Nagma likely to replace Govinda

The Congress may replace Bollywood actor Govinda with actress Nagma to take on Bharatiya Janata Party heavyweight and former petroleum minister Ram Naik from the North Mumbai seat.

Govinda, who had humbled five-time MP Ram Naik in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, was not being considered by the party for the forthcoming polls, party sources said.

Mr Naik, who lost to Govinda by 48,271 votes in 2004, is thought to have covered a lot of ground and Congress was on the lookout for someone with ‘mass appeal’ to take him on.

However, Nagma may not have a smooth sailing as her candidature is being opposed by some senior party leaders from Maharashtra.

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Wife, kids have Rs 1.6 crore, Lalu has Maruti 800

RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, a regional heavyweight with a major influence on national politics, has the lowest assets among the top three contenders for the prestigious Saran Lok Sabha seat in Bihar.

A politician who unrelentingly boasts of being a poor cowherd’s son, Mr Yadav has movable assets worth only Rs 12 lakh, including a Maruti 800 car purchased in 1991 and a military jeep, he said in an affidavit while filing his nomination papers on Saturday. The current market prices of the car and the jeep are shown as Rs 15,000 and Rs 10,000 respectively in the affidavit.

Mr Yadav faces the BJP’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy and the BSP’s Saleem Parvez in the electoral arena in Saran. Both Mr Rudy and Mr Parvez, according to their affidavits, are wealthier than Mr Yadav.

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North Korea’s rocket may be shot down by Japan

Japan may order its military to prepare to shoot down a North Korean rocket if it threatens to hit the country, media reports said on Wednesday, ahead of a meeting to discuss the plan.

The isolated Pyongyang regime has said it will launch a communications satellite over Japanese territory in early April, but the United States and its Asian allies suspect the launch is a long-range ballistic missile test.

Tokyo, which has developed a missile defence system with the United States, has warned it will shoot down any object — a missile or any debris — if it threatens to hit Japanese ter ritory. North Korea says it would regard a rocket intercept as an act of war.

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English April gives Indian Premier League to South Africa

Suspense over the second edition of the Indian Premier League ended on Tuesday with the announcement in Johannesburg that six South African cities will play host to the event, which will now start one week later than scheduled — April 18 — and culminate in the final on May 24.

With the government keen to show the nation off as a safe destination for international sport — South Africa are also hosts of the 2010 Fifa World Cup — the IPL proposal is learnt to have received strong official backing in Pretoria.

IPL commissioner Lalit Modi met officials of Cricket South Africa (CSA), including chief executive Gerald Majola, on Tuesday afternoon and a consensus was quickly arrived at in Johannesburg. The decision also eliminated England’s chances of hosting the event with the weather being a key factor.

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Zardari is world’s fifth biggest looser

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is one of the topmost losers of the world, a media report said. Mr Zardari, losing a political battle to Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif on reinstatement of judges, has been listed the fifth biggest loser in the world by the Foreign Policy magazine. Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is one of the topmost losers of the world, a media report said.

Mr Zardari, losing a political battle to Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif on reinstatement of judges sacked by former President Pervez Musharraf, has been listed the fifth biggest loser in the world by the famous Foreign Policy magazine.

“Mr Zardari was known to be a bad guy long before he became Pakistan’s President. Many of the closest friends of his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, could not stand him,” said the magazine.

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Jade has a quiet death

British Reality TV star Jade Goody, who battled cancer in the public eye, passed away on Sunday morning in her sleep.

The 27-year-old died at 3.14 am on Mother’s Day at her Upshire, Essex, home. Her mother, Jackiey Budden, and her husband, Jack Tweed, 21, were at her side at the time of her death. No date for funeral has been released as yet.

Ms Budden, who requested privacy for family and friends to grieve, said: “My beautiful daughter is at peace.”

Goody’s publicist Max Clifford, who announced her death to the media, said:

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Bulletproof travel for Indian Premier League stars

Cricketers play ing in next month’s Indian Premier League will move around in bulletproof jeeps and buses being assembled by a Punjab firm.

IPL’s South African security agency, Nicholls Steyn and Associates, has asked Jalandhar’s Laggar Industries Ltd, which makes bulletproof vehicles, to prepare 64 jeeps and 16 buses for use by cricketers. A senior intelligence official confirmed to this newspaper: “Yes, the agency approached the Jalandhar company for armoured vehicles... After the militant attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, the government as well as the organisers can’t afford to compromise on the security of the players.”

The official added: “Matches are expected to be held in eight cities.

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Girls wearing jeans sent home by Sikh college

In a rather disturbing reminder of the dress codes forced on women by Khalistani terrorists in the 1980s, authorities in educational institutions run by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee are similarly advising girl students wearing jeans or sleeveless shirts to “go home and change”.

