Animal rights activists wearing prisoner suits and dog, rabbit and rat masks sit in a cage during a protest in front of the Air India headquarters in New Delhi yesterday. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals organised the protest against the alleged role of Air India in shipping animals for experimentation and the airline’s decision to reverse its ban on transporting animals to l

  New Delhi: The cabinet yesterday approved a special recruitment drive to fill up vacancies reserved under the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) quota, an official statement said. According to the statement, 75,522 vacancies had been  identified by end of March 2012. Of these, 44,427 were in the direct recruitment quota and 3

New Delhi: As many as 56,700 Indians face deportation from Saudi Arabia in the next one-and-half months and ten officials have been despatched to the kingdom to help the Indian mission prepare emergency certificates for their exit, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said yesterday. “As of now, 56,700 Indians have registered with the Indian mission for getting exit permits as th

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged yesterday to crack down on corruption in the defence sector after a string of recent graft scandals left his government facing renewed calls to step down. The premier said he was committed to making the process of buying arms and other military hardware more “transparent, smooth, efficient and less vulnerable to unethical practices&rdqu

NEW DELHI: India’s sports minister yesterday branded as “shameful” the spot-fixing scandal involving the arrest of three cricketers, including Test fast bowler Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, and 11 bookmakers. Police last week arrested Sreesanth and teammates Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila from the Rajasthan Royals, accusing them of deliberately bowling badly in exchange for t

Mumbai: Wholesalers, retailers and manufacturers across Maharashtra called off their month-long agitation against the local body tax (LBT) imposed by civic agencies, following talks with Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan here yesterday. The local body tax is imposed on goods traded and services offered in the jurisdiction of a civic body. At a meeting of trade associations (of wholesaler

Washington: Twelve-year-old Indian-origin boy Sathwik Karnik won the 2013 National Geographic Bee by correctly naming Chimborazo, a peak in Ecuador, as the farthest point on earth from the centre of the earth. A seventh grader from King Philip Regional Middle School in Norfolk, Massachusetts, in the US, he won the 25th edition of the bee in a heated final against 13-year-old Conrad Oberhaus

Bollywood actors Deepika Padukone (right) and Ranbir Kapoor pose during a promotional event for the forthcoming film Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani in Mumbai, late on Tuesday.

New Delhi: Ajit Chandila of Rajasthan Royals was about to spot fix in another Indian Premier League (IPL) match too, for which he had taken Rs1.5m from a Punjab-based bookie, when he was arrested on May 16, police claimed here yesterday. During interrogation Chandila has revealed the name of another bookie, Deepak Kumar, 35, a resident of Patiala, in Punjab. “Kumar contacted Chand

NEW DELHI: Afghan President Hamid Karzai said yesterday he had given a “wish list” of military equipment to India during a visit this week, presenting a conundrum for New Delhi as it weighs whether arming the Afghan army is in its interests. India wants to stabilise Afghanistan and is concerned about the resurgence of militant groups after foreign combat troops leave in 2014.

Agartala: A consumer court in Tripura has ordered Cadbury India to pay a compensation of $541 to a complainant who found an iron pin inside a chocolate bar made by the company. But the company said it disagreed with the findings of the consumer court and would file an appeal against the order in the higher court. “The quality and safety of our products is our highest priority. Cad

New Delhi: The UPA is committed to transparency and allegations of impropriety in telecom spectrum and coal blocks allocations are being investigated and wrongdoers will be punished, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday. Speaking at a function at his official residence to mark four years of the United Progressive Alliance-II government, the prime minister said the government has int

Lucknow: A man killed his three children yesterday in Uttar Pradesh and committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a speeding bus, police said. He suspected his wife to be in an illicit relation with one of his relatives. The incident took place in the Robertsganj area of Sonebhadra district, over 400km from here, when on pretext of taking them out for a treat Babulal strangulated his th

Kochi: Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has won the prestigious United Nations Public Service Award for his mass contact programme initiative, an official release said yesterday. The Kerala chief minister bagged the first place in the category ‘Preventing and Combating Corruption in the Public Service’ from the Asia and Pacific region. The second place was bagged by South Kor

Washington: India has sought from the US access to Pakistani-American 26/11 Mumbai terror attack convict David Headley and his accomplice Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana, both found guilty of supporting Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Indian Home Minsiter Sushilkumar Shinde during a meeting with US Attorney General Eric Holder here Tuesday is reported to have ra

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang shakes hands with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a ceremonial reception at the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi yesterday.  NEW DELHI: India and China will study new ways to ease tensions on their ill-defined border after an army standoff in the Himalayas, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said yesterday on his first official foreign trip

Lucknow: An FIR was yesterday registered here against social networking site Facebook on a complaint that claimed a group on the site exhorts people to slaughter cows, police said. The site was booked under penal provisions and under the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, on the complaint filed by senior police officer Amitabh Thakur.  In his complaint filed at Gomtinagar polic

New Delhi: A 17-year-old girl was kidnapped and gang-raped here by three people, including two neighbours, after being giving sedatives, police said yesterday. The incident took place on May 17 in east Delhi’s New Usmanpur area, police said. “Two of the three accused are minors. The third accused has been identified as Ajay who has been arrested. Ajay’s younger brother

New Delhi: A man accused of rape can be convicted only if he has a malafide intention of not fulfilling a promise of marrying the victim, the Supreme Court yesterday said, describing the crime as an assault on the “body and privacy of the victims”. “An accused can be convicted for rape only if the court reaches a conclusion that the intention of the accused was malafide, a

Mumbai: Two elderly and ailing convicts in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case were respectively brought on a stretcher and a wheelchair to surrender before a TADA Special Court here yesterday to serve their sentence. While Zaibunissa Kazi, 75, suffering from multiple ailments including cancer, was brought on a wheelchair, Sharif ‘Dada’ Parkar, 80, was brought in an ambulance on