South Block

When it comes to news it is important that you get the truth from the news, and not just gossip which goes around, which is why people read the newspapers and listen to the live television news. Without listening or reading about the news it is impossible to know anything about what is happening in the world and keep yourself updated. Sometimes people get up in the mornings and what they want to do is read the paper and keep themselves informed, which is something very good.

The Blue Line busses in New Delhi are becoming a big problem for the public, as they are causing more accidents and deaths than ever before. Its one accident after the other with the buses, and there is nothing serious being done about this. Whether its the buses them selves or the driver, you cant really tell as of yet. But this is something that needs to be taken to court and the blue line buses need to be stopped for the time being, until the problem gets resolved.

Two lesbians in Delhi have got married only a few days ago, but their wedding was not all to cheer about, as their families were against this. The girls went to the police station to get help and say that their families are threatening them. The police told both family members that the girls were both adults and can do as they wish. Since the wedding the families have not heard anything of them.

Infosys Technologies — the poster boy of India’s software services industry — beat market forecasts with an almost 35 per cent leap in net profits at Rs 1,079 crore during the first quarter ended June 30 compared with the year-ago period. But on a sequential quarter basis, its net profit actually tumbled 5.8 per cent from the Rs 1,145 crore recorded in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2006-07 that closed on March 31. A surging rupee, growing wage bill and rising visa costs wrecked the first quarter forecasts that the company put out in early April and badly crimped its margins — a fact that weighed on the market which clobbered the stock and sent it skidding almost 5 per cent to Rs 1,929.70 at the end of a volatile day of trading. The company, which earns 98.2 per cent of its revenues from outside India, topped its dollar guidance for the quarter earning revenues of $928 million against the April forecast of $904-908 million — and put it well on course to meet its target of emerging as a $4billion company by the end of this fiscal.

A doctor detained in Australia in connection with the failed terrorist plot in Britain was allowed talk to his wife in India on Wednesday for the first time since his arrest more than a week ago, his lawyer said. Also Wednesday, a magistrate gave police permission to hold the doctor, Muhammad Haneef, without charge for another two days and adjourned a hearing in which his lawyers are demanding he be freed or charged. Haneef, a 27-year-old Indian who came to Australia from Britain last year, was arrested July 2 as he tried to leave the eastern Australian city of Brisbane for India on a one-way ticket. Police say they are investigating links between Haneef and some of the seven suspects held in connection with two bomb-laden cars found in London on June 29 and an attack on a Glasgow airport the next day.

The Supreme Court today took a serious view of a large number of witnesses, including policemen, turning hostile in Ujjain’s Prof H S Sabharwal murder case and stayed the trial, saying that it would be a “mockery” of justice if the case continued to proceed in the manner it was going on. Two top functionaries of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh, are among the key accused in the case. Taking cognisance of a petition for transfer of the case outside MP, moved by Prof Sabharwal’s son Himanshu, a Bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and D K Jain said the way the trial was going on, it gave an impression that the case might meet the same fate as Gujarat’s Best Bakery trial did initially. While cautioning policemen against resiling their statements in the court during cross-examination because it was not expected from public servants who were to uphold the rule of law, the court issued notice to the MP government seeking its reply why the case should not be transferred out of the state.

When a Jeep Cherokee sped towards the Glasgow airport terminal on June 30, the driver had decided that it was a moment of reckoning for a jehadi. When his plan to blast the building failed, he opened gasoline cans, and doused and lit himself. Investigators quote the UK police, who shared this information, as saying Kafeel Ahmed tried to immolate himself after his attempt to blast gas canisters proved futile. The investigators say the police came to rescue of the passengers in the jeep thinking it was an accident but were alarmed to see the driver setting himself ablaze.

Already vitiated by a fierce war of allegations and mud slinging, the current presidential campaign has marked a new low with both sides locking horns over the charge of telephone tapping. NDA-backed ‘independent’ candidate Bhairon Singh Shekhawat’s spokesperson Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday alleged that the phones of some of the key persons in their camp were being tapped by the government. She said that her mobile phone and also those of S S Ahluwalia and Digvijay Singh were under surveillance. Her accusation, however, evoked a strong response from Congress which dismissed the charge by saying that its opponents “did not deserve that kind of attention”. Congress, which fielded Union minister Renuka Choudhury as its spokesperson in the hope of effectively countering Swaraj, perhaps did not make a mistake.

President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to have the army storm the Red Mosque may strengthen the U.S.-allied leader’s hand among Pakistanis dismayed at how Islamic militants used the holy site as a fortress. It also has pushed a fight over his bungled attempt to fire the country’s top judge out of a harsh media spotlight and prompted a fresh show of support from Washington. However, the general has given extremist enemies who have repeatedly tried to assassinate him a new cause to rally around, raising the prospect of surging violence as Pakistan heads toward elections and he seeks another five years in power.

Former U.S. first lady Lady Bird Johnson has died in Texas at the age of 94, less than two weeks after leaving hospital, a family spokeswoman said on Wednesday. Facts about former first lady Lady Bird Johnson: * Claudia Alta Taylor, born in Karnack, Texas, on December 22, 1912, was 2 years old when her family’s maid came up with her nickname, saying the girl was “purty as a lady bird.” * She graduated from the University of Texas in 1934 with degrees in arts and journalism and intentions to become a reporter. She met Lyndon B. Johnson, then a congressional aide in Washington, that same year and he proposed marriage to her on their first date. She thought he was joking but they were married two months later.