In a dramatic turn around, Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Malik on Wednesday divorced Ayesha Siddiqui, the local girl whom he had married seven years ago, under a compromise worked out by Muslim community leaders paving the way for his marriage with Sania Mirza on April 15.

Under the compromise, Shoaib will pay Rs 15,000 as maintenance to Ayesha at the rate of Rs 5000 per month for three months as per Sharia (Islamic law), Shafi, Sania's uncle, announced at a joint press conference at the residence of Ayesha Siddiqui.

He also said all the police cases against Shoaib, who has been maintaining that there was no valid marriage with Ayesha, will be withdrawn and they have already filed an application with the police in this regard. Ayesha's mother Farisa and Abid Rasool Khan, General Secretary of Andhra Pradesh Congress and a well-wisher of both the families, were also present at the press conference.

Shafi and Khan said negotiators worked through the night to work out a compromise between the two families because the controversy was bringing a bad name to the community and the religion.

Farisa said as decided by the elders of the community, it (compromise) has been done. I am very happy about it. All community leaders have come to him (Shoaib) to do the settlement and he has done it.

"My daughter had to pass through hardships. Finally justice has been done to my daughter. She is relieved and very happy", she said.
   

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Star player Sania Mirza will be the brand ambassador of a mega tennis event, to be launched soon, to promote the game in the country, the All India Tennis Association (AITA) said on Tuesday.

The mega event will be unveiled during AITA's Executive Committee meeting in Mumbai on April 16, a day after Sania is to tie nuptial knot with Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik in Hyderabad.

The news has come at a time when Sania's upcoming marriage with Malik has been hit by several accusations against the Pakistani cricketer by one Ayesha Siddiqui, who claims to be Malik's first wife.

The most important agenda of the meeting is unveiling of a Mega Tennis Event in 2010. The event will be a tremendous help in development of both Professional Tennis for Men and Women in India as well development of Junior Tennis.

"AITA has decided to appoint Sania Mirza as one of the Brand Ambassadors for this Mega Event and Sania has agreed readily since the project is to help both the professional as well as the Junior Tennis in India," am AITA release said.

Sania is India's most successful female tennis player with a Grand Slam title in her kitty 
 

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 day after India's worst Naxal attack ever, details are now emerging of how the Maoists managed to trap, ambush and kill 75 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans and a police constable in the forests of Dantewada in Chhattisgarh.NDTV has learnt that the Naxals took advantage of poor planning.

Sources say the local police were in the dark about the details of a CRPF operation that a newly-appointed Deputy Inspector GeneraI of Police, who is a top anti-Naxal specialist and a top greyhound commander, decided to launch to get a feel of the area.

How it happened

Naxal guerrillas were tracking every movement of the CRPF jawans and put in force a meticulous plan. They trapped the security men, who were walking back after a 72-hour deep-penetration operation in the dense jungles in Dantewada: 

 day after India's worst Naxal attack ever, details are now emerging of how the Maoists managed to trap, ambush and kill 75 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans and a police constable in the forests of Dantewada in Chhattisgarh.

NDTV has learnt that the Naxals took advantage of poor planning.

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India and China on Wednesday signed an agreement to establish a hotline between Prime Ministers of the two countries, as External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi resolved to take the bilateral relationship to new heights.

The agreement, under which dedicated phone lines will be set up in the Prime Minister's office of the two countries, was signed by Krishna and Yang after their talks here. This would enable Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao to hold direct conversations whenever they want. This is the first time in recent years that India has established a dedicated hotline facility with any country.

During the over an hour-long meeting, the two countries also decided to strengthen their cooperation in regional forums and on addressing issues like global financial crisis and climate change. After the meeting, Krishna said the establishment of hotline facility showed how close "India and China were with each other."

"This has been one of the highlights of my visit and it is fitting that the two countries were able to do it during the celebrations of 60th year of establishment of diplomatic relations," he told reporters. The decision to establish the hotline was reached during a meeting between Singh and Chinese President Hu Jintao in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in June last year.

Asked whether the issue of stapled visas were taken up during the meeting with Yang, Krishna said: "All issues concerning bilateral ties were discussed." He is understood to have conveyed India's concerns over Kashmiris being issued stapled visas by the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi. The issue of 21 Indians being held in China on charges of diamond smuggling is also understood to have been raised.

