Whistleblower IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who had pointed out alleged irregularities in allotment of land to Robert Vadra in Haryana, was tonight transferred yet again for the umpteenth time.

Pope Francis has been told by Vatican doctors to lay off the pasta, after gaining weight since being elected as head of the Roman Catholic Church two years ago.

ISIS is gone, but the fear remains.As Iraqi forces, aided by Shiite militiamen, took control Wednesday of the northern city of Tikrit, they found vehicles laden with explosives and buildings that might be booby-trapped.

Lauding the services of former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao to the country, the Telangana BJP today hailed the Centre's proposal to construct a memorial to the departed leader in Delhi.

The first wife of 'The Beatles' legend, John Lennon, today died after a battle with cancer. Cynthia Lennon, 75, passed away in the presence of her family at her home in Spain.

Senior broadcaster C Lalrosanga has been appointed as interim Director General of Doordarshan. 

Additionally, a C-17 aircraft of the IAF with 168 Indian nationals on board has taken off from Djibouti for Kochi. 

A Spanish court Wednesday remanded in custody a Moroccan woman suspected of trying to send her twin 16-year-old sons to Syria to become jihadi fighters, a year after her other son was killed there.

Just In: The West Bengal government has banned the entry of VHP leader Praveen Togadia, announces home secretary Basudeb Banerjee.

Just In: The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday attached assets worth Rs 742 crore in the name of former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran and his brother Kalanithi Maran in Aircel-Maxis case in which they have been accused along with six others.

The acting high commissioner of Nigeria OB Okongor, reacts to Giriraj Singh's comments. "Given that the minister is at the highest levels of government, the remarks made are unfortunate. India, Nigeria have close ties, such remarks not expected. We will not do anything that will destroy the relationship. I will not tell the Indian PM what to do. He is a very close friend and I believe he will do the right thing."

Union minister Giriraj Singh apologised for his appalling racist remarks against Sonia Gandhi. As the BJP distanced itself from the minister, he said, "I apologise for my comments on Sonia Gandhi. If I have hurt Rahul or Sonia in any way, I apologise." 

The minister shamed the country today with his hugely sexist, racist and misogynistic remark saying it was the colour of Sonia Gandhi's skin that made her the Congress president.

"If Rajiv Gandhi had married a Nigerian and if she wasn't white skin, would Congress accept her as a leader?" the BJP MP from Bihar said.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has 'liked' Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Facebook post about the Varanasi constituency page launched today within hours of its posting.

The micro-site is a specially created one stop destination for gathering all information about Prime Minister Modi's constituency.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Modi took to twitter and shared the link of the website specially dedicated to Varanasi.

Zuckerberg was in Delhi in October.

Click on the picture for a larger image.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed today joined the people of the Valley to offer special prayers for the improvement of weather conditions in the state.

Sayeed paid obeisance at the holy Hazratbal shrine in the outskirts of Srinagar and offered special prayers for the improvement of weather in the state.

This was Sayeed's first visit to the revered shrine after taking over as the Chief Minister of the state last month.

Sayeed also prayed for peace, prosperity and safety of the people of the state.

Interacting with the people, the Chief Minister assured them that the government would take necessary steps to improve the facilities in and around the shrine.

Heavy rains recently led the Jhelum river to swell and cause fresh floods that have so far claimed 17 lives in the state.

Pic: In Bemina, Srinagar, an inundated home. 

Congress leader Milind Deora rightly condemns Giriraj Singh's remarks saying, "Dark days ahead for our democracy when union ministers are allowed & encouraged to repeatedly make anti-women, racist & communal statements."

But he seems to have forgotten his colleague Digvijaya Singh's remarks in 2013 when he called fellow party leader Meenakshi Natarajan 'a 100 percent tunch maal".

MoS VK Singh in Djibouti coordinating the evacuation from Yemen. The
first IAF C-17 transport aircraft with 175 rescued Indians to depart Djibouti soon.

Loved this. Shashi Tharoor tweets: The joys of tweeting in India! I wrote "paid a condolence visit". Got 10 replies like this:"So u were paid fr a condolence visit? Shame on u".

Giriraj Singh also mocked Rahul Gandhi's absence from the political scene and likened it to the "missing Malaysian airliner".

"Imagine a situation, if Congress was in power instead of us and had Rahul been the Prime Minister, and if for some reason, the PM had disappeared for more than 47 days.

"Absence of Congress Vice President is similar to that of the missing Malaysian airliner that still has not been located. The same way the Congress leader was not present in the budget session. No one in Congress is ready to speak. This is unfortunate for the Congress and a joke for the country," he said.

Union minister Giriraj Singh apologises for his appalling racist remarks against Sonia Gandhi. As the BJP distanced itself from the minister, he said, "I apologise for my comments on Sonia Gandhi. If I have hurt Rahul or Sonia in any way, I apologise." 

