Indian News Headlines...(21/10/08)_

Sachin Tendulkar adjudged best Asian ODI batsman
Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar was named the best Asian one-day batsman at the inaugural Asian cricket Council (ACC) awards ceremony in Karachi on Saturday night.Tendulkar, who is recovering from a groin injury, could not make it to the ceremony and India ODI captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni collected the award on his behalf.Three Sri Lankans walked away with top awards with wicketkeeper-batsman Kumar Sangakkara receiving the best Asian Test batsman award while country-mates Muttiah Muralitharan and Farveez Maharoof named the best Asian Test and ODI bowlers respectively.Former India and Pakistan captains Sunil Gavaskar and Imran Khan were also honoured with special awards named "legendary cricketers" of both countries.The ACC also gave away a special award of "best administrator" to Colonel (retd) Nur Khan, former President of the Pakistan Cricket Board, who played a significant role in forming the ACC.The septuagenarian Nur Khan who took his award from former Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga got a standing ovation from the gathering at the ceremony.Khan, who had also remained President of Pakistan Hockey and Squash Federations, is credited of playing a big role in promoting Pakistan and Indian cricket at the world level and also producing a lineage of great sportsmen.PCB Chairman Nasim Ashraf, who took over as ACC President, said the awards were meant to honour and recognise the outstanding performers of the continent."Our sportsmen need to be recognised and rewarded for their achievements specially when Asia has now become a powerhouse in world cricket," he said.

Arrest of political leader sparks protests in Mumbai
Police in the western Indian state of Maharashtra have arrested the head of a local right-wing party after attacks on north Indian migrants, sparking protests around the state capital Mumbai.Raj Thackeray, who heads the small but vocal Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), was arrested earlier Tuesday in Ratnagiri, a police spokesman said, and was being brought to Mumbai, India's financial hub.MNS supporters had attacked north Indian railway job aspirants in the city Sunday. They want more jobs for locals in the state, and have protested the presence of north Indian migrants who come to the state in search of work.Thackeray's supporters were following the police convoy to Mumbai, TV channels reported. There were also reports of attacks on taxis in Mumbai and at toll booths in the suburbs, and a heavy police presence on the streets and in train stations.The police spokesman said everything was "under control."There have been growing calls for checking MNS, which has previously attacked migrant taxi drivers as well as workers in construction and manufacturing sites in the state, driving many away and causing delays to projects.Thackeray, who was briefly arrested in February for inciting violence against migrant workers, formed MNS in 2005 after splitting from Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist party headed by his uncle, the controversial Bal Thackeray.Shiv Sena, best-known for its anti-immigrant rhetoric, believes Mumbai belongs to the Hindu Marathi community, but it has been less millitant recently than the MNS.Recently, MNS was reprimanded by a city court for forcing shops to display signs in the local Marathi language.Monday, the state parliament was adjourned after noisy protests by members calling for the arrest of Thackeray.Maharashtra has long been a magnet for migrants from other states, including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, two of India's poorest states. Less than half of Mumbai's 17 million residents are from the state

Indian news headline...

Delhi Metro flyover collapses, four dead

At least four people were killed and 25 injured when a part of an under-construction flyover of the Delhi Metro collapsed here Sunday morning, officials said.
The accident occurred at around 7 a.m. in Laxmi Nagar locality of east Delhi when a machine aiding in the construction of the over-bridge collapsed, leading to a part of the flyover coming down, a Delhi Metro official said.
A Blueline bus plying on route number 39, one crane of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC)and several cars are trapped under the debris of the flyover. Delhi Police has taken over the rescue operation and at least 10 people have been rescued and taken to nearby hospitals, the official added.
'This has happened for the first time in the decade-old history of Delhi Metro. We are asking AFCONS (the private firm in-charge of the segment) about the engineering failure,' the official said.

Now, Amitabh gets the home blues

"Inactivity is a curse. Deliberate inactivity, even worse...You get up without an aim. You attend to papers and morning formalities without an anxiety of what is needed to be done next,' Bachchan Sunday wrote on his blog www.bigb.bigadda.com from his Prateeksha residence.
'You remain sluggish and carefree. There is no schedule. Nowhere particular to go. To see, to meet, to administer. Time, therefore, is insufficient."
"There is no routine...When will I do something that is routine bound... I must be in routine. In activity. In work. In camera," the blog further read.
He also condemned his idleness as a reaper of negative thoughts and wanted to get back to planned "activity".
"In idleness there is only thought which harbors destruction. It is passive. Negative and undesirable...I need to breathe activity. I shall become a lifeless morsel to be devoured, if not," he wrote.
The superstar slammed giving up in life due to various reasons as "failure" and termed it "abject resignation".
"I must resign only when my desire to not breathe prevails. Right now, I am desirous of a deep breath," he added.
Diagnosed with incisional hernia, Bachchan had been in the Lilavati hospital for a week and was discharged Friday.

Indian News Headlines..(16/10/08)

Rebound for Indian Stock Market?

Due to the massive increase in food and energy prices, India's headline inflation has been surging rapidly. Wholesale prices rose from 3.83% in late-2007 to a multi-year record high of 11.91% in early-July 2008. Duggal expects commodity prices and, consequently, inflation to moderate as global demand slows. He also expects the tightening monetary policy of the Reserve Bank of India to help ease inflationary pressures.

"As the recent interest rate hikes need time to take effect, inflation may rise further before peaking later this year, and then fall," says Duggal, who is an investment director at Halbis, the active-investment specialist of HSBC Global Asset Management.

