Five security personnel, including three state policemen, were today killed when armed Naxals attacked them during construction of a culvert in Aurangabad district of Bihar, a senior police offical said.

State Director General of Police Abhayanand told PTI that the three policemen belonged to special auxilliary police unit while the other two deceased were private security guards at the site of the construction of a culvert in the district.

Around 50 armed ultras arrived at the culvert in Goh area in the district and exploded bombs in a bid to destroy it. However, the culvert suffered minor damages in the attack, the DGP said.

BBC reports: A senior Pakistani Taliban leader has said he was "shocked" by his group's near-fatal attack on schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai last October.

In a letter to Malala, Adnan Rasheed stops short of apologising but says he wished the attack "had never happened". He also claims the shooting was not in response to Malala's campaign for girls' education, but because she ran an anti-Taliban "smear campaign".

Boosting army's war fighting capabilities along the Line of Actual Control, the government today given a go ahead to the creation of a corps including deployment of 50,000 additional troops along the China border at a cost of around Rs 65,000 crore.   

The cabinet committee on security headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cleared the proposal in its meeting,sources told PTI. As part of the plans, the around 1.3 million-strong army is expected to raise the new Corps' headquarters at Panagarhin West Bengal along with two divisions in Bihar and Assam and other units from Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh.

The opposition Rashtriya Janata-Dal hit out at the Bihar government on Wednesday for accusing it of hatching a 'conspiracy' in the mid-day meal tragedy that claimed the lives of 22 children, alleging that by politicising the issue the Janata Dal-United government was trying to divert the people's attention from the incident.

"You are the government and it is the duty of your child development project officer to do quality check of food served in midday meal scheme ... Instead of performing the task sincerely you are blaming the RJD," party chief Lalu Prasad told reporters rejecting Education Minister P K Shahi's charge that the opposition was trying to destablise the Nitish Kumar government.

NDTV reports: The Supreme Court today made it clear that the CBI should not share any information with the government on its investigation into alleged irregularities in how coal mining licenses were issued to private companies, a scandal dubbed "coal-gate."  

The court also took on the government over whether its permission is needed for investigators to interrogate senior government officers.

Attacking the Congress-led UPA government for liberalising FDI limits in various sectors, particularly telecom, defence and insurance, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today alleged that it was selling out the country and claimed that it would go soon.        

 

"We quit the government after it allowed FDI in retail. Now they are selling out everything -- defence, telecom and insurance, what not?" Banerjee told a panchayat election rally at Habibpur in Nadia district.        

 

"I want to know, after getting how much money will they stop? This government will surely go after the elections," Banerjee said. "I feel sad that the nation is being sold out in this way," she said.

Just in: An full emergency was declared at Mumbai airport for Air India flight from Sharjah to Kochi, which has developed hydraulic failure. Around a 135 passengers were on board the flight. The emergency has since been lifted and the flight landed safely.

And another mid-day meal horror? Unconfirmed reports say one child has died while 22 others were injured after consuming a mid-day meal in Gaya, Bihar. 

The value of Narendra Modi was contested this week after it was reported that party officials would collect five rupees from each participant at a rally where the divisive politician is slated to speak. Some might say it's a bargain, others that you couldn't pay them enough to attend a speech by Modi. Read

Bihar's education minister PK Sahi tells the media that the opposition was trying to pay play politics over the issue. "Don't blame us. I personally went there and moved the critical students to a better hospital in Patna. The
principal of the school, Meena Kumari has been suspended. Her husband is very close to a prominent political leader," he says.

Sahi said that the cook had complained about the quality of the cooking oil but the principal told her to use it anyway. The children had also complained about the meal. He said forensic reports are awaited, but the government suspected the involvement of a political party.  

Channel 4 News has a copy of a letter sent to Malala Yousufzai from a senior Taliban commander berating her "smear campaign" against them - but expressing some remorse about the attack. Read

PK Sahi, education minister, Bihar addressing the press on the mid-day meal tragedy in Chhapra, where 22 children died after consuming pesticide laced food. Sahi says the government responded immediately. He said three children were critical, but are likely to recover. He said the cook had complained of the oil, but had been dismissed.

