Timeline Refresh
In a brazen daytime attack, 16 people including 11 CRPF personnel, four state police and one civilian were gunned down by Naxals in Jeerum Nallah area of Sukma district of Bastar.
The investigators had also learnt that Ramanna, a member of the central committee of the Naxals, was present in Bastar in the last few days. On March 5, the police got a tip-off that Surendra and another leader Jagdish, the 'commander' of Dantewada platoon no. 26 of the Naxals, were "rehearsing" for a big attack with about 50 cadres, sources told PTI.
"In the history of Gujarat politics, the AAP has fielded a Dalit candidate -- Natavar Solanki -- from Sabarkantha which has Brahmin majority population. From Banaskantha Lok Sabha seat, we have decided to field a Brahmin candidate Sanjay Raval," an AAP press release.
"At a time when no political party dares to give tickets without considering the caste factor, AAP has taken a revolutionary step by fielding two candidates who do not belong to castes having a major vote bank," it said.
"Himalaya and Mt Everest are compared to good things but the comparison this time was done with arrogance. There is no scale to measure arrogance. Who is calling whom arrogant? We are proud to be Indian and Bihari but do not have arrogance," Kumar told a press conference in Patna.
"Other people have arrogance and their arrogance is dripping from every inch of his body," Kumar said two days after Narendra Modi attacked him at a rally in Purnea.
An energy company Consolidated Edison spokesman Bob McGee said the utility received a call of a gas leak at 9:13 am, CNN reported.
The full Commission, which came to Assam in its first visit to any state after announcing the Lok Sabha poll dates, also directed the police to seize all licenced and illegal arms to have a free and fair elections in the state.
The state BJP unit has turned the message to help beat the exam blues apparently into a campaign tool for the Gujarat Chief Minister.
Search operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight with 239 people on board was on Wednesday extended to the Andaman Sea and India's help sought as international efforts to trace the aircraft that went missing five days ago yielded no breakthrough.
As the massive 12-nation exercise involving 42 ships and 39 aircraft entered the fifth day, Malaysian civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said its planes were now also searching in the southern part of the Andaman Sea.
Kejriwal's aam admi train ride from Andheri to Churchgate this afternoon caused immense chaos to commuters. Reacting on the damage to metal detectors and other property, Maharashtra Home Minister R R Patil said,
"There is law in Maharashtra which says that cost of damage done to public property shall be recovered from those who are responsible. We will assess whether the damage done today is accidental or purposely done and take action accordingly."
"Wherever law has been flouted action will be taken. Political parties should think while organising such march(es). In a city like Mumbai, it causes immense discomfort to commuters, Patil said.
Among the names to be discussed will be Narendra Modi and whether he will contest from UP or Gujarat, or both states. If Modi is fielded from Varanasi, senior party member MM Joshi could be given the ticket from Kanpur. Read
She further said that she came to the rally to keep her promise, but she did not have any idea why Hazare did not come to the rally.
"It was his rally. I had come here at his request. I do not know why he did not come. I have no idea," she said.
Dodging questions on Hazare's absence, she said," I have respect for Annaji. He is a a senior person. I respect his desire." On the poor turnout at the Ramlila ground, she said, "People in this ground are brought from outside. We could also have done the same. But, this is election time."
His aides cited health reasons, but Mamata said "she had no idea" why he didn't show up."It is not our rally, but on Anna's word, I dropped everything and came here. I had work but I still came, as I had promised," the Trinamool Congress leader said at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan, visibly upset at the activist's absence at what was meant to be her pitch to the nation ahead of next month's general election.
At the sprawling venue, which was awash with posters of Anna and Mamata, the absence of one of only two star speakers was glaring. Sources say Anna changed his mind after his aides reported a poor gathering. -- NDTV
And another one: "Distributed lap top so that school students go tip top"
Terming as "malafide propaganda" AAP's allegation that Aiyar had to go because he opposed RIL's move to raise KG-D6 capital expenditure 2.5 times, the company said Aiyar left the oil ministry in January 2006 while the revised USD 8.8 billion field development plan was submitted in October 2006.
For more on what Mumbai thinks of Kejriwal in the city, go here.
mercy plea. The SC has dismissed the Centre's plea against its verdict granting life to 15 condemned prisoners.
Chidambaram wants his son Karthi to contest from Sivaganga constiutency in Tamil Nadu. Sachin Pilot's seat is being considered for Azharuddin.
