-The Times of India   Picking holes in some decisions made by the home ministry, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India has pointed out that the ministry had incurred an "avoidable expenditure" of more than Rs 9 crore by flying helicopters from Delhi to the North-East and Jammu and Kashmir to aid its troops deployed in operations. Besides, it has also rapped the ministry and its police wireless wing for incurring an...

Ankaji Bhai Gangar, a 49-year-old subsistence farmer, stood in line in this remote village until, for the first time in his life, he squinted into the soft glow of a computer screen. His name, year of birth and address were recorded. A worker guided Mr. Gangar’s rough fingers to the glowing green surface of a scanner to record his fingerprints. He peered into an iris scanner shaped like binoculars that...

The finance ministry has asked the telecom department not to entrust state-owned BSNL with the Rs 20,000-crore project to build a nationalbroadband network to take high-speed internet to the hinterlands. It has recommended that a special purpose vehicle (SPV), consisting of many mobile phone companies, be entrusted with implementing this project, while adding that all stakeholders should be chosen through a transparent and competitive bidding process. The telecom department had identified...

-The Times of India   The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday arrested an income tax commissioner Daya Shankar in Mumbai for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 2 lakh from a private company for passing a favourable order in an appeal matter. "Shankar, commissioner IT (appeals), was arrested this morning from his office in Bandra for demanding and accepting bribe for settling and issuing a favourable order in an appeal matter...

SRINAGAR: Abu Usmaan alias Abu Adnan alias Doctor, top commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba, shot dead after a 12-hour encounter. The Army had all the names right, except they shot the wrong man. The Poonch incident is now unraveling. Two men - a special police officer (SPO) and a Territorial Army jawan - have been arrested and charged with murder. And the LeT 'commander' was a man picked up from Rajouri and then...