As scores of people are being treated in local hospitals after they were bitten by stray dogs, whose population in Kashmir Valley has shot up manifold over the past few years, a local pressure group has threatened to launch “kill the rabies” campaign after a fortnight if the authorities fail to check the menace. They will be poisoned or even “beaten to death” by volunteers, it said.

In a major breakthrough, security forces on Friday gunned down a “top” Naxal leader, suspected to be the commander of Mahasamund-Bargarh div-ision, operating in Chhattisgarh’s eastern region bordering Orissa, in an encounter in a forest in Raigarh district, the police claimed.

Six days after top Maoist leader Satish fell to police bullets in Rayagada district, the Orissa police on Thursday night killed Maoist couple Chitrakam Reddy and his wife during an encounter in Badmathur forest in Koraput district.

In what has been an alarming development, a stray leopard on Friday created panic in Guwahati by injuring two people in the fourth incident of its kind in less than one month.

Bird flu, or avian influenza, has resurfaced in Tripura barely within a month of declaring the country free from the disease and culling has started in villages within a 3-km radius of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research at Lambuchera in West Tripura district where it was first detected.

Campaigning for the January 30 Assembly elections in Uttarakhand, which saw heavyweights of major political parties criss-crossing the hill state in spite of snow fall and intense cold, comes to an end on Saturday.

The Congress vision document that promises justice, rights and development to the people of Uttar Pradesh also focuses on minority empowerment and gives a major push to minority education and skill development through setting up new schools, recruitment of minority teachers, scholarships and vocational training.

Amid a boycott call of 12 separatist outfits, including Ulfa, hundreds of people defied militant threat to take part in Republic Day’s celebrations in Assam and other northeastern states.

Extreme biotic pressure has taken the man-animal conflict to alarming levels in the forested area stretching across Raisen, Hoshangabad and Sehore districts adjoining the state capital.

If there is any political battle which is worth noticing in the overall political war between the Congress and the Akali-BJP alliance in Punjab, it is without any doubt in Lambi, where chief minister Parkash Singh Badal is in a triangular contest with his two brothers.