"I created him (Ramkripal), but he has proved to be 'Bhasmasura'. Lord Shiva was happy and granted a boon to Bhasmasura. But he became a cause of concern for all and nature ensured that he burned. God is removing all such elements from my party," Lalu said today.
He also called Yadav his erstwhile man Friday and Secretary General of RJD, an 'opportunist' for whom Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi overnight became a 'bhai' (brother).
"He has forgone all his beliefs and burnt ideology to join communal forces. Secular people, minority communities and all others have recognised how he has sold his principles," Lalu alleged. The RJD supremo said he was not responsible for Ramkripal Yadav leaving the party.
A piece from our beloved contributor, the late B Raman, remembering that terrible day. Read
On the other hand, the Congress gives former railway minister Pawan Bansal a clean chit in the railway recruitment scam.
The TMC rally has begun at the Ramlila Maidan.
Dates we have so far are:
UAE: April 16 to April 30
BANGLADESH: May 1-12
INDIA: May 13 to June 1
Pic: Kejriwal at Churchgate station/Sahil Salvi
The government has provided Z security to Kejriwal after specific IM threats, while the RPF has taken responsibility for his security, while he was on board the train.
Mumbai police has deputed 150 cops and three ACPs for Kejriwal.
So, what do you think of Kejri's aam admi adventures in Mumbai? Tell us
"I am not contesting from Rae Bareli. I never agreed to nor do I now... I've been denying this for the last two months," Ilmi wrote on Twitter.
There was buzz in the party that Ilmi will be fielded against Gandhi from Rae Bareli after another AAP leader Kumar Vishwas was fielded against Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi from Amethi.
He said he would work to make Narendra Modi PM. At the investiture were Sushil Kumar Modi and Rajnath Singh.
'As Jagat Mehta''s special assistant during the last two years of his tenure as foreign secretary, I saw for myself how his conviction, courage and patriotism enabled him to fight against heavy odds,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan. Read
When that happens, she simply looks away and hurries past. On reaching home at night, she thanks her lucky stars that she has got through another day with body and limb intact. Read
Before going out the next morning, she mutters a prayer, apprehending what the city might have in store for her. Racial slurs, she has learnt to handle. When she first arrived there from her home in Manipur, they would reduce her to tears.
Reality TV star Kim Kardashian was involved in a minor car crash while she was driving along Sunset Boulevard.
The 'Keeping Up with Kardashians' star's USD 100,000 Mercedes G Wagon got a mere scratch while the other vehicle, a Nissan Sentra, took a bigger damage on the front grill, reported TMZ online.
The 33-year-old TV star was making a left turn at an intersection while the other driver was going in the opposite direction with his right turn signal on, an eyewitness said. The other driver went straight instead, causing the two cars to collide.
They reportedly drove to the Beverly Hills Hotel where they exchanged information. Neither Kim nor the other driver, a male, was ticketed by authorities.
If Brinda Karat holds a rally with Subhashini Ali, the Left Front's Barrackpore nominee, and a supporter holds up the candidate's picture, it will tell on Subhashini's poll expense limit.
But if Sonia Gandhi simply stands near Mohammad Kaif on a Phulpur stage and does not utter his name, the cricketer's poll expenses meter may not tick.
From this general election, star campaigners' expenses will be considered as that of the candidates if it is established that votes were canvassed not just for a party but also for individual contestants. Till now, expenditure incurred by star campaigners -- a select group nominated by each party '" was counted as that of the organisation. Read
After landing at the airport, the 45-year-old took an auto-rickshaw to go to Andheri station which is barely 5 kms from the domestic terminal.
The road show to the station will pass through AAP candidate Mayank Gandhi's constituency who is pitted against sitting MP from the Congress Gurudas Kamath. Read more
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Sahara Group's plea for release of Subrata Roy.
Roy and other two directors of Sahara Group have contended that their detention ordered by SC is illegal.
A major fire broke out at a factory of Shalimar Paints Limited in Howrah early this morning, sources said.
The fire was noticed at about 4.07 am and it spread rapidly. Nobody was injured in the incident and 31 fire tenders were pressed into service to douse the flame, fire brigade sources said.
Several officials of the fire brigade department have reached there and the fire is under control, officials said.
