A former Special police Officer, who had been associated with the banned Salwa Judum, was allegedly shot dead today by Naxals in Yerkad village on the suspicion that he was working as a police informer.

A gang of armed ultras barged into the house of Dilip Narote this afternoon and shot him point black, police said. Dilip had worked as an SPO for a CRPF battalion before Salwa Judum (civilian militia) was disbanded, the police said.

He recently participated in a police recruitment drive, a police officer said.

) Controversial Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, who was a key figure in the Bofors payoffs scandal, has died in Milan following a stroke.      

Seventy-four-year-old Quattrocchi died peacefully yesterday and his funeral will take place on Monday, a member of the family told PTI on phone from the Italian city.

The Bofors chargesheet filed in 1999 by CBI had named Quattrocchi, who was close to the Gandhi family during his days in India as the representative of an Italian firm, as one of the accused in the case regarding the Rs 64 crore payoffs for supply of Swedish Howitzer guns to the Indian Army.

The Rs 1,600 crore contract was clinched in 1986.

The Telegraph reports: Ulfa general secretary Anup Chetia will most likely be deported from Bangladesh ahead of the July 18-19 talks between the home secretaries of the two countries.

A source told The Telegraph, "Chetia will be flown to New Delhi first and efforts are being made to do that before July 18.' He would be brought here first, possibly for a debriefing by intelligence agencies. The militant leader has been in Bangladesh jails since December 1997 after being arrested by authorities in that country.

A team of Indian officials is being readied to shortly leave for Dhaka to accompany the Ulfa leader back.

Read the full story here

Gujarat government has submitted to Uttarakhand a list of 121 persons from the state, who went missing following the flash floods in the Himalayan state, a top state official said today.

"121 people from the state are still missing. We have submitted the list to Uttarakhand government and FIRs have also has been lodged," Gujarat Relief Commissioner P K Parmar said.

The list of those missing from Gujarat has been e-mailed to the Uttarakhand State Emergency Operation Centre, set up specially to monitor the relief work.

"A copy of the list has also been handed over to the District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police of Rudraprayag district in Uttarakhand," he said, adding that most of the cases were reported in that district alone.

President Pranab Mukherjee today paid rich tributes to legendary actor Pran saying he was a "highly talented" artist whose contribution to Indian film industry was "unparalleled".

In a condolence message to the actor's wife Shukla Sikand, the President said "I am deeply saddened to learn about the passing away of your husband, Shri Pran Krishan Sikand. Shri Pran was a highly talented actor who shall always be remembered by generations of film watchers for his versatile and vivacious acting in multifarious roles.

"In his passing away, the celluloid world has lost a veteran and acclaimed actor whose contribution to the Indian film industry remains unparallelled", he said.

The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant will attain criticality by midnight today, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman S K Sinha announced.

Talking to newsmen, Sinha, flanked by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Chairman K.C.Purohit and Executive Director, NPCIL, Nageswara Rao, said four operators were monitoring the "Boron dilution process", which would allow neutron concentration to go up and start nuclear fission, generating heat.

The heat would start operating the turbine to generate power, he said. "The Boron dilution process will be over by mid-night and the reactor will go critical," he said adding the entire process was well in compliance with the established principles.

The Congress today hinted that declaration of Rahul Gandhi as prime ministerial candidate cannot be ruled out, dismissing as "personal opinion" certain comments of senior leader Digvijay Singh in this regard.

"Individuals may have their personal opinions, but on such issues final decision is taken by the party only. The party has declared in Jaipur at the time when Rahul Gandhi's appointment as Vice President was announced that the question of campaign and leadership will be decided by it later. No time frame was announced", party General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi told mediapersons.

He was replying to a question on the hint given by Singh that declaration of Gandhi as PM candidate ahead of polls is unlikely.

"We do not have a presidential form of government. Congress party does not declare PM or CM candidates before elections...Even in the Karnataka Assembly elections we had not declared any CM candidate," Singh, who is also a party General Secretary, had said in an interview.

