It's a day when the stock markets have been adjectivised with -- bloodbath, carnage, slaughter -- as the Sensex crashed 700 points -- the lowest since 2008. By the end of the day's trading, the market 'clawed' back but investors lost over Rs 1.33 lakh crore. Similar effect in the global markets.

Other big stories today... 

1. Nasa to launch Jupiter mission today
2. Black money: Govt for tax offices in six countries
3. INOC withdraws defamation suit for Sonia NYT ad
4. Much awaited CAG CWG report tabled in Parliament
5. SC U-turn: Allows govt to mine in Bellary
6. Stay in jail, not Parliament, HC tells Kalmadi
7. CAG: Irregularities, bias in awarding CWG contract
8.  SC slams police for tardy cash-for-votes probe
9. Sonia recovering after mystery surgery in US

In an extraordinary step, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna today served a legal notice on Press Trust of India for reporting that he appeared to be absent minded when called upon to make a statement by the Lok Sabha Speaker.

PTI had reported that when Speaker Meira Kumar called Krishna to make statement yesterday on the the situation in Sri Lanka, he was not in his seat and was engaged in conversation with some members in the aisle.

The report said that as Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar drew his attention to the Speaker's direction, Krishna failed to immediately find a copy of the statement in his file. Lok Sabha Secretariat staff had then provided him with a copy.  

Late at night, a senior official of his ministry called PTI to state that Krishna, who was handling questions in Rajya Sabha had handed over certain papers to his deputy Preneet Kaur which were meant for his statement in the lower house.

Nasa is on the verge of launching a new solar-powered spacecraft all the way to Jupiter, says the Independent. The robotic explorer, named Juno, is on top of an unmanned rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Lift-off is scheduled for later today.

It will take Juno five years to reach Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. The spacecraft will be powered by three huge solar panels. It will be the farthest any solar-powered craft has ever travelled. Previous Jupiter probes have relied on nuclear energy.

Investors were left poorer by over Rs 1.33 lakh crore after today's stock market crash, even as the market managed to recover nearly half of the losses suffered earlier during the day.    

The plunge in investors' wealth, which is notional in nature and is measured in terms of cumulative value of all listed stocks, was more than Rs 2.5 lakh crore at one point of time when the benchmark Sensex had plunged over 700 points to below the 17,000-point level -- the lowest since 2008..

A British tourist has reportedly been mauled to death by a polar bear that injured four others in a tour group at a Norwegian beauty spot. The tourists killed the bear at the Von Postbreen glacier on the remote island of Spitsbergen.

Read it at the Guardian

A few days after the Supreme Court ordered a complete ban on mining in Bellary, it today allowed state enterprise NMDC to operate its two mines for production of iron ore in the Karnataka district. 

"We are of the view that under the extraordinary circumstances, NMDC be allowed to operate these mines (two mines) to extend the production of iron ore to the tune of one million tonnes per month from tomorrow onwards," a special forest bench headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia said.

So Suresh Kalmadi stays in jail and does not get to attend Parliament. The CBI had vehemently opposed Kalmadi's plea before Justice Rajiv Sahai who had reserved the order on August 1. The agency had contended that the jailed MP was making all attempts to get bail indirectly as the trial court has rejected his plea.

"As per the medical report of Kalmadi, he is suffering from various ailments, including loss of memory and neurological infractions. If this is the condition of an MP, what will he remember from his constituency and present before Parliament"? Additional Solicitor General A S Chandihoke, appearing for Centre, had submitted referring to the affidavit of Kalmadi.

Rediff.com's Toral Varia gets us this report: Top officials of the FBI are on a visit to Mumbai as a part of an exchange programme. "The visit is a part of information and knowledge sharing process that has been initiated post 26/11 attacks," said joint commissioner of police, Himanshu Roy. Members of the FBI accompanied by their Bureau of Police Research Development met with the city police commissioner Arup Patnaik and other top officials from the Mumbai Police department earlier in the day today.

More on the CAG report:

Dragging the PMO in the CWG mess, CAG today said Suresh Kalmadi had been appointed Organising Committee chief at its behest in 2004 despite "serious objections" and highlighted how wasteful expenditure worth
several hundred crore rupees was caused in organising it.

In its voluminous report on the October 2010 mega sporting event, the CAG found "irregularities", "favouritism" and  "bias" in award of contracts for various projects like construction and development of Games venues and Village,
infrastructure development and beautification in Delhi and broadcasting rights.
 

The Pakistan Navy is keeping its main battleships away from Karachi, and has moved them to another port in Ormara, Balochistan, as security threats continue, sources in the navy tell the Express Tribune.

The navy sent its warships away from its main base in Karachi as a "precautionary measure' after a 16-hour siege of its main naval airbase, PNS Mehran. The commando-style gun and rocket-propelled grenade attacks resulted in the destruction of two P3C Orion airplanes which were key naval assets.

While she's still mum over the CAG CWG report, the Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit today acknowledged the need for governments to work in coordination with civil society on matters of social importance but said nobody has the right to "over ride" the people's representatives in a democracy.

