The BJP has withdrawn a series of advertisements rhetorically asking "Kuthe neun thevlay Maharashtra maajha? (Where have you taken my Maharashtra?)"that attracted severe criticism from various quarters.       

"The ads have been dropped, but that is a scheduled action and has nothing to do with criticism or ridicule they attracted," Maharashtra state BJP spokesperson Keshav Upadhye told PTI.

"The advertisements highlight misdeeds of the corrupt Congress-NCP regime in Maharashtra during the last 15 years.The next phase of our advertisements will be about a positive side, depicting what the BJP intends to do after coming to power in Maharashtra," Upadhye said.        The BJP advertisements had attracted a wave of responses, ranging from poems to jokes to photographs, and area rage on social media.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon today expressed concern over the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan along the LoC and asked the two nations to resolve all differences through dialogue and engage constructively for a long-term solution for peace and stability in Kashmir.

The secretary-general is "concerned about the recent escalation of violence along the Line of Control between India and Pakistan.

He deplores the loss of lives and the displacement of civilians on both sides," a statement issued by Ban's spokesman said.

"Ban encourages the governments of India and Pakistan to resolve all differences through dialogue and to "engage constructively to find a long-term solution for peace and stability in Kashmir," it said.

Shrien Dewani's admission that he was bisexual is a ploy by the Indian-origin British businessman, accused of plotting the murder of his Indo-Swedish wife, to "knock the wind out of the prosecutions' sails", according to criminal law experts.

Dewani is facing charges in the Western Cape high court of being the mastermind behind the killing of his wife Anni while they were on honeymoon in Cape Town four years ago in an apparent staged hijacking in which he was unharmed.

Three others charged with the murder are already serving lengthy prison sentences.

Dewani admitted to the court when the trial started on Monday that he was bisexual. He also admitted that he had been surfing gay websites a day after his wife was killed.

Responding to Congress' demand to give account of the work done by the Narendra Modi government so far, the BJP today said it will do so in the next elections.

"Soniaji, people have given us power for 60 months. When we go to the people in the next elections, we will come prepared with account of our months in office," BJP president Amit Shah today said at a poll rally in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra.

"We want to fight against corruption, but they (Congress and others) want to fight against Narendra Modi," Shah said. Criticising the 15-year-old regime of Congress and NCP in poll-bound Maharashtra, the BJP chief said, "Both these parties have lowered the prestige of Maharashtra."

With the arrest of AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa coming as a shock to her supporters, the party today claimed that 154 sympathisers have died unable to bear the anguish. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today reiterated his government's tough stand on the confrontation with Pakistan at the Kashmir border. "Today, when bullets are being fired on the border, it is the enemy that is screaming," the PM said, adding "the enemy has realised that times have changed and their old habits will not be tolerated."

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi today hailed the effort being made by cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar to push the 'Swachh Bharat' campaign, saying it is a "very strong source of support and encouragement" for the mission. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced "cautious optimism" today that the EU will broker an end to the Russian-Ukrainian gas standoff despite the "fragile" situation in the conflict-torn country. 

Crunch talks between Hong Kong democracy protesters and the government were called off today just hours after demonstrators vowed to ratchet up their occupation of key parts of the city if their demands were not met. 

A senior Iranian diplomat said Iran denied entry into the country to a member of an International Atomic Energy Agency delegation this week, the semi-official Fars news agency reported today. 

Google Street View has evolved into "Camel Cam".The trial in the United Arab Emirates' Liwa Desert has made it possible for each and every one of us to carry out a virtual tour of those sandy dunes from the comfort of our own homes.The company says using using camels meant they could take "authentic imagery" with minimal disruption to the environment. Street View now covers parts of around 230 countries.

Former Finmeccanica CEO Giuseppe Orsi and ex-AgustaWestland head Bruno Spagnolini were today acquitted of corruption charges by an Italian court in the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP chopper deal with India but were sentenced to two-year jail term on lesser charges of falsification of invoices.

Preity Zinta claws her way back in news... just about. 

On Tuesday (October 7) Zinta trended on Twitter for a bit after her self-appreciatory tweet on how she threw a young man out of the theatre because he didn't stand up for the National Anthem.

Instead of a pat on the back she probably expected, Zinta was dissed for her self-appointed self-righteous role.

This is what she tweeted today by way of explanation: "Maybe I am old world or Maybe its because my father fought 4 this country & now my brother does the same. I think its the least we can do."

Wearing your patriotism on your sleeve is one thing, making others wear it, is quite another.