The minister shamed the country today with his hugely sexist, racist and misogynistic remark saying it was the colour of Sonia Gandhi's skin that made her the Congress president.

"If Rajiv Gandhi had married a Nigerian and if she wasn't white skin, would Congress accept her as a leader?" the BJP MP from Bihar said.

The Congress has called him "bordering on the insane"

MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin tweets this picture of Indians who were evacuated from Yemen. "The ubiquitous smart phone seems to be a companion in every situation." The MEA says that these Indians were evacuated from Aden and are now in Djibouti.

External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj confirms that Indians evacuated from Aden by the Indian Navy have reached Djibouti. "They will be brought back to India by the Indian Air Force today," she said.

Slumdog Millionaire writer Vikas Swarup will soon replace Akbaruddin as the new MEA spokes.  ‏@MEAIndia You will be missed.

The Union Finance ministry has made the use of a pan card mandatory for any transaction above Rs 1 lakh. The Revenue Secretary issued a circular to all the secretaries to the government of India and to Chief Secretaries quoting the Finance Minister's Budget speech with this new proposal.The rule comes into effect today.

The Pan card will be issued in a week from the day of application and the registration for a new car can be done online. According to Arun Jaitley only 21 crore citizens have a Pan card and the government aims to achieve a target of 50 crore by the next fiscal. This is aimed at curbing black money.

The Congress has said Giriraj Singh's remarks reflected the "lack of moral fibre" in the BJP.

"The Congress strongly deprecates and condemns the intemperate and distasteful remarks of Giriraj Singh bordering on insanity," said party spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala.

"It appears that the continuous quest to appease Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made him lose his balance," he said.

Cong's RPN Singh said he strongly condemned the derogatory remarks. "We seek an apology from the PM; he must make a statement on this."

RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav said, "This is a very derogatory remark, highly objectionable, very wrong."

Read Pritish Nandy's blog for the Times of India: Is a new Modi emerging?

And while on China, Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Pakistan next week to deepen economic and strategic ties between the two all-weather allies, a senior official said today.

Xi was to visit Pakistan last year during his South Asia trip to India, Sri Lankan and the Maldives but postponed it due to political unrest in the country with opposition leader Imran Khan staging a protest in Islamabad for alleged rigging in 2013 polls that were won by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

A government official said that the Chinese leader would be in Pakistan around April 10. "He would hold high-level meetings and unveil several economic projects," the official said. Xi is also expected to address the joint session of the Parliament, the official said.

On the eve of the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and India on April 1, 1950, the Chinese Ambassador to India, Le Yucheng, in written answers provided to a set of questions posed by the Hindu, emphasised the need for a renewal of China-India ties in tune with the realities of the 21st century. Excerpts.

MoS Home V K Singh greets Indians evacuated from Aden to Djibouti.  "You are safe now," he tells them.

Three-hundred-and-fifty Indians were rescued on Tuesday by the Indian Navy from the strife-torn Yemen's Aden city.

INS Sumitra took the people to the neighbouring territory of Djibouti, which lies across the Red Sea.

The evacuation process was initiated after India got approval on Tuesday to dock its ship at the Aden harbour. Meanwhile, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speed up the evacuation of Indians stranded in the conflict zone of Yemen.


MEA releases the statewise numbers of those evacuated from Aden and getting ready to fly back home today. Click on the picture for a larger image.

An influential American Senator has said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is probably the strongest Indian leader to have emerged in his lifetime and asserted that the US needs to have more cooperation with India.

"I'm incredibly impressed with the new leader. Mr Modi is probably the strongest leader that I have seen emerge in India, certainly in our lifetimes," Senator John McCain said yesterday.

In his remarks before the Center for Strategic and International Studies, McCain, the 2008 presidential candidate, said the United States needs to have more co-operation with India.

"I believe one of the great long-term challenges we have is to maintain significant influence in the Asia-Pacific region. And we have to do things like look to India for more co-operation," the senior US Republican senators said.

Flurry of activity in North Block over the last two days. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and 15 of his senior officials burned the midnight oil to complete the year-end process of allocation of funds to state governments and union ministries. 

Insiders say Jaitley signed as many as 600 times on files that needed his authorisation. But officials give a different prespective.

They say that Jaitley's marathon end-of-financial year task began on February 28 and ended on March 31 and the ministry has been under immense pressure to ensure it met deadlines.

All work and no play for Mr J.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today dedicated to the nation an expansion and modernisation project worth Rs 12,000 crore at Rourkela Steel Plant.

Modi happens to be the second Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to visit the plant, one of the five integrated plants of public sector steel giant SAIL.

Prime Minister Modi also saw the functioning of the new plate mill that has been installed as part of the Rs 12,000 crore modernisation and expansion programme.

