Timeline Refresh
- Kiran Bedi NGO's travel agent quits over tarnished image
- Interim Libyan govt orders probe into Gaddafi killing
- Last of US's most powerful nuclear bomb to be dismantled
- Regret Gaddafi death says Libya's interim PM
- 'No secret info on chopper that strayed into PoK'
- Khurshid to Team Anna: Talk to us, not to media
- In show of solidarity Sushma meets ex-BJP MPs in Tihar
- WikiLeaks blockade is existential threat: Assange
- Fuel depot blast in Libya's Sirte kills 100
- Twin blasts in Srinagar injure three CRPF men
- Digvijaya takes on Anna: Who are lucky gang of four
- Interest on savings bank deposits deregulated: RBI
- Judge who convicted Taseer's assassin seeks refuge in S Arabia
The Core Committee of Team Anna will meet in New Delhi on October 29 during which the members are expected to discuss the controversies surrounding the group, including continuance of Prashant Bhushan in the team and alleged financial malfeasance of Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi.
It was, however, not clear whether Anna Hazare will attend the meeting as he is on a 'vow of silence'. The meeting will take place against the backdrop of the
resignation of two prominent activists Rajinder Singh and P V Rajagopal and allegations against Kejriwal and Bedi.
Sushma Swaraj tweets:
Met Faggan Singh Kulaste, Mahavir Bhagora and Sudheendra Kulkarni in jail today. Ravi Shankar Prasad and Bhupendra Yadav were with me. Conveyed to our colleagues in jail that the party is firmly behind them and we will not rest till they are out and the guilty are punished. It is really unfortunate that the innocents are in jail and those guilty of corruption are in the government.
A while earlier, one of the founder members of Kiran Bedi's NGO managing her trips quit the trust claiming his reputation has been tarnished.
Anil Bal, proprietor of Flywell Travel and a trustee of India Vision Foundation run by Bedi, said the activist's defence on overcharging her hosts has conveyed the wrong impression among public that he was responsible for inflated invoices after issuing cheaper tickets.
"In view of what has happened which unnecessarily tarnished my reputation I have decided to resign as trustee of IVF with immediate effect and have also requested IVF to engage another travel agent for their travel needs.
Amount to the credit of IVF as on date in our records is being refunded to IVF by crossed cheque to close the account with us," Bal said.
Jaden Lender, 3, sings along softly with the "Five Little Monkeys' app on the family iPad, and waggles his index finger along with the monkey doctor at the warning, "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"
He likes crushing the ants in 'Ant Smasher,' and improving his swing in the golf app. But he is no app addict: when the one featuring Grover from Sesame Street does not work right, Jaden says, "Come on, iPad!" then wanders happily off to play with his train set. Read the story on the New York Times.
Too little, too late, but Libya's interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil has ordered an investigation into the death of Muammar Gaddafi under pressure from the international community.
Jalil's orders were issued as new video surfaced of a man claiming to be Gaddafi's killer. There are allegations that fighters for the new regime might have been responsible for the execution of a group of the deposed dictator's supporters.
"We grabbed him. I hit him in the face. Some fighters wanted to take him away and that's when I shot him twice - in the head and in the chest," the New York Post quoted the fighter who identified himself as Senad el Sadik el Ureybi, as saying.
A severe security flaw in the massively popular Skype video chat service might put Internet users worldwide at risk.
The serious security breach in the Internet video chat program, which boasts over 500 million users around the globe, means that any evil computer nerd could easily hunt down users'' whereabouts.
The flaw lets hackers determine the IP address from which a Skype user is logged in. That's a problem because IP addresses are usually specific to Internet users physical locations. Hackers simply have to know how to grab their targets IP addresses from simulated calls that Skype users would never notice, and which leave no trace.
Government today said there was no "secret information" on the helicopter that strayed into Pak-controlled territory that could have got into Pakistani
hands. "There was no secret information on that helicopter," Minister of State for Defence M M Pallam Raju told reporters.
Dismissing reports in a section of the media that Pakistan had downloaded information from the strayed helicopter about helipads of the Army's 14 Corps, he said, "It contained regular information that is needed for a flying machine. So I don't think that has happened."
In other news, but something that should hold everyone's attention:
Want a little Einstein around the house? There's no single best recipe, but studies prove that keeping TV out of the nursery, shelling out for music lessons, breastfeeding, having a big library, and withholding cookies are just a few ways to boost your child's chances of success.
