Gujjars paralyse Delhi

At least two persons were killed, one of them in police firing, and 14 security personnel injured in violent clashes between Gujjar demonstrators and the security forces in Delhi and Haryana on Thursday. The Gujjars took over the areas bordering the national capital and paralysed rail and road traffic, completely disrupting normal life till late in the afternoon.

One person was killed when the police opened fire on agitators, blocking traffic on the national highway at Patti Kalyana in Panipat district, while the other died in a stampede reportedly triggered by the police action at Samalkha in Haryana. State chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda ordered a magisterial inquiry into the circumstances leading to the death of the two persons.

On the war path over their demand for Scheduled Tribe status, the Gujjar community, observing "martyrs' day", poured into the national capital region since the early hours of the morning and blocked major roads leading to New Delhi. The security forces resorted to lathicharges, lobbed teargas shells and fired rubber bullets to disperse violent mobs at Mehrauli, Mathura Road, Gazaipur and Anand Vihar, among other areas. Nearly 110 agitators were detained by the police.

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Nepal is declared a secular republic

Nepal on Wednesday scripted a new chapter in its turbulent history as the newConstituent Assembly abolished the 240-year-old monarchy and declared the country a "secular, federal democratic republic."

The 601-member body met at the Birendra International Convention Centre on Wednesday evening, and a motion was passed to declare the country the world's newest republic.

After a series of meetings, the Seven-Party Alliance agreed to table the motion at the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly, dominated by Maoists. It was passed by 560 votes in favour, with four members opposing it.

King, Gyanendra will become an ordinary citizen and will lose all his powers. He has been given 15 days to vacate his palace. May 28 will now be celebrated as Nepal's Republic Day.

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Soon: Ombudsman for all air travel complaints

The civil aviation ministry is planning to appoint an ombudsman for the entire airline industry with whom harassed passengers can lodge their complaints against airlines. Confirming this, well-placed ministry sources said it had been asking all airlines for the past several months to set up their own ombudsmen but that these requests had fallen on deaf ears.

The ministry has now scheduled a meeting with the airlines on the issue, and this is expected to take place within the next couple of weeks. The directorate-general of civil aviation may also be asked by the ministry to formulate a civil aviation requirement (CAR) on the appointment of an ombudsman for the entire airline industry. It is being felt that this would give much-needed powers to the ombudsman to ensure that passengers with genuine grievances get justice.

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Sleeper terror cells active in Bengaluru

The Karnataka police appears to be blissfully sleeping over an intelligence report which has alerted them to the existence of three terror modules and various sleeper cells in the state.

The state intelligence bureau's report states that the "sleeper cells" have been "recommissioned" and the state needs to be vigilant against possible terror attacks, mostly masterminded by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

"It is clearly mentioned in the report that there are two terror modules by the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba operating across the country. Its modules in India have been divided into the western and southern Corridor and the eastern and northern corridor," officials said.

The official assessment of the intelligence sleuths and the recent court blasts in Hubli have indicated the involvement of even banned organisations like the Students' Islamic Movement of India (Simi).

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More Noida arrests likely

The Talwar family of Noida on Sunday continued their offensive against the UP police even as investigators questioned Dr Nupur Talwar.

The police, which hinted at more arrests, conducted extensive searches at the Talwars' Sector 25 residence in Noida.

The central processing unit (CPU) of a computer used by 14-year-old Aarushi was seized from the room where she was found murdered on May 16.

"We have confiscated the CPU of Aarushi's computer for further probe.Our cyber experts will analyse the information stored in the computer. We have some more clarity in the case and more arrests are likely," a senior police official said.

The investigators questioned Dr Nupur Talwar for about an hour after the searches, police sources said. The police is also considering moving the court for conducting a narco-analysis test on Dr Rajesh Talwar.

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Assam admits project funds went to militants

The Assam government said here on Thursday that the political leaders of the North Cachar Autonomous District council have siphoned off Rs 10 crores by clearing old fake bills of contractors in order to facilitate fund to the Dimasa militant. Disclosing this to reporters, Assam government spokesman and minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said: "This is what the Assam governor, Lt. Gen. Ajay Singh (retd), who is the constitutional head of the district councils, has reported to the Assam government."

