Indian tennis star Sania Mirza and her husband, Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik,  at Karachi airport after arriving from Indian on Thursday. Camera bulbs flashed and fans thronged to get a glimpse of the newly-wed lovebirds as they landed at Karachi, their first visit to Pakistan after their April 12 wedding.     PHOTO: AFP

New Delhi , April 22: With Lalit Modi’s future as the IPL’s top man effectively hinging on the league’s governing council meeting in Mumbai on April 26, the BCCI is doing all it can to keep the road leading up to it as controversy-free as possible.
After Mfr Modi sent an email to board president Shashank Manohar questioning the legality of Monday’s meeting, calling it unauthorised, the latter made it clear that he would go ahead with the meeting as per schedule.

New Delhi , April 22: After a protracted 14-year legal battle, a Delhi court on Thursday awarded the death penalty to three out of six convicted members of the Jammu Kashmir Islamic Front militant outfit for the 1996 Lajpat Nagar market blast in which 13 persons were killed. The court noted that their “dastardly” act fell under the “rarest of rare” category.
Announcing the death sentences for three convicts — Mirza Nissar Hussain alias Naza, Mohammad Naushad and Mohammad Ali Bhatt alias Killey — in a jampacked courtroom, district and sessions judge S.P. Garg said in a 42-page order: “The apparent motive of the convicts was to inflict maximum casualties. It was not mere a desperate act of a small group of persons... the convicts took an active part in a series of steps to pursue the object of the conspiracy.”

NEW DELHI , April 22: India was waiting Thursday to hear from Pakistan whether it was desirous of a possible meeting between their Prime Ministers on the margins of the 16th Saarc summit to be held in Bhutan on April 28 and 29.

New Delhi , April 22: The Planning Commission has slashed funding for the programme to send a manned mission to the moon by 2015. The Human Space Flight Programme, earlier allocated Rs 238 crores, will now get only Rs 30 crores because the commission wants to allocate the rest for a rural job scheme.
When the parliamentary standing committee on science and technology asked why, the commission’s explanation was that since the HSFP would be taken up in phases it did not need this consolidated amount for now.

New Delhi, April 22: The heat wave on Thursday claimed seven more lives, raising the death toll across the country to 67, even as overnight rains in many parts of the northern belt provided relief to people from hot conditions for another day.
Five fresh casualties were reported from Orissa, where the coal belt of Talcher sizzled at 45.9ºC followed by Sambalpur (45.2ºC) and Hirakud (45ºC).
Jharkhand too was in the grip of intense heat as two people died due to sunstroke. The maximum temperature in the steel city of Bokaro rose up to 47.2 degree Celcius, followed by Palamau 44.9ºC, Jamshedpur 44.6ºC and Dhanbad 44.2 degrees.

Islamabad , April 22: Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has asked interior minister Rehman Malik and law minister Babar Awan to clarify their suspicious disappearance from the site of two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on December 27, 2007.
Mr Malik was then Bhutto’s chief security officer and Mr Awan is a senior member of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party. The two left the scene before Ms Bhutto was killed in a gun-and-bomb attack in Rawalpindi after she addressed an election rally.

A youth  throws an egg at Tory leader David Cameron (extreme left corner, in white shirt, partially obscured) during a visit to Cornwall College at Saltash, southwest England, on Wednesday. The politician laughed off the missile, which hit him on the shoulder as he left the college, saying it was the “first of the campaign”.     PHOTO: AP

Mumbai Indians’ owner Mukesh Ambani with IPL commissioner Lalit Modi at the first IPL-3 semi-final, against the Royal Challengers Bangalore, at the D.Y. Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai on Wednesday. The Mumbai Indians won by 35 runs and will meet the winner of Thursday’s semi-final between the Deccan Chargers and the Chennai Super Kings in the final on Sunday.   PHOTO: PTI

Bengaluru , April 21: Within 24 hours of issuing a lookout notice against controversial godman Nithyananda Swami, Karnataka’s criminal investigation department arrested him on Wednesday in Himachal Pradesh with the help of the local police.
The CID tracked his mobile phone and calls made to him and, with the help of the service provider, zeroed in on him in the north Indian state.
Director-general of police (CID) D.V. Guruprasad confirmed that his officers led by deputy superintendents of police Chandrashekhar Hosakeri and Hussain arrested the swami from a house in the Akri police station area in Himachal’s Solan district.