Top stories this evening...

1. Extra courts to prosecute UK rioters
2. Pak to extradite Bali bombing mastermind
3.  ED to follow Ramdev's FEMA scent to Madagascar
4. CBI to probe Jagan's assets, investment flow
5. Lokayukta FIR against Yeddy for Rs 13-cr bribe
6. Contempt notice to Pak minister over 26/11 trial
7. Another ship drifting near Mumbai's Juhu beach?
8. Home Ministry submits Afzal Guru case to President
9. Delhi police: Did not lathicharge BJP workers
10. 2G: Reliance denies substantial equity in Swan
11. Death rap for LeT man in Red Fort attack case :

The Home ministry says its wants President Pratibha Patil to reject Afzal Guru's mercy petition and sanction his hanging. It has sent a 10 page letter to the president today.

Guru was convicted of conspiracy in the December 2001 attack on the Parliament and was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court in 2004. The sentence was scheduled to be carried out on October 20, 2006. However, Guru's execution was stayed following a mercy petition filed by his wife. He remains on death row.

Steve Coll, the president and CEO of the New America Foundation, is a distinguished American investigative journalist who has worked with the Washington Post for 20 years and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Coll, 52, is the author of six books, including the highly acclaimed Ghost Wars (2004) which focuses on the history of CIA, Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden.

In an exclusive interview with Dawn.com, Coll talks about the war in Afghanistan, counter-insurgency operations, the future of al Qaeda and Pakistan's role in the war on terror.

Read

Meanwhile, Britain will set up extra courts to quickly prosecute "thugs" who indulged in looting and rioting in English cities as Prime Minister David Cameron today warned of more arrests as police worked through "picture by picture" from CCTV images.

More than a 1,000 people have been arrested in centres including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol and Leicester during four nights of rioting.

The Metropolitan police arrested 81 people yesterday in London, where it was much quieter with 16,000 police officers from forces around the country on the streets.

Manchester, Birmingham and Nottingham bore the brunt of the latest rioting and looting, with trouble also erupting in Liverpool, Salford, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Bristol and Gloucester.

Pakistani authorities are set to extradite Umar Patek, the alleged mastermind of the Bali bombings, to Indonesia.

Patek, 41, was arrested in March in the garrison city of Abbottabad, where US special forces killed Osama bin Ltaden during a covert raid on May 2. Patek is suspected of having acted as the field coordinator and planner of the 2002 suicide bombings in two nightclubs in Bali that killed 202 people, most of them Australian holidaymakers.

Vicky Nanjappa says that a complaint was lodged against Yeddyurappa for showing undue favours to a private company in an irrigation project.

In the complaint it was alleged that two private companies owned by the sons of Yeddyurappa had received an amount of Rs 13 crore from a joint venture company of R N Shetty in favour of considering the company to take up the Upper Bhadra Lift Irrigation Scheme at a total cost of Rs 1,033 crore and an advance of Rs 103 crore was paid to them.

Vicky Nanjappa reports that there was fresh trouble for former Karnataka Chief Minister, B S Yeddyurappa, after the Lokayukta had filed an FIR in a case relating to a Rs 13 crore kickback.

The Lokayukta informed that the FIR in this case has been registered as per the order of the court which was passed on Monday. However the Lokayukta, Justice Shivraj Patil informed that no arrest would be made as the matter needed to be investigated first.

Two oil tankers are sailing to India's west coast from Iran after the South Asian nation paid 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) to partially clear debt on its purchases via the mediation of a Turkish lender, ship-tracking data show, says the Hurriyet Daily News.

Desh Bhakt, owned by the Indian government, and Jag Laxmi, a Great Eastern Shipping vessel, are sailing to the western Indian port of Mangalore, carrying crude oil from Iran's main crude-export terminal, according to transmissions captured by AIL Live, the global provider of real time shipping data, on Bloomberg.

English musician and singer-songwriter Liam Gallagher has fallen victim to the riots that took place across England when his fashion store was ransacked by looters.

Thieves targeted several retailers in Manchester, including the Gallagher's Pretty Green store. The store, which opened in December 2010, had its windows smashed and stock stolen by unruly teens who ransacked the property.