Fear of a severe economic downturn has been one of the major triggers of the recent correction in India's stock market, which has been the case for most markets in the region. Slowing global growth and soaring oil prices have led to lower growth estimates. India's GDP growth is expected to slow from 9.1% in the fiscal year 2008 to around 7.5% to 8% in the fiscal year 2009.

Markets lose all gains

Markets were back in the red on Wednesday as investors begin to face the likelihood that serious dislocations will plague the global economy despite the coordinated bailouts. The Sensex lost 654 points to end at 10,889. Shares in New York fell, following markets in Europe and Asia earlier in the day.

HC raps Centre on gay issue

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday pulled up the Centre for relying on religious texts to justify the prohibition on gay sex in the country and asked it to come up with scientific reports to justify it. The Court’s remarks came when the additional solicitor general, P.P. Malhotra was referring to an article condemning gay sex by quoting Bible.

"We should not accept religious literature instead of scientific report," said a bench headed by chief justice A.P. Shah. The bench, also comprising Justice S. Muralidhar, asked the government to place before it the reports of the World Health Organisation on the issue of health hazards arising out of criminalisation of gay sex.

Indian News Headlines..(16/10/08)

Hannah Foster's last words with killer played in court

A London court has heard the last words of British student Hannah Foster, raped and murdered in March 2003, during the course of the trial of the alleged murderer, India-born Maninder Pal Singh Kohli. Hannah's parents, Hilary, 51, and Trevor, 57, and her sister, Sarah, 20, left the public gallery of the Winchester Crown court while the tape was played on Wednesday. Accused Kohli listened to the recording of the two voices on headphones, according to The Guardian.

Hannah's conversation with the person who kidnapped her as she was walking to her home in Southampton was recorded when she secretly called the emergency services number 999. The high school A-level student perhaps thought someone answering the phone would hear their conversation and try to rescue her. Unfortunately for her, the emergency service has a system which disconnects unanswered calls. Her call was disconnected after 50 seconds, but her conversation with the kidnapper during that time went on record. During the 999 call, Hannah answers a man's questions, apparently from a moving vehicle.

A man can be heard asking the student: "You belong this country?" "Yeah," responded Hannah. "England," said the male voice. "Yeah I'm English. Yeah. My name [...] My name is Sarah," she answered. The court earlier heard that Sarah is the name of Hannah's sister.

India Post, Reliance Money deal to sell gold

India Post has tied up with Reliance Money and World Gold Council to sell gold coins through its post office network across the country.

The pilot project has been launched on Wednesday and it will make gold coins available across 100 post offices in four states — Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. However going forward it would be available for sale at all the 155,000 post offices across the country.

Obama not McCain hogs most headlines

Republican presidential contender John McCain had to work extra hard for media coverage over the last week amid an international, headline-stealing whirlwind tour by his Democratic rival Barack Obama.

Some of McCain's manoeuvres have included slamming Obama's Iraq policy and lack of military experience, hinting that he may announce his vice presidential pick and mocking the media's wall-to-wall coverage of Obama's trip to the Middle East and Europe.

McCain has continued a series of townhall meetings across the US, talking up the economy and energy and promising not to leave Iraq until the US can proclaim victory in the five-year-old war.

Indian News Headline

Economic crisis in India is UPA's creation: BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday said that the present economic crisis in the country is not the creation of global financial crisis but because of the mismanagement of the economy by the UPA government.
"The mismanagement of the economy had already led to several major imbalances such as the high fiscal deficit, high current account deficit, elevated inflation levels, and a collapsing real estate sector," the BJP said in a statement.
"None of these is the creation of the recent global financial crisis. All of them are directly the result of the complacency and the cavalier attitude of the UPA government which slept on the wheel while the crisis was brewing, in fact in many ways contributed to it by its acts of omission and commission," the BJP added.
"Why a liquidity crisis today? Is it because of the global crisis?" the party asked. "Certainly not. The liquidity crisis is the UPA government’s own creation," it charged and said that the BJP had always held that the UPA government went about the wrong way to tackle inflation.
"It totally ignored the supply side which was responsible for this inflation. Instead, it went about tightening money supply and raising interest rates which not only sucked liquidity out of the market, it also made money dearer," the BJP reasoned.
It further said that the UPA government took these monetary measures at a time when its own fiscal deficit had reached unsustainable level. "The withdrawal of their investments by the FIIs has added to the problem only in a small way," the BJP said.

Indian News Headline

Bomb blast in Kanpur, four kids injured

As many as six people were injured when a "crude bomb kept on a bicycle" in Kanpur exploded on Tuesday evening.
The incident occurred in Colonelganj, a crowded and communally sensitive area. All the six injured in the low intensity blast are children.
Police have been deployed in the place, which is tense after the explosion.
Hari Prasad Verma, the Senior Superintendent of Police of Kanpur, told CNN-IBN as yet the blast was not being considered as a terrorist attack.
The DG of Kanpur, Vikram Singh said that the crude bomb was probably one which goes off on impact and that is just what happened in Colonelganj.
He refused to speculate on whether the bomb went off accidentally or was set off on purpose to create panic.
One of the reasons why the police is unsure whether it is a bomb blast or not is that there are many fire cracker factories located near the "blast" site and police feel it could be a minor incident in one of the factories.
However, eyewitnesses insist it was a crude bomb kept on a bicycle.
A special committee is being formed to look into the incident.

Apex court rules against keeping reserved seats vacant

The Supreme Court on Tuesday held that the seats reserved for backward category students in the state-run higher educational institutions but left vacant due to their paucity must be diverted to the general category students every year.
A five-judge constitutional bench headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan also held that the cut-off marks for admission for backward category students in a state-run educational institution of higher learning must not be relaxed beyond 10 per cent of the cut-off marks for general category students.