The Indian Air Force has asked its personnel and their families not to use Chinese 'Xiaomi Redmi 1s' phones as it believes these phones could be transferring data to their servers in China and hence be a security risk.

"F-secure, a leading security solution company, recently carried out a test of Xiaomi Redmi 1s, the company's budget smartphone, and found that the phone was forwarding carrier name, phone number, IMEI (the device identifier) plus numbers from address book and text messages back to Beijing," says an advisory issued by the Air Force to its personnel. 

Pakistani teenage rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has expressed her desire to join politics and return to the Swat Valley where she was shot in the head by the Taliban. Malala, in an interview to Pakistan state broadcaster PTV, also urged India and Pakistan to spend on children's education while putting aside their differences.

She again invited both the prime ministers of Pakistan and India to attend the award ceremony of Nobel Peace Prize to be held in December.

PMK, a partner of NDA from Tamil Nadu, today accused the Union government of trying to "impose Hindi" through local radio broadcast and asked the Centre to give up the proposed initiative.  

"The Centre has planned to impose Hindi through local broadcast by regional radio stations in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in the name of commercial broadcast," PMK founder leader Dr S Ramadoss, alleged, in a statement here.  

Claiming that the duration of such broadcast in Hindi had been fixed for four hours a day, effective October 26, he said, local stations have been asked to re-broadcast Hindi content.

Despite the bitterness in Indo-Pak ties, Pakistan has sent 'Diwali sweets' to President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The sweets, by Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit and his wife, were also sent to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

According to sources, Basit sent the boxes to the Prime Minister's Office for Modi apart from the President and the External Affairs Minister and seemed an "initiative" taken totally at the High Commission level. Significantly, Indian forces have not offered sweets to their Pakistani counterparts on Diwali in the wake of repeated ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the border.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit Fiji on November 19, a day after a bilateral meeting with his Australian counterpart Tony Abbot in Canberra.

The PM is likely to travel from Australia, where he will be attending G-20 meeting, to Fiji on a day-long visit on November 19, sources told PTI. They said the possibility was being explored and the prime minister's meeting with the leadership in the island country in the South Pacific Ocean was being worked out.

One of the suspects in the Al Qaeda backed 2002 kidnapping and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, was acquitted today by an anti-terrorism court, citing lack of evidence, a lawyer said.

Qari Hashim was arrested in 2005 in connection with the kidnapping and murder case that made global headlines. He was freed of the charges by an anti-terrorism court in Hyderabad in southern province of Sindh in a trial held inside a jail. Hashim's counsel Sher Mohammad Leghari had filed an acquittal plea on the basis of lack of evidence.

Gurunath Meiyappan's voice sample has been confirmed in a tapped conversation,  NDTV reports.

Meiyappan, son-in-law of suspended BCCI chief N Srinivasan was chargesheeted by the Mumbai police and even spent time in jail last year but had refused to depose before the Justice Mukul Mudgal-led probe committee saying the case was sub-judice.

Meiyappan was a team owner of Chennai Super Kings.

Central Forensice Science Laboratory confirmed that the voices of Meiyappan, Vindu Dara Singh and other arrested accused in the IPL spot-fixing case are the same as those intercepted voices of the arrested accused.

The Mudgal panel is expected to submit its final probe report to the Supreme Court on October 30

In a historic first, Queen Elizabeth II today sent out her maiden tweet while opening an information technology gallery at the Science Museum in London.

The first tweet by a reigning British monarch read: "It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R."

The 88-year-old monarch removed a glove to send the tweet from the @BritishMonarchy Twitter account in front of around 600 guests including communications entrepreneurs and experts.

CNN-IBN reports:  Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not invited any one of the National Democratic Alliance constituents to the Diwali dinner which will be hosted by him on Saturday, say sources.

Invite for the dinner has been sent out only to the parliamentarians in the NDA camp. This implicates that Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray would not be present at the dinner.

His party MP Anant Geete, however, is likely to attend the dinner. Apart from the MPs, BJP chief Amit Shah will be there at the special dinner.

Read the full report here

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today nominated his political opponent and PDP president Mehbooba Mufti and Nobel Peace prize winner Kailash Satyarthi among nine people to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan'.