Contending that civil society too has its limitations and no particular group can be representative of aspirations of all the country, she asked, "Can even five lakh representatives in a population of one billion claim to be representing the country or the 500-odd lawmakers who have been directly elected?"

Highlights of the 800-page Comptroller and Auditor General report on the CWG, tabled in Parliament today. Among those it faults for mismanagement are Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and the Lieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna. Reproduced from NDTV.com. Read

One of the 33 audited entities in the 33 chapters in 743 pages reads: Mr Kalmadi was named Chairman based on recommendations of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in December 2004.

A child-like enthusiasm for the game is the reason why Sachin Tendulkar has completed over two decades in international cricket despite the pounding that his body has taken, feels his long-time teammate Rahul Dravid.

"Sachin's longevity comes down to the joy that he still gets from playing. After 20 years of international cricket he still has a child-like enthusiasm. That's not an easy thing to do when you have been travelling and playing so much and your
body has taken a pounding," Dravid said in the latest edition of 'Wisden Cricketer' magazine.

A report in the Telegraph, Kolkata, says that Sonia Gandhi is an unlisted patient at Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan. All the arrangements for Sonia's surgery and treatment have been made by Pulok Chatterji, her long-time confidant who is now India's executive director at the World Bank headquarters in Washington.

Read

A blog from the Hindustan Times.

The US budget deal was interesting in foreign policy terms at the willingness with which the US legislators and administration were willing to put the Pentagon's budget to the axe. Read

On March 11, 2008, the Indian National Overseas Congress had filed a suit against Bharat Barai alleging that he was involved in the publication of an advertisement criticising Sonia Gandhi in the New York Times, dated October 6, 2007. The INOC had filed a suit for damages for $100 million -- Cause No.2.10-cv-141 vs Dr Barai in the US Courts of Appeal in Chicago.

However, it now appears that the INOC has withdrawn the suit and says it regrets filing the complaint naming Dr Barai.

The advertisement had said that Sonia Gandhi was "not a representative of Gandhian values and attacked her on multiple fronts: corruption, deception, violence, intolerance, terrorism, self-aggrandizement and religious bias.

The few words uttered by Egypt's dethroned president Hosni Mubarak at the start of his trial have now turned into hit ringtones in the country. Three different versions of the ringtones of the few low, growly words the deposed leader spoke are now available for download.

The first ringtone records the judge's voice calling on Mubarak by his full name -- Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak, to which Mubarak responds, "I am here, your honour.'

"I completely deny all these charges,' the 83-year-old said as he lay on a hospital bed inside a cage of mesh and iron bars in a Cairo courtroom on the first day of his trial on Wednesday.

With the government in a fix over Telangana, Home Minister P Chidambaram today appealed to all sections to allow consultation process on the statehood issue to reach its logical conclusion.

"The government would like to make an earnest appeal to all sections of the people in Andhra Pradesh that they should allow the consultation process to reach its logical conclusion," he said in a statement on a Calling Attentionmotion in the Lok Sabha on creation of a separate Telangana state. 

DMK president M Karunanidhi today expressed "shock" over Congress President Sonia Gandhi taking ill and wished her a speedy recovery and early return to the country. "I was shocked to know that Sonia Gandhi is unwell. I sincerely wish her a speedy recovery," he said in a telegram to Gandhi's political secretary Ahmed Patel.

It's a pleasant surprise to note that there has not been a peep out of the Opposition over the fact that Sonia choose to go abroad for her surgery. Normally, the Opposition would've feasted on it.

Olympics chief Sebastian Coe has discovered that his ancestors were slave owners, reports the Sun. His great-great-great-great-grandfather, George Hyde-Clarke, got rich through sugarcane in Trelawny, Jamaica. Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt was born in the plantation parish.

Lord Coe said: "My career has been surrounded by extraordinary Jamaican athletes but I guess I'm going to find deeper and maybe less attractive roots."

Read

This day, last year, 33 Chilean miners trapped underground were convinced that they would slowly starve to death. But two months later, a drill broke through to their refuge 700 metres below ground, and, after a painstaking rescue operation, they were eventually hauled to the surface before television cameras from around the world.

A year on, the men say, their celebrity status has long gone and... they face a severe financial crunch. Read the essay in the Guardian

This is what the Guardian had to say on Rahul Gandhi assuming power in Sonia's absence. If you've just joined us, Sonia has had a successful, but unnamed surgery in the US and will be out of commission for at least three weeks. A four-member team, with Rahul at the helm, will head the Congress in these three weeks.

From the Guardian: Rahul Gandhi, the crown prince of Indian politics, took a step nearer to power on Thursday when it was announced that his mother Sonia, the leader of the ruling Congress party, had suddenly gone abroad for medical reasons and charged the 41-year-old with running the organisation in her absence.

Read

For a generation weaned on Jane Fonda's aerobics videos, it's a shock to realise the actress, who is 73, still looks like she's in her thirties. Fonda, in an interview to Daily Mail, says she is looking - and feeling - as good as a woman a third of her age. 