Earlier, Krishna met the families of 21 Indians, who have been charged with diamond smuggling in China, and  assured them that he will raise the issue during his meetings with the top Chinese leadership. While 20 Indians have been charged with diamond smuggling, one has been charged with money laundering.

However, Yang refused to go into the details of his talks with Krishna when asked whether the issue of stapled visas were discussed. "I am not going into the details," he said adding that both the countries should focus on common interests. "I am sure that this relationship will go forward."

Yang said Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet on the sidelines of the Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC) summit in Brazil this month and work together to contribute to its success. "We are very much looking forward to make major contribution to make the BRIC summit successful," he said.

Krishna said the trade between India and China will touch USD 60 billion this year and the issue of trade deficit with China is being discussed. He said the discussions between him and Yang were "purposeful and indeed satisfying."

"We want to have continued, sustained and cordial relations with China. That has been one of the priorities of India's foreign policy. That purpose has been served by my visit to Beijing," he said. "We want to have cordial and friendly ties and lift the bilateral relations to a new level of strategic cooperation and partnership."

Yang said Krishna's visit is "very important" as it is taking place in the 60th of year of establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. "We have had very good discussions covering broad range of issues. We believe that the relations should be viewed from a strategic vantage point and from long term interest."
 

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Road Transport and Highways Minister Kamal Nath has been summoned by a US federal district court for his alleged role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots based on a case filed by a Sikh outfit.

In the civil case filed under the Alien Torts Claims Act, the petitioners sought compensatory and punitive damages for several allegations including crimes against humanity, degrading treatment and wrongful killing.

However, Nath, who is incidentally here on a visit, said he was "surprised and appalled" as the case has been filed 25 years after the anti-Sikh riots in India.

"I really have no clue about it. I don't have a basis and I don't know the authenticity. I don't know the validity. It was for the first time that I saw it," Nath told PTI when asked to comment on the case.

Nath has been served a notice and has to respond within 21 days failing which the court will give a default judgment on the matter.

The minister said that he would have to study the matter further.

"A piece of paper was given to me. I will have to see what the piece of paper is all about," he said.

Nath stressed that he had never been charged in any court and questioned why these allegations were being raised more than two decades after the tragedy and that too in a foreign land.

"Nobody has ever charged me in India. But if the United States charges me 25 years later for something that has happened in India...well it just reflects on the authenticity," he said.

"For the last 25 years I wasn't involved...suddenly in 2010 I get involved...There was nobody who stood up and said that he was a victim or that I was in any way connected. So I'm surprised and appalled."

The case has been filed by two Sikhs, Jasbir Singh and Mahinder Singh on behalf of the New York based organisation, Sikhs for Justice.

Their attorney Gurpatwant Pannun claimed Jasbir lost 24 members of his family and Mahinder, who was two-years-old then, lost his father.
 

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The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought response from veteran Congress leader N D Tiwari on why DNA test should not be conducted on him to ascertain the allegation made by a man claiming to be his biological son.

Justice J R Midha also directed the 83-year old politician to file a "specific" response on each photograph in which Tiwari is seen with the young man Rohit Shekhar and his mother.

Giving a deadline of four weeks to file response, the Court said that Tiwari will have to personally appear before it in case he fails to file a written reply.
 
The court passed the order on a paternity suit filed by Shekhar, grandson of a former Union minister, claiming that he was born out of a relationship between his mother Ujjwala

Sharma and Tiwari, a charge denied by the Congress leader. Earlier, the High Court dismissed the plea of Tiwari who sought dismissal of the petition on the ground that it was filed 31 years after the petitioner was born in order to malign his character.

The court also rejected Tiwari's contention that Shekhar should have filed the petition within three years after becoming a major in 1997.

"Human relation cannot be treated in the same manner as commercial or civil transaction. An infidelity by a spouse is condoned by a subsequent conjugation," the court had said while directing all parties to appear before the single judge.

"We think that in the vicissitude of personal relations that is an untenable position to adopt. The court cannot delve into the mind of the plaintiff (Shekhar) in order to ascertain the time at which he felt that he had no alternative but to go to the extreme of moving the court which is always a point of no return," the court had said.  
 

