India

Ahmedabad, May 17: The suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt says the closure report submitted by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) only confirmed his long-standing apprehension that it was only working to “shield” Chief Minister Narendra Modi and other “powerful persons” from legal punishment for their involvement in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. In a letter to SIT Chairman R

New Delhi, May 17: The Indian rupee plummeted to an all time low on Wednesday to 54.46 rupees to the dollar, or up to Rs14.81 to the dirham, breaching its previous record low of 54.39 struck on December 15. Local money exchanges witnessed “higher than normal footfalls” as non residents rushed to remit money as the rupee’s value against the dollar-pegged UAE currency declined to over 20 per cent

New Delhi, May 17: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said that his government was committed to ensuring foolproof security of nuclear power plants but it would be harmful for the country to pass an ordinance against nuclear power. "We must put everything to ensure foolproof safety of the nuclear plants and we will not compromise on it. "But at the same time I would respectfully submit it

Washington, May 17: Citing the example of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, a top US military commander has warned of the dangers posed by "democratisation" of technology in future warfare. "Now, in many ways, technology has been democratised," Marine Corps Lt. Gen. George J. Flynn said at the sixth annual 2012 Joint Warfighting Conference at Virginia Beach Tuesday. Referring to the greater

New Delhi, May 16: A Raja, the prime accused in 2G spectrum scam, today came to Parliament a day after being released from Tihar jail where he was lodged after his arrest in the case on February 1 last year. Dressed in white shirt and black trousers, 49-year-old Raja got down from his car and entered Parliament. He then went went straight to the Lok Sabha. The former Telecom Minister appeared

Ahmedabad, May 16: The former Gujarat Chief Minister, Keshubhai Patel, sharing a platform with Mahagujarat Janata Party (MJP) president Gordhan Jhadafiya has unnerved the ruling BJP in the State. Mr. Patel said the Modi administration had become a “terror” for the people. “It is not the Patels alone, every section of the Gujaratis are living in a state of fear all the time under the present

New Delhi, May 16: If inflation has broken the back of the aam aadmi, the biggest contributor to the pain in the UPA's term is food prices. Government data on wholesale price index (WPI) shows that there has been a 63% increase in the price of all commodities between April 2004, a month before UPA took charge, and April 2012, the latest period for which data is available. But when it comes to food

Lucknow, May 16: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday said that financial irregularities were all-pervasive during the five-year tenure of Mayawati and affected practically every segment of the society. Yadav said that over Rs 40,000 crore were misappropriated in schemes ranging from eco parks to the NRHM. The government would soon set up a commission to bring the probes into

New Delhi, May 16: Things have got tougher for the former Secretary of the Department of Space and former ISRO Chairman, G. Madhavan Nair, with the Comptroller and Auditor-General also finding fault with the way the Space Department, under his stewardship, went about the deal between ISRO's Antrix Corporation and the Bangalore-based private firm, Devas Multimedia. Calling the Antrix-Devas

New Delhi, May 15: In the face of US sanctions on Iran, India has decided to reduce crude oil imports from the gulf nation by 11.1 percent to 15.5 million tonnes during the 2012-13 fiscal, Parliament was informed Tuesday. "The target fixed for import of crude oil from Iran for the year 2012-13 is approximately 15.5 million tonnes," Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas R.P.N. Singh told