Free for all in rugby match between Uzbek side and police team

A scuffle during a rugby match saw blood spilled on the Bombay Gymkhana field after blows were exchanged between Uzbekistan and Maharashtra State Police ruggers during the All India & South Asia Division 1 meet on Tuesday.

A high tackle on an Uzbekistan RFC side player by a MSP rugger with seven minutes to go for the whistle triggered a melee which left Uzbek winger Talipov Radik with a gashing cut on the right side of the forehead. Punches rained from both ends as the young visiting player from the only foreign side invited to compete in the championshipcontested the tackle. A fight broke out after MSP’s team and supporters joined in the scuffle, with the Uzbeks retaliating in kind.

Three referees who intervened to separate the two sides including Englishman Roy Maybanks also came in the line of attack,

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This 20 year old Kashmiri killed a militant, shot another

Displaying rare courage, a 20-year-old Kashmiri woman axed to death an armed Lashkar-e-Toiba commander and then, along with her 18-year-old brother, snatched guns and opened fire on two other militants, wounding one and forcing them to flee. The incident took place at Shahdra Sharief in the Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir late Sunday night.

Police identified the dead militant as Uzafa Shah, a Pakistani national who had been operating in the Rajouri-Poonch area for the last four years. He was said to be the only Lashkar commander in the area who had survived.

Rajouri SSP Shafqat Watali said police found a blood trail, suggesting that one of the militants who fled was wounded. One even left behind his weapon.

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India finds water on the moon

Days after the Chandrayaan-I mission to the moon had to be aborted prematurely, US space agency NASA tonight said India’s maiden lunar mission had confirmed the presence of water molecules in the polar region of moon’s surface. Indian Space Research Organisation’s chairman G Madhavan Nair called the finding “path breaking”.

NASA said data from its Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3, one of the 11 payloads aboard the Chandrayaan-I spacecraft, had revealed water molecules in “amounts that are greater than predicted, but still relatively small”. It said the instrument had also found traces of hydroxyl, a molecule containing one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, in the lunar soil.

“Water ice on the moon has been something of a holy grail for lunar scientists for a very long time,” said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

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Wife waits in camp, Major killed in Jammu and Kashmir encounter

On October 5, Major J S Suri would have turned 30. He had planned to celebrate his birthday with his wife, S Pallavi, by the picturesque Manasbal lake where his 13 Rashtriya Rifles unit is deployed. Pallavi arrived at the 13 RR regimental centre in Manasbal a few days ago.

On Wednesday, Major Suri was killed in a major encounter with militants in Bandipore in North Kashmir. Pallavi is in shock. They were married only last year.

“She seemed to have guessed last night that something was wrong... confusing reports about Maj. Suri were coming in from the encounter site,” said an Army officer who was part of the 45-hour operation to flush out the militants holed up on an island on Wular lake.

“She is in a state of shock. Officers and jawans of the unit are trying to console her.

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NRI woman gets 33 yrs for killing daughters

An Indian-origin woman who stabbed her two teenage daughters to death at her house in Cambridgeshire was on Tuesday sentenced to 33 years in prison after she was found guilty of the murders.

Rekha Kumari-Baker, 41, admitted to the killings, but denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Davina Baker, 16, and Jasmine Baker, 13, were killed with a kitchen knife in a frenzied attack in 2007.

Earlier, a jury at Cambridge Crown Court took 30 minutes to reach a verdict of guilty on both counts of murder.

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Madanis spar over hosting Eid Milan

Noted Islamic cleric Arshad Madani and his nephew and Rajya Sabha MP Mahmood Madani hardly miss an opportunity to have a go at each other. The latest clash between the two, who head factions of the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind, is over hosting of Eid Milan.

The two popular Islamic leaders are organising Eid Milan in Delhi this week, but on the same day and at the same time. They have sent out invites to the who’s who of the community and the Capital’s political class, and it is not surprising that the guest list looks almost identical.

Arshad now claims that he had announced the date for the function first and Mahmood Madani deliberately chose the same day (September 24) to run him down. “He could have chosen another day.

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China strikes back on Arunachal

Barely weeks after it failed in its attempt to block Asian Development Bank (ADB) funds to a project in Arunachal Pradesh, China has successfully struck back.

Last month, in a development New Delhi has been quiet about, China won a vote on a “disclosure agreement,” which prevents ADB from formally acknowledging Arunachal Pradesh as part of India. (A disclosure agreement is a formal notification of a project once it’s approved by the ADB Board).

On June 16, India had successfully isolated China the entire ADB Board except Beijing had voted in India’s favour and secured approval for its $2.9-billion country plan.

