With Ganesh Chaturthi just around the corner, several B-town celebrities are gearing up to welcome home the elephant-headed god. Shilpa Shetty, who has been religiously celebrating this auspicious festival, was spotted today with her hubby Raj Kundra and son Viaan collecting the idol of Lord Ganesha. This is the seventh year that Shilpa is bringing home Ganpati. The B-town beauty Read More

Russian President Vladimir Putin did on Sunday what no major western leader from the NATO member countries cared to do when he telephoned his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan to convey his sympathy, goodwill and best wishes for the latter’s success in restoring constitutional order and stability as soon as possible after the attempted coup Friday night. (Kremlin website) The US Read More

The reported remark by the spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs Vikas Swarup to the effect that his ministry is not in possession of any corroborative information over the recent speculations that some families from Kerala may have migrated to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has, unfortunately, become the small print. In the prevailing set-up in our Read More

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]