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.

Heading home with little to take away from the summit of heads of state and government of the 20 most economically powerful countries, PM Manmohan Singh said, “The Group of 20 is, on the international plain, as essay in persuasion.” He repeated the phrase thrice in the course of his interaction with Indian media on board his special aircraft on the way back home.

The British police has arrested two men after a break-in at Buckingham Palace this week, one of the most serious security breaches at Queen Elizabeth’s London residence in about 30 years.

Ravindra Public School beat Nav Bharti Public School by 75 runs on Saturday to enter the semi-finals of the KC Sharma Under-16 cricket tournament. The winners rode on impressive performances from centurion Hitesh Sharma (105) and Ghanshyam (4/29) to make it a one-sided contest.

Asserting that Jammu and Kashmir has a total annual income of only Rs 6,500 crore from all sources, chief minister Omar Abdullah today said the present fiscal status of the state is grim.