The fire broke out late Friday in the foothill community of Sylmar on the edge of the Angeles National Forest and quickly spread across 2,600 acres — more than 4 square miles — as it was driven by Santa Ana wind gusting as high as 76 mph.

Dozens of homes were destroyed, officials said, and aerial footage from television helicopters showed rows of houses gutted in just in one subdivision.

Fire crews had to abandon a mobile home park that was burning out of control.

“We have almost total devastation here in the mobile park,” Los Angeles Fire Capt. Steve Ruda said of the Oakridge Mobile Home Park. “I can’t even read the street names because the street signs are melting.”

At an evacuation center, Oakridge resident Wendy Vannenberg said the park had about 600 residences, many of them housing senior citizens. The same park had been evacuated during a fire last month.

“Last time I took all of my grandparents’ things. They had brought over them from Germany after World War II,” said Vannenberg, 46. “This time, I didn’t really grab anything. I don’t know why.”

Behind a fireline outside the mobile park, Jo Ordaz, 50, anxiously waited to learn the fate of her three-bedroom home as ash-laden wind gusts flicked branches from trees and rocked parked cars.

Seeking extension of police custody of Purohit, special prosecutor for Maharashtra ATS Ajay Misar told the court that a witness in Malegaon blast told ATS that Purohit had claimed he had 60 kgs of RDX in his possession which he had got from Jammu and Kashmir.

Purohit gave a portion of the RDX to one Bhagwan who is suspected to have used in Samjhauta Express blast, Misar said. The RDX is also suspected to have been used in Malegaon bomb explosion on September 29 this year, due to which Purohit’s interrogation is necessary, Misar told the court.

Saravana Bhavan is a worldwide chain of restaurants famous for South Indian vegetarian cuisine. The restaurant chain has 47 outlets in India and seven abroad, including one each in Canada and the US.

Savale was dragged out of his office, stripped to the waist and assaulted by the group of women, whose identity is not yet known. He added that some women employees had made similar complaints against the 57-year-old Savale in the recent past. Among the allegations against him were that he threatened to ‘transfer’ the women employees if they rejected his overtures. He allegedly would go to their homes at odd hours, send SMSes and make blank calls.

Kuldeep’s brother Vikas, who along with another friend was with the victim when the incident occurred, claimed that they were proceeding towards their house on a motorcycle when a police van suddenly stopped them. He said some of the personnel in the van were in plain clothes.

One of them fired at Kuldeep “from point blank range without provocation”, Vikas claimed. He said after the firing, the police inquired about their whereabouts. Kuldeep died on the spot, he claimed, adding the police team fled from the site.

As per the statement, Singh, who is Minister of State for Food was scheduled to travel on flight IT 4580 from Patna to Kolkata. The flight was scheduled to depart at 08:30pm and at 08:10pm, the Kingfisher Airlines staff at Patna Airport were informed by Singh’s travel agent that he would not be travelling on the flight. At around 08:20pm after all the guests were on board, Patna ATC gave start-up and push-back clearance to the commander of the aircraft.

The aircraft had just begun taxiing when Singh reportedly landed at the airport i.e. 10 minutes before the scheduled departure of the flight, the statement said. “Under the circumstances, considering the fact that the aircraft had began taxiing, our Airport Manager told Singh the same and regretted that he could not join the flight as we were told that he was not coming,” the statement said.

At least a ten people were killed and several others injured when serial blasts rocked the northeastern state of Assam on Thursday.

According to police officials, the blasts occured at Ganeshguri, Fancy Bazaar, Dispur Road, Century market and Paan Bazaar.

Television channels showed footage of cars going up in flames and firefighters dousing the charred wreckage of vehicles. Plumes of smoke were seen rising from Guwahati, the state’s main city.

No one has claimed responsibility as yet.

Following a media expose on how judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts were holidaying abroad at the tax payers’ expense, the government is now preparing fresh guidelines. Union Law Minister, H R Bhardwaj said, “There was a lot of undue criticism so we made the rules that they should travel only when necessary and should do so only when the court is not in session.”