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West MTV awards act provokes Obama

Rapper Kanye West apologised personally to teenage country singer Taylor Swift two days after ruining her moment at the MTV Video Music Awards, an indiscretion that provoked President Barack Obama to call him a “jackass”.

Obama’s comment came in the course of apparent banter with John Harwood of television network CNBC and The New York Times as they prepared for a political interview. It would seem Obama assumed what he said was off-the-record, and CNBC did not include it in the transcript of the interview it released.

However, Terry Moran, anchor of Nightline on rival network ABC, tweeted the news to his million-plus followers, and TMZ.com posted an audio copy of the transcript on its site.

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Dirty Dancing star loses battle to pancreatic cancer at 57

Patrick Swayze, the balletically athletic actor who rose to stardom in the films Dirty Dancing and Ghost and whose battle with pancreatic cancer drew wide attention, died Monday. He was 57. His publicist, said in Los Angeles that Swayze had died with family members at his side.

Swayze’s cancer was diagnosed in January 2008. Six months later he had outlived his prognosis and was filmed at an airport calling himself, “a miracle dude”.

He even went on to star in The Beast, a drama series. He filmed a complete season while undergoing treatment. “How do you nurture a positive attitude when all the statistics say you’re a dead man?” he said. “You go to work.”

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Inspired Clijsters completes mother of all comebacks

Kim Clijsters dropped down on her knees in disbelief, and then looked to the stands to find her golden-locked daughter, Jada, up way past her bedtime so she could see her mother spin a fairy tale.

Clijsters, the 26-year-old wildcard entry from Belgium who was a former No. 1 player, left the game two years ago to start a family and returned to tennis just one month ago. Suddenly on Sunday night, she had captured the 2009 US Open title by dispatching the 19-year-old Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, 75 6-3, in 1 hour 33 minutes before an adoring crowd of 23,351 at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Jada flashed on the giant screen in the stadium, pointing and hamming it up with the same infectious joy her mother had supplied to cap the most unexpected women's Open in memory, one marked by charming upsets, unsettling anger and disruptive rain.

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Government finds out: 25,000 Chinese entered India on business visas but are in unskilled jobs

In a massive screening exercise of Chinese working on Indian projects, the government has identified close to 25,000 such workers who are on business visas but have been doing unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. A deadline of September 30 has been set for these workers to either return or apply for a legitimate employment visa.

To avoid further confusion in future, the Home Ministry, in a meeting with industry representatives, made it clear that no Indian company has the right to enter into an obligation in a contract with a Chinese company for bringing labour from there. The government is of the view that this involves sovereign issues and no entity, private or public, can insert this on its own in a commercial contract.

As a result, Chinese companies are now complaining because labour was one key advantageous segment for them in every bid and allowed them to offer lower costs compared to competitors.

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Ahead of 9/11 anniversary, Gitmo photos of mastermind Khalid Sheikh on the web

The first photographs of the self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind at Guantanamo Bay have cropped up on the Internet, and experts say the images of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are being used by terrorist groups to inspire attacks against the United States.

The photographs, taken in July by the Red Cross at the Guantanamo detention centre in Cuba, show Mohammed in a white robe, a red-patterned headdress and a long salt-and-pepper beard.

They are the first known images of Mohammed since shot taken upon his capture in Pakistan in March 2003 showing him in a white T-shirt, with disheveled hair and a moustache. Since then, only courtroom sketches from his trial have been available.

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Day 2 of Jet strike: Government looks at taking pilots out of ‘workmen’ status

The government is considering changing a 60-year-old law to exclude airline pilots and commanders-in-charge from the definition of ‘workmen’, making it illegal for them to form trade unions and go on strike.

The Jet Airways pilots’ agitation completed day 2 on Wednesday, with nearly 400 cockpit crew of India’s largest private airline on mass leave, forcing the cancellation of 206 flights and causing continued harrassment and frustration to thousands of passengers.

Secretaries to the government in two different departments said the possibility of amending the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 to take out pilots from the category of ‘workmen’ had been discussed at a meeting of the Committee of Secretaries chaired by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar recently.

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Lisa Ray blogs: my bone marrow started sending messages, I have cancer

Actress Lisa Ray is suffering from Multiple myeloma, a relatively rare and incurable cancer of the white blood cells. Ray has announced her condition in her blog, The Yellow Diaries (http://lisaraniray.wordpress.com/).

Her friends and colleagues in Mumbai are devastated. “I am in complete shock,” said director Vikram Bhatt, in whose film Kasoor Ray debuted in a leading role. “I’m going to check on her immediately.”