The mystery surrounding North Korea's erratic young leader, Kim Jong Un, only deepens by the day.He has not been seen publicly in more than a month. Rumors are flying that Kim is ill with gout, diabetes, even possible problems with his ankles. Now, a group of defectors say they believe Kim's younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, may be running the country while he recuperates. Read

Jayalalithaa moves the Supreme Court for bail. Jayalalithaa, her aide Sasikala and two others were convicted in the Rs 66.65 crore corruption case by a special court in Bangalore on September 27.

While the AIADMK chief was asked to pay Rs 100 crore, the other three were fined Rs 10 crore each.

In her petitions seeking immediate bail and challenging her sentence, Jayalalithaa had maintained that the charges of amassing wealth against her were false and that she had acquired property through legal means.

Jaya had not moved the SC yesterday since the day was believed to be inauspicious because of the lunar eclipse.

VVIP chopper scam: Italian court sentences former CEOs to two years prison for fiscal fraud, drops corruption charges.

And the Indian who missed the Nobel: Upendra Nath Brahmachari, the person who discovered the treatment for the deadly parasitic disease, kala-azar, was nominated twice for the Nobel in Medicine.

The acclaimed scientist and medical practitioner was nominated in 1929 and 1942.

He lost to  Christiaan Eijkman "for his discovery of the antineuritic vitamin" and Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins "for his discovery of the growth-stimulating vitamins".

Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif reacts to Indian defence minister Arun Jaitley's statement on the ceasefire violations: "We don't want to convert border tension between two nuclear neighbors into confrontation. Pakistan is fully capable to respond to any Indian aggression. We want peace in the region. We expect India to understand that."

His remarks came after Defence Minister Arun Jaitley warned this morning, "If Pakistan persists with this adventurism then our forces will continue to fight. The cost of this adventurism will be unaffordable."

The announcement of the Nobel Prize is the one literary occasion each year when the big American beasts of the written word are, blessedly, made to look on from the sidelines like a gaggle of romantic novelists -- when even Philip Roth, that titan of 50 years' standing, becomes the most gleefully talked about loser of the year. Read more

If you haven't read/heard of Modiano, it's probably because he writes in French. A poll on the Nobel website shows 97 percent of people who polled have not read him.

Modiano wins "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation", says the Nobel committee. 

This is what the Guardian has on Modiano...

French author Modiano, who was introduced to the literary world by writer Raymond Queneau at school, currently has Ladbrokes odds of 10/1. Modiano published his first novel, La Place de l'toile, in 1968, after reading the manuscript to Queneau.

In 1973, Modiano co-wrote the screenplay of Lacombe Lucien, directed by Louis Malle, which tells the story of a boy in the French Gestapo during the German occupation of France in World War II. Other notable works of literature include Rue des Boutiques Obscures (Missing Persons), his 1996 novel Du Plus Loin de l'Oubli (Out Of The Dark) and Dora Bruder, published in 1997.

So, favourites Philip Roth, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Svetlana Alexievich and Haruki Murakami lose out. 

And the Nobel Prize for Literature goes to Patrick Mondiano. 

The Nobel Prize for literature to be announced any time now. Philip Roth, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Haruki Murakami are the bookies' favourites to take the prestigious prize.  

Just in: The government is looking at the possibility of tie-up with Facebook on social sector issues like the Ganga Clean-up mission. The government will also ask FB co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is in India for two days, to extend the FB experience in Indian languages.   

Facing flak from Congress for accepting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's invite to join Swachhta Abhiyan, former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor today got support from party general secretary Digvijay Singh, who saw "nothing wrong" in the Kerala MP's actions.

"I see nothing wrong in Shashi Tharoor accepting to be Brand Ambassador for Swachhta Abhiyan. It is a Congress Party programme adopted by Modi," Singh said on Twitter.

The party, however, said that the leaders were speaking for themselves.

Party spokesperson Anand Sharma retorted, "Digvijaya speaks for himself. Tharoor speaks for himself."

The remarks by the Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh, who has often taken positions which have ruffled feathers in the party, have come at a time when the Kerala Congress unit has decided to seek suitable action from the high command against Tharoor.

A senior AICC functionary, speaking on condition of anonmity, had yesterday said that Tharoor should not have accepted the invite and kept in mind that he belonged to a party to which he owes position and his independent intellectual outlook comes later.

The leader had said that intellectuals and academics, who join Congress, must remember that it is the party which gave them positions and must not do anything which makes the partymen uncomfortable. Holding that Tharoor's adulatory statements about Modi had hurt Congress workers' sentiments in Kerala, the KPCC yesterday resolved to draw up a report and submit it to the high command.

