Faced with allegations of Aam Aadmi Party volunteers resorting to violence, the party today said the police was free to take action against its party volunteers or anyone "wearing AAP caps" indulging in mischievous or violent activities.

"The police is free to take action against any of our volunteers indulging in mischievous or violent activities. There are many who wear AAP caps and do this," senior party leader Gopal Rai said, observing that the miscreants may not be AAP supporters.

He was responding to a query that some AAP volunteers had resorted to stone-pelting after a face-off with the police yesterday during Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's protest against the Home Ministry demanding action against certain police officials near Rail Bhawan here.

A 10-year-old boy from Dewas district was seriously injured when a mobile phone, said to be of Chinese-make, exploded in his hand while charging, police said today.

The incident occurred last night when Arihant was playing games on the handset while charging it at his home at Uday Nagar village, 100 km from here, they said. Police said Arihant has fractured his fingers and also sustained injuries on his face and in eyes due to the blast.

He was taken to a private hospital in Indore last night. A doctor treating Arihant said he was out of danger. "However, blood supply to one of his fingers is stopped. If there is no improvement in the condition of that finger, we might have to amputate it", he added.

RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya today hailed the AAP government's decision to revoke FDI in multi-brand retail in Delhi, saying several organisations have been demanding the move for long.

"It is a good step," Govidacharya told PTI here while appreciating AAP for revoking the previous government's decision to allow FDI in multi-brand retail in Delhi,  "AAP formation is intended to bring the prevailing corrupt political system of the country back on track with focus on issue and value-based politics," Govindacharya said, advising Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to be patient to face challenges.

Travel expenses given to MPs have come under the scrutiny of the Delhi High Court, which asked the Centre to explain the "rationale" behind such benefits.

A bench comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw asked the Centre to respond on a PIL which questioned the "payment of extra allowances" to MPs.

It asked Additional Solicitor General Rajeeve Mehra to inform about the "rationale of travel expenses of MPs".

The ASG said he will seek details from the parliamentary affairs ministry on the issue. The petition also sought directions from the Centre to have travel allowance and dearness allowances of the MPs of both the houses audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Eight Indian-American high school students have been named as finalists in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search competition in the US.

In all 40 science students from across the nation have made it to the science competition for this year, which is considered to be one of the toughest and most prestigious in the US.

The eight who have made it to the list are Anubhav Guha and Preeti Kakani from New York, Rahul Siddharth Mehta from Chicago, Ajay Saini from Massachusetts, Vishnu Sarkar and Sreyas Misra from California, Anand Srinivasan from Georgia, and Parth Thakker from North Carolina.

The students are among the 40 finalists, who would gather in Washington from March 6-12 to compete for $630,000 in awards with the first-place winner receiving $100,000 from the Intel Foundation.

Peace talks intended to carve a path out of Syria's civil war got off to a rocky start today as a bitter clash over President Bashar Assad's future threatened to collapse the negotiations even before they really begin. 

India today asserted there can be no military solution to the lethal Syrian conflict and societies cannot be "re-ordered from outside" as people have the right to choose their own destiny. 

The reports of tests conducted on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal this morning were normal, but doctors advised him rest for at least two days. 

In a scathing attack on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said that Aam Aadmi Party should quit if they don't know how to govern. 

With AAP leader Kumar Vishwas throwing an open challenge to him, Rahul Gandhi today said the Congress does not talk but act and in an affectionate gesture invited an old woman to be seated beside him in his car during his visit. 

Taking a swipe at AAP for its dharna at New Delhi for two days, Union Minister V Narayanasamy today said the people of national capital have realised that the fledgling party was incapable of governing as it had failed to fulfill poll promises.

After Mumbai police charged actor Suraj Pancholi with abetting the alleged suicide of his actress girlfriend Jiah Khan, her mother today said she would move the Bombay High Court seeking reinvestigation from the angle of murder by a Special Investigating Team or CBI.

Against the backdrop of Arvind Kejriwal's protest here, BJP today equated the Delhi Chief Minister and his party colleagues with "unguided missiles" and said they should behave responsibly as they are bound by the Constitution. 

BJP president Rajnath Singh today made a comparison of Narendra Modi to veteran socialist leader Karpoori Thakur saying the party's prime ministerial candidate has humble root like him. 

Sex, power and bons mots -- is Hanif Kureishi's new novel actually the fictionalised biography of fellow writer VS Naipaul? David Sexton reports on a titanic tussle that's the talk of the town, in the London Evening Standard, here.

Greenpeace today left its calling card on the Essar House facade -- a huge banner saying 'We Kill Forests'. Greenpeace even tweeted a photograph of the banner on Essar's front.

