Britain is taking interim steps toward restoring diplomatic ties with Iran by appointing a charge d'affaires to work with the country, Foreign Secretary William Hague announced today. 

A CBI court hearing the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case today fixed October 10 for start of the final arguments in the case. The arguments were to begin today but the case could not be taken up as condolence was announced after the death of a lawyer.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today called for sanctions on Iran to be strengthened to curb its atomic programme, which the Israeli leader said could lead to nuclear military abilities. 

The Muslim Brotherhood's status as a registered non-governmental organisation was officially annulled today by Egypt's cabinet, in a fresh blow to the country's largest Islamist movement. 

Turkey today lifted a decades-old ban on Islamic head scarves in the civil service as part of wide-ranging reforms driven by the Islamic-rooted government. 

Finance Minister P Chidambaram will reach Washington tomorrow to attend the IMF/World Bank annual meetings, after which he will meet investors in San Francisco to hardsell India as an investment destination. 

A glimpse of the humane side of our president, Pranab Mukherjee.

A journalist fell severely ill on board Air India One, the President's aircraft,  on the way back from Turkey.

The journalist's blood sugar had shot up to 547 and Pranab Mukherjee got wind of it. He went up to the journalist and touched his forehead and told him not to worry and assured him he would be taken care of. The president said his personal doctor would examine him.

All through the five-hour flight from Ankara to Delhi, a medical attendant was seated next to the journalist to monitor his condition. The journalist, we are happy to tell you is doing well and can't get over Pranab Mukherjee's kindness. 

The Dindoshi Flyover will remain shut for 24 hours, till 6 am tomorrow. Brace for massive traffic jams. Last week, a part of the flyover had caved in and the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation decided to keep the flyover partially closed for a week. The flyover is expected to reopen at 6 am tomorrow.

Rumors of the flyover "breaking into two" is not true. 

Pic: Sahil Salvi

As of now, there is a major traffic chaos on WEH between Andheri and Borivli due to closure of Dindoshi flyover near Oberoi mall. Use SV Road. 

The Gujarat government and Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) have locked horns over seeking death sentences for ex-minister Maya Kodnani, Babu Bajrangi and 28 others convicted of the Naroda Patiya massacre during the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom.  Read

Vinita Gupta is chief executive  of Lupin Ltd., the second largest Indian pharmaceutical company by market value, and the fifth largest generic drug company in the U.S. by number of prescribed medicines. Read the interview

What exactly is the Higgs Boson? Have physicists proved that it really exists? Read

UK Prime Minister David Cameron tweets: PM congratulates Professor Peter Higgs for winning the #NobelPrize for Physics. 

The chargesheet in the Shakti Mills gang-rape case in Mumbai has been filed.The Bombay High Court has also ordered the clean-up exercise of the Shakti Mills compound after taking cognizance of the series of sexual assaults that had taken place within the compound. 

The world's first anti-malaria vaccine may be approved for use within two years, after encouraging results from a large-scale trial of a vaccine candidate. UK drug maker GlaxoSmithKline is seeking regulatory approval for the vaccine after trial data showed that it had cut the number of cases in African children.

Despite the Supreme Court's recent strictures on Aadhaar, Nandan Nilekani has ensured that the scheme is now too big and too widely used to be scuttled. Read more 

In other news: The Shiv Sena has been allowed to hold its Dussera rally at Shivaji Park.

Peter Higgs was not reached by Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences yet, though an has been email sent.

Yesterday, the Nobel Academy could not reach Thomas C Sudhof to inform him that he had won the 2013 Medicine Nobel, for over an hour.

His reaction when he was informed is posted below.

Here's how the 2013 Medicine Nobel prize winners reacted:

Machinery ... that's exactly how I think about it: James E. Rothman's reactions to the 2013 Medicine Prize.

Are you serious?: Thomas C Sudhof

Oh my God, oh my God!: Randy W Schekman

In a phone interview with the Nobel organization, Professor Francois Englert says he is "very happy, but there are there are still big questions to be answered in particle physics."

So who are the two Nobel physicists?

Francois Englert is a Belgian citizen. Born 1932 in Etterbeek, Belgium. Ph.D. 1959 from Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium. Professor Emeritus at Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.

Peter W. Higgs, UK citizen. Born 1929 in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Ph.D. 1954 from King's College, University of London, UK. Professor emeritus at University of Edinburgh, UK.