Well, you can put it down to altitude sickness or may be just alternate tastes. A Youtube video doing the rounds on social network sites, shows images of  a man believed to be an ISIS militant, in a compromising position with a donkey.  The image was captured by a coalition drone in Syria.

Sorry folks, this site is not for people with strange fetishes. 

Pic: Since the donkey is a victim and may possibly have been underage, this is just a representational picture.

India is among the top five contributers to the UN Ebola response with a contribution of USD 12.5 million, according to a fact sheet released by US Secretary of State John Kerry today.

The US with USD 113.8 million tops the list to the UN Ebola response. It is followed by the European Union (USD 55.5 million), Canada (USD 31.9 million), Netherlands (21 million) and India with USD 12.5 million.

The World Bank has put in 22 per cent. The USA has put in 11 per cent. Private sector, 10 per cent. The fact sheet showed that India has contributed a little over one per cent to this.

In the wake of stone pelting incidents and alleged presence of Islamic State (IS) flag during a rally in Srinagar, the Army today said it is closely monitoring the situation and the issue was getting the highest concern of all security agencies.

"Certainly, we are watching and closely monitoring the situation as it were. As per my inputs, there was one incident of the kind that you refer to that of the (IS) flag. We are watching the situation as this is something which merits the highest concern of all security agencies and let me tell you that it is getting the attention of all the security agencies," General Officer Commanding (GoC) of the Army's Srinagar-based 15 Corps, Lt Gen Subrata Saha said.

Lt Gen Saha said the stone-pelting incidents on the choppers involved in rescue and relief operations during the floods last month were "isolated" and driven by "angst" among the people.

"Those were isolated incidents. Isolated incidents of, I would say, angst rather than anger ... because it is driven by a complex web of uncertainties in their mind which transitions from having to worry about food, medicines, education for children, their own livelihood, their money, so on and so forth," he said.

How can a cyclonic storm that could make landfall at India's eastern coastline with winds blowing in the range of 120 to 140 km per hour be named Hudhud? A Google search of Hudhud throws up this definition of the Omani word: 'Hoopoe, the bird which carried the letter from Nabi Sulayman alayhissalam to Bilqis, the Queen of Saba (Sheba)'. Read

As the Nobel laureates for peace, literature, economics, medicine, physics and chemistry are named for 2014, The Telegraph investigates the history of the awards' gender and geographical bias. Read

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is in India on a two-day visit. He will be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow.

Addressing a meet, Zukerberg says PM Modi is conmitted to connecting villages online and he is excited to see how Facebook can help.

"Today more than 85% of the people live within the range of an existing network - for these people the problem of connectivity is economic. But the biggest set of barriers is social. Connectivity is a fundamental right," he says.

Zuckerbeg is in India to address the first Internet.org  summit taking place on October 9-10 in New Delhi. The young billionaire is expected to meet members of other key ministries as well.

The BBC One hit starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman will begin shooting the special in January 2015, with new episodes shooting later next year. Read

We are proud to share this with you...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was presented with a copy of 'India Abroad' -- a special issue commemorating his visit to the United States -- by Rajeev Bhambri, Head, US Media, Rediff.com in New York.

Rediff.com owns and publishes India Abroad, the oldest and best-known Indian-American weekly newspaper in the United States.

Indulge us while we blow our own trumpet.

The trial in the hit-and-run case had hit a roadblock in July when the court was informed that the original statements of the witnesses had disappeared. The court was again informed in August that case diaries relating to the case too were not traceable.

Just in: Setback for Salman Khan in the hit and run case.

A former parking assistant working at the JW Marriott hotel identifies Salman Khan and says the actor was in fact driving the car which mowed down people. He tells the court that Salman got behind the white Landcruiser.

One person was killed and four injured in the 2002 incident. The witness says Salman was accompanied by three people.

The witness, in his statement to the court, said that Salman was on the driving seat, while leaving the hotel premises on that night.

The 48 year-old actor is accused of driving his SUV onto a pavement in Bandra on September 28, 2002, leading to the death of one person and injuring four others.

Alright, so Rahul is more careful this time. At the Haryana rally, he says,  "Phir ek neta aata hai aur kehta hai ki 60yrs mei kuch nai hua,yeh aap par sawal utha rahe hai."

Yesterday at the rally in Mahad, Maharashtra, he had said precisely the same thing but referred to PM Modi as "opposition leader".