There have been many cases of Indian children falling sick after eating meals distributed through the government's free school meal program, but none as extreme as Tuesday's deadly poisoning in Bihar. Read

Ravi Subramanian's move from Rupa Publications to Penguin India may not be about the money but you cannot be blamed for thinking it is. The publishing giant has offered the author Rs 1.25 crore for a two-book deal making it the highest advance given by them to any Indian writer. Read more 

Murmurs at 11 Ashok Road, the BJP headquarters in Delhi is that party president Rajnath Singh is in great demand in the US. He has a personal trip coming up this month, but the party has planned another visit in October.

Rajnath Singh has left drafts of his speeches which have been approved by three top leaders of the BJP. The focus of the speeches remain Hindutva apart from how Nepal and Sri Lanka have gradually turned away and against India.

Rajnath Singh's deep understanding of Afghanisthan and Pakistan have always played into his speeches. 

Unlike the Chhapra incident where organophosphorus used in pesticides had contaminated the mustard oil used to prepare the potato-soyabean meal, causing death of 22 students, the severity of food poisoning in the Madhubani incident is low. CNN IBN reports that a lizard was found in the meal. The children started vomiting and were rushed to a local hospital.

In the Chhapra incident, Principal Secretary, Education, Amarjeet Sinha, said that vegetables used in cooking the mid-day meal had traces of organophosphorus.

Toll in Chhapra now 22. Nitishji has still not visited Hospital in Patna to meet children & relatives or taken step to fix responsibility, tweets BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain. 

At least 15 children have been admitted to hospital when they fell ill after eating their mid-day meal in a school in the Madhubani district of Bihar. Early reports say that a lizard was found in the food served to the children. Two students are said to be in a critical condition.

This appalling news comes after 22 children died in Chhapra district of Bihar after consuming a mid-day meal in school. Read the report here.

Nagpur remains firmly in the headlines with top BJP leaders air-dashing to the RSS headquarters there.

Out of the eight contentious issues which the RSS is apprehensive about placing before Narendra Modi, six have been sorted out. But the most important remains that septuagenerians and octogenerians are told way ahead that they will not seek re-election to the Lok Sabha. Instead, the future leadership will ensure a safe place in the Rajya Sabha in mid 2014.

Who is that one person, or may be two people, who can tell senior BJP leader LK Advani where to get off?

The top brass of the BJP and the RSS have been struggling to tell Advani that it would be difficult for him to contest from the Gandhi Nagar Lok Sabha Parliamentary Constituency and it was time he stood back.

So, the top brass decided to get the message conveyed by his son Jayant Advani, but then someone chanced upon an even better idea. Insiders in the Advani family say that the patriarch listens to his daughter, Pratibha, more than his son and she may eventually bell the cat. Rumours are that Advani will be coaxed to give up the seat for Pratibha.  

Papal court handling pardons for sins says contrite Catholics may win 'indulgences' by following World Youth Day on Twitter. Read

Pakistan's new government has lifted a five-year moratorium on state executions, a move that human-rights campaigners say is a backwards step in the country's relations with the rest of the world. Read

Former Delhi BJP vice-president Aamir Raza Husain today said that he would prefer party veteran LK Advani or Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, as the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate in comparison to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who makes despicable and divisive comments.

"I thought that Modi's remarks were in terrible taste. He should not have made them and a man who consistently speaks such a language should not be considered by a national party (BJP) as their Prime Ministerial candidate when that national party has people like Sushma (Swaraj), Advani,' he said.

Husain said all political parties are the same and admitted that no leader likes to be challenged or debated upon by someone within the party.

Husain, a well-known theatre personality, tendered his resignation on Tuesday, a day after he had commented adversely about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on national television. "All political parties are same. No leader likes to be challenged or debated upon by someone in the party. You can't do anything to a very senior leader. There is no democratic environment in any party,' Hussain said.