This is the Nobel committee's press release on the Physics prize. Read

The announcement was delayed by over an hour. Yesterday, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013 was awarded jointly to James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Sudhof. Tomorrow, is the announcement of the Chemistry Nobel. 

So there you have it. The Nobel Prize for Physics goes to Franois Englert and Peter Higgs.

The official Nobel Prize tweets say, the physicists won "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass subatomic particles and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider."

Francois Englert (Univ. Libre de Bruxelles) & Peter W. Higgs (Univ. of Edinburgh) have been awarded 2013  Nobel prize for Physics.

Less than 3 minutes, for the announcement of the 2013 Nobel Prize to be announced. 

Air Costa, Andhra Pradesh's first regional airline promoted by the LEPL group, will launch its commercial operations from October 14, its Chairman L Ramesh said today.

With coastal city Vijayawada as its base, Air Costa would initially operate flights to Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Jaipur and Ahmedabad and subsequently to Madurai, Visakhapatnam, Goa, Thriuvananthapuram and Mysore, Ramesh said.

Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai became a global inspiration after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. In an exclusive interview, to the Guardian, she talks about the man who tried to kill her, life in Britain and why she won't give up campaigning. Read

The Supreme Court has set up a three-member panel to probe the IPL spot-fixing case. The panel will be headed by former Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana high court Mukul Mudgal.

The other members of the three-member panel are senior advocate Nilay Dutta and Additional Solicitor General L Nageshwar Rao. Mudgal says he has accepted the responsibility given by the court.

The SC however, has said that BCCI president N Srinivasan can take charge of the Board, a departure from its earlier order that Srinivasan could not take charge pending the judgement on the spot fixing scam.

The Nobel Prize for Physics will be announced in a bit. The 2013 Nobel Prizes consist of a Nobel Prize medal, diploma and cash award worth 8 million Swedish Crowns.

In 2004, Drs. Higgs, Brout and Englert won the Wolf Prize, considered to be a forerunner of the Nobel.

In 2010, Drs. Higgs, Brout, Englert, Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble shared the Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society, another important forerunner, and the first time that prize had been split six ways.

This year, the European Physical Society gave its high energy and particle physics prize to the Atlas and CMS collaborations, naming the founders of those experiments, Michel Della Negra, Peter Jenni and Tejinder Virdee.
 -- NYT

Physics Nobel announcement will be delayed by 30 minutes.  

Tiny Particle Looms Large on Eve of Top Physics Prize. Read

106 Nobel Prizes in Physics have been awarded between 1901-2012.
47 Physics Prizes have been given to one Laureate only.
2 women have been awarded the Physics Prize so far.
1 person, John Bardeen, has been awarded the Physics Prize twice.
25 years was the age of the youngest Physics Laureate ever, Lawrence Bragg, when he was awarded the 1915 Physics Prize together with his father.
55 is the average age of the Physics Laureates the year they were awarded the prize.

The Nobel Prize for Physics will be announced today at approximately 3:15 pm.

This is the second Nobel Prize of 2013 and the most eagerly awaited prize announcement for some time. The stand-out prediction for this year's Nobel has to be an award for last year's completion of the Standard Model of particle physics, with the disovery at Cern that the Higgs field is indeed real.

Theoretical physicists Franois Englert and Peter Higgs are the clear favourites. Englert was first to publish the idea, in 1964, of a field that interacted with fundamental particles and gave them mass; Higgs was the first to point out, merely a few weeks later, the potential existence of the eponymous boson, reports the Guardian.

Traffline confirms that as per recent updates - Dindoshi flyover will open at 6 am tomorrow. A part of the flyover had believed to have caved in and has been closed for repairs.

On October 1, a part of the Dindoshi flyover caved in and the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation decided to keep the flyover partially closed for a week for repair work.

More on Rahul Gandhi's 'escape velocity'.

Drawing an analogy, Rahul Gandhi said the escape velocity needed to escape from Jupiter's atmosphere is much more than that of the Earth.

"The escape velocity for earth is 11.2 km/sec while that of Jupiter is 60 km/sec. In India we have the concept of caste. There is an escape velocity here also. For a Dalit to achieve success the escape velocity required is that of Jupiter. More effort is needed," Gandhi said.