In an apparent reference to veteran social activist Anna Hazare's latest comments, Union Law and Justice Minister Salman Khurshid today urged the civil society activists to communicate directly with the Central Government rather through media.
Khurshid requested the media to not create a wedge between the civil society and the government. "My request to you (media) is please don''t create greater distance between civil society and the government. Things will be said. People, who think that they should say something, will say.
"I don't think that we should engage in a dialogue of this kind through the media. Whoever needs to talk, I am sure we have a lot of channels by which we can talk directly. I don''t think we should encourage discord and distancing between civil society and the government," Khurshid said.
The people who set out to climb Everest spend months dreaming about reaching the summit. They pay $65,000 in fees to the Nepali government; they train, trek for days, endure extreme discomfort, even danger. So it should be a simple thing to get them to pick up after themselves. Apparently not.
Nearly 60 years after Edmund Hillary conquered Everest, and 30 years after climbing turned commercial, the region is still struggling to deal with mass tourism.
Lashkar-e-Tayiba commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the main accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case, has been clandestinely communicating from prison with members of his group, according to intercepts by Western intelligence agencies.
Read the rediff.com report:
properties spread across India and Saudi Arabia. Speaking to reporters last evening after formally assuming the charge as the Naib Mutawalli (custodian) of the Aukaf-e-Shahi Trust, Saba said it was her father's dream that she should take over this post. Saba said her father's death left her with a sense of
immense responsibility much before she expected.
Starlet Sayali Bhagat recently blamed Shiney for misbehaving with her in April only to change her statement in subsequent interviews, says Zee News. Reportedly, there was news that Sayali was miffed with the gossip circulated all over that Shiney pinched her butt while filming their upcoming flick Ghost. She said working with Shiney was no less than mental molestation.
Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at time magical. He was, indeed, an example of what the mathematician Mark Kae called a magician genius, someone whose insights come out of the blue and require intuition more than mere mental processing power. Like a pathfinder, he could absorb information, sniff the wind, and sense what lay ahead.
-- Apple founder Steve Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson.
Read more on bbc.co.uk.
While on Libya, a fuel tank exploded in Gaddafi's hometown Sirte killing more than 100 people less than a week after the deposed despot was captured and killed there, a military commander said today.
"There was an enormous explosion and a huge fire. More than 100 people were killed and 50 others wounded" in Monday night's blast, National Transitional Council commander Leith Mohammed told AFP. He said the scene was "a heart wrenching spectacle with dozens of charred bodies."
It's confirmed now...
The bodies of ex-Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his son Muatassim and a top aide have been buried in secret in the desert, Libyan officials said. A National Transitional Council (NTC) official told the BBC the bodies were buried at dawn in an unknown location.
This follows days of apparent uncertainty among the new leadership about what to do with the bodies. Gaddafi's family wanted the bodies to be buried outside the former leader's hometown of Sirte. But officials from the NTC had expressed a preference for a secret burial.
'Unknown location' The NTC's Guma Al Gamaty confirmed the burial to the BBC. The Associated Press earlier reported that it received confirmation in a text from a military council official in Misrata that the burial took place at a secret location at 05:00 local time.
A few relatives and officials were in attendance as Islamic prayers were read over the bodies, spokesman Ibrahim Beitalmal is quoted as saying.
An NTC official had earlier told Reuters news agency that Col Gaddafi would be buried in a "simple" ceremony with "sheikhs attending" on Tuesday.
In an exclusive interview to Newsweek, Raj Rajaratnam jailed for insider trading, reveals his surprising motivations and the reasons he didn't take a plea that could have saved him from 11 years in jail.
Details of the twin blasts at Srinagar.
Militants today carried out two grenade attacks on security force installations in the city in a span of about five minutes, injuring three CRPF personnel. The ultras struck in the Maisuma area near Lal Chowk by lobbying a grenade at a CRFF bunker outside Dashnami Akhara building at 12:25 pm. They said the grenade landed inside the picket resulting in injuries to three CRPF jawans who were admitted in a hospital.
Minutes later, another grenade was thrown by militants at a police post in Batmaloo, less than a kilometre away from site of the first blast, the sources said. No one was injured in the Batmaloo blast. Police and CRPF personnel have cordoned off both the scenes of blast and so far detained one suspect for
questioning.