He said: "The council leaders hurriedly cleared the controversial bills of two contractors, R.S. Gandhi and Ali, worth Rs 10 crores, which was pending for the past several years. These contractors paid the majority of the fund released by the council to the Dimasa rebels." Denying the charges of the council leaders against him of having nexus with Dimasa rebels, Mr Sarma said: "It has become a fashion among my political opponents in Assam to drag my name in all militant-related controversies."

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Actress, Navy officer arrested for murder

A naval lieutenant and a budding television actress were arrested by the crime branch of the Mumbai police on Tuesday for the murder of the creative head of Adlabs Synergy on May 6. The police said the murder was the result of a love triangle gone sour.

The two arrested were to be engaged in July but of late had been having trouble with the naval officer suspecting the actress of two-timing him with the deceased, claimed the police.

Maria Monica Surairaj, 27, had come to Mumbai in 2005 and, after completing a one-year course from Asha Chandra's acting school, went south and acted in four Kannada films. In March this year, Surairaj came back to Mumbai and approached Neeraj Grover, 25, creative head of Adlabs Synergy. Grover was the former creative head of Balaji Telefilms. The police said that Surairaj believed Grover would get her a break in the TV industry.

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Mansarovar yatra put off 2 weeks, to start June 13

India has can celled the first two batches of the Kailash-Mansarovar pilgrimage this year after China cited "domestic reasons" to suggest it would not be in a position to receive pilgrims from India before June 21.

The external affairs ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that the pilgrimage will now commence from Batch Number 3, which is scheduled to depart New Delhi on June 13.

The annual Kailash-Mansarovar pilgrimage for 2008 was earlier scheduled to commence from June 1.

"The ministry is continuing its efforts with the Government of the People's Republic of China to accommodate the pilgrims of Batch Numbers 1 and 2 in later batches," the spokesman said.

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Ship with 10 Indians hijacked off Somalia

A year after it narrowly missed getting captured by pirates on the high seas around the Horn of Africa, a Jordanian-registered merchant vessel Victoria, whose crew included at least 10 Indians, had been hijacked, officials of the directorate-general of shipping confirmed here on Monday.

The shipping authorities here said the vessel had been hijacked off the coast of Somalia on Saturday. The seizure allegedly occurred on the 3,700-km coastline of Somalia, large stretches of which are not patrolled by the Somali coast guard or by international sea safety agencies. This is the third such hijacking case so far this year.

According to a top shipping official, the Indian authorities were trying to investigate the matter but were being thwarted in their efforts as there was no intimation about the incident by the shipowners.

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Dev's Guide to Life

Actor Dev Anand made the classic Guide, which will be screened on Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival and 84-year-old veteran's excitement at this recognition is palpable.

Ever-energetic Dev Anand drove straight from the airport to the sprawling Villa Paradisiaque, where Hinduja brothers hosted a lunch for Indian celebrities and others attending the festival.

The Hindujas' association with the actor and Guide goes back all the way to the time when the film was released, he said adding that Srichand P. Hinduja was the man who first distributed the movie.

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Email sent from Ghaziabad

The Centre is grappling hard to establish the links between Tuesday's serial blasts in Jaipur with the earlier blasts in cities like Varanasi, Hyderabad and Mumbai, working on the lead it has received from an email purportedly sent by militant outfit "Indian Mujahideen" to various television channels late on Wednesday night claiming responsibility for the Jaipur blasts.

Hours after the email was sent, the security agencies traced it to a cybercafe at Sahibabad town of Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh, bordering New Delhi. While the owner of the cybercafe has been detained by the special task force of the UP police for questioning, the "source" of the email is yet to be traced.

Security has been stepped up along the Delhi UP border and at courts and railway stations throughout the national capital region even as the police raided a house in UP's Baghpat district in its hunt for one Shamim, chief of the western UP unit of Harkat-ul Jehadi Islami (HuJI) of Bangladesh, who is suspected to be involved in the Varanasi serial blasts of 2006. The raid, however, did not yield any results.

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Another daughter killed for ‘honour'

Close on the heels of the grue some murder of Sunita and her lover Jasbir in Karnal's Balla village, another Haryani father has killed his daughter to preserve his family "honour".

On Wednesday, Bhawana Ram strangled and killed his married daughter, Reshma, at Laloda village near Fatehabad. His sons, Lala Ram and Suche Ram, allegedly stood by and egged their father on as he set upon the unsuspecting young woman in her sleep.