Omar, who was nominated by Bollywood superstar Salman Khan to the campaign, launched by the prime minister earlier this month, had thanked the actor on microblogging site Twitter and asked him to watch the space for the names of the nine people he would nominate.

Apart from Mufti and Satyarthi, Omar nominated actress Deepika Padukone and politicians Milind Deora and Bayjant Jay Panda to the campaign.

Air quality in New Delhi deteriorated alarmingly a day after Diwali as pollution levels spiked more than five times higher than normal leaving many at the risk of respiratory problems.

The Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter, which directly affects breathing, has gone up by five times from the national ambiance air quality standard, stated scientists from System of Air quality and Weather Forecasting and Research.

"The 24-hours average of PM10 was recorded at 427 mg per cubic metre and PM2.5 was at 278 mpcm, almost five times higher than the prescribed standard of 100 mpcm and 60 mpcm respectively," said senior scientist Dr Gufran Beig at SAFAR, which is jointly run by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and India Meteorological Department.

"These pollutants can harm the heart and brain as well. People with existing heart or lung diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart disease, or ischemic heart disease are at increased risk of admission to hospitals based on the severity of already existing problem," he said.

The process of BJP government formation in Maharashtra is expected to be expedited with a meeting of party legislators likely to be held in Mumbai on Monday.

"A meeting of BJP legislators is likely on Monday," a party functionary said in Mumbai  today, adding that state unit chief Devendra Fadanvis was the front-runner for the chief minister's post.

"There are no developments expected during Diwali. The action will start next week," he said.

RPI leader Ramdas Athawale, who met Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray today, said Uddhav was "very keen" on forming the government in alliance with BJP. However, there is no word yet from BJP on the former ally's overtures.

In a world first, surgeons at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital have made a dead heart beat again and successfully used it in a transplant, reports news.com.

Described as the biggest heart transplant breakthrough in a decade, the successful surgery has profound implications for reducing the shortage of donor organs, the director of St Vincent's Hospital Heart Lung Transplant Unit, Professor Peter MacDonald, said today.

Read the full report here

ACK Nair, director, Kochi International airport, said, "We got the threat from intelligence agencies that flights flying from Mumbai to Kochi may be tracked. Security was tightened thereafter and will continue for four to five days and then we will review the situation again."

"Though it is hoax call but we cannot rule out the concerns." 

Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu has adopted Chepala Uppada village of Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam district for rehabilitation and development in the aftermath of recent Cyclone Hudhud that ravaged north coastal districts of the state.

This fishermen village and the surrounding hamlets were severely affected by the cyclone.

Naidu has decided to donate his one month salary besides a contribution of Rs 25 lakh from MPLADS funds for rebuilding of Chepala Uppada village and adjoining hamlets.

Former Union minister P Chidambaram said in an interview to NDTV: I will urge Sonia and Rahul to speak more to the media. "Sonia is the most acceptable Congress leader; among the youth it's Rahul. As long as Sonia is the Congress president, she is numero uno."

Talking to NDTV, P Chidambram also said that he was disappointed Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley did not go whole hog on reforms. "The NDA has a majority, they should go further on reforms," he added.

On the Vadra case, he said, "I don't know the facts of the Vadra case; I can't comment on it. It never came to the finance ministry formally. Maybe the Vadra case created a perception for the Congress."        

Just in: In an interview to NDTV's Barkha Dutt, senior Congress leader and former Union minister P Chidambaram said, "Whatever name is there (on the list of Indians who hold illicit foreign bank accounts) will embarrass the individual, the party won't be. These are individual transgressions."

"The BJP's position on black money is identical to that of the Congress. The UPA government also got a defacto agreement with Swiss authorities on black money."

Read more here 

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh today attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his remarks on 'one rank one pension' alleging that he was "appropriating credit" for the step taken by the United Progressive Alliance.

"Now Modi takes credit for One Rank One Pension for defence personnel !Deserves full credit for appropriating Credit of what others have done. "Decision of One Rank One Pension for Defence Personnel was taken 2 years back by UPA Govt, funds provided in the Budget and he takes Credit! (sic)," Singh said on Twitter.

The Ebola epidemic already devastating swaths of West Africa will explode by mid-December and could kill tens of thousands of people unless urgent action is taken, a new study warned today.

