Not being the “professional killers” has been seen by the Supreme Court as a valid reason for reducing the death sentence into rigorous life sentence of two “supari killers” of a Jharkhand MLA. They were hired by a coal mafia to bump the legislator for taking on them and exposing their massive coal theft racket.

The Food Security Bill may not be listed amongst the bills meant for introduction during the forthcoming Budget Session of Parliament. But Union minister for food K.V. Thomas on Saturday said that that the government is ready to introduce the bill and that 60 to 70 per cent of the population would benefit from it.

With the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) working overtime to protect the tiger population, poachers have now shifted their attention to killing leopards and selling their body parts as tiger parts.

A special CBI court on Saturday sent former Commonwealth Games Organising Committee chief Suresh Kalmadi’s aide Shekhar Deorukhkar and businessman Binu Nanu to judicial custody of 14 days.

Which can be a good model for democratic transformation in the Arab world, India or Turkey? If the question surprised foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, he did not show it.

The CBI has now begun probing the banking loan of `1,200 crores which was given by certain public sector banks to Swan Telecom (now Etisalat-DB Telecom Private of Shahid Balwa) for the payment of Unified Access Service (UAS) licence fees. Sources said the agency is probing the role of former telecom minister A. Raja, his associates and certain former as well as serving officials of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in helping Swan Telecom and other private companies obtain these loans just a few days before the allotment of UAS licences.

The Orissa government on Saturday stepped up efforts to secure release of young IAS officer R. Vineel Krishna and junior engineer Pabitra Mohan Majhi from Maoist custody, even as the designated interlocutors arrived here in the evening to set in motion the negotiation process to gain their freedom.

After getting assurances from the Railways that two ongoing railway projects in Bihar were not being shelved, the Bihar government has submitted its wishlist for the upcoming Railway Budget for 2011-12 and sought enough funds for completion of all ongoing rail projects in the state.

They began with a bang and have ended with not even a whimper. The dalit-based political parties in Uttar Pradesh that had positioned themselves against the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party, seems to have lost the energy and the will to keep up the fight.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi described the BJP’s report on “Indian Black Money Abroad in Secret Banks and Tax Havens” as “reckless and baseless”.
The Congress president was surprised how a leader of the stature of Mr L.K. Advani presided over a function held to release the “so called” document. Mrs Gandhi, also