A photograph of the actress and fitness guru in the new issue of Harper's Bazaar magazine shows her looking stunning in a slinky black dress complete with sheer panels with polka dot detail.  See

His antics in the Mr Bean series may be genuinely funny, but nobody is laughing at this. Actor Rowan Atkinson cheated death last night after careering off the road in his 240mph supercar. The 650,000 McLaren F1 spun several times, smashing into a tree and ploughing into a road sign before catching fire on the opposite side of the carriageway, reports the Daily Mail.

The Mr Bean star, 56, pulled himself free from the wreck and was looked after by a passing motorist until emergecy services arrived at 7.30pm.

The much awaited CAG report on CWG has been tabled in Parliament today. The report, which has already caused much uproar after being leaked to the media, is expected to point fingers at Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and even the Prime Minister's Office.

The auditor has slammed the Dikshit government for lapses and irregularities, stating the contracts for the Games were overpriced and delayed to make money. The CAG has also reportedly slammed the PMO for ignoring warnings against the CWG Organising Committee chief Suresh Kalmadi.

The deluge of complaints made by Air France staffers and customers against former International Monetary Fund head Strauss Kahn's behaviour had led the company to issue a directive that only men should be on duty in the first-class sections of its planes when Strauss-Kahn was travelling.

Air France staff and customers have alleged only male attendants served Strauss Kahn, while he was travelling by air, as he habitually abused female cabin crew. The accusation comes in the wake of Strauss Kahn being out on bail in connection with the attempted rape of a hotel maid in New York.

On Monday, day one of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha adjourned over the issue of the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust in Gurgaon. Today, after four days of silence, Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari said nobody was pressurised to lease land to the Trust. 

Addressing a news conference in New Delhi, Tiwari said the amount proposed by the village council for acquiring the land was minimal, so the trust agreed to pay an appropriate amount for the land.  

"There is absolutely no question of any pressure being put on any individual much less the panchayat (village council) of a village.

"The panchayat took a decision that the land should be leased to the trust for a charitable purpose. In fact what the panchayat had proposed was a very minimal or a nominal or a notional rent which was rejected by the trust and an appropriate rent was agreed to," said Tiwari.

Earth's most enduring romance with life on Mars continues... Now scientists says that they have found new evidence for possible saltwater flows on the Red Planet.

The discovery was announced at a NASA news conference Thursday at the space agency's headquarters in Washington, reports cnn.com. Read and see the slideshow.

An Australian radio show host facing criticism for using a derogatory word against India and calling river Ganga a "junkyard" has issued an apology.
The Council of Indian-Australians president Yadu Singh today said: "I am pleased to report that Sydney's 2Day FM Radio station and (host) Kyle Sandilands have realised the mistake in their comments and issued an apology.

Singh said Kyle, in his apology note, stated: "'Im apologising... anyone that's Indian, that listens to this show, knows that I love Indians... I don't discriminate.
I love everyone. I dont care where they are, where they are from, what colour they are. "'I just made the mistake that the river which, to me, looks polluted, I said it was a junkyard and I did not realise it was holy.'"

This is what the bbc.co.uk says on the stock market blood bath. The Asian stock markets have slumped on Friday, extending a global equity sell-off after Wall Street had its worst day in more than two years.

Japan's main index fell 3.4%, South Korea's lost 3%, Australia's dipped 3.9% and Hong Kong's shed 4.4%. On Thursday, shares in the US and Europe tumbled on fears about the strength of the US economic recovery and the eurozone debt crisis.

Analysts warned that global markets may remain volatile in the coming weeks.

In other news, Congress President Sonia Gandhi was today recovering in the ICU of a US hospital where she underwent successful surgery for an undisclosed ailment.

The party today issued a brief statement that 64-year-old Gandhi underwent a surgery on August 4 and the surgeon has indicated that the surgery has been successful. 

At present, Gandhi is in ICU, a statement by Congress General Secretary Janardhan Dwivedi said. However, the statement did not disclose what was the surgery and the hospital and the country where it was performed. 

Gandhi is reportedly in the US for the surgery. Children Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and son-in-law Robert Vadra are with Gandhi, the party said. Gandhi's family has requested that her privacy be respected. "This is a personal matter that pertains to her health and medical treatment. Her family requests that her privacy be respected," Dwivedi said.

The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex plunged by 467 points in early trade on heavy selling by funds and investors in line with melting global markets amid worries over the US economy and the European debt crisis.     The 30-share Sensex, which had lost nearly 620 points in the previous three straight sessions, tanked another 466.78 points to trade at 17,226.40 points in the first few minutesof trade.    

All the sectoral indices, led by realty, capital goodsand banking, were in the negative zone with losses up to 3.73 per cent.    

The wide-based National Stock Exchange Nifty index dipped below crucial 5,200 level by losing 147.30 points to trade at 5,184.50 points.    

Brokers said sentiments on the domestic boures remained extremely bearish after Asian stock markets plummets by nearly 5 per cent following overnight losses on the US market on fears the American economy is sliding back toward recession. 

The Bombay Stock Exchange has its worst opening since 2008 in reaction to markets worldwide going into a tailspin on US recessionary fears. It's also been the worst day for Wall Street since the 2008 bust.