Though the gurdwara body does not have any written rule on the matter, its employees in schools and colleges across Punjab insist hip-hugging denims and bare female arms are too provocative and liable to distract male teachers and students. There have been many recent instances at Ludhiana’s highly-sought after Guru Nanak Engineering College, where women students were turned out of classrooms and told to stay away unless they went home and changed into “more respectable attire”.

SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar actually acknowledges the unwritten rule. “We discourage girls from wearing anything other than the usual salwar kameez because Sikh religion doesn’t permit dresses like jeans, pants or other similar wear.”

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Delhi, Jaipur, Vizag may be off Indian Premier League list

While the Indian Premier League awaits the green signal to the second edition of the Twenty20 event from the home ministry, reports emerged on Tuesday claiming that New Delhi, Jaipur and Visakhapatnam had been dropped as venues in the schedule.

The latest itinerary revision submitted to the home ministry on Tuesday has left out these three venues as the respective state governments could not guarantee security owing to the General Elections during that period, sources were quoted as saying.

The sources said the new schedule has taken into consideration the security constraints of all the state governments. The ministry confirmed on Tuesday that it had received the new schedule.

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Adivasi victim gets Lok Sabha ticket

Laxmi Oraon, an adivasi who was stripped and assaulted at a 2007 rally for seeking tribal status, has been nominated for the Tezpur Lok Sabha seat by the Assam United Democratic Front.

“I may win or lose ... but I’ll continue to fight for the rights of adivasis working as labourers in Assam’s 800-odd tea gardens,” she said. Laxmi, who completed school-leaving exams in 2008, added: “Adivasis will no longer take exploitation lying down... My humiliation didn’t end with the stripping and beating. It followed me to the examination centre, where I was taunted and teased.”

AUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal said Laxmi was chosen as she is a “living symbol of adivasi exploitation”.

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Defiant Sharif heads for Islamabad sit-in

Pakistan’s pow erful Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on Sunday put pressure on the civilian leadership to swiftly end the chaos engulfing the country, with its most populous province — Punjab — almost in total revolt, with its police chief and his deputy as well as some senior government officials resigning from their posts and joining angry protesters in their march towards Islamabad. The marchers plan to begin a massive sit-in outside the Pakistan Parliament on Monday.

President Asif Ali Zardari’s arch-rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, defied house arrest orders to walk out of his Lahore home to lead the marchers to the federal capital. He told reporters that his Long March was the most momentous protest in Pakistan’s history since the freedom struggle which led to the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947.

“After 1947, this is the second time that the country needs you,” Mr Sharif told hundreds of cheering supporters, calling for the immediate ouster of President Zardari, who he said had “let down and betrayed” him.

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Fans reject sixth Potter film at test screening

Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince has been criticised as “pointless” by fans who went to its secret test screening in the US.

The sixth adventure in the Harry Potter series sees Daniel Radcliffe as adolescent wizard Harry, learning to crush his enemy Voldemort.

According to disappointed fans, the film, due to be released on July 17, made key characters and plot lines vanish from author J.K. Rowling’s bestseller.

“The film is dominated by romance: Ron with Lavender Brown, Ginny with Dean Thomas, Hermione’s growing love for Ron, Ron’s potion-affected desire for Romilda Vane, and ultimately Harry and Ginny,” the Sun quoted a fan as saying

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Dalai: China made Tibet ‘hell on earth’

Fifty years after Tibet’s failed uprising against the annexation by China, the Dalai Lama has said the five decades of Communist rule has turned his Himalayan homeland into a “hell on Earth,” brought on by “death” and “destruction.” The Tibetan spiritual leader told a congregation of thousands at the Tsuglag Khang (main temple) in Dharamsala, his home in exile, that his patience with the Chinese leadership was beginning to wear thin.

Accusing China of deliberately building a climate of fear through its violent campaigns since 1959, he said: “These thrust Tibetans into such depths of suffering and hardship that they literally experienced hell on earth.” He added: “The immediate result of these campaigns was the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans.”

“The past 50 years,” the Dalai Lama told his captivated listeners from around the world, “have brought untold suffering and destruction to the land and people of Tibet. Even today, Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear and the Chinese authorities remain constantly suspicious of them.

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Prime Minister-Obama meet April 2

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to meet US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the Group of Twenty (G-20) summit in London on April 2.

Dr Singh’s meeting with the new US President will be his first since Mr Obama’s inauguration on January 20. Foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon began talks in Washington on Monday to lay the ground for a meeting between the two principals.

While the focus of the summit will be on growth, jobs, financial stability and regulation, Dr Singh and Mr Obama are expected to discuss a host of bilateral, regional and global issues connected to security and terrorism.

