The first batch of Haj pilgrims left for Jeddah on Saturday. The batch comprised of 270 people who boarded the Saudi Arabian airlines flight from Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai.
 
A large number of people, including representatives of political parties and officials, ...

Professor Yash Pal has been conferred with UNESCO award for popularising science. The annual Kalinga Prize was given to the Indian professor along with a Vietnamese professor, a Tunisian expert in water management and the organisation responsible for Spain's national park system.
 
Kochiro ...

Eminent journalist Prabhash Joshi succumbed to a heart attack on Thursday night. He was 72. Joshi, who was complaining of heart attack, had passed away, when he was admitted around 11.30 pm.
 
He is survived by wife Usha Joshi, two sons, Sandeep and Sopan, daughter Sonal and mother ...

Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, who now leads the Unique Identification Database Authority of the nation, will become the first India to be honoured with the Legend in Leadership Award of Yale University.
 
The award of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute will be presented to ...

The central government is yet to decide on a new chief information commissioner of India (CIC), almost two weeks after Wajahat Habibullah quit the post to take up his new assignment as RTI watchdog in Jammu and Kashmir.
 
A committee consisting of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Leader of ...

Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan and 20 other Supreme Court judges have made their assets public on a website. It also has the information related to the assets of Justice B N Agrawal, who retired from service on Oct 15.
 
"The above declaration of assets is purely on voluntary ...

Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and social activist Anna Hazare are among several people who have urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to appoint the country's first woman police officer, Kiran Bedi, as the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC).
 
The other persons who have put forward the same ...

It is 25 years since India lost one of the moist efficient and brilliant leaders in her history. This is the day when the Iron Lady of India, Indira Gandhi, was shot dead by Sikh extremists, as a protest to the entry of Indian Army into the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984.
 
Thousands ...

Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao has cited that Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is "free to go anywhere in the country" and asserted that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India.
 
"The Dalai Lama is a respected religious and spiritual figure. He is free ...

Even though it had been the birthday for the Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, it was just another day for him with his hands full of business. He is now 86.
 
The day began as usual with a slight variation from the daily routine when his wife K. Vasumathy gave him a glass of ...

Renowned, veteran economist K K Subramanion passed away early on Friday morning at a private hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. He was 75.
 
He was an honorary fellow at the Centre for Development Studies. He became a fellow of CDS during the mid-80s after he quit Sardar Patel Institute for ...

Dr. Kamla Beniwal, who had been Rajasthan’s deputy CM, has taken oath as the new governor of Tripura. She took the oath from senior judge of Guwahati High Court Amitava Roy at Raj Bhawan.
 
"Dr. Beniwal is the first woman governor of any northeastern state," a senior Tripura ...

The AGP won just one seat in the parliamentary elections, while the BJP seized the opportunity of the alliance to win four seats.
 
In the 2004 elections, the AGP and the BJP had won two seats each - there was no electoral tie up then.
 
"We were vehemently opposed to the ...

The National Commission for Women has decided to form certain guidelines for the airline industry, which will ensure that the female employees have better working conditions. This decision has been adopted by the NCW in waked of the increasing number of complaints of the female employees of the ...

The 'Culture in Balance' Award for the year 2009 was given away to 'Art of Living' founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar by the World Culture Forum in Germany. He was presented with the honour for promoting Hindu culture.
 
"Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was conferred with the award in recognition of his ...

L.C. Gupta, secretary of the Badminton Association of India (BAI) passed away on Friday after prolonged illness. He was suffering from various physical complications.
 
Gupta, 79, is survived by three sons and a daughter. He held the post of BAI secretary since 1994. A former shuttler, Gupta ...

Veteran cricket writer Natarajan Balasubramaniam popularly known as Rajan Bala passed away in Bangalore on Friday. Rajan had turned 63 two days ago.
 
According to his family sources he died in a hospital in the Garden City where he had been admitted after he suffered a stroke .He was in ...

Renowned human rights activist and lawyer K. Balagopal passed away in Hyderabad following a cardiac arrest. He was known for the battle he had led for the rights of the poor, tribal and labourers.
 
Balagopal, 57, passed away on Thursday night. He is survived by his wife and son. ...

According to Congress Chiefs of Himachal Pradesh, Kaul Singh Thakur, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi will pay a visit to the capital of Himachal Pradesh next week.
 
"Rahul Gandhi will visit Shimla next week for a day. During his visit here, he will also interact with students ...

Stressing that the election system of Indian needs a change, senior BJP leader, L K Advani has urged the Centre and Election Commission to do the needful so that the general and assembly elections need not be conducted separately.
 
Advani, who was addressing an election rally in Haryana, ...

Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has topped the all-India list of celebrity brand endorsements.
 
The second round findings of CelebTrack, which is a joint effort of Percept Talent Management and Hansa Research, Dhoni has taken over Sachin Tendulkar, who had been leading the first round. ...

Indians seem to be making waves all over the world! Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, an Indian born scientist, along with Thomas Steitz and Israeli Ada Yonath won the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for mapping ribosomes, the protein-producing factories within cells, at the atomic ...

An advisory for the Hajj pilgrims of India has been issued by the external affairs ministry for the prevention of epidemic swine flu while they fly to Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
 
The advisory restricts the pilgrims from sharing greetings in the form of shaking the hands ...

Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid mentioned on Monday that government is in the process of finalizing a bill which will ensure that the Wakf boards present across India will function in a streamlined fashion.  He mentioned that the bill will be introduced during Parliament’s ...

The Central Industrial Security Forces, CISF, has rolled out a new section of their website, www.cisf.gov.in, called the ‘lost and found’, which will help the travellers to trace the baggage which they missed from an airport.
 
CISF handles the security of 57 Indian airports. ...

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, in an attempt to shed India’s tag of being ‘diabetes capital of the world’, has made the diabetes and hypertension tests for all the villagers above 35 mandatory.  The test kits have been made easy and affordable.
 
"We have a ...

Nikhil Kumar, the former Police Commissioner of Delhi, has been appointed as the New Governor of Nagaland on Sunday.
 
Nikhil Kumar will be taking over as the Nagland governor from the Governor of Manipur, Gurbachan Jagat, who has been assumed the additional charge as the Governor of ...

Rao Birender Singh, the ex-Haryana Chief Minister and a former minister of the union cabinet, passed away on Wednesday in Gurgaon following a cardiac arrest. He was 88.
 
He had held the post of the chief minister from March to November 1967and was the second person to rule after Haryana ...

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani on Monday told that he wants to quit politics. Advani, who was visiting Swami Vishwesh Teerth at the Udupi Pejawar Math in New Delhi, told his spiritual mentor he keen on retiring from politics.
 
But his spiritual guru has asked him not to ...

The National Commission for Women has formed teams for probing the flesh trade channels which have been reported from Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Delhi to the Middle East.
 
"The NCW has been deeply disturbed with the recent spurt of missing girls in NCR (National Capital ...