Just in: It seems unbelievable, but yet another vessel has been seen drifting near Juhu beach. The coast guard is using a helicopter and a ship to verify the report.

Details awaited.

Despite all the rioting and unrest in Birmingham, it is indeed laudable that the India-England Test match has begun as per schedule. Follow Bikash Mohapatra's commentary from Birmingham.

For now, England has won the toss and has invited India to bat first.  The moment Andrew Strauss got it right with the coin, he had no hesitation is asking MS Dhoni to have a go first, keeping the overcast conditions in mind. 

Team India comprises: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (c), Virender sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Suresh Raina, Amit Mishra, Praveen Kumar, Ishant Sharma, S Sreesanth. England: Andrew Strauss (c), Alastair Cook, Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen, Eoin Morgan, Ravi Bopara, Matt Prior, Tim Bresnan, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann, James Anderson.  

In the face of spreading civil unrest among China's Uighur population, the Chinese government's love-fest with its all-weather ally, Pakistan, may be starting to sour.

Indeed, the authorities in China's Xinjiang province are charging that a prominent Uighur separatist that they captured had received terrorist training in Pakistan.

No less embarrassing for Pakistan, the charge came while its intelligence chief, Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, was holding talks in Beijing on securing greater Chinese support to blunt the growing US pressure on Islamabad. Read

For the first time, China will be launching a communication satellite for close ally Pakistan, a move that will mark "a new beginning" in bilateral space collaboration.

The satellite named PAKSAT-1R will be launched at an "appropriate time" in the coming days, state-run Xinhua said. The satellite, which was made in China, would provide a variety of benefits, including high-power communication and weather monitoring facilities, besides strategic defence applications.

Back in India, the Home Ministry is likely to submit its Action Taken Report on the findings of Shunglu Committee that probed alleged irregularities in execution of the Commonwealth Games projects to the Prime Minister's Office next week.

Official sources said the Home Ministry has received the responses of the Delhi government, Delhi Development Authority, New Delhi Municipal Council and Municipal Corporation of Delhi on the Shunglu Committee report and are now preparing the ATR to be submitted to the PMO.

Addressing Parliament today, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee says that confidence has returned to the Indian market and in a couple of days, it will be stable. He said there will be no dearth of liquidity and foreign exchange and both the RBI and the Ministry of Finance are working in close cooperation to ensure necessary steps are taken.

Sony Entertainment Television looks at more than doubling its advertising revenues from its flagship reality game show, Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), as the time stretches and duration expands, reports the Indian Television website.

The Hindi general entertainment television channel is expecting to reap an ad revenue of Rs 1.80 to Rs 2 billion from the fifth edition (second in Sony) of the show, according to market estimates.

This time the show will run for 14 weeks in 1 and a half hour long episodes. In the previous edition, KBC ran for seven weeks in one-hour episodes.

Read: SM Krishna's statement in the Lok Sabha on Nuclear Enrichment and Reprocessing Technology.

The LS has been adjourned till 2 pm.

Read: Shashi Tharoor's column on the monsoon session of Parliament.

Every year, during India's rainy season, there is, equally predictably, a "monsoon session' of Parliament. And, every year, there seems to be increasing debate about which is stormier -- the weather or the legislature.

Seeking a maximum prison term for Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund manager convicted of running America's biggest insider trading scam, US prosecutors have recommended that he should be sentenced to as many as 24-and-a-half years for his "extensive criminal activities".

Federal prosecutors yesterday filed a 56-page 'Government's Sentencing Memorandum' recommending a "very substantial term of imprisonment proportionate to the historic nature of his crime."

Details of the Reliance Telecom Ltd, denying 'substantial equity' in Swan.

Reliance Telecom, one of the accused firms in the 2G case, today told a Delhi court that it did not hold substantial equity in Swan Telecom at the time of grant of spectrum licences.

"No criminal case is made out against Reliance Telecom Ltd as it held only 9.9 per cent equity in Swan Telecom when the latter was granted spectrum licences," the counsel for Anil Ambani promoted telecom company told Special CBI Judge O P Saini.

