India is one of the few countries that offers a multitude of landscapes -- from the Himalaya in the north to the Arabian Sea in the south, and from the salt plains of the Rann in the west to the bare beauty of the east.

Now you can book online your entry tickets to the Taj Mahal in Agra and Humayun's Tomb in the national capital.

Underworld don and the man who tops India's most wanted list Dawood Ibrahim has been caught on tape by a western intelligence agency.

Syrian planes and helicopters have dropped barrel bombs on Islamic State-held areas in the north-east, killing some 40 people, activists say.

The patchwork theatrical release Sony Pictures put together for 'The Interview' generated about $1 million in ticket sales on Christmas Day, a largely symbolic box-office result.

Before war convulsed his hometown in Syria, Usaid Barho played soccer, loved Jackie Chan movies and adored the beautiful Lebanese pop singer Nancy Ajram.

A suspected U.S. drone fired missiles at two compounds in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region Friday, killing at least seven alleged militants, while security forces killed the alleged planner of the deadly recent attack on a school, Pakistani officials said.

The Mumbai police today ordered a probe into allegations that an Inspector accepted a bribe of 'crores of rupees' to grant favours to the accused arrested in the last year's IPL betting case during their inquiry.

After the missing report of the 33-year-old woman who has filed a complaint of rape against self-proclaimed godman Asaram, from her house in Surat, police authorities today ordered inquiry against four constables. 

Samajwadi Party President Mulayam Singh Yadav today saw no wrong in performances by Bollywood celebrities at Saifai Mahotsav here, saying there should be no objection when other people can watch such stars. 

Adults often find surprising subtexts in children's literature '" but are they really there? Hephzibah Anderson delves into the world of Freud and fairy tales.

in the wake of the violence in Assam, Home Minister Rajnath Singh met Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag on Friday to discuss the situation in the strife-torn state.

Three injured in an powerful explosion at Uripok area of Imphal in Manipur.

Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif today said that terrorism has caused a big damage to the country and time has come to take 'bold decisions' to combat it.

A magistrate's court has asked the Mumbai Police to conduct a probe into a complaint against Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar and others over a scene in his 2012 film `Khiladi 786' for allegedly hurting the religious sentiments.     

Two more militants are set to be executed next month with a court here dismissing their plea seeking a stay on their death penalty as Pakistan continued with executions of convicted terrorists after the grisly Peshawar school attack. 

The External Affairs Ministry today did not rule out any further disciplinary action against senior diplomat Devyani Khobragade, who had hit the headlines last year after being arrested in the US in a visa fraud case. 

China has backed Pakistan's counter-terrorism plan including measures to expedite trials against terror suspects in special military courts. 

Keen to invest more in India, Microsoft's chief Satya Nadella today pledged support to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India initiative. 

The ISIS-appointed governor of Mosul was killed in coalition airstrikes on Thursday, according to Iraqi police.

Severe cold wave swept across most parts of Punjab and Haryana, affecting normal life and leading to the death of two people.

A key round of peace talks between Ukraine's government and pro-Russian rebels, due to take place in Minsk on Friday, has been called off, Belarusian officials say.

The National Conference has offered support to the Peoples Democratic Party for formation of a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir.

Despite worsening situation in strife torn Libya, eight Keralite nurses left early today from here for Benghazi, not paying heed to pleas of police and NORKA (Non Resident Keralite Affairs) department about the dangers lurking there. 

India today announced a USD one million contribution to a UN fund for tsunami, disaster and climate preparedness in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian countries on the 10th anniversary of the 2004 tsunami. 

Three South Korean workers died today after apparently inhaling toxic gas at a construction site for a nuclear plant being built by South Korea's monopoly nuclear power company, which has come under recent threats by hackers, a company official said. 

South Korea, the US and Japan will sign a trilateral intelligence-sharing agreement on Monday to better cope with North Korea's increasing military threats, Seoul's defence ministry said on Friday.

An FIR was today lodged against BJP's Birbhum district president Dudhkumar Mondal for threatening to cut off hands of Trinamool workers, sparking outrage in the ruling party following which he expressed regret for his remarks. 

A Turkish court today ordered the release of a 16-year-old high school pupil arrested for "insulting" President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, following accusations his detention was the latest sign of the country veering to authoritarianism. 

