British tycoon Sir Richard Branson on Tuesday was forced to abandon his attempt to kitesurf across the English Channel.
He had hoped to celebrate his 60th birthday by becoming the oldest person to cross the 24.4-mile English Channel by kite-board. He also wanted to set a second record by being part of a kite-board team making the fastest crossing across the channel.

Irked by a callous bureaucratic poser on whether he was Indian or not, the world chess champion Viswanathan Anand on Tuesday refused the degree of doctor of philosophy (honoris causa) offered by University of Hyderabad.

The Election Commission of India on Tuesday flatly denied any role in the arrest of Hari Prasad for allegedly stealing an electronic voting machine (EVM) from a godown in South Mumbai. Hari Prasad, a technical coordinator of VeTA (Citizens for Verifiability, Transparency and Accountability in Elections), has been in the fore-front of a campaign to prove the theory that electronic voting machines can be tampered with.

While the Opposition parties are seeing red over the dilution of the suppliers liability, Sudhinder Thakur, executive director of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), has warned that across the world the operators right to recourse is limited to wilful act or gross negligence by the supplier.

The Congress is planing to hold the AICC plenary in November this year. Though it has yet to begin an exercise of shortlisting venues for the full session, Mumbai figures prominently in the list.

In a bid to placate the agitating MPs over hike in their salary, the government on Monday cleared a proposal to increase by another Rs 10,000 in their monthly allowances, which they will be getting over and above the amount announced last week.

It is not only Members of Parliament who will soon get a hefty raise in salaries. Delhi MLAs and ministers are also likely to earn more, with the Delhi Cabinet approving a 200 per cent increase in the salaries of MLAs, ministers, the chief minister, Assembly Speaker and Leader of the Opposition.

Union rural development minister C.P. Joshi on Monday reportedly sought clarifications on the Educational Tribunals Bill 2010 before the Cabinet approved it. The bill seeks to set up a two-tier structure of educational tribunals at the national and state levels to adjudicate on disputes in the higher education system. Sources said the clearance to the bill comes without incorporating changes proposed by the parliamentary standing committee on HRD.

Two separate incidents of robbery were reported from the national capital in the last 24 hours.
In the first incident, eight masked men allegedly barged into a jewellery shop in Mayapuri area and held the staff hostage before decamping with jewellery worth Rs 20 lakhs.

The MCD on Monday resolved to request the Centre for giving it the task of regularising the 1,639 unauthorised colonies, a promise made by the Delhi government before the November 2008 Assembly elections. Meanwhile, in the Delhi Assembly, the government said that it had sent a list of 680 colonies to the MCD for sanction and scrutiny of their layout plans.