Citing the example of Ambedkar, the Congress Vice President said he is looked up to with pride as he was the first Dalit to reach the escape velocity and go to America.

Seriously, the man needs to get a new speech writer.

The Supreme Court today rejected the Centre's plea to modify an interim ruling that the Aadhaar or the Unique Identity Card is not mandatory for essential services.

The court also took a dig at the government over its ordinance to override a Supreme Court order disqualifying convicted MPs, withdrawn last week in a blaze of controversy. 

When the government lawyer admitted that a law on Aadhaar was before the cabinet, the judges sarcastically said, "You have the ordinance route also. If you have a law this case becomes irrelevant."

This comes on a day the Cabinet approved the National Identification Authority of India Bill that will give legal backing to the Aadhaar card.

The Bill may be tabled during the winter session of Parliament, say sources. The authority that issues the 12-digit Aadhaar numbers to citizens currently operates through an executive order. -- NDTV

Alert on Twitter says that the there has been some damage to the Dindoshi Bridge flyover near Oberoi mall, Goregaon. There is traffic jam from Andheri to Borivali.  The damage is most likely believed to be a crater that has developed on the flyover. But the south-bound carriageway has been closed for repairs, say tweets.  

CPI-M leader and MP Sitaram Yechury on Narendra Modi's recent campaign for toilets over temples...

"Recently, the RSS/BJP prime ministerial candidate, who presided over the 2002 communal carnage in Gujarat, thundered in Delhi -- "Pahale shauchalaya, phir devalaya (build toilets before you build temples)."

He was echoing a similar comment made by Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh weeks earlier.

Such assertions could be considered laudable but for Gujarat's dismal record on sanitation under the BJP government." Read more

Undeterred by a notice asking him to withdraw his hunger strike at Andhra Bhawan, Telugu Desam Party leader Chandrababu Naidu today said he would continue his fast to protest against the split of Andhra Pradesh.

"What crime I have committed? When Jaganmohan Reddy was in jail, he took part in a fast against the jail manual. But why should I vacate from Andhra Bhavan as I am under fast for a good cause," he said.

The Residence Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh served a notice to the TDP chief stating that the hunger strike is "unauthorised" as permission was granted only for a press meet at the venue, TDP spokesman Shiva Prasad Rao said.

Asked whether his indefinite fast was a second struggle for Andhra Pradesh, Naidu said he wanted to expose the Congress party which is allegedly "match fixing with YSR Congress and TRS."

"Congress is adamant and playing politics. It is unfortunate," the TDP chief said.

Mo Farah recalls his first gold medal at the London Olympics in the 10,000m and the extraordinary scenes of euphoria that followed his victory. Read 

Prince Harry's girlfriend Cressida Bonas in pictures. See

Two lawyers, representing death row convicts Mukesh Singh and Pawan Kumar Gupta, today informed the Delhi High Court that they are withdrawing from the December 16 gang rape-cum-murder case on the ground of alleged interference by family members of the convicts.

Appearing for Mukesh, advocate V K Anand informed the bench of justices Reva Khetrapal and Pratibha Rani that at the instance of certain people, including advocates, the convict's family members are interfering in his work to file the appeal in the case.

"I wanted to withdraw myself from the case as certain people are trying to interfere into my work and the court should discharge me from the work," he said, adding that he has communicated the decision to the brother of Mukesh.

Accepting his submission, the bench said, "We can't interfere with your decision".

Meanwhile, special public prosecutor Dayan Krishnan told the bench that advocate Vivek Sharma, who represents convict Pawan, has telephonically informed about his intention to withdraw from the case.

After the submissions of the counsel, the bench said, "In these circumstances we will have to appoint amicus curiae for Mukesh and Pawan".

Pic: Lawyer VK Anand

Conscious of threats posed by Pakistan-based terrorists to its bases, IAF chief NAK Browne today said the Air Force has taken all "necessary" steps to protect its assets and stations.

"It is a very valid concern. These kinds of things have happened in our neighbourhood (Pakistan) and in last two years, there have been three such incidents there. We are very conscious of those things and all necessary steps have taken to protect our assets.

"We are extremely vigilant," Browne told reporters at the air base here after the 81st IAF Day parade.

The Keran operation, one of the longest anti-infiltration operations in recent times ended today with the Indian army finishing seven massive search operations of a three-km area in their mission to hunt down the terrorists in the Keran sector along the Line of Control.

