A spirited peformances from Sikkim United and Mohammedan Sporting Club help them register victories in their respective quarter-final league round matches of the 126th Durand Cup football tournament at the Ambedkar Stadium here on Thursday.

The National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) Ranjan Daimary faction has been asked to deposit their arms and list of cadres to the police to sign a formal suspension of operations agreement with security forces in Assam.

The government on Thursday approved a proposal to invest $4.3 billion in World Bank bonds, which will help the country in securing additional funding from the multilateral agency for infrastructure and development projects. With this, India will have a leeway to borrow $ 21.8 billion from the World Bank’s lending arm, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).

Pakistan expects normalisation of ties with India in the coming days with the “almost certain” meeting of Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly summit.

India and Japan may be keen to push ahead with a civil nuclear pact but Tokyo has made it abundantly clear that several outstanding issues need to be addressed before the two sides can sign on the dotted line.

Tension prevails in Bahraich district as hundreds of villagers, led by BJP MLA Mukut Bihari Verma, are staging protests on the collectorate premises to protest against the removal of Ganesh idols in Beria and Dhaprapur villages on Tuesday night.

A 20-year-old woman was raped in a hotel twice by two men on the pretext of providing her a job. A senior police said the victim, who hails from West Bengal, had came to Delhi in search of a job with her husband.

Curfew was relaxed for almost seven hours on Thursday in the riot-hit Muzaffarnagar.
People rushed out to buy essentials and groceries between 10 am and 5 pm when curfew was relaxed.

As the communal flare-up in Uttar Pradesh claimed 37 lives and injured more than 80 people, the Union home ministry, along with Central agencies dealing with cyber security, are closely examining the fresh threats being posed by the social media as the Muzzafarnagar violence was stoked using such platforms which are routed through cross-border channels.

Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav has rejected the allegation that the Muzaffarnagar riots were running parallel to the Godhra riots in Gujarat in 2002.