The twin grenade attacks in the summer capital, which sparked panic, comes at a time when the state government plans to revoke the Armed Forces Special Powers Act from parts of the state. Police has launched a manhunt to nab the militants and presence of security personnel around the city has been
strengthened.
Conflicting reports coming in: Al Jazeera TV quoting Libya's NTC says Muammar Gaddafi was buried at dawn.
However, a bbc report says: There are unconfirmed reports that the body of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is being prepared for burial. Witnesses said the body of Col Gaddafi, his son and a former aide were taken overnight from the cold storage facility in Misrata where they have been on public view. An NTC official told Reuters news agency a "simple" burial would take place in the "open desert".
Just in: Two CRPF jawans have been injured in a grenade attack in Srinagar. Early reports say the blast occured at Maisuma near Srinagar, while another report says it occured at a CRPF bunker in Lal Chowk.
Other than this, there has been another blast at Batamaloo in Srinagar, but luckily no casualties or injured.
R Rajagopalan tweets: UPA2 wants Abdul Kalam Azad to take interest in the settlement of Kudankulam nuclear plant issue. Left to himself, Kalam wants to distance himself from controversies.
S Y Quraishi, Chief Election Commissioner, is in Seoul. But he also needs to be in Delhi. to conduct five states elections Most foreign travelled CEC.
By freeing the savings bank deposit rates, RBI has demolished the last bastion of the regulated interest rate regime. As part of the economic reforms programme, RBI had earlier given freedom to banks to determine fixed deposit
rates, depending on their asset-liability positions.
"There should not be any discrimination from customer to customer on interest rates for similar amount of deposit," RBI said further. About 20-25 per cent of the total bank deposits are parked in savings bank accounts.
Details on the deregulation of savings bank interest rates by the RBI today. The Reserve Bank today freed savings bank deposit rates, a step which bankers said could fetch better returns for depositors as competition will intensify.
"...banks are free to determine their savings bank deposit interest rate," the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said, adding the change will come into force with immediate effect.
While freeing interest rates on savings bank accounts, the RBI has said that banks will have to offer a uniform interest rate on deposits of up to Rs 1 lakh.
For savings bank deposits of over Rs 1 lakh, banks would be free to provide differential interest rates. Till now, banks were mandated to give 4 per cent interest rates on such deposits.
On Twitter: R Rajagopalan: Jairam Ramesh takes on Mayawati government for misusing Rs 5,000 crore of NREGA funds.
Rural Development minister Jairam Ramesh writes to UP CM Mayawati alleging funds were misused in seven districts and asks for a CBI probe into the issue.
Taking a dig at social activist Anna Hazare's latest blog post Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh today said he's curious to know who all constitute the 'gang of four'. The Congress leader posted on micro blogging site Twitter: Who are the lucky ones? I am curious ! ; @ digvijaya_28.
Veteran activist Anna Hazare on Monday night defended his key associate Kiran Bedi from the allegations of "air travel corruption", pointing fingers at a "gang of four" in the ruling party being behind the campaign against his team.
Also on Libya: Men, women, children holding masks to their noses to ward of the stench of the rotting bodies, line up for a final 'farewell' to Gaddafi. Watch.
The ousted Libyan dictator is to be buried today. See our 10:58 am post.
Amid the gloom of a probable hike in home and car loan rates and high inflation, here's some comfort.
A cnn.com report says that India is expected to overtake fellow Asian powerhouse China in terms of GDP growth in 2013, according to a new report from Ernst and Young. India is forecast to achieve 9.5% growth, compared with China's expected 9%. Both countries remain among the top performers in the group of 25 so called Rapid Growth Markets (RGMs), which also includes Brazil and Russia. Read
And the wicked response to Bhagat's blog:
India is a beautiful country. I am proud to be an Indian. In this country, we have best-selling authors -like my Bhaiya aka Chetan Bhagat whom you all love to hate -- can write extensively what they have done for their maids and the whole country gets up in arms against them. Do our voices not deserve to be heard? We know we are down-trodden. But then again we too have some status and prestige, and at times like Diwali we too want people to sit up and take notice of our existence. I am grateful to Bhaiya for having done so on his popular blog.
From Chetan Bhagat's blog:
I have never really reacted to a piece written by someone else before. However, the "Why I left India (again)', (do read this to make sense of what follows) made me want to share my own thoughts.
