The Mysteries of Asia three-part video series was originally produced for the Learning Channel. During this segment, historians and others examine temples built in India more than 1,000 years ago. They remain quite intriguing, though today's tourists rarely visit them. Records reveal that trained elephants had to drag millions of stone blocks to help erect these structures. The program notes that due to the temples' size, the U S Senate, Versailles, the houses of parliament, and St Paul's Basilica in Rome could all fit within a single one of them.

Michael Bell narrates as footage and animated maps are used to help viewers learn more about what these ancient structures look like and why they were built.

Asia is a continent steeped in ancient cultures, religions, and buildings. In this intriguing program, we are transported to this exotic land and examine the mysteries behind some of the most fascinating structures found there. Southern India has the largest temple complexes ever built.

In Lost Temples of India, we examine these 1,000-year-old temples adorned with intricate and beautiful sculptures. We learn how the kings used large herds of trained elephants to drag the millions of stone blocks into place and how these temples are virtually unknown and unvisited by Western tourists.

Watch the series here

Gangster Abu Salem, who survived bid on his life in a Navi Mumbai jail last month, will move the European Union seeking execution of the order canceling his extradition to India issued by the Portuguese constitutional court.

"We will move the EU..The Portugal high court, supreme court and constitutional court had cancelled the extradition (to India). What are the authorities waiting for,," Salem's Portugal-based lawyer Mannuel Ferriera asked.

Ferriera, who arrived in India on Sunday, met Salem after securing permission of the special TADA court and spoke to him for nearly two hours.

CNN IBN reports: Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha has warned that Modi's controversial statements will shift focus from corruption. He said that the more Modi speaks the attention gets diverted from Congress's misgovernance.

"The Modi baiters have a clear game plan. The more he speaks. The more controversy he will create. The attention will shift from misgovernance and corruption to what happened more than 11 years ago in Gujarat. It will be a grave mistake to allow Congress change the agenda and force debate on its own terms," Sinha said.

As the iconic 163-year-old telegram passed into history, the last message was sent to Rahul Gandhi.

The telegram counter closed at 11:45 pm last night and the last message was booked at the counter of Central Telegraph Office Janpath by one Ashwani Mishra, who sent messages to Gandhi and Director General of DD news SM Khan.

The revenue collected was Rs 68,837 as the country bade adieu to the harbinger of good and bad news for generations of Indians.

Reacting sharply to Narendra Modi's "burqa of secularism" jibe at Congress, Union Minister Shashi Tharoor today lashed out the one time RSS pracharak saying it was preferable to khaki shorts of fascists.

"Secularism burqa in my view is preferable to the khaki shorts of the Italian fascists of the 1920s. Shorts which signify intolerance and hatred, which he is not trying to hide. He was a RSS pracharak," he said.

Tharoor who is a known baiter of the Sangh Parivaar said the burqa represents the belief of a certain faith but the Khaki shorts represented intolerance to other communities.  He said Modi was making veiled attacks at Muslims.

Eleven days after he was found dead on a train track, a second autopsy report will aim to furnish more information on what may have killed 21-year-old Ilavarasan.

His family says he was murdered for daring to fight for his love for a woman from a higher caste; the police alleges he committed suicide, shattered by his wife's declaration that she wanted out of the marriage that was punished with retributive politics in Tamil Nadu. Read

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today said the state government was preparing a list of victims of the devastation in Uttarakhand. The state government will invite declaration from families whose members are missing in Uttarakhand and Rs 2 lakh compensation - Rs 1 lakh from the state government and a matching sum from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund, would be paid to them. 

India's new High Commissioner to Pakistan, TCA Raghavan, on Monday said that it would be his endeavour to take bilateral relations between the two countries forward during his posting.

"There is change in environment in Pakistan and certainly that is very important. The last few years have shown that the potential exists when there are good relations between India and Pakistan," he said. 

That marriages between blood relations might lead to health issues for the child has been suspected for several years. Now, a detailed analysis of the issue involving over 11,000 children, born out of consanguineous marriages, revealed congenital anomalies in 386 of them. Read

Stop! Tales of a village telegraphist. Read Ganesh Nadar's eulogy on Rediff.com

Just in: The monsoon session of Parliament to begin from August 5 and end on August 30. This is the last Monsoon Session of the UPA 2 government, which is likely to push through the Food Security Bill, the pet project of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The decision on Telangana statehood may come before or during the session.