Bushfire to bullets: Face-off threatens to spin out of control. Read

Rahul Gandhi addressing a rally in Ferozpur Jhirka (Haryana). Quips, "Haryana ke liye naya naara banna chahiye 'Jai Jawan Jai Kisaan Jai Pehelwan'."

On his first day on the campaign trail in Maharashtra yesterday, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi committed a faux pas when he apparently referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the Opposition leader.

An Opposition leader says nothing happened in the last 60 years. Their thinking is that only one man can take the country forward, Rahul said.

Adani Group chief Gautam Adani promises investments worth Rs 20,000 crore in Madhya Pradesh over next five years.

Nicolas Henin, a former cellmate of Peter Kassig and John Cantlie, reveals intimate details of their lives as hostages of the Islamic State. Read

Senior journalist, columnist, author, Vinod Mehta's blog for the Times of India today, that has set the English press snapping at his heels. Read

Do serious work but don't take yourself seriously. The man who told me this is no more... Nitin Gokhale pays tribute to veteran journalist MV Kamath, who passed away today. Read

PM Narendra Modi will be in Mumbai today. Expect traffic near Somaya College ground, Vidyavihar after 6 pm. 

Collectors of all districts along the Bay of Bengal coast in Andhra Pradesh have been put on high alert in view of the threat of cyclone 'Hudhud'.

The cyclonic storm is expected to cross the Bay of Bengal coast on October 12 between Visakhapatnam in AP and Gopalpur in Odisha.

AP Chief Secretary I Y R Krishna Rao held a video-conference today with Collectors of coastal districts and reviewed the preparedness.

He asked the Collectors to take all steps to prevent loss of lives and also ensure that damage to properties, if any, was the least.

"Open relief camps wherever needed and move people from vulnerable areas to safety. Keep essential commodities ready for the evacuees," he told the Collectors. He also directed them to submit reports on the latest situation regularly.

The race is very tight - at least according to betting companies. Two days ago Japanese star Haruki Murakami shared 4/1 odds with Ngugi wa Thiong'o, but the Kenyan has now pulled ahead with 7/2 odds, according to the latest data released by Ladbrokes, whose bidders have made some lucky guesses in the run-up to the prize in recent years.

The winner of this year's Nobel prize in literature, who will take home eight million kronor will be announced at noon (UK time) by the Swedish Academy.

Should long-term favourite Murakami finally get the award, or is it time for Philip Roth, a last-minute addition to the highly tipped list? Algerian novelist Assia Djebar? Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse?

Take a look at the list here

US Senator T Kaine suggests the UN needs to engage between India and Pakistan and bring about ceasefire violations.

The Indian government's centralized attendance monitoring website to monitor and track the work of all central government employees, attendance.gov.in, which was launched as 'work in progress' in early September, is now live. Read

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor who drew flak from party's Kerala unit for repeatedly praising Narendra Modi has now been told by party that he will be forgiven for his actions and uncalled for adulation of PM on only one condition.

The condition put forward by Congress high command is that as a part of punishment for his actions, Tharoor will have to write "Rahul Gandhi is a visionary leader' 1000 times on a piece of paper.

Alright, so that's a story on Faking News. 

Arun Jaitley: There is a connection between firing and infiltration. Firing covers infiltration. Pakistan has to stop this unprovoked firing and shelling, if this continues how will there be peace?

Ceasefire violations by Pakistan Rangers continued on Thursday with 60 Indian border outposts and over 90 villages coming under mortar shelling and firing overnight in Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts along the International Border. Senior officials said that eight persons, including three BSF jawans, had been reported injured in the Pakistan shelling.

Defence minister Arun Jaitley's presser over the continued ceasefire violations by Pakistan. Jaitley says India is never an aggressor but it has a paramount duty to defend its people. There have been a series of unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistan, mostly on the international border and some at the LoC, he said.

"Our forces will make the cost of Pakistan's adventurism unprofitable, he warned.  

The government is looking into Flipkart's 'Big Billion Sale' campaign following several complaints from traders, reports Livemint. Read

Rajdeep Sardesai pays tribute to veteran journalist MV Kamath, who passed away today.

"In February this year, I met MV Kamath for the last time. Kamath, a veteran journalist, was dean of the Manipal Institute of Communication and had invited me to talk on the political situation in the country. We had to walk two floors: Kamath was 93, ailing, but insisted on taking the stairs. 'I need to get fit,' he said with a smile and twinkling eyes. Kamath was almost twice my age, we had sharp political differences and disagreed on many issues. And yet, we bonded. Maybe, we had a lot more in common: we were both Saraswat Brahmins ( yes, we Saraswats can be community conscious), we loved our fish curry rice, and yes, we loved journalism. Like all good journalists, he was opinionated, had a curious mind and always had a good story up his sleeve. Kamath was a journalist for over six decades: he wrote extensively. Whether it be as the Washington correspondent of The Times of India, editor of The Illustrated  Weekly, as a columnist and an author, he just liked to put pen on paper. In fact, he was writing a weekly column till the very end. He was a great admirer of Narendra Modi and had written a glowing biography of the prime minister.