The operation that lasted 15 days, saw eight terrorists dead and six jawans of the Indian army injured.

Army officials say an infiltration of this size could not have been possible without the support of the Pakistan army. -- NDTV

India today successfully test-fired for the second time in two days its indigenously developed nuclear-capable Prithvi-II missile, which has a strike range of 350 km, from a test range at Chandipur.

The surface-to-surface missile was test-fired from a mobile launcher in salvo mode from launch complex-3 of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at about 12.20 pm. 

BJP has refused to accept the one-man inquiry commission constituted by the Uttar Pradesh government to probe the Muzaffarnagar riots and said that the violence should be probed by a commission comprising a judge from the Supreme Court.

A memorandum was submitted by the BJP local unit to Vishnu Sahai, heading the one-man commission, demanding that the commission comprising a judge of the Supreme Court should probe the Muzaffarnagar violence.

Earlier in the day Army chief Gen Bikram Singh said the "desparate infiltration bid" by terrorists in Keran sector in Jammu and Kashmir has been foiled. He sought to clarify that the infiltration attempt was not an "intrusion" as the enemy was not occupying higher ground but sitting in a "nallah" (rivulet). "It was a desperate infiltration bid, which has been foiled," Gen Singh said on the sidelines of the Air Force Day parade in Hindon.

The Army presser on the Keran incursion is on now.

Northern Army Commander Lt Gen Sanjiv Chachra says there has been a desperate infiltration bid in the Keran sector.

A large quantity of ammunition, communication devices, AK 47 rifles have been recovered. Counter infiltration operations will continue, but the operations are over as of now. 

He also said the Pakistan army was certainly aware of the incursion. No Army post taken over, they were trying to enter Indian territory, he Lt Gen Chachra clarified.

CBI to close its probe in the disproportionate assets case against BSP supremo Mayawati. 

Mayawati was let off in the Taj Heritage Corridor scam case after UP governor TV Rajeswar had on June 3, 2007 refused to grant the CBI sanction to prosecute the former chief minister and her cabinet colleague Naseemuddin Siddiqui.

In its July 6, 2012 judgment, the court had quashed the FIR after perusing the almost decade-old orders of the court in the Taj Heritage Corridor scam case and coming to the conclusion that there could not have been an occasion for the apex court to direct lodging of DA case FIR against Mayawati.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's statement likening the Dalit movement to the "escape velocity  of Jupiter" has gone viral. Speaking at the Vigyan Bhawan in Delhi, Gandhi said, "In India, we have a concept of caste. If one belongs to a backward caste and wants to attain success then one needs an escape velocity of Jupiter to attain that success."

The Congress Vice President also hit out at BSP chief Mayawati for the plight of the community saying that the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister was not allowing his party to work for the Dalits.

Here's what tweets say:

JUST IN : Stephen Hawking has filed a petition for Voluntary euthanasia after hearing Rahul Gandhi speak about

Jupiter's  #EscapeVelocity for Dalits? Let #Paidmedia n #enrega propel it. Rahul is seriously humourous. I bet he just heard the word dayB4.

@S_Mandalia: Rahul gandhi shud campaign more, everytime he speaks BJP gains few thousand votes #EscapeVelocity

@fakingnews: From today onward, the universal gravitational constant, or the Big G, will stand for (Rahul) Gandhi

@sundeepgummadi So wanna meet his speech writers. You're all just jealous that Rahul Gandhi's ideas are out of this world. #EscapeVelocity.

Anonymous emails have been doing the rounds in the past few days, revealing the purported name of the juvenile convicted in the December 16 gang-rape and murder case.

Some rights activists who received the mails said that steadily, the online discourse in the case was moving away from questions of justice and womens safety to religious profiling of the accused. Read more

The Army is likely to hold a press briefing on the Keran incursion along the Lind of Control at 12:30 pm.

At another press briefing yesterday, the Army said a huge cache of arms and ammunition was recovered from the Keran sector, even as the operation against militants holed up there entered the 14th day.

"We conducted search operations in the sector and recovered war-like stores of arms and ammunition," Officiating Brigadier General Staff (BGS) Col Sanjay Mitra told reporters.

He said the recoveries include seven AK 47 rifles, four pistols, one sniper rifle, 20 UBGL grenades, two radio-sets and other war-like stores. Some medicines and food items were also recovered, he said.

