India

Mumbai, November 6: Trustees of Mumbai's Haji Ali dargah, the iconic Sufi shrine visited by thousands every year and immortalised in the movies, have barred the entry of women. The Haji Ali Dargah Trust says it's "un-Islamic under the Sharia" for women to visit graves and its decision is final. The trust says women are free to be within thedargah's compound but cannot enter the sanctum sanctorum

New Delhi, November 6: Indians may hate them, but Barack Obama's anti-outsourcing ads are helping him win swing states like Ohio which will determine the US presidency. Over the past few months the US president has released waves of advertisements against his Republican rival, Mitt Romney. These have claimed "Romney outsourced call center jobs to India" and was a "pioneer in outsourcing". Fact

Bhopal, November 5: Hoping to stave off another controversy, BJP chief Nitin Gadkari Monday denied he had compared the intelligence quotient (IQ) level of Swami Vivekananda to that of fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim. Cornered by reporters ovee his speech in Bhopal, Gadkari said: "I did not make any comparison between Swami Vivekananda and Dawood Ibrahim... I said if one used one's intelligence

New Delhi, November 5: Senior BJP leader and top lawyerMahesh Jethmalani has resigned as member of the national executive committee of the party, and has linked his resignation to the continuance of Nitin Gadkari as the party president. In a direct letter written to Nitin Gadkari, Mahesh Jethmalani has said that it is morally and intellectually inappropriate for him to be in the national executive

New Delhi, November 5: The university system was not producing "well-educated" graduates to meet needs of Indian companies, giving an opportunity to firms to enter the sector in the "guise" of training, Minister of State for Higher Education Shashi Tharoor on Monday said. He also said that the national education policy in the past has been out of step with the times. "The major problem remains

New Delhi, November 5: Amidst a row over CAG audit of Reliance Industries' KG-D6 gas field spendings, Petroleum Minister M Veerappa Moily today said audit is a contractual obligation and the company will abide by it. "I have already gone on record to say that it is a contractual relationship between the government and the respective contracting parties... Audit (of spending on oil and gas fields)

Lucknow, November 5: In a major relief for former UP chief minister and BSP supremo Mayawati, the Allahabad High Court today dismissed petitions against her in the Taj Corridor case. The Lucknow bench of the court also dismissed the petitions against her cabinet colleague Naseemuddin Siddiqui. Passing the order, the bench comprising justices Imtiyaz Murtaza and Ashwani Kumar Singh said all

Hyderabad, November 5: The old city of Hyderabad remained tense Monday after incidents of violence the night before over reported attempts to expand a place of worship abutting the Charminar monument, police said. Many shops remained closed Monday, and a holiday was declared in many schools and colleges. A policeman was injured, six police vehicles and a few shops were damaged as people pelted

Lucknow, November 5: In a major relief for the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Monday dismissed the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that challenged the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to refuse to initiate prosecution of BSP chief in the Rs 17 crore Taj corridor scam. The high court dismissed all the six petitions seeking to

Hyderabad, November 5: Twenty-two people have died in coastal Andhra Pradesh as heavy rains continued to lash the region in the after effect of the Cyclone Nilam. Coastal Andhra Pradesh has been witnessing heavy rainfall over the past 48 hours. Vishakapatnam, Prakasam, East Godavari and Viziana-garam have received close to 25 cm of rainfall since Saturday. People from low lying areas have been