The government of India, it seems, has decided that factories must not be allowed to come up or to run.

 

Uday Kotak said a few months back, in the course of an interview, that he was amazed that in his new office in Mumbai, not one of the furniture or fixture items were made in India. My friend Rahul Bhasin conducted a similar exercise in his office in Delhi and discovered pretty much the same thing.

 

The carpet is from China, the furniture is from Malaysia, the light fixtures are from China, the glass partition is from all places, Jebel Ali in the Middle East and so on. Kotak went on to add that even Ganesha statues are no longer made in India. They are imported from China. Our great, glorious, imperial, imperious government in Delhi, I am told, organises what is called a cabinet meeting every week.

 

The first item on the agenda is to take stock of how well the country has progressed in destroying its manufacturing base; the second item is to think up Machiavellian new ways to further emasculate what is left of Indian manufacturing. I am told that it is during one of these sessions that it was decided that the income tax department should mount a strong and no-holds-barred campaign against Nokia, a defenceless Finnish company which had shown the temerity and gumption to not only bring FDI into the country, but to actually be one of the few (only?) investors to set up a manufacturing facility.

 

Read more on The Indian Express

Heavy snowfall threw normal life out of gear in Jammu and Kashmir today, snapping the road and air links between the state and rest of the country.         Electricity supply across the Valley was also suspended due to the fresh bout of snowfall which began last evening.        

 

Vehicular traffic from Jammu-Srinagar national highway has been suspended due to slippery road conditions in Jawahar tunnel and Patnitop areas. Flights to and fro Srinagar have also been put off for the time being.        

 

"J&K Highway has closed for the vehicular traffic today due to fresh snowfall and slippery road conditions in Jawahar tunnel and Patnitop areas," officials at Police Control Room in Jammu said.        

 

The flights to and fro Srinagar have been suspended for the time being and there are bleak chances of any flights operating today due to continuous snowfall, an official of the Airport Authority of India said.  

 

Police said over 200 vehicles are stranded at several places in Sidhra, Udhampur, Ramban, Kud, Ramban and Banihal belts of Jammu region. About one-feet thick snow has accumulated at Jawahar tunnel and 6 inches at Patnitop belt.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram at World Economic Forum in Davos: If Congress comes to power, I am pretty certain Rahul Gandhi will be the PM.  

 

India is likely to grow at about 5 pc in current fiscal and next fiscal we will cross 6 pc, the minister added.

By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been. People are living longer, healthier lives.

 

Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient. You might think that such striking progress would be widely celebrated, but in fact, Melinda and I are struck by how many people think the world is getting worse.

 

The belief that the world can't solve extreme poverty and disease isn't just mistaken. It is harmful. That's why in this year's letter we take apart some of the myths that slow down the work. The next time you hear these myths, we hope you will do the same.

 

Read Bill and Melinda Gates' letter here

Multi Screen Media's (MSM) sports arm Sony Six bagged the exclusive broadcast rights for the highly anticipated India's tour of New Zealand just 10 days prior to the first match. 

 

However, after the first One Day International (ODI) which was played at Napier on 19 January where the Kiwis decimated the boys in blue by a margin of 24 runs, MSM discovered that few website operators and a radio operator were providing live and contemporaneous text and audio commentary and detailed ball-by-ball update of the match without obtaining any authorisation from MSM. 

 

While ESPNCricinfo was providing live and simultaneous text commentary over the internet, Cricbuzz was providing audio and text commentary online, and RadioOne was providing audio commentary through internet and mobile. Since the Network has exclusive copyright over the content, MSM moved the Delhi High Court (HC) against these three entities seeking inter alia for permanent injunction restraining violation of its exclusive media rights, damages and rendition of accounts.

 

Read more on Indiatelevision.com

An NGO moved the Delhi high court for quashing of the election nomination of Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal for alleged illegalities in his affidavit filed before the Election Commission.

CNN IBN: National Commission for Women chief Mamata Sharma says that the SHO is scared to summon Delhi Law Minister Somnath Bharti as he is being threatened by AAP workers.  

 

Mamta has demanded Bharti's resignation after Ugandan woman complained of misbehaviour by the minister and his supporters. Mamta said, "Somnath Bharti should resign. Arvind Kejriwal should demand his resignation."

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who sat on a two-day dharna outside Rail Bhavan, is unwell today and undergoing tests at a hospital in Ghaziabad.         Kejriwal is suffering from acute bronchitis and had fever in the night, sources at Yashoda Hospital said.        

 

A CT scan has been conducted on him at the hospital besides various other tests. Dr Bipin Mittal, the chief minister's family doctor, is accompanying Kejriwal.         During his over 30-hour protest, Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues slept in the open outside Rail Bhavan. Kejriwal was running mild fever yesterday also.

