Jericho, the lion is alive and roaming his park habitat in Zimbabwe, a Oxford University researcher tracking the lion confirmed on Sunday. He is the brother of Zimbabwe's most famous lion Cecil who was killed earlier this month.  

Brent Stapelkamp dismissed reports that the lion had been killed, saying a GPS device on Jericho didn't suggest anything out of the ordinary, reports CNN.

Photograph: @UniofOxford/Twitter

As proof of life, Oxford University tweeted a photo of Jericho, taken by Stapelkamp early Sunday morning.

Pakistani security forces have killed the Al Qaeda chief for Balochistan and south Punjab in the restive Balochistan province, the government said today.

Omar Abdul Latif, the Al Qaeda chief for Balochistan and South Punjab, was killed in a gun battle with security forces in the Chaghi district near the Afghan border last night, provincial home minister Sarfaraz Bugti said.

Bugti said that Latif's wife had also been arrested in the raid which was carried out on a intelligence tip off. The wife of the Al Qaeda commander was identified as Tayyaba alias Freeha Baji and Latif's two children were also taken into custody for interrogation, Bugti said.

He said initial investigations showed that the Al Qaeda commander fled to Balochistan from Afghanistan eight months ago. Latif was trying to set up an Al Qaeda base camp and carry out terror attacks in the province and other parts of Pakistan, the minister said. "He was linked to the subcontinent chapter of the Al Qaeda," he said.

The Telangana government today requested the Centre that the city-based Defence Research and Development Organisation, be named after former President A P J Abdul Kalam.

Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this regard, according to a release issued by his office. He said the research done by DRDO has helped the country towards achieving self-reliance in the defence sector.

"Under Kalam's guidance, when he was director of DRDO, several research works were done in the organisation enhancing country's self-reliance in defence systems," Rao said.

"Naming the DRDO after Kalam, who had close association with Hyderabad city, would inspire the future generations and also pay rich tributes to Kalam by India's defence organisation or establishment," Rao was quoted as saying in the release.

Kalam passed away in Shillong, Meghalaya last week.

A number of Internet users in India are reportedly not being able to access popular porn websites.

Twitter and Reddit users are reporting that state-owned ISPs MTNL and BSNL and privately-owned ISPs ACT, Spectranet, Tikona, Asianet and Hathway are blocking access to major porn websites. Mobile operator Vodafone is also blocking these websites, according to a Times of India report.

One user reported that: The site has been blocked as per the instruction of the Competent Authority.

According to a piece in Legally India, which used a Delhi broadband connection provided by Spectranet, 11 out of the 13 most popular porn sites were not accessible.

In July, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu, responding to a request for blocking of porn websites in a petition filed by Kamlesh Vaswani, had said, "It is an issue for the government to deal with. Can we pass an interim order directing blocking of all adult websites? And let us keep in mind the possible contention of a person who could ask what crime have I committed by browsing adult websites in private within the four walls of my house. Could he not argue about his right to freedom to do something within the four walls of his house without violating any law?"

Image: Representation picture

Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu today expressed disappointment over few people trying to politicise issues of death sentence and terrorism and said it would be "a dis-service to nation" by sympathising with Yakub Memon, who was recently hanged in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.

"...Unfortunately, some people are trying to politicise everything," Naidu said in Hyderabad, adding that death sentence and terrorism are two different things and people can debate on it.

"But, as far as fighting terror is concerned we must do it with all our might. We are becoming worst casualty of terror. They are aiming to subvert our economy and weaken our country. There should not be any scope for any sort of leniency or softness, as far as dealing with terrorists is concerned," he said.

On the recent debate over the death sentence of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Memon, he said, "I am really amazed over the way some people debated over (death sentence to) Yakub Memon. He is a traitor, he is a terrorist and he has done immense damage to the country. After giving a fair trial and opportunity he was given the punishment and it has been implemented."