Bhawana Ram was convinced that Reshma, married for the past 12 years, was carrying on an illicit love affair with her own brother-in-law (sister's husband). The victim's husband, who was away on Thursday night, told the police that he returned home to find his wife unconscious inside her room.

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12 MINS. 8 BLASTS. 60 DEAD

Eight bomb blasts triggered by terrorists over just 12 minutes on Wednesday night killed at least 60 people in the heart of Jaipur and injured 200.

The explosions, the first terror strikes in the Pink City, occurred in markets usually teeming with people and near the Hanuman Mandir in the walled city.

The bombings took place as India marked the 10th anniversary of nuclear tests conducted on May 13 in Rajasthan, but it was unclear if there was any link.

"According to the information I have received, 60 people have died and 150 have been injured," said Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje.

The Bangladesh-based Harkut-ulJehadi Islami (HuJI) is suspected to be behind the blasts, home ministry sources said.

The sources had earlier ruled out the use of RDX in the carefully orchestrated low-intensity explosions, which were believed to have been set off from cycles in areas frequented by tourists, including near the historic Hawa Mahal. But minister of state for home Sriprakash Jaiswal, saying that the government felt there was a "foreign hand" behind the blasts, added later that the use of RDX was also suspected.

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Nepal King set to lose his crown on May 28

Nepal's government announced on Monday that its new constitution drafting body would meet for the first time on May 28 when it is due to formally abolish the monarchy and declare the country a republic.

The Maoists, who scored a surprise victory in landmark elections last month, have vowed that the monarchy would be scrapped during the first sitting of the assembly.

The former rebels overturned all predictions in the April polls, winning 220 of the 601 seats in the constitutional assembly more than twice the number of their nearest rivals and pre-election favourites, the Nepali Congress.

"The Prime Minister has sent letters to all the participating political parties calling for the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly on May 28," Aditya Baral, adviser to Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, said.

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As Hillary fades, Obama readies to fight McCain

Barack Obama began sketching the outlines of his expected presidential contest against Republican John McCain, saying the November election will be more about specific plans and priorities than about questions of political ideology or patriotism. Barely mentioning Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr Obama said he was open to campaigning with Mr McCain in "town hall" events. Mr McCain's advisers have already said he would be open to holding such joint forums or unmoderated debates in which both candidates would take questions from voters.

Mr Obama warned that he won't stay away from controversial issues and he attacked Mr McCain's proposal for a temporary halt in the federal petrol tax as a "pander."

The turn toward campaigning against Mr McCain and not Ms Clinton came as Mr Obama, who would be the nation's first black President, surpassed Ms Clinton on Saturday in the all important count of super delegates. Super delegates are the nearly 800 party and elected officials who attend the Democratic national convention this August in Denver and are free to support whom ever they choose, regardless of the primary results.

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Big blow to Ramadoss, All India Institute of Medical Sciences law held invalid

Dr P.Venugopal returned to the helm of the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences here on Thursday after the Supreme Court struck down an amendment brought into the AIIMS Act by the Centre fixing the upper age of retirement of the director of the institute at 65 years.

Dr Venugopal had been unceremoniously ousted from the post of AIIMS director in November last year, hours after President Pratibha Patil had signed the controversial AIIMS amendment bill. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the PostGraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (Amendment) Bill 2007 had been introduced by Union health and family welfare minister Anbumani Ramadoss in Parliament in August 2007 after the turf war between the health minister and the AIIMS chief sunk to a new low over the autonomy of the institute. The bill was passed in Parliament amid stiff opposition from the BJP and the AIADMK.

The Supreme Court verdict has proved a major setback for the Centre and for Dr Ramadoss in particular, with several top Opposition leaders demanding that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh immediately dismiss the health minister. "I demand the resignation of Ramadoss, and if he is not resigning I want the Prime Minister to dismiss him forthwith," BJP leader Sushma Swaraj told reporters.

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Google invites Congress, BJP to campaign via YouTube

The presidential election campaign in the United States this time is being fought as much in the party primaries as on YouTube, the enormously popular Google-owned site where anyone can post a video free of cost. In the run-up to the next general elections in India, we may see a similar online video war between the Congress and the BJP.

Google announced the launch of YouTube's India operations on Wednesday. However, it has already broached the use of YouTube with the BJP and the Congress in their campaigns for the coming general elections.