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The summer has barely begun and wells in Mangi village in Vidarbha have already run dry. For two days, desperate villagers crowded around in the hope that some groundwater would seep through.

The villagers scramble for water after water tankers arrive.

This is the most important time and the task of the day. Villagers collect as much water as they can because nobody knows when the tanker will come next.

This is Vidarbha, the cotton belt of Maharashtra, which sees the highest number of farm suicides in the country.

Five of its 11 districts are now water-scarce, less than 20 per cent water left in their irrigation projects, the shadow of drought is looming.

In a matter of minutes, 5,000 litres of water provided by the tankers vanishes. The desperate wait for a tanker continues.

"We have two borewells and two wells in the village. Both are dry," said Rama Atram, villager.  
 

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The ruling BJP in Karnataka on Monday captured the Bangalore city corporation for the first time, wresting the civic body from Congress in fiercely contested polls held last week.

Of the 198 wards in the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) which went to polls on March 28, BJP captured 101, gaining clear majority.

The party is likely to further consolidate its position as results from 18 wards were awaited.

Congress won 61 and JD-S 13 while independents got five.

In addition to 198 corporators, a total of 52 elected members -- MPs, MLAs and MLCs -- have voting rights in mayoral polls.

BJP has 31 of these 52 members, including 17 MLAs in BBMP jurisdiction; the Congress has 10 MLAs and the JD-S one.

"We don't need a better example than this, that if you do good work, development work, people will bless you", an elated Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa told reporters, adding the citizens have given a reply to those engaged in "criticism and commentary" on the functioning of BJP in the state.

However, opposition Congress and JD-S said the ruling party always enjoyed advantage in local body elections.

Karnataka Congress Chief R V Deshpande said in such elections, legislators use influence and charged BJP with misusing power.

Elections to BBMP were held for the first time after 100 wards were expanded to 198 by merging seven city municipal councils, one town municipal council and 111 villages
 Will re-draft Food Bill after 3 weeks, says Sharad Pawar.

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A Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota is working in his home diocese in India and has no plans to return to the US to face the courts, he and his bishop said on Monday.

Church documents show the Vatican was alerted to the accusations against the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul more than three years ago but it did not respond.

The priest has received only a minor punishment and is currently working in his bishop's office processing teacher appointments for a dozen church schools in the diocese of Ooty in southern India.

"We cannot simply throw out the priest, so he is just staying in the bishop's house, and he is helping me with the appointment of teachers," said the Most Rev. A. Almaraj, the bishop of Ooty. "He says he is innocent, and these are only allegations. ... I don't know what else to do."

Almaraj emphasised that Jeyapaul was engaged in only "paperwork, nothing to do with the children or anything."

The main group of clerical abuse victims in the United States has scheduled a news conference for Monday in St. Paul, Minnesota, to draw attention to the Jeyapaul case and demand he be suspended and returned to face justice in the United States.

The group, Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, has been campaigning recently to draw attention to what it considers the Vatican's complicity in cases of abusive priests being moved around dioceses to avoid criminal prosecution.

The Vatican has denounced such accusations and has blamed the media for what it calls a smear campaign against the pope and his advisers.

The Vatican has insisted Pope Benedict XVI takes such accusations seriously and cracked down on abuse in 2001 by ordering dioceses to inform the Vatican of all such cases. However, the Vatican hasn't issued any guidelines requiring bishops to heed civil authorities, though it insists nothing in its directives precludes such cooperation.

Jeyapaul is currently wanted on two counts of criminal sexual conduct stemming from accusations he assaulted a young, female parishioner in the fall of 2004 at the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, Minnesota, where he was working. Each charge carries a sentence of up to 30 years.

According to the criminal complaint, the teenage girl accused Jeyapaul of threatening to kill her family if she did not come into the rectory, where he then forced her to perform oral sex on him and groped her in the fall of 2004.

In a telephone call with The Associated Press, Jeyapaul denied the charges.

"It is a false accusation against me," he said. "I do not know that girl at all."

He said he had no intention of facing the charges, and Almaraj said the church had never discussed asking him to return to the United States to appear in court.