The undertrial, Shakeel Ahmad Khatana, who was injured in a grenade attack in Srinagar along with four policemen who were escorting him, has died as a result of his injuries. A pedestrian was also injured in the attack in the crowded Batamaloo bus stand in central Srinagar around noon. 

Khatana, a former Hizbul militant was critically injured when the attack took place this morning. He had been arrested last year under Section 7/25 of the Arms Act and was charged with the Public Safety Act.

The Supreme Court has allowed the CBI to remove tainted SP Vivek Dutt from its Coal-gate probe team. The court today turned down the CBI's plea to shift DIG Ravi Kant, probing the coal block allocations between 2006 and 2009. The court said, "We may consider the CBI's plea for expanding the probe team as the scope of investigation has widened significantly."

Pakistan's new government has lifted a five-year moratorium on state executions, a move that human-rights campaigners say is a backwards step in the country's relations with the rest of the world. Read

Cheers, all best, warm regards -- having to choose the best way to sign off an email is a minefield. Which one do you use for what occasion? Read

In other news: In a world's first, UK scientists claim to have developed a novel method to charge mobile phones -- using human urine. Scientists working at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory have described the "breakthrough" finding of charging cell phones using urine as the power source to generate electricity.

"One product that we can be sure of an unending supply is our own urine. By harnessing this power as urine passes through a cascade of microbial fuel cells (MFCs), we have managed to charge a mobile phone. The beauty of this fuel source is that we are not relying on the erratic nature of the wind or the Sun, we are actually re-using waste to create energy," said a spokesperson from the lab.

A couple has been sentenced by an Australian court to nine months in jail for a racial attack in which a Sikh taxi driver's turban was ripped off. Angeline Kim Sollitt, 44, and Michael John Arbouin, 40, were handed down the nine-month prison-term for the "unprovoked and malicious" attack on taxi driver Jagroop Singh.

"The turban is the crowning glory of the Sikhs. For Sikhs, the head and the turban are sacred, they must not be touched or insulted in any way," Judge Stephen Southwood said.

The report said that Sollitt began verbally abusing Mr Singh when he picked her up with four others at the Dinah Beach Yacht Club last October.

"You are in Australia, mate, this is not your country. If you want to live in Australia, take this off," Sollitt had told Mr Singh, referring to his turban.

He kept on driving but later had to pull over when Sollitt got out and yelled "grab his turban, rip it off", before she ran to Mr Singh and pulled it off.

He attempted to radio in for help but was assaulted by the couple.

Arbouin then said, "You see what happens with your turban? Now I'm going to rip your hair off". The police arrived soon after to take control of the situation.

As the death toll in Bihar's mid-day meal food poisoning case rose to 20, Union Minister for Human Resource Development MM Pallam Raju said on Wednesday that the government has taken a serious note of the incident and is hoping that other states and their respective authorities would exercise more caution.

"It is very sad to know about yesterday's incident where food poisoning has taken place and 20 children have lost their lives in Bihar and another 21 are hospitalised. We have taken serious note of what has happened and our additional secretary who looks after the midday meal program is already in Bihar,' Raju said. 

The death toll in the midday meal incident has gone up to 22. While 16 children, aged below 10 years and studying in Class I to V, had died in Chhapra itself, four others were declared dead on arrival at Patna Medical College Hospital last night. Two died at the hospital this morning. Among the dead were two children of a woman cook of the mid-day meal project Panno Devi.

Read: Insecticide in mid-day meal killed 21 school kids

Huge cracks have developed in some places in the Kedarnath shrine that faced the fury of last month's floods, although the sanctum sanctorum has escaped damage, according to preliminary assessment of the Archaeological Survey of India.

The ASI has been given the responsibility to restore the Kedarnath temple, which was damaged in the deluge and landslides that hit Uttarakhand last month.