Several pieces of "metallic debris" have been found on La Reunion island, where a Boeing 777 wing part believed to belong to missing flight MH370 washed up last week, AFP reports.

An AFP photographer saw police collect one piece of debris, measuring about 15 square inches, on the north of the island this morning. Police placed the debris -- which has a sort of handle partially covered by leather and is inscribed with two ideograms -- in an iron case.

Also this morning a man handed police a piece of debris measuring 27 inches, guessing it was part of a plane door. The discovery of a piece of wreckage confirmed to come from a Boeing 777 last Wednesday sparked fevered speculation that it may be the first tangible evidence that the missing plane crashed into the Indian Ocean, the report said. 

The Jammu bandh, in its third day, today saw violence in some areas of the city and a brief detention of a Congress leader along with some party colleagues agitating for the demand for setting up of an AIIMS.

Some youth, participating the agitation being spearheaded by a conglomerate of 70 organisations, pelted stones at police in Purani Mandi area of old city this afternoon, police said.

Police resorted to minor tear gas shelling to disperse the stone-pelting youth. "The situation was brought under control," a police officer said, adding no one was injured.

Business establishments, market places and shop remained closed generally and public transport was off the roads in view of the 72-hour bandh call given by the AIIMS Coordination Committee which is spearheading the agitation for an AIIMS in Jammu. The bandh began on Friday morning.

Protesters blocked the highway and various roads in the city by burning tyres, police sources said. Congress workers led by the state unit's senior Vice President Sham Lal Sharma took out a march in support of AIIMS demand, defying restrictions under 144 CrPc in Bakshinagar area today.

The police prevented them from moving ahead and detained Sharma, a former minister in the state, along with 16 other party colleagues at Bakshinagar police station.

Intensifying their 52-day-old stir for removal of BJP member Gajendra Chauhan as FTII's chairman, nearly 80 agitating students today left from Pune for Delhi to hold a protest there.

The students have been protesting against Chauhan's appointment since June 12, saying he lacked "vision and artistic credentials" to merit the post at the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India.

Chauhan, known for his role of 'Yudhishtira' in popular tele-serial "Mahabharat", has refused to step down, claiming he is well equipped for the job and that if Centre, which has appointed him tells him to go he will do so.

"We will start our march from Jantar Mantar and head for the Parliament Street and will be joined by activists of other like-minded organisations to express their solidarity on the issue, which involves preservation of the Film and Television Institute of India's artistic and academic excellence and ethos," FTII Students' Association representative Ranjit Nair told PTI today.

Five persons, including four teenage boys, have drowned in different parts of Rajasthan which was lashed by heavy rains.  

The south-west monsoon shifted its centre over Bikaner division in the last 24 hours as Karanpur city recorded 5 cm of rainfall till 8:30 am today, the maximum in the state, officials said.       

At least a dozen villages remained inundated in Sanchore tehsil due to incessant rains, which reduced since Friday, officials said. A Sirohi district official said the Abu-Road and MountAbu (hill station) road, which was damaged by shooting stones due to heavy rains, was still under repair and traffic was not allowed on the route yet.       

The civil administration has pressed 25 rescue and relief teams into action in Sanchor and Bheenmal tehsils, covering a dozen of villages, the official said.

Family, friends and a host of celebrities, including media mogul Tyler Perry, bid goodbye to Bobbi Kristina Brown, the only child of Bobby Brown and singer Whitney Houston, at a private funeral in Atlanta.

The body of Brown, 22, was carried in a silver casket to St James United Methodist Church in Alpharetta. The invitation-only ceremony that took place yesterday included grandmother Cissy Houston; Bobby Brown and his wife, Alicia; and celebrities like Perry and singer Monica, reported CNN. They arrived in a motorcade of limousines, led by police motorcycles.

Brown died in hospice care on July 26, six months after being found face down and unresponsive in a bathtub at her suburban Atlanta home. She never regained consciousness after the incident, and her months of medical care exposed family rifts that never seemed to heal.

