A nondescript Dalit outfit in Kerala - Dalit Human Rights Movement - makes its presence known with a gruesome murder.

Warning: Travelling by train through Bihar is injurious to your life.

Mutawas, the ruthless and primitive religious police of Saudi Arabia are a rule unto themselves. Joy C Raphael's book on the mutawas and their modus operandi is an eye-opener.

The Ninth World Tamil Conference will be held in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu on January 21-24, 2010.  

This is going from bad to worse. The Shashi Tharoor Twittergate saga is not dying down at all. The main at the center of it all is currently in Africa - I don't think it will end nicely when he is back.

The Organising Committee of the Commonwealth Games (OCCG) has announced that the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi will be held “as scheduled” amidst doubts being raised by the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF).

The Congress Party and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the ruling-alliance partners in Maharashtra, are about to agree on a seat-sharing pact for the elections to the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly to be held in October 2009.

The ruling Congress Party has announced the names of 56 candidates and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said it would contest in about 50 seats in the elections to the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly to be held on October 13, 2009.

Initial evidence collected by the investigating team of the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) suggests that the helicopter in which Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR) flew crashed mainly because of a dangerous drop in altitude to about 1,200 feet from the designated 5,500 feet. Dr Reddy and four other people of his entourage died when their Bell-430 helicopter crashed on a hillock in the dense Nallamala forests on September 2, 2009. The investigating team, led by R K Tyagi, Additional Director-General of the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation, also found that that the helicopter was in fact flying on its original flight path and had not deviated before crashing in the Nallamala forest, a section of the media reported, quoting official sources. It was earlier assumed that the helicopter had deviated from its assigned flight path. A day after the incident, Andhra Pradesh Chief Secretary P Ramakanth Reddy had said that YSR’s helicopter deviated 18 kilometres from its original flight path towards the east, then hit the cliff of a hill at Pavuralagutta before crashing. The investigations by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation, however, found that the helicopter was very much on its course, but was flying at a much lower altitude than it should have flown. According to reports, officials of the Andhra Pradesh Aviation Corporation Limited told the investigating team of the DGCA that, based on the coordinates of the helicopter’s flight, they believe that the aircraft had not deviated from its original path. A mapping the DGCA team did on the site of the crash also showed that the helicopter had not strayed from its course as was initially suspected, the reports quoted official sources as saying. The Chief Minister’s helicopter was permitted to fly at an altitude of 5,500 feet. However, by the time the helicopter reached Atmakuru area, it descended to a height of as low as 1,200 feet – the same height of the Pavuralagutta hillock. And, this was probably the cause of the accident, the officials of the Andhra Pradesh Aviation Corporation Limited informed the investigators of the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation. The investigating team of the DGCA, according to reports, held detailed discussions with the officials of the Andhra Pradesh Aviation Corporation Limited on various aspects of the ill-fated flight. The DGCA team also examined the detailed flight schedule, the flight engineer’s report, the pilots’ fitness reports, and the weather reports. The DGCA investigators were told that the Chief Minister’s “exact programme” was disclosed only at about 6.30 a.m. on September 2, 2009, since the visit was supposed to be a surprise one. Group Captain S K Bhatia, the pilot-in-command of the Chief Minister’s helicopter, was only informed about “a flight to Chittoor district and nothing more,” the official sources said. Initial evidence collected by the investigating team of the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) suggests that the helicopter in which Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR) flew crashed mainly because of a dangerous drop in altitude to about 1,200 feet from the designated 5,500 feet.

The United States has rejected the package of proposals put forward by Iran, which were aimed at breaking the impasse over its nuclear programme.