Shamim Sarif, in whose film I Can’t Think Straight, releasing September11,

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Everyone fights for this region but no one wants to own it

At the sleepy office of the Bundelkhand Vikas Nigam in Jhansi, senior assistant O P Gupta, lone member of the staff apart from a chaprasi and the newly appointed chairman, is clearly unaccustomed to visitors. He recalls the time when the Nigam — revived by the Mayawati government a last month — was still a working institution. It oversaw sugar mills at Rath and Madhogarh, stone crushers at Bijoli, Khilli and Kabrai, and brick kilns in Jalaun, Hamirpur and Jhansi districts. That was till the Nigam, set up in 1971, closed down in 1992.

It reopened a decade and a half later in April 2008, remembers Gupta, when Mayawati appointed local businessman and BSP politician Ramesh Sharma as Nigam chairperson. It was around this time that Rahul Gandhi made his most high-profile visit to the region. And Bundelkhand, comprising some of the most dry and underdeveloped districts of UP and Madhya Pradesh, became the new political flashpoint between the Congress and the BSP.

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Campaign for Y S Rajasekhara Reddy son runs into Sonia wall

With Congress president Sonia Gandhi deciding to crack the whip on regional leaders seeking to dictate terms in the Andhra Pradesh succession, senior party leader Digvijay Singh was sent to Hyderabad on Sunday to deliver a stern message to Rajya Sabha member Dr K V P Ramachandra Rao — the late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s right hand man, and perceived brain behind the feverish campaign to install YSR’s son Jaganmohan Reddy as chief minister.

Late on Sunday afternoon, Ramachandra Rao, widely known as KVP, gave a dramatic speech to members of YSR’s council of ministers, reminding them that in the Congress, “no one goes against the high command”.

Within an hour, all 34 members of the YSR’s former Cabinet took oath again and Konijeti Rosaiah took charge of the new government as interim chief minister in Hyderabad.

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Prime Minister to Sonia, Advani to Naidu: all turn up to bid YSR farewell

The four-lane road being laid to this village was to be inaugurated by the man who had given its residents hope and made them dream of a better future. But Y S Rajasekhara Reddy didn’t live to see its completion, killed in a helicopter crash in the jungles of Nallamala two days ago. Today, the same road was swamped by a sea of humanity as people trudged miles to have one last glimpse of their leader.

The Chief Minister was buried with full state honours, very near to the graves of his parents in his 300-acre estate. This was the way he wanted it — he had even mentioned it to his family several times.

But before he was laid to rest at Idupulapaya, his home in Kadapa, people from across Andhra Pradesh came to bid YSR a final farewell as his body was taken from his residence in Hyderabad’s Begumpet to the state Congress headquarters and then to the Lal Bahadur Shastri stadium.

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Delhi yet to decide, state Congress chorus loud and clear: Son as Chief Minister

The Congress high command tonight deferred the potentially fractious exercise to choose late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy's successor as Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister but its unit in the state came out in a groundswell of support for his son Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy as the next CM.

While a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party is scheduled to elect his successor only after the seven-day mourning period, the state Cabinet passed a resolution today urging the central leadership to name YRS's son the next CM.

Health and Family Welfare Minister Danam Nagender said 118 MLAs of the 156 have signed a letter with that demand. Small Scale Industries Minister D K Aruna said that when Rajiv Gandhi could be made

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Across state, all fingers crossed for a miracle

Sixteen hours after losing contact with his helicopter over the Naxal-inested Nallamala forests in Kurnool district, hopes of finding Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy began to fade despite a massive search operation on the ground and mapping of the area late at night by an IAF Sukhoi-30 MKI.

In Hyderabad, there were anxious faces all around and Home Minister Savita Indra Reddy was close to tears as it dawned on everybody that "only a miracle" could now see Reddy return safe from the forests.

Late tonight, 41 photos, snapped by a remote sensing ISRO aircraft from Bangalore which made two sorties over Nallamala forests, were rushed to the National Remote Sensing Agency in Hyderabad. "The photos are highly technical and need to be analysed.

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Pakistan expanding nuke arsenal, has stockpile of 90 warheads

Pakistan's atomic weapons stockpile has umped to 70-90 warheads rom a previous figure of 60 and it is also developing two new types of nuclear-capable cruise missiles, according to a top American scientist.

Writing for the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Hans M Kristensen cited the latest Nuclear Notebook published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to highlight Pakistan's expansion of its nuclear warheads.

The estimate of 70-90 nuclear warheads in Pakistan's atomic weapons stockpile is an increase compared with the previous estimate of approximately 60 warheads due to Islamabad's pending introduction of a new ballistic missile and cruise missiles, he said.

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