A two-kg bag of rice handed over to Sangeeta Shukla in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand's Rudrapur village is infested with tiny black insects."Would you accept rations of this quality?" Shukla asks as a family member empties the sack of rice into a bucket. Read

Moderate to heavy rainfall today occurred at various places in Uttar Pradesh where major rivers continued to flow above the danger mark. The Ganga was flowing close to the danger level from Fatehgarh to Kanpur, while Sharda was flowing above the red mark at Paliakalan in Lakhimpur district.

Decrying the 'puppy' and 'burqa' remarks, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, in a veiled attack on Narendra Modi, said use of such language will not yield votes for the BJP, and instead will only pollute the environment.

Modi had accused the Congress of hiding behind burqa (veil) of secularism to hide its failures.

In an interview to Reuters, he had on being asked whether he regretted the 2002 riots in Gujarat, responded that one will feel sad even if a puppy comes under the vehicle you are travelling in. 

Two BSF jawans were arrested today for allegedly molesting a 23-year-old woman on board the New Delhi-Sealdah Rajdhani Express when the train was between Kanpur and Allahabad.

A group of students was travelling from New Delhi to Sealdah in Kolkata when the two jawans -- Sandeep Kumar posted in Tripura and Vinay Pal in Murshidabad, West Bengal -- molested one of them in the train.

An FIR has been registered at Mughalsarai station and both the jawans have been arrested.

From the day she burst onto television screens as a Big Brother contestant in 2002, Jade Goody's life resembled one long soap opera.From her struggles with fame and cheating boyfriends to race rows and eventually her death, most of her adult life was played out in the public spotlight. Read

About 100 students of various reputed schools from Delhi and Gurgaon were detained from a pub in a mall in Gurgaon for allegedly smoking hookah during a party.

The students were released later and no action was taken against them, but the pub's manager was booked under section 188 of the IPC (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) and the pub was sealed.

The students aged between 15 and 20 had attended the birthday party hosted by one of them and they were allegedly served hookah there on Sunday afternoon. 

The tragicomedy of Mumbai's LAST telegram. Read

Hardly before the ink could dry out on the joint statement agreed to between Defence Minister A K Antony and his Chinese counterpart General Chang Wanquan pledging to maintain peace and tranquillity in the India-China border, media broke the news that the Chinese troops again transgressed the Line of Actual Control in Chumar sector of Ladakh on June 17 after the resolution of three-week long Depasang incident of border transgression on May 5.

Read

Greatest runner of all time -- Gebrselassie -- says democracy can't come overnight as he targets a new career in politics. But he hopes he can lift the pace of progress. Read

Musician Nitin Sawhney and producer David McEwan on their special relationship. Read

They behave like ants and can live for more than 30 years, but what's really captured the imagination of scientists is the fact that naked mole rats don't get cancer. Read (but no, they aren't cute)

BJP senior leader Yashwant Sinha clarified his remark on Narendra Modi that the more the Gujarat chief minister speaks, more the Congress would grain.
Speaking to CNN IBN, Sinha clarified that the the Congress's attack on Modi would benefit the BJP, but "will divert attention from the issue of corruption and misgovernance."

He added that the Congress is trying to divert attention and the BJP should not fall into its trap.

"The Congress is determined to bring the secular-communal debate to the centrestage, BJP should not fall into that trap," Yashwant said.

He said that while all this will benefit the BJP, the economic issues are being sidelined in the battle. "BJP will gain from any polarisation that happens because of Modi. The more the Congress attacks Modi, the more popular Modi becomes.

Issues of misgovernance and corruption should be brought to the fore in the coming elections. Economic issues are being sidelined in this battle," Yashwant said. "Congress is mistaken that it will get back to power with the secularism issue," he added.

Four senior executives of British multinational pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have been detained by Chinese police for alleged economic offences like bribery and tax evasion.

The four were once dubbed the GSK China's "quadriga," the report said which also alleged malpractices like manipulating prices of the medicines in collusion with officials.

In the wake of last year's horrific gang rape in India, Sohaila Abdulali revisited her own experience and feels lucky she can put it behind her. Read

If the George Zimmerman murder trial didn't polarize America enough, the verdict certainly did.While supporters of Zimmerman's acquittal kept largely quiet after the weekend decision, outraged protesters poured into the streets across the country Sunday and early Monday. Read

Edward Snowden, the fugitive intelligence leaker wanted by the United States, has still not applied for temporary asylum in Russia. Snowden made his first public statement in nearly three weeks last Friday as he met with a group of Russian rights activists and pro-Kremlin figures in the Moscow airport where he had been marooned since June 23 after flying in from Hong Kong.

However he has made no further public statement and has not yet filed the asylum application with the Russian authorities that he told the activists he would be making Friday evening.

