Karzai sworn in for second term

Tainted by a flawed election and allegations of highlevel corruption in his regime, Hamid Karzai was inaugurated on Thursday for a second term, saying the Afghan Army should assume full control of the country's security within five years.

"We will decrease the role of international forces," Karzai said at a ceremony held at the presidential palace in Kabul. "We want our security within five years to be entirely within the hands of the Afghan government and led by Afghans."

The ceremony was the culmination of a fraught and chaotic electoral process that began on August 20 when Afghans went to the polls. Karzai was proclaimed the winner earlier this month when his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew from a run-off after a UN-sponsored inquiry found evidence of widespread electoral fraud.

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Rana came from Dubai, met visa-seekers

Investigators have found evidence to indicate that Tahawwur Rana, arrested along with David Coleman Headley by the FBI for plotting terror attacks on India at the behest of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, and his wife Samraz Akhtar 'interviewed' visa-seekers in Ahmedabad and Kochi and stayed with relatives in Agra during their 10-day trip to India just before the Mumbai terror attack.

The couple, who flew into Mumbai from Dubai, returned to the emirate on November 21, 2008. A team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is expected to leave for Dubai.

Born in Chichawatni in Sahiwal district of Pakistan, Rana and his wife put out an advertisement for Canada visa-seekers

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16 surgeons work for 25 hours, and the twins are separated

A team of 16 surgeons and nurses successfully concluded 25 hours of delicate surgery Tuesday to separate twin Bangladeshi girls who had been joined at their heads, sharing blood vessels and brain tissue.

It is too early to know whether the two-year-old girls, Trishna and Krishna, suffered any brain damage during the marathon operation an outcome doctors said had a 50-50 chance. The girls will remain in an induced coma for monitoring for several days.

The medical team began the work Monday morning on separating the girls, who were brought to Australia as infants by an aid organization.

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Thackeray verses Sachin and the rest of India

The Shiv Sena’s latest attempt to raise the pitch on the Mumbai-for-Maharashtrians issue boomeranged today with chief Bal Thackeray drawing flak from across the nation for criticising Sachin Tendulkar over his remarks that Mumbai belonged to all Indians.

In an open letter addressed to the cricket icon in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna,Thackeray slammed Tendulkar for saying that Mumbai could not be monopolised and that all Indians had an equal right over it. Criticising Tendulkar for “hurting Marathi sentiments”, Thackeray advised him to stick to cricket and not venture into politics through his statements.

“Sachin, the Marathi mind has shattered after hearing this. Was there any need?

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Omar Sheikh's Pak handler Ilyas Kashmiri also handled Headley

In late 1994, a milkman knocked on the door of a Ghaziabad house. As the door opened, he noticed men with guns inside, but he still delivered the milk. He then tipped off police who raided the place and rescued several foreign hostages being held by a group of terrorists, seeking the release of some arrested militant leaders including Maulana Masood Azhar. Azhar had been arrested in February that year.

When the police reached there, the commander of the terrorist group that called itself Al-Hadid -- essentially it was a Harkat-ul Ansar-Harkat-ul Jihad-al-Islami operation -- had just stepped out with his trusted lieutenant Omar Saeed Sheikh.

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Two days after Batla, Indian Mujahideen men dialled Headley

The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad is probing leads that David Coleman Headley, arrested by the FBI for allegedly plotting a terror attack in India at the behest of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, had contacts with Indian Mujahideen (IM) operatives involved in the 2008 serial blasts in Delhi.

ATS officials have found a UP cellphone number in the call details of the phone Headley used during his stay in Mumbai. This UP number was used by one of the two absconding IM operatives from Azamgarh, Dr Shahnawaz and Asadullah Akhtar alias Asadullah Khan, to contact Headley in Mumbai two days after the Batla House shootout in Delhi on September 19, 2008. ATS sources said the UP cellphone went dead the same day.

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Orissa shuts down 64 mines, probes racket

Probing allegations of a multi-crore mining scandal, the Orissa government has ordered suspension of work at 64 iron ore, manganese ore and limestone mines whose operators have failed to provide proof of legal mining activity.

It is learnt that leases of all these mines ran out long ago but they continued to operate without approval, authorisation or execution of any lease deed subsequently.

Director of Mines Jyoti Ranjan Patnaik said the steel and mines department issued orders last month to deputy directors of mines to verify documents of all lease holders under deemed extension.

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Raj men `fight' for Marathi, send own kids to English schools

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) MLAs who assaulted a colleague in the House for not speaking in Marathi, don't send their own children to Marathi medium schools.

A day after MNS MLA Ram Kadam slapped SP's Abu Azmi -who pleaded he does not know Marathi well enough to take the oath in the language inquiries by The Indian Express revealed that the children of eight of the MNS's 13 MLAs attend English medium schools.

It is well known that MNS chief Raj Thackeray's son Amit passed out of Mumbai's exclusive Bombay Scottish school last year, and that he chose to study a foreign language instead of Marathi while he was there.

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Quoting `anonymous', China daily takes a swipe: India may have forgotten lesson of 1962

A day after the Dalai Lama reached Tawang, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, People’s Daily, quoting an “anonymous” scholar, said that India “may have forgotten the lesson of 1962” and is “on the wrong track again.”

