With more bodies recovered by the rescuers, the death toll in last week’s cloudburst and resultant flash floods and mudslides in Leh and its neighbourhood rose to 185 on Wednesday.

The oil spill from MSC Chitra has finally stopped and salvage operations have been started with the help of a floating crane.

In a bid to apply the healing touch to the state’s festering wounds, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday urged the people of Jammu and Kashmir to “give peace a chance”. He also reached out to the state’s youth, asking them to “make a new beginning” along with the assurance that the government would respond in equal measure.

The government on Tuesday stated that it had no plans to frame a law making voting compulsory. Union law and justice minister M. Veerappa Moily stated in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha that the government was not contemplating a law on the subject. “The issue was considered by the Dinesh Goswami Committee on Electoral

External affairs minister S.M. Krishna has said that 26/11 co-conspirator David Coleman Headley’s confessions were in the public domain and Pakistan could not brush them under the carpet.

Telugu Desam Party chief and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu was arrested by the Maharashtra police for allegedly violating prohibitory orders in the Nanded district. Mr Naidu was arrested along with five TDP MPs and seven MLAs. Mr Naidu and his supporters were scheduled to visit Babhali barrage irrigation project in Nanded, which borders AP, for an “inspection”. The TDP has alleged that Maharashtra is building the barrage “illegally”.

The JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav is pinning hope on Opposition unity in the upcoming Parliament Session to corner the UPA government on the issue of price rise. Mr Yadav has expressed hope that all Opposition parties would support the demand of rollback of fuel price hike in Parliament. Mr Yadav is likely to reach out to leaders of all

The Indian Space Research Organisation scored yet another success with its workhorse PSLV placing into orbit the remote sensing satellite Cartosat-2B and four other satellites after a textbook liftoff from the launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here on Monday morning.

Union home minister P. Chidambaram said on Saturday is Islamabad that he had asked his Pakistani counterpart, Mr Rehman Malik, to put more people — ostensibly Lashkar-e-Tayyaba founder Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and his men — on trial for the 26/11 carnage in Mumbai.

The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Friday granted conditional bail to two accused persons in the Satyam Computers multi-crore accounting scam.
A CBI counsel said that S. Gopalakrishnan, the Pricewaterhouse (PWC) auditor who signed the company’s financial reports, and Prabhakara Gupta (accused 10), a former internal auditor, were granted bail.