India

Patna/New Delhi, June 20: Struggling to find a candidate of its own to contest the presidential election, the BJP-led NDA found itself in acute embarrassment on Tuesday as alliance partner Shiv Sena came out openly in support of the UPA nominee Pranab Mukherjee. Sena supremo Bal Thackeray made known his party position through party mouthpiece Saamna: “Let bygones be bygones. Let us unanimously

New Delhi, June 19: Congress on Monday snubbed Digvijaya Singh, saying that its most vocal general secretary was not authorized to speak on the party's behalf. "Digvijay Singh is not officially authorized to speak on behalf of the party," the AICC said in a media release. The unusual statement was seen as reflection of the leadership's annoyance with the senior leader, who has been quite voluble

Pune, June 19: Villages in India may lack good roads, power, drinking water and sanitation. But the leaders of some of those villages in Maharashtra showed up with status symbol cars at a convention organised in Pune by Shard Pawar's party, the NCP. Among those who addressed the local leaders were senior NCP politicians including party chief Sharad Pawar. During the interaction, they imparted tips

New Delhi, June 19: Two years after Apple unveiled iPad and Steve Jobs declared the beginning of post-PC era, Microsoft formally entered the tablet market on June 19. At an event in Los Angeles, the company announced 10.6-inch tablet called Surface. Microsoft, however, did not announce any prices. The company said that prices will be competitive with other tablets running on ARM processors

New Delhi, June 18: In an official statement, former President A P J Abdul Kalam has said he will not contest the presidential election 2012 to be held on July 19. The former President said he was aware of the developments in the run-up to the elections but had never aspired for a second term as President. Kalam also conveyed the same to senior BJP leader L K Advani a short while ago, PTI reported

New York, June 18: Internet giant Google has reported a sharp rise of 49% in online content censorship from India as it said the trend of blockage were increasing from governments round the world, more surprisingly from Western democracies. Google said it had received more than 1,000 requests from governments around the world in the second half of last year to take down items such as YouTube

New Delhi, June 18: Congress appears to be considering giving a second term to Vice-president Hamid Ansari, who narrowly lost out to finance minister Pranab Mukherjee in the race for UPA nomination for the Rashtrapati Bhawan. An indication to that effect came on Sunday, when Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said in a TV interview that the party leadership could continue Ansari as VP. To a question

Hyderabad, June 18: Virtually sounding a warning to the striking Air India pilots, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said the government is not waiting for the pilots to return to work but making plans to move ahead. Reminding the pilots and other employees that their survival was linked to Air India, he said that nobody is going to give anymore public money to the airline and "they will not

New Delhi, June 18: The Indian stock markets on Monday are expected to react positively to the Greece results and also domestic factors. The Reserve Bank of India will announce its mid-term credit policy review on Monday. Majority of bankers and economist polled by CNBC-TV18 say that the RBI will cut repo rate and reverse repo rate by 25 basis points. This means home loans could become cheaper

Kolkata, June 18: A day after supporting APJ Abdul Kalam as the presidential candidate on Facebook, Mamata Banerjee on Sunday raised her voice against "corruption and back-room dealings" on the social networking site. Her latest post on Facebook hinted that the last two days' hectic political activities over presidential poll had something to do with "money, power and scams". The Trinamool