"No steps were taken. Nobody talked about that. Nobody asked about that," Almaraj said.

Officials at India's Foreign Ministry were not immediately available to discuss whether the US asked for Jeyapaul's extradition. The two countries do have an agreement.

At the time the accusations against Jeyapaul first surfaced in 2005, the priest had returned home to visit his ailing mother and officials in Minnesota's Crookston diocese told him he should stay in India, Jeyapaul said.

"My mother told me to remain here, and the (Crookston) bishop also told me not to come back, because these allegations have come against you," he said.

On December 21, 2006, Monsignor Victor Balke, the-then bishop of the Crookston diocese, wrote about the accusations against Jeyapaul to both Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the Most Rev. Pietro Sambi, Apostolic Nuncio, the Vatican's ambassador, to the United States. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the Vatican office that handles all abuse cases.

"I hope that for the good of the Church you are able to reach a speedy resolution to this case," he wrote to Levada, according to a letter obtained by AP.

A week later, Rev. Sambi wrote to Bishop Balke: "I assure you that this material has already been forwarded to the Holy See."

It's not clear what actions, if any, the Vatican took. Alamaraj said the Vatican was informed of his disciplinary actions against Jeyapaul, but had no input.

Almaraj said he sent Jeyapaul to a monastery for a year of prayer and asked the local parishes where the priest had worked previously if there were any prior cases of possible abuse. None came to light, he said.

Almaraj then assigned Jeyapaul to the bishop's house, where he is in charge of compiling seniority lists for teachers in the diocese's schools.  
 

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Turning the tables on a China-based computer espionage gang, Canadian and United States computer security researchers have monitored a spying operation for the past eight months, observing while the intruders pilfered classified and restricted documents from the highest levels of the Indian Defence Ministry.

In a report issued Monday night, the researchers, based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, provide a detailed account of how a spy operation it called the Shadow Network systematically hacked into personal computers in government offices on several continents.

The Toronto spy hunters not only learned what kinds of material had been stolen, but were able to see some of the actual documents, including classified assessments about security in several Indian states, and confidential embassy documents about India's relationships in West Africa, Russia and the Middle East. The intruders breached the systems of independent analysts, taking reports on several Indian missile systems. They also obtained a year's worth of the Dalai Lama's personal e-mail messages.

The intruders even stole documents related to the travel of NATO forces in Afghanistan, illustrating that even though the Indian government was the primary target of the attacks, one chink in computer security can leave many nations exposed.

"It's not only that you're only secure as the weakest link in your network," said Rafal Rohozinski, a member of the Toronto team. "But in an interconnected world, you're only as secure as the weakest link in the global chain of information."

As recently as early March, the Indian communications minister, Sachin Pilot, told reporters that government networks had been attacked by China, but that "not one attempt has been successful." But on March 24, the Toronto researchers said, they contacted intelligence officials in India and told them of the spy ring they had been tracking. They requested and were given instructions on how to dispose of the classified and restricted documents.

On Monday, Sitanshu Kar, a spokesman for the Indian Defence Ministry, said officials were "looking into" the report but had no official statement.

The attacks look like the work of a criminal gang based in Sichuan province, but like all cyberattacks, it is easy to mask the true origin, the researchers said. Given the sophistication of the intruders and the targets of the operation, the researchers said, it is reasonable to suspect that the Chinese government approved of the spying.

When asked about the new report on Monday, a propaganda official in Sichuan's capital, Chengdu, said "it's ridiculous" to suggest the Chinese government might have played a role. "The Chinese government considers hacking a cancer to the whole society," said the official, Ye Lao. Tensions have risen between China and the United States this year after a statement by Google in January that the company and dozens of other businesses had been the victims of computer intrusions coming from China.

The spy operation appears to be different both from the Internet intruders identified by Google and from a surveillance ring known as Ghostnet, also believed to be operating from China, which the Canadian researchers identified in March of last year. Ghostnet used computer servers largely based on the island of Hainan to steal documents from the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet, and government and corporations in more than 103 countries.