Describing the selection of a non-tribal chief minister in Jharkhand as an "anti-tribal" approach of BJP, Jharkhand People's Party (JPP) today announced to observe a state-wide bandh on the day Raghuvar Das would take oath.

Maharashtra govt orders probe into grant of repeated furloughs to actor Sanjay Dutt, says MoS for Home Ram Shinde.

With India expected to spend over USD 200 billion in the next decade to modernise its military, French defence firms are eyeing a piece of the cake and are ready to "adapt" to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' push. 

A fake godman who hugs and kisses devotees to "remove" their affliction and "solve" financial and domestic problems was arrested by Proddatur Police on Thursday. 

A key Taliban commander Saddam, who masterminded the Peshawar school massacre, was killed by security forces in Khyber Agency's Jamrud area on last night, Dawn News reports.

Saddam was killed in the Gundi area of Jamrud and one of his mastermind was arrested.

Political Agent of Khyber Agency Shahab Ali Shah said that Saddam had facilitated the Taliban gunmen who had launched the attack on Army Public School in Peshawar.

More than 140 people were killed, mostly children, in an attack on an army-run school in Peshawar on December 16. 

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will visit relief camps set up in Alipurduar area for people fleeing neighbouring lower Assam districts in the wake of the attacks by NDFB-S militants.

"The chief minister is leaving for Bagdogra by plane today and will go to Kumargram in Alipurduar tomorrow where the relief camps have been set up by the state government," CMO sources told PTI.

Banerjee had said yesterday that her government was making necessary arrangements to help to adivasis coming to the state from Assam for shelter while expressing grief over the killings.

"The brutal mass killing of adivasis in Assam by armed extremists has deeply saddened me. I strongly condemn the heinous it," Banerjee had said in a post on Facebook.

The Maharashtra government will investigate a 14-day furlough granted to actor Sanjay Dutt, who was jailed in connection with the 1993 blasts.

Dutt was granted furlough on December 23. He was spotted at a special screening of PK, which features him in a pivotal role.

He is serving his sentence in the Yerawada jail in Pune in a case related to the 1993 Mumbai blasts. He is serving 42 months of his sentence starting May 2013. He has spent over 118 days out of jail either on parole or furlough from May 2013 to May 2014.

Paving way for additional foreign investment in insurance and to move ahead with the re-allocation of cancelled coal mines, President Pranab Mukherjee today signed the two ordinances in this regard.

The government had decided to promulgate these ordinances to move ahead with reforms in the two sectors, as respective bills could not get through during the just-concluded Parliament session that ended on Tuesday.

The President has signed the two ordinances, Press Secretary Venu Rajamony said. The Cabinet had had approved promulgation of the ordinance on insurance bill and re-promulgation of the coal ordinance on Wednesday, a day after the conclusion of the winter session of Parliament.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had expressed the hope that hiking of the foreign investment cap in the insurance sector to 49 per cent, which has been pending since 2008, will result in capital inflow of $6-8 billion. Earlier, this foreign investment limit was capped at 26 per cent.

Delhi today recorded its first swine flu death. A 51-year-old woman died due to swine flu in Delhi's Ganga Ram Hospital.

Eight people have died because of swine flu in Telangana this year.    

The Delhi high court today set aside an National Human Rights Commission order holding Aam Aadmi Party leader Somnath Bharti guilty of "racial prejudice and unlawful acts" against12 African women during his controversial midnight raid at the Khirki Extension in South Delhi.   

A vacation bench of justices S Muralidhar and ManmohanSingh, while setting aside the September 29 ruling of the NHRC, also directed it to hear the matter afresh and pass a detailed order by taking into account the evidence lead by Bharti in his defence.   

The AAP leader has also been asked to appear before the Commission on the next date of hearing in January. The high court passed the order while disposing of Bharti's appeal against its single judge's decision to dismiss his petition against the NHRC's September 29 ruling.   

Additional Solicitor General Sanjay Jain and the central government standing counsel Jasmeet Singh appeared for the Union of India in the matter. Bharti in his appeal, filed through advocate Deepak Khosla, had contended that the single judge had dismissed his plea as "premature" without "allowing fair opportunity to explain the facts of the situation before the NHRC and the legal grounds on which the writ petition was eminently maintainable".