Army had on Sunday recovered six AK rifles, 10 pistols, five radio-sets and other items after the search operations in the sector, Col Mitra said. "The level of preparedness by the terrorists prior to these attempts and their designs are amply clear with recoveries," he said.

A decade after Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping ended, she is sharing intimate details of her 9-month-long nightmare.Smart, now 25 and married, spoke to CNN about her book "My Story," which she said tells 100% of what happened to her. Read

The RSS wrote a non-political role for itself as part of an undertaking it gave Sardar Patel. The overt political role it has assumed in 2013 is a breach of that agreement and its own constitution. Read 

The Supreme court has directed the Election Commission to introduce in a phased manner a paper trail in EVMs for the next general elections.

Just in: Telegu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu has been asked to vacate the premises of Andhra Bhavan in Delhi where he is holding an indefinite fast to protest over Telangana statehood. Naidu is on the second day of his hunger strike today.

Yesterday, Naidu was denied permission to fast at Andhra Bhavan by the Resident Commissioner of the facility. Authorities in Andhra Pradesh Bhawan here were in a fix over former Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu sitting on a fast unto death over division of the state.

Just in: The Supreme Court directs the Centre and all states to provide three per cent reservation in government jobs to disabled persons. The deadline for the implementation is three months.

Just in: The Supreme Court turns down the Talwar couple's plea for reports of a polygraph, brain mapping and narco-analysis tests of their three domestic helps who were the initial accused in the murder of their daughter Aarushi. The court said these were simply delaying tactics.

The court reserved the order after the accused couple, who are facing trial for allegedly killing their teenaged daughter, pleaded these reports are essential to defend themselves and CBI is opposing their plea saying that it is a tactic on the part of the couple to prolong the trial.

The Talwars had approached the top court challenging the order of the trial court and the Allahabad High Court dismissing their plea for a direction to the agency to produce the reports of tests carried out on Raj Kumar, Vijay Mandal and Krishna in the trial court.

Pleading for scientific records to be taken on record by the trial court, senior advocate UU Lalit, appearing for the Talwars, submitted such tests were conducted on the couple which extinguished any possibility of their involvement in the crime but the tests done on their servants suggested the possibility of their involvement.

The 2003 story from Rediff.com that details what happened in the tandoor murder case:

On the night of July 2, 1995, Delhi police constable Abdul Nazir Kunju and Home Guard Chanderpal saw smoke emanating from the open-air Bagiya Restaurant in Ashok Yatri Nivas (now called Indraprastha Hotel).

They got suspicious and scaled the hotel's boundary wall to enter the premises.

'Something big' was burning in a tandoor (a clay oven) in the restaurant.That 'something big' turned out to be the body of Naina Sahni (29), who was allegedly killed by her husband and the then Delhi Youth Congress president Sushil Sharma.

Read

The Supreme Court has commuted the death sentence to a life term of a former Congress leader who was found guilty of murdering his wife and trying to burn the body in a tandoor in 1995, a sensational crime that came to be known as the 'tandoor murder'.

The former Youth Congress leader Sushil Sharma had challenged his conviction and death sentence for the murder of his wife Naina Sahani, a crime that the Delhi High Court had described as an "act of extreme depravity that shook the conscience of society. 

So, Rahul Gandhi, quite expectedly hits out at Mayawati at the National Awareness Camp on Scheduled Caste Empowerment at Vigyan Bhawan.  He said only the Congress has got the concept of reservation right. "We should not give up, but stand by the weak," he said. "Mayawati has captured the space of OBC leadership in UP," he added, but, "we need many Dalit leaders, just one won't do." 

The Supreme Court is likely to decide today whether to uphold the death sentence of a former Congress leader who was found guilty of murdering his wife and trying to burn the body in a tandoor in 1995, a sensational crime that came to be known as the 'tandoor murder'.

Former Youth Congress leader Sushil Sharma has challenged his conviction and death sentence for the murder of his wife Naina Sahani, a crime that the Delhi High Court had described as an "act of extreme depravity that shook the conscience of society". Read more

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will address two conventions today. The first is at 09:45 am, where he will inaugurate a National Awareness Camp on Scheduled Cast Empowerment, at Vigyan Bhawan. The other address is at 11 am on the occasion of Dalit Adhikat Diwaso at Talkatora Stadium.