CNN IBN: An 18-year-old girl was allegedly molested, stripped in Kandivali, a Western Mumbai suburb.
The four accused men have been arrested, police said, adding that two of them are minors.
It was 1:30 a.m. when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 lost all communications, including important transponder signals that send data on altitude, direction and speed. Still, it showed up on radar for about 1 hour, 10 minutes longer -- until it vanished, having apparently moved away from its intended destination, hundreds of miles off course.
Those details -- told to CNN by a senior Malaysian air force official, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media -- seemingly shed more light on what happened to the aircraft that mysteriously went missing early Saturday. But if these assertions are true -- and other reports, citing a different Malaysian official, cast doubt on them -- many big questions remain. Why were the communications lost?
Why was the Boeing 777 going the direction it was? And where did it end up? "Something happened to that airplane, that was obviously out of the norm, that caused it to depart from its normal flight path," said Mark Weiss, a former 777 pilot now with the Washington-based Spectrum Group consulting firm. "... It's difficult not to speculate."
Military radar suggests the missing Malaysia Airlines plane turned west, away from its planned route, before vanishing, Malaysia's air force says.
Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing went missing on Saturday, after taking off with 239 people on board. The international search for any wreckage has been widened. Earlier, it emerged two men travelling on stolen passports on board the plane were Iranians with no apparent links to terrorist groups, officials said.
The international police organisation Interpol's Tehran bureau has said the two Iranians had no criminal records and had left Iran legally. One of the men is believed to have been migrating to Germany.
A 27-year-old Indian-origin woman, convicted of arson leading to her husband's death two years ago, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison by a court in the US state of Texas.
After long deliberations, a Travis County jury handed down the sentence to Shriya Patel yesterday afternoon, which was accepted by District Judge David Crain.
Shirya (27) who faced the death sentence for allegedly killing her husband, Bimal, by pouring gasoline over him and setting him on fire, was, on March 10, found not guilty of capital murder by the jury.
However, she was yesterday found guilty of first-degree felony arson and given a prison sentence of 20 years. She has served two years of incarceration thus far and will likely be eligible for parole in three years. Upon release from prison, she will face deportation.
In the courtroom yesterday, she stared straight ahead as the verdict was read. Although her family was not in the courtroom, but local South Asian community members, who supported her for last two weeks of trial were there for her.
More than a dozen friends of Bimal Patel, who also have sat through the proceedings, were absent. But after the jury's decision was read, a victim services counsellor read a direct statement to Shriya Patel from a close friend of Bimal Patel's who took the stand last week.
Bimal's friends testified that Shriya loved another man and wanted to make him jealous. But Shriya's attorneys argued Bimal wanted to kill himself and forced her to help.
Two farmers have committed suicide in Damoh district of madhya Pradesh after they incurred severe loss to their crops by the unseasonal rain. So far, six farmers have tried to end their life in the district after the loss.
Till now, crops worth 13,000 crores have been destroyed in Madhya Pradesh due to the unseasonal rains. In Maharashtra, 8 lakh hectares of crops have been hit in the Marathwada region alone by hailstorms and similar conditions are likely to prevail in the state over the next 2 days as well.
12 people have been killed and crops spread over one lakh hectares damaged in Andhra Pradesh as well. Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Karnataka have also seen considerable crop damage.
The Jew as well as the Christian, the Hindu no less than the Muslim 'fundamentalist' plies an ideology of superior difference. Each confronts an inferior and threatening Other.
Each engages in the politics of exclusion. Hence each poses a menace to the minority communities within its boundary'For the Muslim militants the Other are the Jews, occasionally Christians and, in South Asia, the Hindus, Christians, and Ahmedis.
Read the full article here
"We've made clear, there have been and there will be costs to Russia's action," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters at his daily news conference.
"We have a flexible tool in the executive order that the president signed that will allow us to calibrate the cost depending on the decisions that Russia makes, depending on whether or not Russia decides to avail itself of an opportunity here to pursue its concerns in Ukraine in a peaceful, diplomatic way," he said.
Carney said the US has provided stepped-up assistance to the countries in the region.
Modi calls Uddhav, says Sena a trusted ally of BJP
Germany confers Order of Merit on three Indians
Shazia Ilmi says 'never agreed' to contest against Sonia
Now, Congress netas want to play 'musical chairs'!
Rahul to counter Modi's 'chai pe charcha' with Google Hangouts