The Union Budget is likely to make provision of Rs 2000 crore to offer financial assistance to Hindu and Sikh worship places that are in dire need of funds in SAARC countries.

Dr Murli Manohar Joshi in a letter to the prime minister has sought the digitisation of the Bhagwad Gita, Ramayan, Granth, Holy books of Islam, Sikhism, Budhhsim and Christianity to be completed by 2019.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar phoned Telangana Rashtra Samithi MP Jithender Reddy to convey Prime Minister Narendra Modis approval to include a tableau on Telangana at the January 26 Republic parade in New Delhi, reports our New Delhi correspondent.

Reddy has been trying hard for the inclusion of the tableau that would focus on Hyderabad city.

The Bombay high court today refused to grant a stay on hosting the popular Sunburn Electronic Dance Festival scheduled to start in Goa from tomorrow.

Congress party's Goa spokesman Sunil Kawathankar had filed a public interest litigation before the high court pleading that the festival be stopped accusing the organisers of tax evasion. The petition had alleged that the festival organisers were evading the entertainment tax on sale of tickets, which are largely done online and also differently priced.

Sunburn would be held at Vagatore beach in Goa from December 27-30. Kawathankar, who argued in person before the single bench of Justice Anuja Prabhudesai stated that the tickets were priced differently, dodging the commercial tax department which determines the entertainment tax collection. He submitted that the sale of online tickets also goes without any monitoring.

Just in: Sixteen ministers from Rajasthan receive a terror threat on e-mail, says state government.

The threat that warns of blasts in the state on January 26. The Indian Mujahideen claims to have sent the mail.

More details are awaited. 

In yet another shocking incident, People's Democratic Party MLA Ashraf Mir fired celebratory shots by an AK47 rifle after defeating former chief minister Omar Abdullah from Sonawar the assembly seat recently, CNN IBN reports.

The incident took place outside his residence while his supporters were cheering him on for winning the election. However, it is not confirmed whether the AK47 belonged to him to him or to his security officer.  

Image: Representation pic

A top executive of Sun TV has been arrested by the police in Chennai over a sexual harassment allegation by a former woman employee.

Praveen, the chief operating officer of Sun TV, was arrested this morning, according to an NDTV report.

Sun TV is the flagship channel of the Chennai-based network owned by Kalanithi Maran, the brother of former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran.

Raghubar Das will be the next chief minister of Jharkhand, the first non-tribal leader in the state to hold the post. The Jharkhand BJP today elected Das as its leader.

The BJP and its ally, the All Jharkhand Students' Union, had won the state elections, bagging 42 seats in the 81-member assembly.  

Das, 59, a former deputy chief minister and BJP vice president, had been a frontrunner for the top job after former CM Arjun Munda lost the elections from his stronghold Kharsawan.

A 12-hour bandh has been called by tribal organisations in six north Bengal districts tomorrow to protest against the attack and killing of adivasis by NDFB-S in Assam.

The bandh will begin at 6 am and essential services would be exempted from its purview, Adivasi Vikas Morcha state president Birsa Tirkey said today. The protest would be peaceful, he said.

The bandh has been called by the Morcha and at least 15 other adivasi organisations of north Bengal. West Bengal had witnessed protests by tribal bodies yesterday also against the Assam bloodbath.

The Bharat Jakat Majhi Pargana Mahal blockaded a key highway at Silda in West Midnapore district for about five hours. In Malda district, tribals blocked the railway tracks at Eklakhi station in the Malda-Katihar division for six hours hitting train services to and from Assam. The national highway linking Siiguri was also blocked by adivasi demonstrators on Wednesday night.

Punjab Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia on today appeared before the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a drug case.

Majithia, who is the younger brother of Union Food Processing Industries Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal and brother-in-law of Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal, had been summoned by the ED earlier this week to probe his alleged role in the Rs 6,000 crore drug case.

The Congress had subsequently demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation  probe into the matter.

NDTV reports:  BJP's Raghubar Das will be the next chief minister of Jharkhand, the first non-tribal leader in the state to hold the post. A formal announcement will be made shortly at a meeting of the party's newly-elected lawmakers in state capital Ranchi.