A day after a 20-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped and set on fire, the main accused in the case was arrested from a bus station here today. Farman was arrested by the police from roadways bus stand here.

According to the FIR, Farman and his five associates allegedly set the girl on fire after raping her. The girl was in a relationship with Farman and on Thursday she had gone to his house to ask him to marry her when the incident took place.

The girl, who was rushed to the district hospital and later referred to Safai hospital, is said to be in critical condition, police said.

Infuriated over the incident, locals had tried to set Farman's house ablaze yesterday, but elders in the village mediated and brought the situation under control.

The Pakistani Taliban have set up a base in Syria to assess "the needs of the jihad" and at least 12 of its "experts" in warfare and information technology have visited the strife-torn country, a media report said. 

The water level in the Ganga in Kanpur is flowing a mere 46-cm below the danger mark, prompting the district administration to issue a high alert for the villages situated on the banks of the river, officials said.        

Pakistan is working on a new security policy document which among other measures will seek to disband militant outfits which were involved in terror attacks in neighbouring countries, including India, a media report said today.        

Kerala Chief Minister Oomen Chandy on Saturday met Congress President Sonia Gandhi to explain the political controversy surrounding the solar scam.

The Central Working Committee of the Congress is expected to meet before the end of July to take a final call on the Telangana statehood issue.     

The US government has reportedly asked the Egyptian army to free 'detained and ousted President Mohammed Morsi'.  

Hillary Clinton is the most likely candidate who will be ahead in the potential 2016 presidential elections according to a new survey.   

Six of Pakistan's government websites were reportedly attacked and defaced by a group of hackers.   

A Ganesh Nadar reports: Ilavarasan's body will be handed over to his parents after the second post-mortem is conducted by three AIIMS doctors. His body will be taken in a procession to Natham village.

The Congress will take a final decision on issues like whether Rahul Gandhi will be declared the prime ministerial candidate, said party spokesperson Janardhan Dwivedi. 

Sri Lanka's main Tamil party has asked for scaling down military presence in northern Sri Lanka, before the northern provincial council elections. 

Two low intensity tremors today shook Bhaderwah valley and adjoining areas in Doda-Kishtwar belt of Jammu and Kashmir, triggering panic among the people.

Two powerful bombs exploded along the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur's Chandel district, but no casualty has been reported so far, officials said today. 

US Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano has declared that she is resigning from the cabinet to take up a job in academics.   

Over a month after a Muslim landlord allegedly paraded three Christian women naked in Pakistan's Punjab province, a court has finally taken notice of the matter and directed a judge to investigate the incident.             

The condition of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela has improved over the last week, his wife Graca Machel has said.   

A recent survey has revealed that nearly half of the Japanese people are against the country's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to restart nuclear reactors.   

Legendary actor Pran was keen to watch the remake of Zanjeer, the film in which he left a mark with his impressive performance, producer Amit Mehra said today.        

China has cancelled the construction of a $6 billion nuclear procession plant in Guangdong province apparently due to public concerns over its safety.        

The family of Savita Halappanavar, the Indian woman who died due to pregnancy complications in Ireland due to the country's strict abortion laws, has welcomed a new initiative of the Irish Parliament to allow limited abortion rights for the first time.   

Pakistani teen activist Malala Yousafzai, in her first public speech at the UN since being shot in the head by the Taliban, has said she is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's path of non-violence.        

The Communist Party of India-Marxist -led Left Democratic Front in Kerala continues to stage state-wide protest rallies over a demand for the  resignation of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy for his alleged role in a scam involving the manufacture and sale of solar panels.   

JMM leader Hemant Soren, son of party chief Shibu Soren, was today sworn in as the new chief minister of Jharkhand.   

In Kashmir, violent incidents are more the exception that the rule, observes Stephen Tankel.

Threatening posters, purportedly issued by terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, have appeared all over Anantnag in south Kashmir.

