As we turned off the main road, there was a mandatory burst of welcoming firecrackers. We had stopped on a slope on slightly higher ground and had walked down the approach, a few hundred yards or so to the open space in front of the main temple at Sriperumbudur, where a red carpet had been laid out. Stepping out from Read More

For the last 18 months, lawyer Jayshree Wad has been fighting surrogacy in the Supreme Court. She petitioned the Supreme Court stating that surrogacy had become a business in India, which then ordered the central government to frame rules governing surrogacy. On Wednesday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj announced that the Union Cabinet had approved the draft of the Surrogacy Regulation Read More

Rajesh Kunte had been hearing since childhood that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was allegedly involved in the killing of Mahatma Gandhi. The claim hurt him, as he had been a member of the Hindu right-wing outfit since he was five years old. He always wanted to prove this theory wrong, but never got an opportunity to do so. Then, in Read More

The India-Pakistan slugfest over Kashmir is nothing new, either in terms of intensity of vitriol or in terms of the issues raised. Enough of opinions on the mutual grandstanding by the two nuclear armed South Asian neighbours. The question remains: What should be India’s strategy to deal with Pakistan? N A Prasad, a senior Research and Analysis Wing officer who Read More

Where has your best selfie been taken? In a bar? On a rollercoaster? In the bathroom? Sigh, those are nothing compared to the selfies Russian girl Angela Nikolau takes. Angela Nikolau, 23, scales horrifying heights in her bid to get the world’s great cities as her backdrop. Nikolau has posed, in some rather cringe-worthy positions, on rooftops, bridges and skyscrapers Read More

Separatists on Sunday rejected Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s invitation to them for meeting with all-party delegation, terming such a measure as “deceitful” and insisting that it cannot be an alternative to a “transparent agenda-based dialogue to address the core issue”. A day after Mehbooba invited separatists in her capacity as Peoples Democratic Party chief, separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Read More

[source;rediff.com]

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Sunday met the all-party delegation led by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Srinagar and said such efforts have lost credibility as there has hardly been any follow-up after similar visits in the past. During his hour-long interaction with the delegation, Omar recalled the previous all-party delegation visits since 1990 to Kashmir Read More

 Obama predicts voters will say ‘no’ to Trump in November: US President Barack Obama said that American voters will say ‘no’ to Donald Trump in the November election. Trump has embraced a hard-line policy against illegal immigration but has said he favours the legal entry of immigrants with job skills needed in US industry. Still, Obama blasted the Republican presidential Read More

More than 200 people were injured in clashes between stone pelters and security forces in Kashmir on Sunday, on a day an all-party parliamentary delegation was in Srinagar to assess the ground situation in the valley where normal life remained paralysed for 58th consecutive day. There was no curfew in the valley except some areas of Srinagar falling under the Read More