The BJP and its ally, the All Jharkhand Students' Union, had won the state polls, winning 42 seats in the 81-member assembly.

Read the full report here

Russia has offered sympathy to North Korea amid the Sony hacking scandal and the release of the controversial comedy The Interview saying that the film was "aggressive and scandalous", ANI reports. 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said that North Korea's reaction to the movie was "understandable", reported Fox News.

Lukashevich said that the U.S. threats of retaliation were "counterproductive" and that America had failed to offer any evidence to back its claim of Pyongyang's involvement in the hacking.

Former US President George H W Bush, admitted to a hospital after experiencing shortness of breath, was in "great spirits," his spokesman said today.

90-year-old Bush, a Texas resident, was admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital on Tuesday as a precaution. His spokesman Jim McGrath said that the 41st president's prognosis was positive and that he remained hospitalised as a precaution.

"President Bush had another terrific day and is in great spirits," McGrath said in an emailed statement.

Bush's wife, Barbara, as well as son Neil and daughter- in-law Maria Bush visited the former president, McGrath said. "He asked that his sincere wishes for a very Merry Christmas be extended to one and all," McGrath said, adding that Bush will remain at the hospital.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh meets Army chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag to review the security situation in Assam where a Bodo militant group accused of killing 83 people on Tuesday.

"We are going to intensify our operations in Assam. I can't give out any more information," Gen Suhag told the media. 

The oldest litigant in the Babri masjid case in Supreme Court, Mohammad Farooq, passed away due to old-age related ailments in Faizabad. He was 100, reports PTI. 


Farooq was buried at a grave yard close to the disputed site. Farooq's father, Mohammad Zahur, was one of the original complainant regarding the placing of the idols of Lord Rama in Babri Masjid in December 1949.

Uttar Pradesh's Additional Advocate General and convenor of Babri Masjid Action Committee, Zafaryab Jilani, told that Mohammad Saleem, the eldest son of late Farooq, may inherit his legacy of the case and may become litigant in place of his father.

Xbox and PlayStation online services have been suffering technical problems, amid claims a hacking group has disabled their services, BBC reports.

Microsoft and Sony -- the companies which make the games consoles -- have told customers they are aware of issues affecting their online services. A hacking group called Lizard Squad is claiming to have caused the problems.

Microsoft and Sony have not commented on the claim, but both said they were fixing the issues.

A joint operation of Assam Rifles, central security forces, the Assam police and the Indian Army began this morning at the state border with Arunachal Pradesh against a Bodo militant group accused of killing 83 people on Tuesday in one of the worst massacres in the northeastern state. sources told NDTV.

Bodo militants allegedly burnt houses of tribals late on Thursday night in Balidanga in Sonitpur, one of the districts worst affected by violence this week.

Read the full report here

The BJP's newly-elected lawmakers in Jharkhand will meet in Ranchi today where they are expected to elect their chief minister after the party and its ally, the All Jharkhand Students' Union, won the state polls, winning 42 seats in the 81-member assembly, reports NDTV.

Raghubar Das, a former deputy chief minister and a party vice-president, is being touted as the front-runner for the top job. If selected, Das would be the first non-tribal person at the helm of a state which has a tribal population of around 32 per cent.

The BJP itself has had two tribal chief ministers in the past - Babulal Marandi and Arjun Munda, who has led the state thrice. Both lost in the elections.

The Assam Tea Tribes Students' Association has given a call for a 12-hour state bandh today in protest against the massacre of over 70 tribals by militants of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland over the past 24 hours.

The bandh is also against the police atrocities on the Adivasi protestors in Dhekiajuli yesterday.

National Conference's Omar Abdullah has denied that his party is in talks with the BJP on government formation in Jammu and Kashmir. The BJP began talks with his arch rival the People's Democratic Party on Thursday night.

"So many stories doing the rounds about a BJP NC deal. Let me say this as strongly as possible -- THERE IS NO DEAL NOR ANY DISCUSSION going on (sic)," Abdullah tweeted late on Thursday.

The BJP delivered its strongest performance in the state to win 25 seats, but was way short of the majority mark at 44.

Suspense continues over government formation in J-K

Kashmir reels under sub zero temperature

Assam violence toll rises to 78 as Adivasis seek revenge

Christmas rave party busted near Delhi; 50 held

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