"He had one regret: Mr Modi had not come to release the book. Maybe, the book will be reprinted and the prime minister will release it at 7 race course road. I know it will make Mr Kamath up in heaven very happy."

The Narendra Modi government has completed more than the proverbial hundred days in office. It rode on to power largely on the back of the reputation built up by Modi of being a remarkably able administrator -- one who would change the way in which the country was governed.

Of course, the widespread disgust with the United Progressive Alliance government also played an important role in the victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Any change in government seemed to be a better option. There is little doubt that this feeling accounted for the initial euphoria that was quite palpable as soon as the scale of the BJP's victory became common knowledge.

The corporate sector reported a miraculous and almost overnight improvement in business confidence. Not surprisingly, the stock market took off.  Read more

Thousands of Muslims posing in front of holy sites for a selfie during the Haj, has angered some conservative clerics and sparking a debate over legitimacy of such actions during the annual pilgrimage. Read

"You want to stay the night because the sun has not yet set," says inspector Sharam Singh, Bravo company commander with the 94th battalion of the Border Security Force at Octroi, an Indian post hemmed by Pakistani positions on three sides amid fields of basmati rice.

They are bombing the basmati every night around here. They are bombing the rice and the people who grow it. In Jammu's Ranbir Singh Pora (popularly known as RS Pora), the aromatic variety of rice is reputed to be among the finest. Read

J Jayalalithaa's arch rival, the 92 year-old DMK chief M Karunanidhi, has predicted that her "comeback to power can only be a dream. It would never be fulfilled."

Karunanidhi took 12 days to react to Jayalalithaa being arrested and jailed. He ended his silence at a party meeting held at the DMK headquarters in Chennai to take stock of the law and order situation in the state after the former Tamil Nadu chief minister was denied bail by the Karnataka High Court this week.

"Jayalalithaa trapped herself in the net. She created a situation as if there's none to question her. Today, Jayalalithaa reads her own fall as a lesson. Unknowingly, Jayalalithaa has helped us in lifting the Dravidian movement," the DMK chief said.  Read more

An 11-year-old boy who was set on fire allegedly within a military garrison in Hyderabad on Wednesday has died of 90 per cent burns. NDTV reports that before dying, he had alleged that "some military men" burnt him, the police say.

The chief minister of Pakistan's troubled Balochistan province today admitted that Islamic State militants could be active in the province. Abdul Malik Baloch told Dawn News that the biggest problem facing the province was religious extremism and fanaticism which had increased in the province during the last three decades.

He said that fanaticism had taken root in the province after the former Soviet Union's invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan in the 1980s. "I cannot rule out presence of IS or any militant group in Balochistan," he said when asked about the reports of presence of the extremist militant group in Pakistan's largest and resource-rich province.

He also admitted that the issue of missing persons was a major issue in the province but said so far "no considerable progress has been made with regard to missing persons".

According to Malik, the province was facing manifold problems like insurgency, sectarianism, militant groups and tribal conflicts.

The Supreme Court today sought response from the Kerala Government on a petition filed by 16 of the 24 convicts challenging their conviction and varying quantum of sentence in the Suryanelli gangrape case.

A bench comprising Justices S J Mukhopadhaya and P C Pant issued notice to the state government on the appeals against the Kerala High Court's April 4 judgement upholding the verdict of the trial court. The High Court had confirmed the life sentence of one convict and varying sentences awarded by the trial court at Kottayam, to other 23. Dharmarajan, who was awarded life term, has not yet approached the apex court.

There were 36 people who faced trial in the 18-year-old case, of which five died during the trial. Seven were acquitted.

The case relates to a victim, who was a minor at the time and was taken to various places in Kerala and Tamil Nadu by the convicts, travelling about 3,000 km during a 40-day ordeal when she was raped by over 40 persons, before being released on February 26, 1996.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeting Marshal of the Indian Air Force Arjan Singh at the Air House reception on Wednesday evening.

Singh is the only officer of the IAF to be promoted to five-star rank, equal to a Field Marshal, to which he was promoted in 2002.

With the death of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw in June 2008, he is the only living Indian military officer with a five-star rank.

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