The Ghostnet investigation led the investigators to this second Internet spy operation, which is the subject of their new report, titled "Shadows in the Cloud: An investigation into cyber-espionage 2.0." The new report shows the India-focused spy ring made extensive use of social networks like Twitter, Google Groups, Blogspot, blog.com, Baidu Blogs and Yahoo Mail, to automate the control of computers once they had been infected.

The Canadian researchers cooperated in their investigation  with a volunteer U.S. group of security experts at the Shadowserver Foundation, which focuses on Internet criminal activity.

"This would definitely rank in the sophisticated range," said Steven Adair, a security research with the group. "While we don't know exactly who's behind it, we know they selected their targets with great care."

By gaining access to the control servers used by the second cybergang, the researchers observed the theft of a wide range of material, including classified documents from the Indian government and sensitive reports taken from Indian military analysts and corporations, as well as documents from agencies of the United Nations and other governments.

The researchers said the second spy ring was more sophisticated and difficult to detect than the Ghostnet operation.

By examining a series of e-mail addresses, the investigators traced the attacks to hackers who appeared to be based in Chengdu, which is home to a large population from neighboring Tibet. Researchers believe one hacker used the code name "lost33" and that he may have been affiliated with the city's prestigious University of Electronic Science and Technology. The university publishes books on computer hacking and offers courses in "network attack and defence technology" and "information conflict technology,'' according to its Web site.

The People's Liberation Army also operates a technical reconnaissance bureau in the city and helps fund the university's research on computer network defence. A spokesman for the university could not be reached Monday because of a national holiday.The investigators linked the account of another hacker to a Chengdu resident whose name appeared to be Mr. Li. Reached by telephone on Monday, Li denied taking part in computer hacking. Li, who declined to give his full name, said he must be confused with someone else. He said he knew little about computer hacking. "That is not me," he said. "I'm a wine seller."

The Canadian researchers stressed that while the new spy ring focused primarily on India there were clear international ramifications.

Rohozinski noted that civilian personnel working for NATO and the reconstruction mission in Afghanistan usually travel through India and that Indian government visa issuing computers were compromised in both Kandahar and Kabul in Afghanistan.

"That is an operations security issue for both NATO and the International Security Assistance Force," said Rohozinski, who is also chief executive of the SecDev group, a Canadian computer security consulting and research firm.

The report notes that documents the researchers recovered were found with "Secret," "Restricted," and "Confidential" notices. "These documents," the report says, "contain sensitive information taken from a member of the (Indian) National Security Council Secretariat concerning secret assessments of India's security situation in the states of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura, as well as concerning the Naxalites and Maoists," two opposition groups.

Other documents contained personal information about a member of the Indian Directorate General of Military Information.
 

The government's Food Security Bill will be redrafted after three weeks and will include fresh suggestions from the Planning Commission and the Food Ministry.

At a meeting of the empowered panel on food security it was decided that the:

The Planning Commission will come back to the panel with the exact number of poor people in India who will benefit from the Act
The Food Ministry has also been told to study how 22 other countries enacted food-for-all laws
The panel met after Sonia made it clear she wants food allocation to be raised from 25 kg to 35 kg per family
Sonia wants Bill to ensure nutritious diet and not just wheat, rice for the poor
Government worried: Food subsidy bill will rise from Rs 55,578 crore to Rs 85,000 crore
Government worried: Revising BPL coverage means added burden of 40%

Speaking on this, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said: Discussions on the BPL list are on. It was decided at the meeting that we will meet after three weeks by which the Planning Commission and the Food Ministry will submit the report to the group of ministers."

Speaking NDTV, the Supreme Court Commissioner on Food Security said that providing 35 kg of foodgrain to the poor was the top court's order not a recommendation and the government cannot change it.

"The government must be proactive in finding out who are the peopel who are not getting 35 kilos of foodgrains. The record of government in this connection is very poor," said NC Saxena, Supreme Court Commissioner on Food Security.

And reflecting the divergence of view between the Congress and the government, Rajya Sabha member Mani Shankar Aiyar said the government has failed to understand that inclusive growth needs inclusive governance.

"A community has to be empowered to secure its own entitlements. That is the whole purpose of bringing in Panchyati Raj and bringing in the Nagar Palikas.Inclusive growth is not possible without inclusive governance," said Mani Shankar Aiyar, Rajya Sabha MP 
 

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