Brinda Karat on Giriraj Singh's . What is PM's Mann Ki Baat on this? We want to see what Modi has to say? It's condemnable.

BJP spokespersons have refused to comment on the statement.

Union minister Giriraj Singh needs a muzzle. The minister shamed the country today with his hugely sexist remark saying it was the colour of Sonia Gandhi's skin that made her the Congress president.

"If Rajiv Gandhi had married a Nigerian and if she wasn't white skin, would Congress accept her as a leader?" the BJP MP from Bihar said.

The Congress, expectedly, lashed out at the BJP for the comment. A party spokesperson said it reflected the BJP mindset.

Giriraj Singh of course, is no stranger to controversy. Immediately after the BJP won the 2014 elections, he had asked all those opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to migrate to Pakistan.


Singh, unfortunately is in Modi's Cabinet as MoS for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.

And yes, Giriraj is in good company, with Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar telling striking nurses in Goa not to sit in hartal in the sun as it would make them "dark" and "ruin their marital prospects".

The body of a 50-year-old woman was found from her husband's pyre giving rise to suspicion that she performed 'sati'. The incident happened in Latur district of Maharashtra, when family members went to collect her husband Tukaram's ashes yesterday, when they found her burnt body in the pyre.

Within hours of Tukaram's funeral, his 50-year-old widow Usha went missing on Monday evening.

The woman's husband Tukaram Mane (55), of Lohata village died on Sunday evening following a heart attack.

He was cremated on Monday.Marathwada region Killari Police in Latur has registered a case of sudden death. The couple is survived by two sons.

A crucial day/night for Kashmir. The Met department predicts a "western disturbance on J&K". This means the intensity of rain will increase by evening.

Sonam Lotus (Director, Met department) says, there will be moderate to heavy rainfall all through the day and tonight is crucial for the state. Rain will fall not only in Kashmir but also in many hilly areas, says Lotus.

With the flood threat continuing to loom large over the valley, the Army has started the evacuation process in Srinagar as the city experienced fresh rainfall yesterday.

Residents have expressed their worry about the situation, saying they had suffered huge losses last time during the floods and are hoping it doesn't happen again.

"We are very scared, last time we had a very tough time and suffered huge losses. We hope it doesn't happen again," said a local resident.

Meanwhile, the soldiers of the engineering wing of army, who have been specially trained for flood rescue ops, have made four units in Srinagar and are ready if the situation deteriorates further.

Senior BJP leader LK Advani is focusing his attention on a new love -- a new Sindhi TV channel.  Primarily an entertainment channel, it is being put together by a group of Sindhis based in Dubai with Advani as the coordinator. The channel is targeted at Sindhis scattered all over India and will showcase Sindhi films and news from the community. 

In a party bombarded with stings and explosive letters, AAP's former internal Lokpal Admiral Ramdas has now written a stinger to AAP's national executive. The letter raises flags on the post of convener, participation of women and inner party democracy in AAP.

The Aam Aadmi Party on Sunday removed Ramdas and Prashant Bhushan as the chief of the national disciplinary committee, a day after the latter and senior leader Yogendra Yadav were expelled from the national executive.

At an emergency NE meeting, the party removed former navy chief Ramdas from the internal Lokpal and set up a new Lokpal panel, comprising former Indian Police Service officers N Dilip Kumar and Rakesh Sinha and educationist S P Verma.

Former PM Dr Manmohan Singh heaved a sigh of relief as he watched TV channels play out news that the Supreme Court had stayed summons against him in the Coalgate case. Two of Dr Singh's  three daughters were present in court today when the verdict was announced.

Dr Singh waited for his daughters to return from the apex court and as they returned home with the good news, they hugged their mother Gursharan Kaur and then touched their father's feet.

The verdict comes as a huge relief for Dr Singh who it is believed has been reading the Guru Granth Sahib praying for relief in the case.

Dr Singh has been worried about appearing in a lower court in the witness box and insiders say the anger with the Congress Party-- particularly two aides of Sonia Gandhi -- runs deep.

It is believed that a senior advisor to Sonia Gandhi was primarily responsible for the state of affairs, feel Dr Singh's family members.

Manmohan Singh also raises the issue of lack of sanction to prosecute him in the case. Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal who is defending Dr Singh says a PM has plenary powers and his administrative decisions can't be termed illegal.

AAP released a fresh list of spokespersons yesterday.

The obvious absentees were senior members Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, both of whom were recently expelled from the national council and other committees after an ugly showdown.

Other than 14 spokespersons from Delhi, the list has six new entrants from other states, in line with the party's more immediate plans for national expansion.

