Former governor of Uttar Pradesh and former foreign secretary Romesh Bhandari passed away on Saturday night after a prolonged illness. He was 85.

The information technology department of the Orissa government has mooted a proposal for bar-coding of official despatches to prevent forgery of official letters issued on the internet.

Nigeria, Senegal and surprise package Ethiopia reached the final play-offs for the World Cup after winning last-round group games on Saturday. Tunisia crashed out and will miss Brazil 2014 after being shocked at home by Cape Verde Islands.

The Trinamul Congress on Sunday snubbed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s overture and ruled out any possibility of an alliance with the Congress ahead of next year’s LS elections. Party MP and spokesperson Derek O’Brien said Sunday that the Trinamul Congress will go it alone in the polls. TMC general secretary Mukul Roy too endorsed these sentiments.

The Supreme Court has held as illegal and unethical the demand for capitation fees by private technical and medical colleges from students, and has directed the Centre to make laws to put an end to such practices which deny admission to meritorious students from financially weak backgrounds in those institutions.

Tokyo was awarded the 2020 summer Olympic Games on Saturday, beating Istanbul in a head-to-head vote after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered a charismatic plea to the International Olympic Committee and promised Japan’s crippled nuclear plant was “under control.”

The scion of the ruling family of Rewa, Pushpraj Singh, who was a state minister in a previous Congress government and had unsuccessfully contested the 2009 parliamentary election from Rewa on a Samajwadi Party ticket, is likely to return to the Congress fold within the next few days.

In what may be a serious embarrassment for the Congress party, its government in Assam has vested the power of appointing the vigilance commission with the chief minister.

Wrestling, as expected, regained its place on the Olympic Games sports roster after a vote by International Olympic Committee members in Buenos Aires on Sunday.

The BJP on Sunday said the Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik was nervous at the rapid growth of the BJP in several urban local bodies (ULBs) which are going to polls on September 18.