On savings banks' deposit rate deregulation, this is what the RBI governor has said:
RBI said the savings bank deposit rate deregulation had two conditions:
1. Each bank will have to offer a uniform interest rate on savings bank deposits up to Rs lakh, irrespective of the amount in the account within this limit.
2. For savings bank deposits over Rs 1 lakh, a bank may provide differential rates of interest, if it so chooses. However, there should not be any discrimination from customer to customer on interest rates for similar amount of deposit.
RBI raises interest rates by 25 basis points, the 13th hike in last 19 months. In effect this means that home and car loans may get dearer. RBI has hiked the Repo rates by 25 basis points. Repo rate is the rate at which the RBI lends money to banks. RBI governor D Subbarao says high inflation will stay.
Full report on rediff.com shortly.
The Afghan President's office has sought to distance Hamid Karzai from his controversial remarks in a television interview, wherein he had asserted that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a hypothetical war against the United States.
The presidential palace said that Karzai''s comments to Pakistan's Geo TV, aired Saturday, had been misinterpreted, The Los Angeles Times reports. Siamak Herawi, a spokesman for Karzai, said that the president had not intended any slight to the Western governments that have spent billions of dollars shoring up the Afghan administration during the 10-year war.
A Reuters report says that ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will be buried on Tuesday in a secret desert grave, a National Transitional Council official said, ending a wrangle over his rotting corpse that led many to fear for Libya's governability.
With their Western allies uneasy that Gaddafi was battered and shot after his capture on Thursday, rebels had put the body on show in a cold store while they argued over what to do with it, until its decay forced them on Monday to close the doors. Read
The Pakistani judge who gave the death sentence to Governor Salman Taseer's self-confessed assassin has sought refuge in Saudi Arabia with his family after receiving death threats from religious extremists.
Anti-terrorism court Judge Pervez Ali Shah, who awarded the death sentence to Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri on October 1, had gone on leave after a group of lawyers ransacked his courtroom and several hardline religious groups offered a bounty to anyone who killed him.
Pictured: Pakistan's governor for Punjab, Salman Taseer
Guinness World Records has refused to give recognition as the world's oldest marathon runner to Fauja Singh, a 100-year-old Briton of Indian-origin who
attracted worldwide attention when he completed an eight hour run, because he can't produce his birth certificate.
"We'd love to say this is a true Guinness World Record, but the problem is there is just no evidence... We can only accept official birth documents created in the year of the birth," the editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records, Craig
Glenday, was quoted as saying by BBC. Singh's British passport, showing his date of birth as being 1 April 1911, as well as a letter from the Queen. congratulating him on his 100th birthday, have been shown to the organisation, the BBC reported.
5 countries issue travel advisories against India (The Times of India)
One after another, five countries - US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - have issued advisories against travel to India during the festival season. The ostensible reason for the caution is terror threat at this time. Read
Kiran Bedi overcharged us for travel, says NGO (The Hindu)
A non-profit organisation has accused Kiran Bedi of claiming travel expenses far in excess of what she actually incurred to attend a programme organised by them in 2009. Read
Bedi says will pay balance, here are 18 more fake bills (Indian Express)
Air fare: Bedi announced that the 'balance amounts' were being returned 'forthwith'. Read
RBI to hike key rates again; auto, home loans to cost more (Hindustan Times)
The RBI is widely expected to again hike key policy rates today to curb stubbornly high inflation. The 13th hike since March 2010 will make home and auto loans costlier and put further pressure on economic growth. Read
Pakistan took security data from the Army chopper (Hindustan Times)
Indian security has been breached in the sensitive Siachen Glacier-Aksai Chin-Ladakh-Kargil sector as Pakistan Army downloaded the GPS coordinates of all helipads from the army helicopter that strayed across the Line of Control (LoC) into Skardu region on Sunday. Read
Tihars high-profile inmates to have a low-key Diwali (Hindustan Times)
While some are worried about whether their family will be allowed to meet them on Wednesday, others are curious about if they will get to light candles to usher in Diwali. Read
WikiLeaks fights back in the face of financial blockade, arm-twisting (The Hindu)
Over the past year, ever since Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union stopped processing financial transactions involving WikiLeaks, this organisation has lost tens of millions of pounds in donations. Read