ASI's Dehradun teams says that there was not much visible damage to the garbha griha, but there has been extensive damage is to the eastern part. "The Ishaan temple is completely washed away in the flood. Several stones have been dislodged from the western gate and the exterior part of sanctum sanctorum. But it is really difficult to assess the actual damage till the debris is removed. There is still 2 to 6 feet debris there," he said.

The Allahabad High Court has granted bail to 70-year-old Ali Mohammed convicted by a lower court of raping his daughter-in law Imrana, that had prompted a minority community panchayat to direct her to treat her husband as a son.

Ali Mohammed was granted bail on the ground that he has already spent eight years in jail since his arrest on June 13, 2005.

On October 19, 2006, the District and Sessions court had held Ali Mohammed guilty of raping Imrana and sentenced him to 10-year prison term.

The incident, which occurred on June 6, 2005, had grabbed much attention nationwide when a minority community panchayat passed an edict that after the rape, Imrana, mother of five, would have to treat her husband as her son and that her marriage will be null and void.

Imrana's husband Noor Ilahi has welcomed the court order. Reacting to the ruling, Ilahi, who continues to live with Imrana despite the panchayat's ruling nulling their marriage, said it is a good news. Imrana, however, refused to comment on the order.

Update on the grenade attack in Srinagar. Four policemen and an undertrial were among six persons injured today in a grenade attack by militants on a police vehicle in Batamaloo area of the city.

Militants lobbed a grenade on a police vehicle carrying an undertrial at busy Batamaloo bus stand around noon, police said.

The grenade landed and exploded inside the vehicle, resulting in injuries to four policemen and the undertrial Shakeel Ahmad Khatana, police said. A civilian, Ghulam Nabi, who was passing through the area, was also injured in the blast, they said. Khatana, whose condition is stated to be critical, was being shifted to Baramulla district jail from Panthachowk police station.

The youth was arrested last year under Section 7/25 of the Arms Act and slapped with the Public Safety Act. This is the first militant strike in Srinagar since the Muslim fasting month of Ramzan began last week.

A seven-month-old baby, Ajay, died in the emergency ward of the Balia district hospital in eastern Uttar Pradesh, where sweepers and a rickshaw puller are asked to fill in for tasks meant only for trained medical professionals. Ajay was critical and suffering from septicemia.


The surgeon treating him had recommended a dose of a life-saving drug "Primacord" and asked the pharmacist to administer it. Instead, the pharmacist allegedly passed on the job to Raju, a rickshaw puller usually at the hospital for odd jobs like ferrying bodies. Read

Violent protests erupted in Chhapra in Bihar on Wednesday where 21 children died after consuming a mid-day meal in their school. According to television reports, people armed with sticks and rods set blaze a bus and damaged public property.

According to reports, 27 children are undergoing treatment at Patna Medical College And Hospital.

The mid-day meal was served to them at a government primary school in Dahrmasati village at Mashrakh block, about 25 Kms from Chhapra on Tuesday. All the children are between 8 and 12 years and fell ill soon after eating the meal which consisted rice, pulses and soybeans.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has ordered a high level enquiry into the incident. A forensic team will assist in the probe which will be conducted jointly by Saran Divisional Commissioner and DIG.

Aarogyasri, founded in 2007 by Andhra Pradesh's then-Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, is the first program in India to provide government-subsidized health insurance to poor families in India. It covers all families with a yearly income of less than 60,000 rupees, meaning that almost 85 percent of the state's population qualifies.  Read

Half of Indians have no toilet. It's one of many gigantic failures that have prompted Nobel prize-winning academic Amartya Sen to write a devastating critique of India's economic boom.  Read

How models and aspiring actors spend a large chunk of their earnings to keep up appearances. Read

And news of another grenade explosion.

Militants exploded a powerful grenade in the complex of the Regional Institute of Medical Science and Hospital in Imphal, but no casualty was reported.

The impact of the explosion was so strong that it could be heard a few kilometres away from the spot. Forces from Lamphel Police Station, just about 200 metres from RIMSH, rushed to the spot minutes after the incident and surrounded all exit points before launching a search operation and frisking passers-by. The militants have escaped. 

