Rabri Devi to vacate 1 Anne Marg

     Patna: Railway Minister and former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family have finally decided to vacate the official residence of Chief Minister of Bihar, 1, Anne Marg bungalow on Thursday. Sources close to the family said that under guidance of astrologers, Lalu Prasad, wife Rabri Devi and family have decided to proceed to a new residence 10, Circular Marg on that day. The NDA Government in Bihar has allotted 10, Circular Road Bungalow to former Chief Minister Rabri Devi, now the leader of the Opposition in the Bihar assembly. The bungalow was earlier home to her brother and RJD MP Sadhu Yadav. The boundary walls of the new residence have been raised and new shelters for security personnel have been built providing 'z- plus' security to the Union Minister.

   The couple's pets - hundreds of cows, buffaloes, horses and even cats are being sent to Naya Tola in Danapur, while their luggage is now being packed and sent to the new house. On January 17, the Nitish Kumar-led coalition government in Bihar had ordered the District Magistrate of Patna, B. Rajendra and the Senior Superintendent of Police, Kundan Krishnan to forcibly evict Lalu Prasad, Rabri Devi and their family from 1 Anne Marg, the official residence of the Chief Minister of Bihar. The controversy over the change of occupants of the official residence has been on since November 24, 2005 when Nitish Kumar was sworn in as the 33rd Chief Minister of the state. Rabri Devi has already been served notice twice by the state building construction department. The problem of finding a new abode for animals kept by them was reportedly being cited as one of the reasons for the former first couple of Bihar buying time in vacating the 1 Anne Marg bungalow. Earlier In December, Rabri Devi had apparently refused to occupy the house allotted by the new government, on grounds that it needed renovation.

Doordarshan to telecast cricket series live (Go To Top)

    New Delhi: Doordarshan will telecast live feed of the India-Pakistan cricket series as Ten Sports and DD today agreed before the Supreme Court on telecast rights. India is now playing the third and final Test in Karachi. On January 10, Doordarshan was not allowed to telecast live feed of cricket series between India and Pakistan as Prasar Bharti had agreed before the Supreme Court to air only 90-minute daily highlights of the Test series with Ten Sports, commenced from January 13. The notice was issued by a bench headed by Ashok Bhan and Justice Tarun Chatterjee on a petition filed by Taj Television Ltd, owner of Ten Sports. In its petition to the apex court, Ten Sports had challenged the provision of the new Policy Guidelines for Down-linking of TV Channels, 2005, which makes it mandatory for all private channels to share with Doordarshan the live telecast feed of sports events of national importance.

   Earlier, the channel had first approached the Bombay High Court to challenge the Centers down-linking guidelines. The guidelines also made it clear that channels, which had bagged exclusive telecast rights, would have to share 25 percent marketing revenue with Doordarshan. Counsel of Ten Sports, Iqbal Chagla, said that the guidelines had no authority of law and as such infringed on the rights of the channel owners to carry out business. He argued that Ten Sports had won the rights at a high price and such rights could not be taken away. "Guidelines have no statutory force of law," he said, even as the channel bosses said 90 percent of ad slots were already booked. The Bombay High Court on December 21 had admitted the plea but declined to grant the channel any interim relief. The division bench of Justice Ranjana Desai and Justice A S Oka stated that they were not inclined to grant stay on the Information and Broadcast guideline whereby Ten Sports, or sports channels having TV broadcasting rights, would have to share their feed with Prasar Bharati for national and international sporting events held in India or abroad. During the 45-day long tour of Pakistan, India is also scheduled to play five one-day internationals there. The five-match one-day series will begin on February 6 in Peshawar. The second one-day international will be played in Rawalpindi on February 11, third one-day international in Lahore on February 13, fourth in Multan on February 16 and fifth and final one-day international in Karachi on February 19.

Saving girl child more important than saving
tigers: Renuka Chaudhary (Go To Top)

    New Delhi: Terming girl child foeticide as "a grave threat to Indian demographic changes", Renuka Chaudhary, the newly appointed Minister of State for Women and Child development, today said that "saving the girl child was more important than saving tigers." Taking charge of the new ministry after Sunday's ministerial reshuffle, Renuka told newspersons that she will make the movement against female foeticide her priority number one and in a few days time, would elaborate the new blueprint of her ministry to tackle this growing menace. "If this continues to go on, then it is projected that in year 2020 the male to female ratio will be a tottering 80:20," she said Outlining the achievements of her new ministry, Renuka also expressed her happiness over the fact that her ministry had been given independent status and called it as a sort of her homecoming. Her previous avatar as Minister for Tourism and culture did not seem to fade in her memory, as time and again she highlighted her efforts to work on the issue of the gender budgeting in her former ministry. She also enumerated the efforts taken by her new ministry in the arena of child development and women welfare, like passing of the Protection of women from domestic violence Act, 2005, expansion of Rajiv Gandhi National Crhches Scheme to other areas and raising the issues of child budgeting.

    Recently, a British Journal had carried a report stating that about 10 million female foetuses had been aborted in India over the past two decades. The Lancet medical journal which published the findings of a team of scientists analysed the female fertility figures from a national survey of six million people in India and found that there were about half a million fewer girls born in the country in 1997 than expected. According to the report, the most plausible explanation for the skewed sex ratio was the illegal abortion of female foetuses. The figures were also supported by the Indian Medical Association, which said that five million female foetuses were killed each year in India.

US to launch more Bajaur-like strikes (Go To Top)

    Washington: Despite intense criticism from Pakistani over its Bajaur strikes, the US is planning to carry out similar strikes on Pakistan from across the Pak-Afghan border in its endeavour to kill Al Qaeda operatives, US officials said. Washington was "expanding its top- secret plan" to kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired missiles. The CIA and the Pentagon have deployed at least several dozen Predator drones along the Pakistan-Afghan border and throughout Afghanistan and Iraq for attacking suspected terrorist targets, The Dawn quoted the unidentified officials as saying in a Los Angeles Times report. Besides, the LA further reported, the CIA also has sent the remote-controlled aircraft into the skies over Yemen and some other countries believed to be Al Qaeda havens, particularly those without a strong government or military with which the United States can work in tandem. The CIA's failed Jan 13 attempt to assassinate Al Qaeda second- in-command Ayman Zawahiri in Bajaur was the latest strike in the "targeted killing" programme, US officials said. The US officials confirmed that on at least 19 occasions since 9/11, Predators had successfully fired Hellfire missiles on terrorist suspects overseas, including ten in Iraq in one month last year. The Predator strikes have killed at least four senior Al Qaeda leaders, and also many civilians, and it is not known how many times they missed their targets, they added.

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