The CBI, in its charge sheet, alleged that Reliance Telecom structured Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd as its front company to circumvent the then existing telecom policy which held existing players ineligible for new licences in the same circle.

The Anil Ambani promoted firm was ineligible to get the spectrum as the Department of Telecom (DoT) had debarred the CDMA player from entering into GSM telephony sector, it said.

Karnataka's new Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda today ruled out the creation of a Deputy Chief Minister's post and re-induction of controversial Reddy brothers in the Cabinet.

On his first visit to Delhi after assuming office, Gowda said the central leadership was not in favour of a Deputy Chief Minister as none of the BJP-ruled states have such a post.

"My central party is there. My state party is there. I am not the only one to take decisions on all these things. All the directions given by the central leadership will be (implemented) after consultations," he said in response to a query whether Reddy brothers would be inducted into Cabinet  

Back in #Pune, a day after police firing and violence in Maval, killing three persons, the situation is peaceful and under control. A magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the firing in which three farmers were killed and one seriously injured, District collector Vikas Deshmukh said.

He clarified that the figure of dead in the police firing so far was three and not four as reported earlier and one of the seriously injured was being treated at a hospital at Talegaon.

Deshmukh said about 50 police personnel including 10 officers too were injured in the stone pelting in the farmers' protest on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, against a closed pipeline project on the Pavna dam to facilitate water supply to the industrial township of Pimpri-Chinchwad.

Seasoned bureaucrat P C Alexander, a close aide of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, died of cancer at a hospital here today at the age of 90. Alexander, who had served as governor of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, was undergoing treatment at Madras Medical Mission Hospital for the last few weeks and breathed his last this morning, hospital sources said. He is survived by wife, two sons and two daughters.

Read his interview to rediff.com's Archana Masih.

Seasoned bureaucrat P C Alexander, a close aide of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, died of cancer at a hospital here today at the age of 90. Alexander, who had served as governor of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, was undergoing treatment at Madras Medical Mission Hospital for the last few weeks and breathed his last this morning, hospital sources said. He is survived by wife, two sons and two daughters.

Read his interview to rediff.com's Archana Masih.

The third man who was run over in Birmingham has also died. Police have begun a murder inquiry over the incident which happened at about 01:15 BST on the Dudley Road in the Winson Green area.

Police have arrested a man and a vehicle has been recovered. The casualties were taken to the nearby City Hospital where a large crowd has gathered. It is not yet known if the deaths are linked to overnight rioting, reports bbc.co.uk.

Incidentally, the Birmingham Test between India and England is still on, even as the players have been confined to their hotels.

London, like we told you, is calm but sporadic incidents of violence were reported in Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Nottingham, Leicester and Birmingham with shops being looted and set alight.

Rioters broke into stores and ran off with electronic and leather goods, bikes, sports shoes, branded clothes and jewellery with virtually no resistance from the police and security personnel.

Armed with swords and hockey sticks, over 700 Sikhs took to the streets last night to protect the Guru Singh Sabha gurdwara in Southall as the police were stretched to maintain law and order on the streets of London.

Local vigilante groups have been formed in various areas in London to protect homes and business establishments that have been vandalised by rioters - mainly of Afro-Caribbean origin - in London over the past four days.

Nearly 800 people have been arrested and over 100 charged in connection with violence in the capital, British authorities said. In the north western city of Manchester youths with a face cover rampaged through the city centre, hurling bottles and stones at police while vandalising stores, some stocking luxury item

In Birmingham, a murder investigation has been launched after two men were killed and one critically injured in a suspected hit-and-run incident, West Midlands Police said, reports the bbc.co.uk. It is not known if the deaths are linked to overnight rioting but early reports say the men had just come out of a mosque and were protecting their neighbourhood. A third man is in a critical condition. Police have arrested a man and recovered a vehicle from the scene. A murder inquiry has been launched.

So far 563 arrests have been made across the UK and the Met Police decision to flood London streets with 16,000 officers - many drafted in from other forces - appears to have worked.

From the New York Times: How China's new wealth spurs a market for mistresses.