Four persons have been injured in a grenade explosion in the Batamaloo area of Srinagar, say police. Details awaited.

On June 28, militants today carried out a grenade attack on a CRPF picket in Sopore township of north Kashmir's Baramulla district, causing panic in the area. The grenade missed the intended target and exploded on the road.

Dharuhera, a small township near Gurgaon, is now an emblem of the change India's economic liberalization has brought to the countryside and its socio-economic life. Here's why

Recent judgments on the disqualification of convicted legislators and candidates in custody, and the banning of caste rallies, are not correct in law and need to be revisited. Read press council of India chairman, Markandey Katju's, column on the Hindu. 

The challenge of cybersecurity lies in protecting people without entering their private space or making 'national security' an excuse to trample on their freedoms. Read

India is the world's largest generic medicines exporter and has the third largest national economy in the world, according to data from the World Bank. But its healthcare policies are failing its poorest citizens. Read

The resignation of Delhi BJP vice-president Aamir Raza Husain over Narendra Modi's "puppy" remarks today gave Congress a fresh handle to attack the opposition party.

"If Aamir Raza Husain could say/do the right thing wonder why all former socialists who joined BJP quiet? "Where do Shahnawazji & Naqviji stand?," Congress leader and Minister of Information and Broadcasting Manish Tewari tweeted this morning.

Tewari was referring to BJP national vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain.

In what is being seen as the first fallout within the BJP over Modi's "puppy" remark, Husain, a well-known theatre personality, tendered his resignation yesterday. 

A batch of over 1,000 pilgrims have left the Jammu base camp for Shri Amarnath cave shrine in south Kashmir Himalayas. A convoy of 35 vehicles, carrying 1,037 pilgrims, left from Bhagwati Nagar base camp in Jammu at around 4.50 an to pay obeisance at the Amarnath cave shrine, police said.

The 21st batch of pilgrims, including 765 men, 166 women, 16 children apart from 90 priests, are on way to twin base camps of Pahalagam and Baltal in the Kashmir Valley. With today's batch a total of 40,612 pilgrims have left the Jammu base camp for Amarnath so far

Flying a MiG-21 amounted to "violation of his fundamental right to life", a serving wing commander has told the Delhi high court, seeking redressal after a regular flight exercise in 2005 went awry, leaving him with debilitating neck and back pain that has rendered him unfit for flying and even day-to-day tasks. Read.

On Monday, a MiG-21 Bison fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force crashed while landing at Uttarlai airbase in Rajasthan's Barmer district, killing the pilot.

BSP MP Vijay Bahadur Singh has been expelled from the party in the wake of his remarks in support of Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, says party sources.

A girl who was kidnapped and raped in Dimapur, Nagaland, managed to flee her captor with the help of the 108 emergency response service in Meghalaya. Read

In other news: The cabinet committee on security is to shortly take a call on the diplomatic ramifications of raising a new army formation for the China frontier in the east and the Northeast. Read

Meanwhile, the Delhi court reserves for July 19 its order on CBI's plea to summon Anil Ambani, his wife Tina Ambani and others as witnesses in 2G case. 

This is what the Justice Verma Commission ruled on juveniles: "We did consider, however, a general lowering of the juvenile age. The research and the statistics in this area, as well as our own experience shows that it was not viable. Even the women's organisations, most of them were of the view that it was not desirable. And you see you can't make a generalisation."

The former Chief Justice of India added, "The law is for general application and not for a particular case. And at any rate criminal law can't be retrospective. Even if a law were to be made today it will only be applicable to future cases."

Incidentally, the three-member panel also had Justice Leila Seth, who is author, poet Vikram Seth's mother and the first woman judge of the Delhi High court.

The Justice Verma Committee was constituted to recommend amendments to the Criminal Law so as to provide for quicker trial and enhanced punishment for criminals accused of committing sexual assault against women.  The Committee submitted its report on January 23, 2013.