US President Barack Obama has called up Russian President Vladimir Putin and urged him not to grant asylum to whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

Amar Bose, founder of the revolutionary audio technology company Bose Corporation, has passed away. He was 83.

The nearly six-month-long President's rule in Jharkhand was today revoked to pave the way for the installation of a government led by JMM leader Hemant Soren.        

Most of the big tech companies implicated in the ongoing controversy over secret government Web surveillance insist they turned over data about users to the National Security Agency only after being compelled by court orders. But a new report claims that Microsoft willingly collaborated with the NSA and even allowed federal agents to circumvent the company's own encryption system to spy on users' messages.

 

The latest bombshell from the UK's Guardian newspaper, which along with the Washington Post broke the NSA snooping story last month, says that Microsoft helped the NSA circumvent its encryption to intercept Web chats on its new Outlook.com portal. The Guardian, citing "top-secret" documents, said the NSA already had access to pre-encrypted e-mail on Microsoft's Outlook, including Hotmail.

 

Read more on CNN

Andrew Pochter, a 21-year-old Kenyon College student from Chevy Chase, Md., was stabbed to death on June 28 during anti-government protests in Alexandria, Egypt. Pochter, a bystander to the demonstrations, was in Alexandria on an internship for a non-profit organization to teach English to Egyptian 7- and 8-year-olds.

 

His family said the young man "went to Egypt because he cared profoundly about the Middle East. He had studied in the region, loved the culture, and planned to live and work there in the pursuit of peace and understanding.'

 

Read the complete report on The Washington Post

Much nonsense is talked about Shakespeare not writing his plays, but more interesting questions remain: who edited the First Folio? And were substantial changes made?

 

Read the complete report on The Guardian

US whistleblower Edward Snowden has said he wanted asylum in Russia until he could legally travel on to some of the Latin American countries that have offered him asylum, adding that he had "no regrets" about leaking a US spying programme. Snowden, who has been holed up in transit zone of Moscow airport since June 23, told rights activists on Friday that he was prevented by Western governments from flying to the Latin America.

 

The former National Security Agency contractor said he was submitting a request to stay Russia "until such time as these (Western) states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted", according to a transcript of his remarks released by anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

 

Read the full report on Al Jazeera

Flights have resumed at London's Heathrow Airport after a fire on a parked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet. All runways were closed for nearly 90 minutes after the fire at 16:30 BST.

 

No passengers were aboard the plane at the time, a Heathrow spokesman said. Fifty Dreamliners worldwide were grounded in January after malfunctions with the plane's lithium-ion batteries. Boeing modified the jets with new batteries and flights resumed in April.

 

Read the full report on BBC

Japan and India have broken new ground by discussing the contours of a defence relationship, which will include joint development and production of defence equipment.

 

The two sides, during meetings here this week, attempted to take forward the initiative taken during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Tokyo visit in May this year, when Japan bent its strict rules prohibiting international trade in defence equipment by offering to sell India the ShinMaywa US-2, a highly sophisticated amphibious plane.

 

Read the full report on The Hindu

Six people have been killed and 26 wounded in a train crash at Bretigny-sur-Orge, south of the French capital Paris, the interior ministry has said. The intercity train had just left Paris and was heading towards Limoges when it derailed, crashing into a station platform at 17:14 (16:14 GMT).

 

Passengers were said to be trapped inside the train. Guillaume Pepy, head of the French rail company SNCF, described the accident as a "catastrophe". The company said 385 passengers were on board when it crashed.

 

Read the full report on BBC

Legendary actor Pran passes away at 93

Cong's Telangana announcement in early August?

In our culture, all forms of life are valued, tweets Modi

Not afraid of terror threats, Malala tells UN

Mahabodhi blasts: Role of Naxals, Rohingyas being probed

Rains continue to wreak havoc in UP, death toll touches 131

In PHOTOS: Mumbai slows down as rains hit road, rail traffic

Did not see the Dec 16 gang-rape victim: Accused tells judge

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