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Charles had a third woman in his life

If you think that there are only two women in Prince Charles’ life, Princess Diana and Camilla, here’s some more information — Britain’s king-in waiting had a third woman in his life. Charles fell in love with Janet Jetkins in 1975 when he was 26 and she was 30. At that time, the Welsh-born blonde was working as a receptionist at British consulate in Canada, his love letters, written to her, has revealed.

In one of the letters, Charles writes to Jetkins: “I would have thought your apartment is the quietest place. If we went out the press would be on to it in a flash and that would be misery.” Writing about failed marriages, the Prince of Wales says, “Making a mistake like that is, frankly, something which concerns me enormously.”

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Global Sale for Satyam

The endgame for the sale of fraud-hit Satyam has begun, with the Securities and Exchange Board of India giving its approval to a plan submitted by the company’s new board to offer 51 per cent stake to a strategic investor through a combination of auction and open offer.

Most of the companies interested in acquiring Satyam, however, reacted with caution, saying that they will require much more information on Satyam’s financial status before taking a decision.

According to the Sebi approved stake sale plan, the Satyam board will make a preferential allotment of 31 per cent stake to the winner of a global competitive bidding process. The winner will then acquire another 20 per cent stake from the market through an open offer at the same price paid for the preferential allotment.

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The pirated DVDs you buy fund Dawood terror

That Dawood Ibrahim’s underworld empire is involved in Bollywood in many ways is a well-known fact. Now, a report has revealed that it is also deeply involved in film piracy, the profits of which go towards actively funding terrorist activities.

The research report “Film Piracy, Organised Crime, and Terrorism”, released by the California-based RAND Corporation, documents the startling nexus between organised crime and intellectual property theft.

In the report, D-Company, confirmed by RAND to be operating out of Pakistan, figures not only as a big conductor of the film piracy business but also as a key link between piracy and terror funding.

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Suicide by retired air marshal, a ’71 war vet

A highly-decorated retired Indian Air Force officer, believed to be depressed and lonely in his advancing years, committed suicide at his retirement home in Chandigarh on Wednesday.

Air Vice-Marshal Manjit Singh Dhillon, 69, a retired helicopter pilot who was decorated with a Vir Chakra for executing several precarious evacuation missions during the 1971 India-Pakistan war, shot himself through the chin with his old hunting gun at home in Chandigarh’s Sector 35.

The police said the officer’s wife was also home but in another room when he loaded his 12 bore gun, sat on a stool and calmly fired the weapon. His wife, Harpreet, rushed in on hearing the gunshot, only to find her husband dead and lying in a pool of blood.

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Indian Premier League will be on schedule, no clash with poll

Tuesday’s unprecedented attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore threatened briefly to cast a shadow over the 2009 season of the Indian Premier League even as it dealt a devastating blow to Pakistan’s hopes of playing host to its share of the 2011 World Cup. With nationwide elections slated between April 16 and May 13 — right alongside the IPL — there were worries that security may become an issue for the inter-city Twenty20 tournament as well.

IPL commissioner Lalit Modi, in a late evening statement, said that a fresh match schedule was being worked out to avoid election dates and match days running into one another. “Post the Election Commission announcing the polling dates, the IPL is working on the schedule to ensure there is no clash with election dates. We will ensure that there will be no games 24 to 48 hours prior to the polling dates across all the nine match venues in the country,” he said.

A reworked schedule of IPL matches will be announced in the next 24 hours, Mr Modi added. Separately, national cricket board secretary N. Srinivasan said it would not be possible to shift the entire IPL calendar, but that matches would not clash with election days.

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One lakh Indians to return from United States in next 3-5 years

As many as 100,000 Indians and an equal number of Chinese will return to their native countries in the next three to five years, a move that will greatly boost their economies and undermine technological innovation in America, a new US study warns.

The study on immigration by a team at Duke, Harvard and Berkeley universities led by Vivek Wadhwa, an Indian-American technology entrepreneur turned academic, says “America’s loss is the world’s gain”.

There are no hard numbers available on how many have returned, but anecdotal evidence shows that this is in the tens of thousands, says Mr Wadhwa, executive-in residence for the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University and fellow at the Labour and Worklife Programme at Harvard Law School.

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6 ringleaders identified, 1,000 face murder case

Six Bangladesh Rifles personnel were identified by the police on Sunday as the ringleaders of the 33-hour mutiny that wiped out nearly the entire batch of Army officers serving in the paramilitary force.

The police on Sunday filed murder charges against 1,000 members of the BDR, initially suspecting six of them to have led the rebellion. “We accused them of killing the officers and their family members in a planned manner,” an official at Dhaka’s Lalbagh police station said.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed visited the headquarters of the Bangladesh Army on Sunday and spent three hours there to calm frayed tempers after the BDR mutiny, while the government decided to form special tribunals for a quick trial of those involved in the massacre of Army officers.

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