Brown's partner Nick Gordon, who discovered her in the bathtub, repeatedly said on social media that he was not allowed to see her in the hospital. Gordon was reportedly absent from the funeral.

In June, a civil lawsuit was filed against Gordon in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, alleging that he accessed Brown's bank accounts and stole more than US $11,000. There were also reports the family was fighting over her care, though Bobby Brown said in June the family was working together on his daughter's behalf.

Eight more trains will run across the Delhi Metro network from tomorrow after a decision was taken to augment it keeping in view a general trend of increased ridership in the months of August and September over the last few years.

The trains, which will ply during peak hours, have been distributed across the metro's busiest corridors. The arrangement will continue for two months as of now although it may remain in place depending on the requirement, officials said. "Basically the trend is an outcome of a number of factors. It's mainly because of the fact that new session of the colleges commence during this period.

"Also the office-going public seems to be more regular probably due to less number of holidays," a metro official said. Keeping in view the expected increase in ridership, a study was carried out to prepare an operations plan to make sure that sufficient services were available for the commuters, DMRC said in a statement.

With the addition of two each on Yellow and Blue lines, the number of trains will go up to 55 and 64 respectively on the busiest corridors. Trains will be available every 2 minutes 18 seconds on the Yellow Line and 2 minutes 30 seconds on Blue Line.

The aftermath of Cyclone Komen has hit large parts of Bengal, Odisha and Manipur, causing floods and landslides in which over 60 people have died so far, reports NDTV.

The depression has reached Gangetic West Bengal. Rain will continue but intensity likely to be less. Heavy rains have been predicted for the next 24 hours, according to the report.

In Bengal, incessant rain has not only sunk large parts of capital Kolkata but also 12 districts, said West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

At least 39 people died and over 1 lakh people ended up in relief camps after 1.8 lakh houses were damaged.

In Manipur, 20 people died in a landslide yesterday and more than a lakh have been affected.

Image: A vendor selling bananas at a water logged street in Kolkata after heavy rains. Photograph: Swapan Mahapatra/PTI Photo

Pakistan today released 163 Indian fishermen from a jail here as goodwill gesture following a recent understanding between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in Russia. Those freed today include an 11-year boy among and 162 adults, an official added. They are being taken to Wagha border and handed over to Indian authorities.

The detained men were set free as goodwill gesture following last month's meeting between the two prime ministers of two countries in Ufa, Russia, the official added. The two sides had decided to release fishermen in each other's custody, along with their boats, within a period of 15 days, addressing one of the major humanitarian issues between them.

According to the latest list exchanged by the two sides, there were 355 Indian fishermen languishing in Pakistani jails and 27 Pakistani fishermen lodged in Indian jails.

The death of Osama bin Laden's three family members, said to include the slain Al Qaeda chief's stepmother and half-sister, remains shrouded in mystery as questions are being raised over the cause of the plane crash in UK despite normal weather and runway conditions.   

The Phenom 300 jet arriving from Italy that crashed while attempting to land at Blackbushe Airport in Hampshire, some 65 kilometres from London, is equipped with fly-by-wire electronic system that is supposed to make it easy to control.   

The 7 million pound Embraer jet was also a regular visitor to the airport, The Guardian reported, citing pilots who use Blackbushe.   

The Saudi Arabia-registered plane had ploughed into a carauction site and burst into flames, killing all four persons on board and believed to have been carrying Osama's stepmother Rajaa Hashim and sister Sana from the bin Laden family, a prominent Saudi clan with vast business interests.

Photograph: Reuters video grab   

Media reports said Sana's husband Zuhair Hashim and a Jordanian pilot were also among the dead. The family were"visiting the UK on vacation", according to police.

With half of the monsoon session virtually washed out, the government will make a fresh bid to end the two-week-long deadlock in Parliament with an all-party meeting on Monday.

