-PTI Five persons were arrested on Thursday in connection with the devastating fire at a cracker manufacturing unit at Mudhalipatti near Sivakasi, even as the toll mounted to 39. The arrested were four persons who had taken the Omshakthi fireworks factory complex, where the fire broke out, on lease and its foreman, police said. The condition of over 40 of the 70 people injured was stated to be serious in various hospitals. The licence...

-The Hindu The fireworks that light up the night sky during Diwali bear no trace of the hazardous working conditions in their place of origin: Sivakasi and its surrounding villages in southern Tamil Nadu. The tragic death of nearly 38 workers and onlookers at a fireworks unit in Mudalipatti village on Wednesday is another gruesome reminder of the dangers lurking behind small-scale cracker factories that neglect laws and rules in the...

-The Times of India The CBI on Tuesday named former Gujarat minister of state for home Amit Shah and over half a dozen IPS officers, including former CID (crime) chief OP Mathur, as accused in the Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case of 2006. They were among the 20 people named in the CBI chargesheet. Considered to be one of the favourite cops of chief minister Narendra Modi, Mathur and former state police...

-Outlook Thane: Over a dozen suspected workers of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) vandalised a theatre here today, protesting against the screening of a Bhojpuri film, police said. The group of party workers barged into the cinema hall named 'Chitralaya', which screened the film Ek Bihari Sau Pe Bhari and then started vandalising it, they said. Following the incident, there was chaos inside the theatre as members of the audience ran out. However,...

-IANS Gali Janardhana Reddy, a struggling businessman who became a billionaire in less than a decade and dictated terms to BJP in Karnataka, completes a year behind bars Sep 5 on charges of illegal mining. The former Karnataka BJP minister, however, continues to make news -- for wrong reasons though, like cash-for-bail deal which has sent his brother Gali Somashekara, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator, also to jail. The third Reddy brother...