CNN IBN: Delhi Police have filed FIR against Aam Aadmi Party protestors at the Parliament Street Police station for the Rail Bhawan agitation.  

 

The two-day agitation, led by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, ended on Tuesday evening.

The standoff between the AAP government and the Union Home Ministry over the conduct of Delhi Police may qualify at best as a temporary truce. With Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal fast-tracking  a new Lokpal Bill for Delhi '" it is to be in place by February '" the two governments may soon lock horns again since the Bill first requires clearance from the Home Ministry.

 

The AAP government aims to repeal the Delhi Lokayukta Act and replace it with a Bill modelled on their own Jan Lokpal Bill for the Centre. The Bill envisages a Lokpal or Lokayukta heading the anti-corruption wing in Delhi with powers to tap phones, conduct surveillance and independent inquires.

 

Read more on The Indian Express

More than a dozen family members of China's top political and military leaders are making use of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, leaked financial documents reveal.

 

The brother-in-law of China's current president, Xi Jinping, as well as the son and son-in-law of former premier Wen Jiabao are among the political relations making use of the offshore havens, financial records show.

 

Read more on The Guardian

Tamil Nadu is no stranger to protesting chief ministers. It has had three who resorted to public protest while in the hot seat, and all three joined politics after a stint in films. M.G. Ramachandran, disciple Jayalalithaa and political rival Karunanidhi have all sat on hunger strike as chief ministers, although for different reasons.

 

Read more on The Telegraph

Citizens' protests in the last few years signal a consensus among all segments of society that the "rules of the game' of conducting politics in India need to change.  

 

The rise of the AAP has been surprising and dramatic and the detractors are many. It is possible that in the coming months, the party may not be able to abide by the high standards it has set, but as the BSP example suggests, the battle for some severe institutional changes in the functioning of India's electoral democracy has begun. India's electoral politics is a decidedly murky process, and it is so by design. This route is not a quick-fix solution, but the true meaning of democracy can be realised only when democratic ideals are deeply embedded in the practice of democracy.

 

Read Vasundhara Sirnate and Rahul Verma's opinion piece on The Hindu

A Ugandan woman says she has identified Delhi Law Minister Somnath Bharti as the man who led the 'midnight raid' at her house last week, in a statement recorded in front of a magistrate on Tuesday, NDTV reports.  

 

"We were attacked on Wednesday night (January 15) by Indians who were led by Somnath Bharti. They are claiming we are blacks and we should leave their country. We were harassed, we were beaten, they had long sticks (sic) and they said we should leave their country or they'll kill us one by one. We don't know if being black is a crime," she told reporters after recording her statement.

 

The woman claimed that it was Mr Bharti's muffler that helped her identify him when he appearance on TV the next day. "I identified Somnath Bharti because he came in the night then the next day I saw him on television. He was still putting on what I saw last night."The Delhi Police had registered a First Information Report (FIR) against unknown people on Sunday, following a complaint by the Ugandan nationals. Mr Bharti was not named in the FIR.

 

Read more here

Uttar Pradesh Congress today held a protest against the state government over its alleged anti-people policies, deteriorating law and order situation and dues of the farmers, during which nearly 5000 party activists courted arrest.

The protest, held at the Gymkhana Maidan, was led by leaders like Minister of State for Home Sri Prakash Jaiswal, Raj Babbar, Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes PL Punia, state Congress chief Nirmal Khatri, former state chief Rita Bahuguna and others.

However, these leaders were not arrested.

One of the African women who was assaulted by a group of people allegedly led by Delhi Law Minister Somnath Bharti today recorded her statement before acourt here after police decided to make her a prosecution witness in the case.

Court sources said that the Ugandan national told the magistrate who recorded her statement that she would be able to identify the persons who had barged into her house on the intervening night of January 15-16.

The woman recorded her statement in camera under Sec 164of CrPC. The statement has been now given to police in a sealed cover and will be opened only during the trial.

NIA will file a charge sheet against two Italian marines, accused of killing two Kerala fishermen, after getting sanction to prosecute them under a law which provides only death penalty.

However, the charge sheet is unlikely before February 3 by when the Centre has told the Supreme Court that it will resolve all disputes with the Italian government arising out of invoking the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Maritime Navigation and Fixed Platforms on Continental Shelf Act against the two marines, official sources said.

The Home ministry had given sanction to NIA to prosecute the marines under SUA last week. Accused Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, who were on board Italian vessel 'Enrica Lexie' and now lodged in Italian embassy premises here, allegedly shot dead the two fishermen off the Kerala coast on February 15, 2012.

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