While the BJP-led coalition is reaching out to Opposition, there is no let up in the Congress attack on the government on the Lalit Modi and Vyapam controversies and it is likely to fine tune its strategy tomorrow at a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party, which will be addressed by party chief Sonia Gandhi.

The CPP general body meeting is being held hours before the all-party meet at a time when the government and the BJP are giving no indication of accepting its demand for resignations of Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

While the Opposition including the Congress and the Left parties have taken a line of "no resignation, no discussion", BJP leaders and ministers are making it loud and clear that there will be no resignation and government is not going to "oblige" the Opposition.

Just in: It's good news for SRK, but not for cricketer Ankeet Chavan.

The Mumbai Cricket Association has turned down the appeal by Ankeet Chavan, and won't lift a ban on the tainted player. The ban was stayed by the BCCI for his alleged involvement in spot-fixing in the IPL. However, the court has dropped charges against Chavan as well as cricketers S Sreesanth and Ajit Chandila.        

Just in: Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan can now enter Mumbai's Wankhede stadium. The Mumbai Cricket Association has lifted the ban imposed on the actor.

Khan was banned from entering the Wankhede in May 2012 for five years after a scuffle and heated altercation with a security guard and the MCA officials following an IPL game in which KKR beat the Mumbai Indians. The ban was supposed to end in 2017.
 

In a coordinated effort by hospitals and the Delhi traffic police, a heart harvested from a 57-year-old brain dead patient was transported from Karol Bagh to Saket, a distance of about 20 km, in a record 16 minutes for transplantation.

The Delhi traffic police provided 'green corridor' for transportation of a human heart which was carried from B L Kapur Super Speciality Hospital, Pusa Road in Karol Bagh to Max Super Speciality Hospital in Saket.

The distance of 20 km between the two hospitals was covered in a record 16 minutes, said Sharad Agarwal, Additional Commissioner of Police, Traffic (Operations). The request to provide the 'green corridor' was received by Delhi Traffic Police last midnight, Agarwal said.

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan says he is grateful to everybody who prayed for him during his accident on the sets of Coolie, exactly 33 years ago.

The 72-year-old actor took to Twitter to share the details about the accident that injured him badly. The actor said he saw his father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, in tears for the first time after his return from the hospital.

"August 2nd 1982... I live after Coolie accident... On returning home saw Father in tears for first time ever," Bachchan wrote, alongside a picture where he is touching the feet of his father.

Bachchan suffered a near-fatal accident while shooting an action scene for Manmohan Desai's Coolie in Bengaluru in 1982, which took him several months to fully recover.

The Piku star thanked his fans for their prayers and hailed his life post the accident as a "rebirth." "To all that give me prayers and wish... August 2nd my rebirth in sense... I fold my hands in gratitude..." Bachchan wrote on his blog that he will "never be able to repay" the gratitude of people who prayed for him.

Days after Bollywood's 'Bhaijaan' Salman Khan stirred a controversy by opposing the death penalty for 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Memon, his father, veteran writer Salim Khan, dismissing his son's tweets as "childish and meaningless".

In an interview to India Today, Salim said that Salman was being targeted for his celebrity status.

Salim said that should not have tweeted things about which he has little knowledge. "It was his foolishness. He said what all he must have heard." 

Also read: Salman Bhaijaan and BJP's mobocracy

Now, getting over one litre liquo rto Delhi from neighbouring areas like Gurgaon and Faridabad to save a few bucks may land you in jail with the Aam Aadmi Party government stepping up efforts to catch hold of defaulters.   

The move is aimed at boosting revenue by plugging losses as the Delhi government loses out on tax which enriches the coffers of its neighbour Haryana. The Delhi government's excise department has formed teams to ascertain the prevalence of the practice by observing the liquor shops operating in Rohtak, Sonepat, Gurgaon and Faridabad bordering the national capital. 

According to government, as per Section 33 of the existing Excise Act 2009, one cannot take more than one litre to Delhi from other states. In violation of this section, violators can face imprisonment of up to three years and a fine of up to 3 lakh.   