India has underlined the need for an urgent "supportive" multilateral trade regime and enhanced investment flows, saying such global environment is required to sustain economic growth and create jobs in developing countries.

"The multiple global crises of the past several years have had a deleterious impact on the ability of developing countries to mobilise finance for their development aspirations," Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said at the United Nations yesterday.

Jaitley is part of a delegation of visiting members of Parliament from India.

CNN-IBN reports: Fifteen days after the infiltration bid at Shala Batu village in the Keran sector, the army is likely to declare that the operations are over later today or tomorrow.

The army sources say that the bodies of 15 terrorists killed may have either been dragged across the LoC, dropped in crevasses or buried in the thick jungles.

Read the full report here

The Supreme Court today will pronounce its order on Rajesh and Nupur Talwar's plea seeking narco-analysis, polygraph, brain-mapping test reports in the murder case of their daughter Aarushi. 

In a significant decision which may escalate the political turmoil in Maldives, the country's Supreme Court declared the first round of presidential polls as null and void.

Former president Mohammed Nasheed emerged as the winner in the polls.

The court also directed that fresh polls must be held before November 4 and the re-run of the first round should be conducted on the 20th of this month, President Mohammed Waheed's Press Secretary Masood Imad told PTI.

India has initiated the process for making it a more tourist friendly destination, which includes extending on arrival visa for 40 more countries, simplifying online visa and attracting senior citizen foreign visitors.

The consensus was brought on these issues during a high level meeting convened here today by the Planning Commission.

"There was a consensus about initiating the process to make India a tourist-friendly country and extending the on-arrival visa facility to around 40 more countries," Planning Minister Rajeev Shukla told PTI.

The countries for which visa on arrival facility would be extended include the US, the UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Italy, Swedan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Poland, Norway and Ireland.

Under the visa on arrival system, India has agreement with different countries, including Japan, Finland, Singapore, Indonesia, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, Laos and Myanmar.

President Pranab Mukherjee today returned from Belgium and Turkey, during which he held bilateral talks with the two countries on various issues including terrorism.


During his three-day visit to Brussels, capital of Belgium, Mukherjee discussed various issues of bilateral importance, including increasing of trade between the two countries. During his visit to Istanbul and Ankara, the President sought Turkey's cooperation for India's bid for a permanent membership to nuclear suppliers group.

As protests continue against the division of Andhra Pradesh, leaders from Telanagana demand that Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy be sacked.

Telangana Rashtra Samithi chief KT Rama Rao told CNN-IBN, "I would like to request through you to Abhishek Manu Singhvi to sack the conspirator behind the Seemandhra agitation today, which is the CM himself. Please sack him and restore peace in the state. Also, if need be, impose President's rule and go ahead with the decision."

Kenyan intelligence knows him simply as Ikrima. But his full name is Mohamed Abdikadir Mohamed, and he is regarded as one of the most dangerous commanders in the Somali terror group Al-Shabaab. U.S. officials say Ikrima was the target of a raid Saturday by U.S. Navy SEALs on an Al-Shabaab compound near the town of Baraawe in Somalia.

 

It's believed that he escaped after the U.S. troops came under heavy fire. Ikrima, thought to be in his late 20s, is wanted by both the Kenyan government and its Western allies and was a close associate of one of al Qaeda's most important operatives in East Africa.

 

A recent Kenyan intelligence report that was leaked just after the Westgate mall attack in Nairobi outlined several plots in which he was allegedly involved. All of them involved targets in Kenya, and all the attacks would have involved Kenyan citizens trained by Al-Shabaab.

Read the full report on CNN

The oddly hilarious faces of spooked visitors at the Nightmares Fear Factory in Niagara Falls, Canada.

 

Must see slideshow on The Guardian

In the United Kingdom, where you can wager on such things, the betting money is on Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. As of Monday morning, the Ladbrokes betting site has the author of the "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' and "1Q84' as a five-to-two favorite to win. Over at the Boston Globe, Chris Wright points out that the British bookies making these odds probably haven't read most of the authors listed along with Murakami as potential favorites.

 

 

After Murakami, the Ladbrokes list is topped by Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro, American Joyce Carol Oates and the Hungarian novelist Peter Nadas, whose most recent novel, the 1,100-page "Parallel Stores,' includes a sex scene that's nearly 100 pages long.