JK Rowling has spoken of the "liberating experience" of adopting a nom de plume after it was revealed that the Harry Potter creator was behind a critically acclaimed crime novel published under the name Robert Galbraith. Read

A penalty of Rs 3 crore each has been imposed on State Bank of India (SBI), Bank of India, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Central Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank and Federal Bank. United Bank of India, Lakshmi Vilas Bank, Punjab National Bank, Jammu & Kashmir Bank and Andhra Bank were slapped a penalty of Rs 2.5 crore each.

A penalty of Rs 2 crore each was imposed on Yes Bank, Vijaya Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and Dhanlaxmi Bank. The other banks which were penalised by the RBI include Deutsche Bank, Development Credit Bank, ING Vysya Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Ratnakar Bank.

Besides, Reserve Bank has issued cautionary letters to Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank, Barclays Bank, BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi and State Bank of Patiala.

Is Satish Verma a genius investigator or a conspiracy theorist? Read

Meanwhile, in New Delhi Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi had lunch with President Pranab Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhavan.  More on that later. 

The RBI has penalised 22 banks for violating KYC norms. RBI has imposed fines ranging from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 3 crore, though it said that prima facie no evidence of money laundering was found. RBI has also sent cautionary letters to seven other banks following scrutiny.

The RBI on Friday had warned banks to meticulously follow its instructions with regard to walk-in customers while selling insurance, mutual fund, gold and other products above Rs 50,000 or face action. "It is reiterated that banks should meticulously follow the instructions in letter and spirit and ensure that violations of (KYC and anti-money laundering norms) do not recur. Such violations would be viewed seriously by the Reserve Bank and would involve imposition of penalties," RBI said in a notification.

US President Barack Obama called for "calm reflection" following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The president, in a written statement, acknowledged an emotionally charged climate but concluded that "we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken." Obama called Martin's death a tragedy for America. Read

A war crimes court has found Islamist Ghulam Azam guilty of five charges relating to Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence with Pakistan. Ghulam Azam was sentenced to 90 years in jail for his involvement in mass killings and rape during the war. Read

The four surviving original copies of Magna Carta will be brought together in 2015 for the first time in history, the British Library has announced. Read

Legendary singer Manna Dey's younger daughter Sumita has accused her cousin of misappropriating close to Rs 30 lakh and some valuables from a joint account that Dey holds with his nephew.

Family members of the accused have denied the allegation, while investigators have confirmed that Dey's nephew is a joint account holder and is legally entitled to operate the account along with the singer. Read

The funeral of Dicky Rutnagur, the doyen of Indian cricket writers who died in London on June 20, aged 82, was held on Friday at Golders Green Crematorium. Amit Roy writes for the Telegraph. Read

Faced with plummeting rupee woes, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss the economic situation, even as RBI Governor D Subbarao has been called to deliberate on the strategy to tackle the problem.

Chidambaram is understood to have discussed the rupee woes and macro economic situation with the Prime Minister. He is scheduled to meet Subbarao later this afternoon.

The Finance Minister also briefed the Prime Minister about his recent Washington visit, where he pitched for US investments in India. He had also met key policy makers including Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

India's premier federal investigation agency, Central Bureau of Investigation has recently charged seven police officers in the western state of Gujarat for the killing of four individuals, including a 19-year-old woman named Ishrat Jahan. Read  what the NYT says

The children begin arriving every year in mid-May, brought to an overburdened hospital here in one of India's most impoverished areas by their panic-stricken mothers. Seemingly healthy hours earlier, most have lapsed into a coma, punctuated by convulsions. The NYT on the mystery illness that stalks India's young. Read

As the debate triggered by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's "puppy" analogy raged across the country, Sruthi Gottipati, the reporter who interviewed him, sought to administer a reality check by asserting that the latter's remarks had been blown out of context by the media. Read more

BJP senior leader Yashwant Sinha warned his party that Narendra Modi's controversial statements will shift focus from corruption. He said that the more Modi speaks the attention gets diverted from Congress's misgovernance. "The Modi baiters have a clear game plan. The more he speaks. The more controversy he will create. The attention will shift from misgovernance and corruption to what happened more than 11 years ago in Gujarat. It will be a grave mistake to allow Congress change the agenda and force debate on its own terms," Sinha said.

Meanwhile, here's what Congress MP Shashi Tharoor tweeted on the episode.
"Modi says we "hide behind the burqa of secularism". Preferable, surely, to the khaki shorts of intolerance&hatred that he now tries to hide?"

A young man was killed in Florida on February 26 because he was black and wore a hoodie. His killer was acquitted on July 13.

