Speculation over the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award finally ended on Thursday, with the sports ministry, sticking to the original list of awardees, named the list of winners to be honoured at Rashtrapati Bhawan on August 31.

The five Indian Army soldiers killed in an ambush in Poonch on August 6 by Pakistani troops may have been sleeping when they were shot dead at point-blank range, television reports claimed Thursday. The Army refused to comment, saying it its “investigation is still on”.

The Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed a flareup as in renewed cross-border skirmishes the facing armies intensely pounded each others’ positions with automatic weapons and mortars again, a day after a Pakistani Army official was killed and another wounded in Skurdu area.

The timeless music of Beethoven, Haydn and Tchaikovsk will reverberate at the historic Mughal Gardens in the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir as the German embassy here plans to hold “Ehsaas-e-Kashmir”, The Kashmir Concert, to pay cultural tribute to Kashmir.

Saina Nehwal shepherded the Hyderabad Hotshots to a comfortable 3-2 victory over the Mumbai Masters in the Indian Badminton League at the Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex at Balewadi here on Thursday. Having registered three wins from four outings, the Hotshots are now at the top of the table with 15 points.

In the face of unrelenting pressure from the Opposition, that has stalled Parliament over the missing files on coal allocations, the government told Parliament on Thursday that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will intervene when the matter is debated on the floor.

The most-sensitive Indo-China border is the only international border with India where not a single bullet has been fired in the past 51 years even after dozens of instances of face-offs between the long range patrols (LRPs) of India and China.

Steven Smith’s maiden Test hundred helped Australia maintain their dominant position on the second day of the Ashes finale at The Oval on Thursday.

The administrative wrangling in the suspended Indian Boxing Federation could end up costing the country’s boxers a chance to compete in this year’s World Championships.

The appointment of former Union law minister Ashwani Kumar as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy to visit Japan with the rank of a Cabinet minister for seven days has raised eyebrows in South Block.