 

Read more on LA Times

Multiple bombs have exploded in quick succession in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 37 and injuring 107, according to officials. The apparently coordinated string of attacks, mostly involving car bombs, struck mainly commercial areas across the Iraqi capital on Monday evening, Associated Press reported.

Police reported casualties from explosions in ten different neighbourhoods in the Iraqi capital, including Meshahda town in the north, Dora, Zafaraniyah, Husseiniyah, Ubaidi neighbourhoods and Elaam and Aidiyah in the south.

 

The deadliest attack happened when a car bomb and roadside bomb exploded in a market and nearby parking lot in the northern Shia district of Husseiniya, killing five, while another five were killed in Ubaidi.

 

Read more on Al Jazeera

Meet Atlas, a humanoid robot capable of crossing rough terrain and maintaining its balance on one leg even when hit from the side. And WildCat, the four-legged robot that can gallop untethered at up to 16mph (26km/h).

 

These are the latest creations of Boston Dynamics, a US robotics company part-funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). The robots are part of Darpa's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation programme.

 

Read the full report on BBC

President Hamid Karzai has criticised Nato for failing to bring stability to Afghanistan in over a decade there. "On the security front the entire Nato exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life, and no gains because the country is not secure," he said.

 

He said Nato had incorrectly focused the fight on Afghan villages rather than Taliban safe havens in Pakistan. Mr Karzai has just six months remaining in office until a successor is elected.

 

Read more on BBC

In a significant decision which may escalate the political turmoil in Maldives, the country's Supreme Court on Monday declared as null and void the first round of presidential polls in which former president Mohammed Nasheed emerged as the winner.        

 

The apex court also directed that fresh polls must be held before November 4 and the re-run of the first round should be conducted on the 20th of this month, President Mohammed Waheed's Press Secretary Masood Imad told PTI.

US President Barack Obama today said that there are enough votes in the US House of Representatives -- or the lower house of the Congress -- to end the government shutdown, which is now into its second week.  

 

"I heard over the weekend was this notion that Congress doesn't have the capacity to end this shutdown. The truth of the matter is, there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end the shutdown immediately with no partisan strings attached," he said.        

 

Obama was referring to the statement made by John Boehner, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, that he does not have enough votes to end the government shutdown.        

 

"The House should hold that vote today. If Republicans and Speaker Boehner is saying there are not enough votes, then they should prove it. Let the bill go to the floor, and let's see what happens. Just vote. Let every member of Congress vote their conscience. They can determine whether or not they want to shut the government down," Obama said.       

 

"My suspicion is, my very strong suspicion, is that there are enough votes there. And the reason that Speaker Boehner hasn't called a vote on it is because he's doesn't, apparently, want to see the government shutdown end at the moment unless he's able to extract concessions that don't have anything to do with the budget," he said.

In an exclusive interview to Reuters, Finance Minister P Chidambaram dismissed the dazzling emergence of opposition figurehead and candidate for prime minister Narendra Modi on the national political stage as "largely media created".

 

He conceded that the Hindu nationalist leader had united the rank and file of the Bharatiya Janata Party and "gained some traction among urban youths", but said his party's challenger was someone with a "very, very chequered track record".

 

Modi was chief minister of the state of Gujarat when deadly communal riots raged there in 2002. He has always vehemently denied charges that he turned a blind eye to the violence, and a Supreme Court inquiry found no evidence to prosecute him.

 

Read the full interview here

Why Dr Singh may be throwing in the towel

We will attack Malala again, threaten Pak Taliban

JK Assembly resolution asks Centre to probe VK Singh's charges

Factional battle in Haryana Congress gets ugly

95 pc Indians want fast track courts for convicted politicians: Survey

Huge cache of arms and ammunition recovered from Keran sector

Venue allotted for Modi's Kanpur rally

13 pc of candidates in upcoming polls have criminal cases

Rahul bats for farmers, sees Amethi as future farm hub

Throw Shinde's directive in the DUSTBIN, BJP tells its CMs

Researchers from US, Germany win 2013 Nobel Medicine Prize

We will defeat the Telangana bill in the assembly: AP Cong chief

Immobilisimo in Andhra! Naidu attacks Sonia using Italian

PHOTOS: Seemandhra battles with protests and power crisis

Will take care of your concerns: Digvijaya coos to angry Seemandhra

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