"We will provide space to the parties for telecasting video campaigns. We can also create customised interactive platforms for them," says Google India managing director Shailesh Rao.

YouTube could become the quickest and cheapest mass based electronic means of reaching out to young urban voters in this country.

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Army may run Commonwealth Games

The armed forces may have a new civilian role to play to make the Commonwealth Games in 2010 a success. One section of the government believes that, given the tardy pace of creation of infrastructure for the Games, it is best to hand over the projects in the National Capital Region to the defence services.

This will be over and above their task of providing an air-land-water security blanket for the Games.

Home minister Shivraj Patil has proposed that the construction of major infrastructure projects, which have already suffered huge cost and time overruns, be handed over to the defence establishment.

A ministerial group on the Games, headed by human resources minister Arjun Singh, will take a view on the proposal at its next meeting in a fortnight. It is likely that the proposal will have the blessings of the Prime Minister's Office.

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Government flooded with new state demands

The Union home ministry finds itself flooded with demands for the creation of at least 15 new states.

After the clamour for carving out separate states - Telangana in Andhra Pradesh, Vidarbha in Maharashtra and Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh - the ministry of home affairs (MHA) has told Parliament that it has received recommendations from "various sources" for the creation of several new states, such as Bhojpur in East Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Bihar, Saurashtra in Gujarat, Coorg in Karnataka, Koshalanchal in western Orissa, Gorkhaland in West Bengal, Mithilanchal in north Bihar, parts of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, and Purvanchal, Harith Pradesh, Braj Pradesh and Awadh Pradesh from various regions of Uttar Pradesh.

The MHA has denied receiving any recommendation from "state governments" for the creation of new states, which includes the demand for Telangana and the call for the trifurcation of UP, a move supported by UP chief minister Mayawati. The ministry has said that all the "demands and representations" for creation of new states have been coming from "various sources" from time to time. The MHA, however, has not specified these "sources".

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Shoaib ban stayed, free to play Indian Premier League

The appellate tribunal appointed by the Pakistan Cricket Board on Sunday suspended the five year ban imposed on controversial fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar for a month, thereby allowing him to turn out for the Kolkata Knight Riders for the rest of their Indian Premier League campaign on the basis of a no objection certificate from the PCB.

Shoaib is now likely to play his first game in the Knight Riders' black and gold colours at home against the Bangalore Royal Challengers on Wednesday. Shah Rukh Khan's team had paid $425,000 for his services in the IPL.

"This is a great relief for me as I am keen to play in the IPL. But this is just one battle won and we still have to win the final case," he was quoted as saying. Pakistan speedster Shoaib Akhtar has Khawaja Sultan Ahmed, a senior advocate at Supreme Court in Pakistan, to thank for the temporary suspension of his five year ban.

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Deccan Ready For All Challenges

Having lost a bit of the momentum against King's XI, the Deccan Chargers will look to get back to winning ways against Royal Challengers here on Saturday.

The Chargers have the best opportunity against the Bangalore team, to get their Indian Premier League aspirations back on track. Both teams have just two points each, having lost four of the five matches that they have played so far. However, it can be said with a certain degree of assurance, that the Chargers will fancy their chances more against the out of sorts Challengers.

On the face of it, the Chargers have power in their arsenal even with the early departure of their star all rounder Andrew Symonds.

If opener Adam Gilchrist can get going like he did against Mumbai Indians' in their solitary win, it can all but shut the door on the Challengers.

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Devils out to challenge Kings status

Two of the best performing batsmen in the IPL, Mike Hussey and Matthew Hayden, will not be available to take on the most incisive bowling attack in the league, at the MAC Stadium here on Friday. Delhi Daredevils and Chennai Super Kings are two of three sides that have been consistent in the tournament so far, the other being Rajasthan Royals who won their fourth game on Thursday.

Barring a loss to Kings XI, the Delhi outfit has had everything going to plan. Delhi will miss the services of Daniel Vettori who bowled with guile in the last game against Bangalore. It is something Delhi are not perturbed about. "We have lost Vettori and Chennai has lost three players. These are things that are not in our control. We will have to device our plans based on what we have," said T.A. Sekar of Delhi Daredevils.

It will be vital for the Super Kings to get on against Mohammed Asif and Glenn McGrath and not get bogged down. Once bowlers of that calibre are allowed to settle down to a rhythm they are difficult to get away.

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