Roopa Unnikrishnan's piece on how her faith in the justice system was shattered, forcing her to look at life through the prism of colour. Read

Update on the MiG-21 Bison crash. The fighter aircraft crashed while landing at Uttarlai Airbase in western Rajasthan, leaving the pilot dead. The aircraft was on a routine sortie when it crashed at 9.30 am at Uttarlai, Defence Spokesperson S D Goswami said. A court of inquiry has been constituted to ascertain the cause of the incident, the spokesman said.

The frequent crashes involving the the MiG 21 has given it the name 'flying coffin' or the 'widow maker'. But a man who has done 6316 sorties with the MiG-21, arguably the most by any air force pilot, says there isn't anything wrong with the aircraft.

As the one-time warhorse aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) completed 50 years in the fleet in 2013, Air Commodore (retd) SS Tyagi, the former station commander of IAF bases in Naliya and Jamnagar in Gujarat believes it is time to set the record straight. Don't blame the machine, he says. Blame the elements that the pilot has to deal with. Read

Just in: IAF's MiG-21 Bison fighter aircraft crashes in Uttarlai in Rajasthan, pilot killed, says Air Force sources.

A month after the Uttarakhand crisis, the state government will declare the 5000 missing to be presumed dead and the compensation to be handed over to the family immediately. However, the government has said that the beneficiaries should sign an undertaking to return the compensation if the 'dead' person is found to be alive.

Over 5,700 people are still missing from 18 states. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna said that the list of dead will be sent to the chief secretaries of all states.

The maximum number of missing people, at least 2,000, is from Uttar Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh comes second with a little over a 1,000 people missing.

Manish Tiwari's Libertarian comment comes after Narendra Modi on Sunday hit back at the Congress, saying the party is adept at donning the "veil of secularism" and "hiding in a bunker" whenever it is faced with a crisis. Read

And the puppy wars continue. Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari tweets this morning: "The Veil of Secularism is inclusive while wheels of communalism consider Libertarians as KUTTE KA Baccha - PUPPY to be crushed under their SUVs. IF KUTTE KA BACCHA- PUPPY comes under your car u hv 2options cuddle &treat it or again crush it What would u call a man who does the Latter.

Gujarat CM Narendra Modi was asked in an interview with Reuters whether he regretted the violence in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots.

This is what Modi said: If "someone else is driving a car and we're sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not? Of course it is. If I'm a chief minister or not, I'm a human being. If something bad happens anywhere, it is natural to be sad."

Anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela might get discharged from hospital soon to recuperate at home, a former president of South Africa said. Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela as South Africa'spresident, made the prediction on Saturday that Mandela's health was improving so he could get a discharge soon.

The CBS News reports that Mandela has been hospitalized for more than five weeks for a recurring lung infection in a Pretoria hospital. According to the report, Mandela has been on life support in the form of mechanical ventilation. Mandela's family is planning a small lunch as he turns 95 on Thursday.  -- ANI

Google on Monday marked the 407th birth anniversary of Rembrandt van Rijn's with a doodle. Rembrandt van Rijn was a Dutch painter who made major contributions to European art history. As always, the doodle is spectacular. See

Days after a consignment of fake Indian currency notes worth Rs 37 lakh coming from China was apprehended in Delhi, another consignment of comparable value from the same country has now been seized on the Indo-Nepal border. Read

It will be an unusual Monday morning in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's household. Among the bagful of mail he gets daily will be several telegrams urging him to 'end corruption, give us freedom'. Read

While the Ishrat Jahan case has once again brought into sharp focus the issue of fake encounter killings, government figures show another disturbing reality.

Russian lawmakers are using the example of Edward Snowden -- who is seeking temporary asylum in the former Communist nation -- to impose tighter controls on internet giants operating there.

The long-pending anti-superstition bill would be tabled in the monsoon session of the Maharashtra Legislature, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan has said.     

Cadres of the banned Communist Party of India - Maoist snatched nomination papers filed for posts of sarpanchs and ward members in four villages in G Madugula mandal of the Visakhapatnam agency area on Saturday.        

Senior police officer Parikshita Rathod, who was the first officer to investigate the alleged fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others, told the CBI that suspended IPS officer D G Vanzara had told her that there was no need for ballistic examination of their weapons.        

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has said her government is "gearing up" to roll out the food security scheme in the city on August 20. 

Congress today hit back at Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for his remarks -- that the ruling party wears the 'veil of secularism' each time it faces a crisis -- and said that this conduct is better than 'communalism'.       

BJP leaders and those involved in pursuing the Bofors scam have said prime accused Ottavio Quattrochi's death should not result in closing the probe into where the kickbacks went and the truth should be unearthed.        

Just 15 minutes to midnight, the iconic telegram breathed its last in Delhi, with the last message sent to Rahul Gandhi.