In a provocative article titled “India covets Dalai Lama’s visit,” the state-run paper said that the presence of the spiritual leader in the “disputed region” is a “double insult” for China. “India may have forgotten the lesson of 1962, when its repeated provocation resulted in military clashes. India is on this wrong track again,” the article, which was first carried in the Chinese Global Times said, quoting an anonymous scholar.

The article claims that India is using the Dalai Lama to “solve” the border dispute in Tawang and had asked him to visit the region.

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India’s sunday morning blues

Once the dust settles over this seven-match one-day series, only one question is likely to remain: How did the Australians pull this off? The visitors had lost four of their first XI even before the team travelled to India. Over the first four matches, they lost another four to various injuries.

They did win the first one-dayer by a close margin, but once India had steamrolled them in the next two, the battle between Dhoni’s men in home conditions and Ponting’s boys in disarray seemed extremely unequal.

And yet, at the end of the sixth one-dayer in Guwahati, they had taken a 4-2 series victory,

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Army doctor kills 13 at United States base, `terror not ruled out'

Investigators today began piecing together how and why they think an Army psychiatrist facing deployment to Afghanistan gunned down dozens of people yesterday at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, in one of the worst mass shootings ever on an American military base.

The gunman, identified as Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, was shot four times by a Fort Hood police officer responding to the scene. Hasan remained hospitalized on a ventilator but was in stable condition, Army officials said.

A day of mourning has been declared on the base for the 13 people killed 12 soldiers and one civilian and 28 wounded in the rampage, and US President Barack Obama said that flags at the White House and other federal buildings would fly at half-staff until Veteran’s Day, “as a modest tribute to those who lost their lives.”

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A chase to remember

He final ball of the fifth over during India's chase in Hyderabad may have had little significance to the eventual outcome of the match, but for the capacity crowd at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, what had transpired before it and what was to follow were from two different worlds.

When Sachin Tendulkar flicked Ben Hilfenhaus through mid-wicket for three runs, he became the first batsman in the history of one-day cricket to reach 17,000 runs. It was the moment that the people of Hyderabad had waited for with fingers crossed, and when it arrived, the celebration was absolutely no-holds-barred.

After all, with India chasing an improbable 351 against a fired-up Aussie outfit, it seemed like the only real hurrah up for grabs as far as the 30,000 spectators at Uppal went.

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Twelve year old Sarfaraz breaks Harris record with 439

Twelve year old Sarfaraz Khan was batting on 235 when stumps were drawn in his Harris Shield match on Monday evening. He spent a sleepless night, wondering if he could go past the 346 runs Sachin Tendulkar had scored in Mumbai's inter-school cricket competition 21 years ago.

Sarfaraz's father, Naushad Khan, is a local coach who has trained players like Iqbal Abdulla and Rahil Shaikh both members of the Mumbai Ranji team as well as left-arm fast bowler Kamran Khan, who came into spotlight in the IPL's second season for the Rajasthan Royals. Many of them, at some point or the other, have stayed at Sarfaraz's place.

"My father was telling me I should try and better Tendulkar's score. I was already on 235, and as one of the boundaries at Cross Maidan is short, I felt it was possible," Sarfaraz says.

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Remote sensing confirms China building dam

The National Remote Sensing Agency(NRSA)confirmedtoday that construction was on at theZangmusiteontheChinesesideof theBrahmaputrariver,promptingthe government to take up the matter with China at a "political" level.

In its presentation to the Committee of Secretaries (CoS) formed to assess Chinese plans regarding possible diversion of the Brahmaputra's water, the NRSA presented evidence of "houses, construction/excavation, and movement of trucks" in and around a 3-4 km range at the site.

Accordingly, the CoS, headed by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar, decided that the issue was too significant to be handled by the expert-level mechanism on floodwater data-sharing.

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All square as India stumble

Ricky Ponting wouldn't have minded taking a few of the Indian batsmen out for dinner last night, but the Aussie skipper spent time celebrating with his own team, relieved at having escaped defeat, and pleased at having thrown a punch or two at the Indians.

Even as the last of the 35,000-odd fans left the PCA stadium, stunned at how the Indian batting choked chasing a very gettable 251, the home dressing room presented a stark contrast to how it had been during the mid-innings break. The bowlers had done their job then, and for the second game running, their fielding had been top notch, accounting for four run-outs. But, by the time the last ball of the day had been bowled, the players couldn't figure out how they had thrown it away.

From a position of great strength, they lost the match by 24 runs, and a series that India seemed to be dominating against a ragged Australian outfit is now tied 2-2.

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`Morale-lifting' revamp of posts on China border

UP against rapidly modernizing Chinese military infrastructure along its northern border, India has decided to completely revamp its border posts at heights above 14,000-15,000 feet, using know-how from Scandinavian countries.

The aim is to improve the conditions in which soldiers live in these high altitudes. The decision was taken after a military survey revealed that poor living conditions were adversely impacting the morale and combat preparedness of soldiers manning these posts.

The survey itself was prompted by former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran's report on improving infrastructure along the China border,

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