Jian, a 42-year-old property developer in the booming southern metropolis of Shenzhen, had acquired just about everything men of his socioeconomic ilk covet: a Mercedes-Benz, a sprawling antique jade collection and a lavishly appointed duplex for his wife and daughter.It was only natural then, he said, that two years ago he took up another costly pastime: a beguiling 20-year-old art major whose affections run him about $6,100 a month. Read

From the South China Morning Post.

China says it has been hit by 500,000 cyber attacks and that half of last year's strikes came from overseas, including the US and India.

The news comes days after US firm McAfee said it had uncovered a massive "five-year targeted" global cyber spying campaign by one unnamed actor - which many analysts said was China. Xinhua said that according to a government report most of the attacks on China came as Trojan software - a malicious programme that masquerades as an application.

Nearly 15 per cent of the destructive programmes came from IP addresses in the United States, while another 8 per cent originated in India, said the report by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Co-ordination Centre.

We told you early on that the markets had recovered this morning. Here's how IT stocks did this morning, the worst hit on Friday.

IT stocks led by TCS and Infosys made a smart recovery in early trade today in line with the bullish trend in the broader market. Shares of Infosys went up by 4.12 per cent to touch an early high of Rs 2,475.10 on the BSE. In the previous session, the stock had fallen to a fresh one-year low.

The country's largest IT exporter TCS's shares also rose by 4.62 per cent to touch an early peak of Rs 1,012.

Wipro saw renewed buying interest from investors and jumped by 3.19 per cent to Rs 358.35, while HCL Tech gained 4.35 per cent, Patni Computer up 3.03 per cent and Tech Mahindra rising by 2.20 per cent.

Across the border in Pakistan, a constitutional petition has been filed in a Pakistani court seeking the disqualification of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani for allegedly committing "high treason" by defying orders of the Supreme Court and attempting to subvert the Constitution.

A man named Allah Baksh Gondal filed the petition in the public interest in Lahore High Court yesterday through lawyer A K Dogar, who is also counsel for Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed.

Just in: The Supreme Court has conferred the death penalty to Mohammed Arif in the Red Fort attack case. The SC in April had stayed the death sentence of the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist in Red Fort attack case in which three army personnel were killed on December 22, 2000.

A bench consisting of Justices GP Mathur and P Sadasivam also issued notices on the petition of Mohammad Arif alias Ashfaq, a Pakistani national and LeT terrorist, to Delhi government.

Just in: The Supreme Court has conferred the death penalty to Mohammed Arif in the Red Fort attack case. The SC in April had stayed the death sentence of the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist in Red Fort attack case in which three army personnel were killed on December 22, 2000.

A bench consisting of Justices GP Mathur and P Sadasivam also issued notices on the petition of Mohammad Arif alias Ashfaq, a Pakistani national and LeT terrorist, to Delhi government.

Good morning. Calm in London and the Sensex today, but expect the usual 'ruckus, adjournements' in Parliament.

Police calm London, but riots flare across UK (Indian Express)
Unrest spreads across England to Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, 125 injured, 1,100 arrested. Read

CWG scam: BJP links Sonia, Manmohan to corruption (Indian Express)
Cong directly responsible for scam, trying to shield Sheila because if she goes, PM is next: Gadkari. Read

Sensex rebounds 398 points in opening trade (DNA)
Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex made a strong comeback by rising nearly 400 points in opening trade today, supported by a rebound on other Asian bourses. Read

Rs 20 crore public money spent on Mayawati's home (The Times of India)
Dalit leader Mayawati spent Rs 20,12,60,000 of public money over the past one year to renovate her bungalow at 13, Mall Avenue, in Lucknow. Read

Govt misled House on Games, says Jaitley (Indian Express)
Demanding resignations of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, BJPs leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley on Tuesday charged the government with consistently misleading Parliament on issues pertaining to the Commonwealth Games. Read

Anna calls for second freedom struggle, says will fast for 15-20 days (Indian Express)
High on symbolism and evocative speeches, the call for a second freedom struggle by Anna Hazare and other proponents of the Lokpal Bill on the 69th anniversary of the Quit India Movement fell several thousands short of a revolution, but it was indisputable by the end of Tuesday that it had captured the imagination of the 2,000-odd Mumbaikars gathered at Azad Maidan. Read