI that being choosy doesn’t make him insecure since no one in the film industry can feel secure at any stage in life.

Post the success of Aamir, you don’t exactly seem to have been on a signing spree…

‘Tibetan medicine offers hope for cancer’

New Delhi, June 12: Tibetan medical science, a 2,000-year-old legacy of herbal and spiritual healing born in the Buddhist monasteries of high-altitude Tibet, offers cures for diseases like cancer and thalassaemia but is yet to be recognised by the Indian government, says one of its leading woman practitioners here.
“This system can contribute a lot to ease suffering. If it is recognised by the Indian government, students can carry on research because we have no country of our own,” Tsewang Dolkar Khongkar, a Tibetan doctor, told IANS.

Salman Khan not my boyfriend: Claudia Ciesla

New Delhi, June 12: German supermodel-turned-actress Claudia Ciesla, who is considering a Bollywood career, has rubbished rumours that she is dating Indian superstar Salman Khan and insists that Katrina Kaif is his girlfriend.

“Salman and I are just good friends. He is not my boyfriend, as has been reported here. Everyone knows that it’s Katrina Kaif who is his girlfriend and not me. I haven’t even been that long in India to start controversies,” Claudia, 22, told IANS in an interview.

She was in the capital to promote her film “Karma: Crime, Passion, Reincarnation”.

Mumbai terror probe: Witness recounts how her daughter died

Mumbai, June 12: A 25-year-old woman broke down in the Special Court as she narrated how her daughter – a victim of gunfire of the terror pair Mohammed Ajmal Mohammed Amir Kasab and Abu Ismail at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus – had collapsed before her eyes and died.

Nafisa Qureshi, a resident of Kurla here, could not hold back tears when she deposed Additional Sessions Judge M L Tahilayani, who is conducting the trial of the November 26-29, 2008 Mumbai terror attack.

After Indians, Sri Lankan students attacked in Australia

Melbourne, June 12: After Indians, a group of students from Sri Lanka have been allegedly attacked in Australia, with three men smashing the windows of their home and taunting them with “racist insults” in capital Canberra.

Police are investigating allegations of attacks against a group of Sri Lankan students at their home, ABC News reported.

It is alleged that three men smashed the front windows of the students’ house in Macquarie in north Canberra after an unsuccessful attempt to crash a party.

‘Married’ girls ready to die but not part

Nagpur, June 12: ‘Shayad, aasman bhi ro pada apne haal dekh ke!’ (Maybe, the sky too has started weeping on seeing our condition) said cupid-struck Rupali (name changed) seated beside her beloved ‘gharwala’ Rupa (name changed) at a non-descript eatery at Khaparkheda on Thursday evening.

45-yr-old woman accused of marrying minor

Kolkata, June 12: A middle-aged man marrying a much younger girl may only raise a few eyebrows. But when a 45-year-old married woman is accused of kidnapping a boy, whose father claims he is only 16 years old, it’s enough to create a sensation. And a court case.

Subhas Mondal, the father of the boy, moved a habeas corpus application before Calcutta High Court on Thursday, alleging that Chanchala Mondal of Biswanathpur village in Murshidabad has “kidnapped his minor son Arjun and married him”.

Docs discover 1 kg hair in girl’s gut

Vadodara, June 12: When this 13-year-old patient walked in the hospital complaining of abdominal pain and vomiting, doctors thought that she was suffering from some routine stomach disorder. Post-diagnosis, the rare ailment left the doctors stumped. Her reports revealed that the patient had a big lump of hair in her stomach measuring 50 cm.

Newly-married woman sets husband ablaze

Aurangabad, June 12: Hell indeed hath no fury than a woman scorned. A farmer was set ablaze by his wife barely a month into their marriage because of his incessant comparison of her with a woman friend.

In her confession to the police, the wife, Komal alias Manisha (18), said she killed her husband, Srihari Yadav (25), because of his frequent taunts that she was not as beautiful as his woman friend from Pune. He also allegedly threatened to abandon her as she had not brought a good dowry amount.

Man rapes minor sister, held

New Delhi, June 12: A day after a father was arrested for allegedly raping his daughter, another incident in which a brother allegedly raped his own
sister has come to light. The incident was reported from the Trilokpuri area in east Delhi late on Wednesday night. The 28-year-old accused, a small stall owner, has been arrested by the Mayur Vihar police. The victim, a 12-year-old girl, is undergoing treatment in a local hospital.

Nightclub guards held for tying up boys

Mumbai, June 12: The security guards of a posh nightclub in Belapur tied two teenaged boys to a fire hydrant for over six hours as a punishment for trying to steal some aluminium pipes and metal sheets kept there to renovate the restobar.

Alam Shaikh (13) and Mohammed Asif Idrisi (15) were illegally detained from 6 am to 12.30 pm on Thursday by two guards — Bageecha Singh Bhullar (43) and Ujwal Sharma (21) — of Indulge Restobar. Both the guards were arrested.

Minister offers Rs42cr crown at Tirupati temple

Hyderabad, June 12: Karnataka tourism minister and Bellary mine baron Gali Janardhan Reddy will probably be better known for something else: with

an offering of a diamond-studded crown worth Rs 42 crore, he became the biggest donor to Lord Venkateswara at Tirupati since the Vijayanagara

kings 400 years ago.

The 20-kg stunner was a “thanksgiving” gesture, the minister said. Sources added that 32kg of `aparanji (pure)’ gold went into its making,

CBI cracks down on India’s corrupt babudom

New Delhi, June 12: India regularly features in the list of most corrupt nations in the world and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has revealed just why. The agency’s countrywide drive against corruption by public functionaries threw up an arc of corruption — from forgery of caste certificates and data theft to bungling in purchases in the much-vaunted Indian Army.

Forensic experts to probe murder of Maharashtra Congress leader

Mumbai, June 11: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has summoned forensic and ballistic experts to help probe the murder of Congress leader Pavan Raje Nimbalkar allegedly by his cousin and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP Padamsinh Patil, an official said here Thursday.

The team will assist the CBI probe the murder, which has created a political storm in Maharashtra and led to Patil’s suspension from the NCP.

Sonia in Rae Bareli, talks development, assembly polls

Lucknow, June 11: Congress president Sonia Gandhi, on a visit to her Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh, Thursday said that development would top the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s agenda for the next five years and also urged party workers to gear up for the next assembly elections.

“We are not going to compromise with the issue of development as it will continue to remain on top (of the agenda) for our government,” Gandhi told a gathering of party workers at the Feroz Gandhi Degree College in Rae Bareli, some 80 km from here.

Now, a TV show for identical twins

New Delhi, June 11: Can you tell them apart? Can they tell themselves apart? MTV’s new game show featuring identical twins promises to answer all these questions and more.

Titled “Airtel MTV Connected”, the show will have 10 sets of identical twins who will be tested to find out how “connected” they are. The winner will earn a trip to the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur.