The worse off the poor become, the healthier our Ministers get. Air India might not be doing as well we'd like it to. But the braveheart who flew it fearlessly into dense clouds of debt is doing okay. Praful Patel (who no longer holds the aviation portfolio) added, on average, over half a million rupees every day to his assets in 28 months between May 2009 and August 2011. This might...

-The Hindu   Leaning heavily on a secret note on 2G pricing prepared by the Union Finance Ministry and sent to the PMO with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's approval, Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday urged the Supreme Court to order a CBI probe against Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram for his role in the sale of valuable spectrum at throwaway prices. The 25 March 2011 document, written by P.G.S Rao, Deputy...

A 6.9-magnitude earthquake epicentred 68km northwest of Gangtok struck at 6.11pm today, killing 14 people in India and four in Nepal and sending people rushing out of buildings from Calcutta to Delhi. Nine died in worst-hit Sikkim, one each in Siliguri, Kalimpong and Jalpaiguri, and two minor children in Bihar, including a boy crushed in a stampede. Several houses collapsed and walls developed cracks in Gangtok, where many tall buildings have...

Stories abound in Bhopal of the life and death of Shehla Masood. But among those who knew her, there appears agreement on one point: something was so uncharacteristically passive, so un-Shehla-like, they say, about the dead body slumped in the driving seat of the silver-grey Santro on the morning of August 16, with no evident signs of struggle and a bullet hole in the neck. Some crude clues to the extraordinary...

Nitish orders suspension of investigating officer, two other policemen In yet another incident of police brutality, policemen mercilessly beat up several persons, including women, in Bihar's Nalanda district on Thursday. The incident occurred when a large crowd trooped in front of the Noorsarai police station to protest against the recent disappearance of a young woman Sushma Kumari alias Reena Devi, who is the panchayat secretary. The mob alleged that the investigating officer (IO)...