A team of seven scientists from Yale University's schools of public health and medicine and the ministry of health and social welfare in Liberia developed a mathematical transmission model of the viral disease and applied it to Liberia's most populous county, Montserrado, an area already hard hit.

The researchers determined that tens of thousands of new Ebola cases - and deaths - are likely by December 15 if the epidemic continues on its present course.

RPI (A) chief Ramdas Athawale met Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray today. Later talking to the media, he said, "Shiv Sena is ready for a compromise. It is keen to form a government with BJP in Maharashtra."

In the Maharashtra elections, the BJP pocketed 123 seats -- including one won by its ally Rashtriya Samaj Paksha, in an unprecedented performance. The saffron party is short of 22 seats to reach the magic figure of 145 seats in the 288-member House.   

In yet another warning to Pakistan, Home Minister Rajnath Singh today said the neighbour should stop ceasefire violations.

On India-China border row, he said, "We want peace with honour." 

NDTV reports:  Major airports across the country are on high alert after an anonymous letter warned of an attack on a flight from Mumbai to Kochi.

Though officials believe the letter is a hoax, more detailed security checks are being  conducted as precaution.

At Kochi, a bomb disposal squad is on stand-by at the airport, along with Anti-Hijacking Unit of the Central Industrial Security Force.

Read the full report here

The University of Mumbai has beaten prestigious varsities like the New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in producing maximum number of billionaires, according to Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2014.

Mumbai University is the only Indian university to feature in the list and is amongst the top 10 varsities from across the world, reports CNN-IBN. 

The University of Mumbai is ranked nine on the list but figures higher than MIT, NYU or even the University of Michigan or Columbia.

The world's biggest retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc today named Murali Lanka as the chief operations officer of its Indian subsidiary with effect from December 1.

Lanka will lead store operations, sales and business development, membership and marketing and asset protection functions for the Best Price Modern Wholesale stores, Wal-Mart India, the wholly owned subsidiary of Wal-Mart Stores Inc, it said in a statement.

He will report to Krish Iyer, president and CEO, Wal-Mart India. Announcing the appointment, Iyer said, "His depth of knowledge and global experience will bring a fresh perspective to our business. He is a veteran at Wal-Mart with almost 25 years in the company."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi appreciated Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for taking up the broom and cleaning a street in Srinagar, saying it was a "wonderful effort" which will strengthen the 'Swachh Bharat' campaign.

"Wonderful effort by @abdullah_omar ! His efforts towards Swachh Bharat will inspire people of J&K and will strengthen the Mission," PM Modi tweeted.

Omar Abdullah had on Wednesday night joined Srinagar Municipal Corporation officials in cleaning the flood-hit areas of the city as part of the 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan'.

A fire has broken out at a slum behind Shastri Park, New Delhi this morning.

Around 40 slum clusters have been gutted. Fourteen fire engines have been rushed to the spot. No causalities have been reported yet.     

National Investigation Agency Director General Sharad Kumar today took stock of the progress in the investigation in the Burdwan blast case.

Kumar arrived in Kolkata this morning and left for Burdwan where he met NIA investigators and assessed the progress in the probe into the blast at Khagragarh in Burdwan town on October 2 that claimed the lives of two suspected terrorists of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh.

Three persons, including two women -- one of them the widow of a suspected terrorist who died in the blast, had been interrogated by the NIA.

CNN reports: A Doctors Without Borders physician who recently returned to New York from West Africa has tested positive for the Ebola virus, becoming the first diagnosed case in the city, authorities said yesterday. 

The doctor, identified as Craig Spencer, 33, came back from treating Ebola patients in Guinea October 17 and developed a fever, nausea, pain and fatigue Thursday.

He is in isolation and being treated at New York's Bellevue Hospital, one of the eight hospitals statewide that Gov Andrew Cuomo designated earlier this month as part of an Ebola preparedness plan.

Read full the report here

Top headlines in the last 24 hours

PM package big let down: NC, Cong terms it as joke

India can celebrate Diwali because of you: Modi tells jawans at Siachen

Sexual assault on minor: Criminal case against Bangalore school

Divided BJP taking its time to pick ally and CM in Maharashtra

I am happy in Delhi, says Gadkari after Fadnavis meets him

Pak violates ceasefire twice, fires at BoPs in Samba, Jammu

Yesterday's live commentary