Telecom companies and their industry body COAI have asked telecom regulator Trai to blacklist telemarketers, who violate ‘Do-Not-Call Registry’ and sent unsolicited SMSs or calls to subscribers.

India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), has reportedly kept Major Nirvikar Singh, who worked as an ADC to former Punjab governor Gen. (retd) S.F. Rodrigues, away from sensitive assignments after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) booked him in a disproportionate assets case.

In a move to tame the inflationary pressures, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) hiked the rate at which banks borrow from it (repo rate) and the rate at which it pays banks which parked their funds with it (reverse repo) by 0.25 per cent but these are unlikely to impact housing, personal and auto loans immediately.

Both the Congress and the NCP on Friday tried to scotch the rumours that agriculture, food and consumer affairs minister Sharad Pawar’s wings would be clipped in the next Cabinet reshuffle by asking him to shed his ministerial responsibility in the wake of his taking over as the International Cricket Council (ICC) president.

Reliance Power and Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL), both part of the Anil Ambani Group, are considering a merger. Both the companies have a board meeting on July 4 to consider merging RNRL into Reliance Power. The swap ratio and other details haven’t been announced yet. The combined market capitalisation of the two firms was over Rs 52,000 crore on Friday.

Civil aviation minister Praful Patel on Friday blasted delays in according environmental clearances for the Navi Mumbai airport project and said that one cannot be “overly obsessive like developed nations” (about adoption of the strictest environment standards). Expressing his “anguish” without naming environment minister Jairam

Cristiano Ronaldo may have packed his bags and gone home, but his alleged lady love – socialite heiress Paris Hilton – and Hollywood heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio are just a few of showbiz’s big names to have descended on South Africa as the Fifa World Cup enters the home straight.

The Supreme Court on Friday warned the private professional institutions in the country against lacking in faculty standards despite charging high fee from the students and even threatened closure of those institutions not adhering to the set standards.

In the Rainbow Nation, Fernando Torres has looked nothing like the man who has been haunting Premier League defenders for the past few years. It’s not just that his long blonde locks have given way for a trimmed look.

Claiming an unprecedented unity of the Opposition parties, JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav on Friday appealed to all the trade unions, youth organisations to lend their support to the July 5 Bharat Bandh called by more than 13 parties. However, the RJD-LJP in Bihar combine and BSP in UP have gone separate ways to protest the hike in the petroleum products.