"The government has now decided to strictly implement this rule. There are thousands of people who live in Delhi, but got to Haryana's areas, especially Gurgaon and Faridabad, for work. Unaware of excise rules, most people can get over one litre liquor to Delhi from these areas which is illegal.

"The rule says that vehicle be it expensive indulged in transporting over one litre liquor will be confiscated and sold in auction. Such vehicles will not be returned to defaulters," a senior government official told PTI.

Violating the ceasefire yet again, Pakistani Rangers resorted to firing of mortar bombs on border outposts along the International Border in Jammu district. 

"Pakistan Rangers resorted to firing of two mortar bombs on BoPs along the IB in R S Pura sector around 10.40 pm last night", a senior BSF officer said today.   

BSF troops guarding the borderline did not retaliate, he said. "There was no loss of life or injury to anyone in thePakistani firing", he said.   

This is second ceasefire violation along the IB in 12 hours. Yesterday, Pakistani Rangers violated the ceasefire by resorting to small arms firing and mortar shelling on 23 BoPs along the IB in the Akhnoor sector in Jammu district, drawing retaliation from the BSF.   

Pakistani troops had violated the ceasefire four times on July 29 and July 30 along the LoC.

A Std III textbook in Jodhpur has a shocking chapter on moral science.

According to the textbook, rape accused self-styled god Asaram Bapu is a "great saint", reports The Indian Express.

On page 40 of the book Naya Ujala, Asaram Bapu is featured with Guru Nanak, Swami Vivekananda, Mother Teresa, Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Maharishi Dayanand. The book published by Delhi-based Gurukul Prakashan, claims to be based on NCERTs continuous and comprehensive evaluation guidelines, the report says.

At least 80 schools are following the curriculum. The education department has said that notices will be sent to these schools on Monday.

Read the complete report here

State showed "bias" and an absence of "zeal" in persecuting those accused of killing more than 900 people during the Mumbai riots of 1992, the judge who headed the probe told NDTV.

At a time when the execution of Yakub Memon, convicted for his role in the 1993 blasts that followed the riots, has opened a debate, Justice BN Srikrishna told NDTV's Barkha Dutt that the state and "those who wielded power" had shown an evident bias in not probing the riot cases with the same energy as they had shown in convicting those responsible for the blasts in which 257 people were killed. 

Read the complete report here

The Islamic State group has detained four journalism students in Mosul on charges of leaking information from the jihadist bastion to Iraqi and media organisations, a media watchdog said today. 

Journalists arriving this week to the Indian Ocean island Reunion to report about the discovery of a jet wing fragment were met with another spectacular sight: the eruption of one of the Earth's most active volcanoes. 

A wing flap suspected to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on Saturday arrived at a French military testing facility where it will be analyzed by experts.

Iran's parliament does not have authority over the nuclear agreement signed with world powers last month, the Islamic Republic's top nuclear negotiator was quoted as saying on Saturday.

CBI today registered eight more FIRs in connection with Vyapam scam, taking the number of cases filed in connection with alleged irregularities in the conduct of professional and academic examinations by Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board to 23 so far. 

Ukraine's foreign minister is calling on Russia to come to "real negotiations" about a cease-fire and stabilization in Ukraine's war-torn east which will require fair elections that are internationally monitored. 

A display plane crashed while performing acrobatics during a car and music festival in northwest England today, killing the aircraft's pilot. The plane went down during CarFest festival founded by TV presenter Chris Evans at Oulton Park in Cheshire. 

Rajnath distorting statement on terror remarks: Chidambaram
20 killed in Manipur landslide
PHOTOS: Bengal flood situation turns grim, 1.19 lakh people affected
SP leader requests Mulayam to nominate Yakub's widow as Rajya Sabha MP, suspended
Osama's family members killed in UK plane crash
At stroke of midnight, 15000 Bangladeshis became Indian