Punjab, which is the next state after Delhi that AAP wants to foray into, has found two representatives in the list, MP Bhagwant Mann and lawyer H S Phoolka. Actor Gul Panag is expected to be added to the party's list of television panelists. Odisha is being represented by Nishikant Mohapatra while Prithvi Reddy from Karnataka is the spokesperson from south. Akshay Hunka from Madhya Pradesh and Preeti Sharma Menon from Mumbai will be the representatives from central and west India.
Read more

A new organisational structure with a defined mechanism for candidate selection for Lok Sabha and Assembly elections could be unveiled as Rahul Gandhi's plan to reform the Congress.

The district-wise and block-wise organisational structure is being changed to constituency-wise units. Every parliamentary constituency will now have a Lok Sabha Congress Committee (LSCC) and the Assembly constituency a Vidhan Sabha Congress Committee (VSCC).

The new committees will have the power to nominate candidates for their respective constituencies. The proposals seek to empower the committees to select candidates two years in advance.

Various committees set up by Congress presidents in the past few decades have suggested early selection of candidates. Read

Celebrations at Dr Manmohan Singh's home today.

The Supreme Court has issued a notice to the CBI on ex-PM Manmohan Singh's petition in the Coalgate case. The SC has stayed all proceedings against Manmohan and five others in the case.

The former prime minister petitioned the court challenging the summons issued to him by a special court in connection with a coal scam case.

A bench of justice V Gopala Gowda and justice C Naggapan also took up petitions filed by industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla, Hindalco Industries managing director Debnarayan Bhattacharya and former coal secretary P C Parakh, who too were summoned as accused in the same case.

The court has stayed summons against all of them. 

The special court had on March 11 issued summons to them, asking them to appear before it as accused and face trial for charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act and Indian Penal Code.

The summons were based on the allegation that allocation of the Talabira-II coal block in Odisha was changed from Neyveli Lignite Corporation to a joint venture of Mahanadi coal fields, NLC and Hindalco, causing loss to the exchequer. Singh held the coal ministry portfolio at that time.

Petrol prices cut by 49 paise per litre, diesel by Rs 1.21 a litre.

We all know that vegetables are good for us - but did you know that eating just one portion of leafy greens a day could stave off dementia?

Researchers at Rush University in Chicago evaluated the diet and mental ability of around 950 older people every year for two to 10 years.

Participants, who had an average age of 81 years, participated in 19 tests to assess their mental function and identified, from a list of 144 items, what food and drinks featured in their diet. Read

Sunita Tomar, 28 the face of India's tobacco battle, died at Mumbai's Tata Memorial Hospital at 4 am on Wednesday. Two days before she died, she wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about her dismay at BJP MP Dilip Gandhi's statement in his capacity as chairman of Lok Sabha's Committee of Subordinate Legislations that there are no Indian studies linking tobacco to cancer. Read

A meeting with Israel's President in Singapore on Sunday has revived a plan for a possible path-breaking visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Tel Aviv, but sections within the diplomatic community are cautioning against rushing into a trip at a time the region is on fire. Read

An 18-year-old girl was shot dead and her friend injured by an office boy of a residential school in Bengaluru, the police said. 

Main opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari won Nigeria's presidential election by 2.57 million votes, according to official results announced today. 

It has begun raining again in Srinagar today morning. The Meteorological Department has predicted that the Kashmir Valley would receive heavy rains today. 

An influential American Senator has said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is probably the strongest Indian leader to have emerged in his lifetime and asserted that the US needs to have more cooperation with India. 

Misao Okawa, a Japanese woman who was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living person, died at the age of 117 early Wednesday morning at a nursing home in Osaka, sources close to her said.

Around 350 stranded Indians were evacuated today from strife-torn Yemen's Aden city on an Indian Naval ship that will now take them to Djibouti, a country neighbouring Yemen and across the Red Sea.

Pakistan's former president and PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari is planning to launch his daughter Bakhtawar Bhutto-Zardari into politics, a move indicative of strained ties with his son Bilawal.

Former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari's campaign said Tuesday that Buhari has won Nigeria's presidential election and President Goodluck Jonathan has conceded defeat.

A BSF convoy came under IED attack laid by militants today while travelling on National Highway-51 in West Garo Hills district of Meghalaya causing minor injuries to three personnel.

Maharashtra Government today said a complete loan waiver for farmers is not possible but it is looking at the possibility of restructuring cooperative crop loans to provide relief to distressed agriculturalists, who are facing losses due to natural calamities.

Did Goa CM say women protesting under the sun won't get grooms?

Operation Raahat: India rushes to evacuate 4,000 citizens from Yemen

Cabinet clears re-promulgation of land ordinance

Video of Sikh man being attacked in UK goes viral 

New UK law allows turban in all workplaces

Swine flu claims 20 more lives, toll rises to 2,064

Indian-American woman jailed for 30 yrs for female foeticide