Just in: The Supreme Court has rejected a PIL trying to reduce the age of juveniles held for murder or rape from 18 to 16 years. Those below 18 will continue to be treated as juvenile even in cases of rape and murder.


In effect this means, the juvenile accused of murder and gang rape in the December 16 case in Delhi will be treated as a juvenile. The maximum punishment he can get as a juvenile in the case is three years. A PIL seeking to lower the juvenile age had been filed in the Delhi court after the December 16 incident.

In Mamata Banerjee's Kolkata, a biker and his accomplices chased a Frenchwoman and her male colleague through the lanes of Jodhpur Park and Lake Gardens on Saturday night, one of them declaring aloud his intention to "f***' her, the Frenchman told The Telegraph today. Read his horrific account.

In the first fallout within the party of Narendra Modi's "puppy" remark,Delhi BJP vice-president and well-known theatre personality Aamir Raza Husain tendered his resignation on Tuesday, a day after he had made anti-Modi remarks on national television.

The Padma Shri awardee, who had been appointed to the post just two months ago, had told a news channel on Monday that "Modi's statements (on puppy and burqa) are despicable, divisive and can never draw support from Muslims." Read more

Bihar's education minister has said the mid-day meal that killed 20 students of a primary school in Bihar was poisoned. 

Violent protests erupted in Chhapra in Bihar on Wednesday where 20 children died on Tuesday after consuming mid day meal in their school. 

A group of 83 passengers aboard an Asiana Airlines flight which crash-landed in San Francisco has filed a lawsuit seeking millions from the aircraft's manufacturer Boeing, their lawyers said. 

An estimated 5,000 Syrians are dying every month in the country's civil war and refugees are fleeing at a rate not seen since the 1994 Rwanda genocide, UN officials said. 

The White House today said there was ample legal justification for former CIA contractor Edward Snowden to stand trial and asked Russia to return him to US.

Snowden, who has been stranded at the Moscow airport for three weeks now after his passport was withdrawn by the US, today applied for asylum in Russia. "Our position on this remains what it was and is quite clear, which is that we believe there is ample legal justification for the return of Mr Snowden to the United States, where he has been charged with serious felonies," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

"It should be clear, when we see the suppositions or discussions about the idea that Mr Snowden is somehow being persecuted, he is a United States citizen who has been charged with crimes, and under our system of law, he should be afforded every bit of due process here in the United States, and he should return here to face trial," he said.

Adding that this had been the US position in conversations with Russians on the issue, Carney added: "Our interest has always been in seeing him expelled from Russia and returned to the United State," Carney said.

Reacting to the reports of US government's access to customer data, software giant Microsoft has said that it did not allow any government to have direct or unfettered access to private information. 

A serious water leak inside an astronaut's helmet forced NASA to cut short a spacewalk Tuesday outside the International Space Station.

A mid day meal that proved fatal for school children in Chhapra in Bihar has left 20 dead and over 30 hospitalised. The state government has ordered an inquiry.

US Secret Service has arrested a man from across the street near the White House for carrying an unlicensed pistol and other fire arms. 

The long wait for the birth of Prince William and his wife Catherine's royal baby is big business for Britain's bookmakers. Punters around the world are betting on a girl called Alexandra to be born, well, any day now. 

Sixteen children have died in Bihar, allegedly as a result of food-poisoning from the free mid-day meal provided at their school near Chhapra in the central part of the state, 60 kms from the state capital Patna. 

The District Magistrate today imposed prohibitory orders under Section 144 CrPC in areas surrounding Maruti company in Gurgaon to avoid any confrontation between villagers and agitating sacked workers of the company.

District Magistrate Shekhar Vidyarthi has imposed the orders in whole area of IMT Manesar, Maruti Company at Manesar, Devi Lal Park Manesar, National Highway 8 and Mini Secretariat Gurgaon, under which assembling of five or more persons and carrying of weapons have been prohibited.

Holding any kind of procession and dharna at these places has also been banned.