Following the media report in May this year, officials admit that foreign visits by judges have been curtailed by a third. Moving away from past practice, the prime minister’s office is refusing permission to a number of such requests. The fresh guidelines dictate that:

1. Judges should avoid travelling abroad when courts are in session.
2. For high courts, if the trip is necessary, only one judge should represent the court.
3. Invitations by non governmental institutes should be politely refused.

A Right to Information (RTI) query had shown how judges were holidaying abroad with their wives in tow. Former chief justice Y K Sabharwal for instance, had extended his 11-day working-trip to 38 days, converting 21 days into a private visit.

While 7,404 Pakistanis did not return after expiry of their visas in 2007, the figure was 7,650 in 2006 and 7,043 in 2005. The figures — disclosed in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday — clearly show the marginal increase or decrease in the number of missing Pakistanis during 2005-07 as compared to what was recorded (9,636) till July this year.

Sources in the home ministry said that though some of them had been deported after verification as they recorded their presence with the concerned Foreigners Regional Registration Offices (FRROs), it had been quite difficult to trace each one of them who disappeared after arrival.

Without ruling out the possibility of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI taking the legal route (using proper visa) to sneak in terrorists into India, a senior home ministry official said: “It is suspected particularly when the number of infiltration has come down substantially this year. The ISI can do it to beat its failure on the infiltration front.”

“This morning we executed a series of search warrants to intercept all the suspects. This operation proved this is happening on a large scale, because we found more than 200 illegal Indians,” Tim De Wolf, an assistant prosecutor dealing with the case, was quoted as saying by the media. “We think we found and identified 15 of the organisers of this smuggling of human beings,” he said. “The ring was capable of smuggling thousands of people into the UK every year”, he added.

According to the BBC, the would-be migrants were mainly Indian men aged between 15 and 35, as well as some women and children. Most of the migrants were from Punjab, de Wolf said. They were being kept in miserable conditions while waiting to be taken on the final leg of their journey.

The deal is simple. The ill-gotten black money of the underworld is invested by frontmen, who get 30% of the profits on the investments. For the remaining 70%, the underworld reaps its dividends every month. Said another senior crime branch officer, “Also, with the slowdown in real estate, gangsters are finding it difficult to extort money from builders who are already in deep crisis.’‘

While the mafia has begun extortion in a big way in Navi Mumbai and Thane, Mumbai’s extortion graph has gone down in the past few years. This year, the police hardly have records of threats from Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan gangs, with cases only pertaining to Ravi Pujari and Hemant Pujari. “We had successfully crippled the underworld activities in the past. And we will not allow anybody to raise their heads and recoup in Mumbai,’‘ a top police official said.

On Monday, the actor, through her counsel Percy Pardiwalla, opposed the commissioner’s appeal, but a bench headed by Justice S Radhakrishnan thought it fit to admit it. The Bachchan bahu, who was then at the start of her career, had, in her I-T returns for the assessment year 1996-97, declared a total income of Rs 2.14 lakh. But in 2000, during a search and seizure on her premises, the I-T department found that her passport showed her to be a resident as against her claim of being an NRI during the assessment year. She was out of India for only 92 days and not for 186 days as she “falsely claimed”, said the taxman, and three years later (in 2003) reopened the proceedings against Rai under the Income Tax Act.

In 2004, I-T authorities ordered that the income of 50,000 pounds (equivalent to approx Rs 26 lakh) she had received for winning the Miss World title must be added to her income and she be taxed accordingly. The tax amount was approximately Rs 14 lakh which, IT officers say, with interest would now amount to almost Rs 50 lakh.

The scandal erupted on Sunday, when a television programme broadcast audio tapes in which two members of the ruling party solicited a kickback of five petroleum lots from the Norwegian firm Discover Petroleum International. Political analysts said Garcia was forced to dump the cabinet to avoid a certain vote of censure, but speculated that he would name a new cabinet with several of those same ministers reinstated in their portfolios.

Investigators say that the software, which operates through a method known as keystroke logging, enabled every character typed on a keyboard to be transmitted to a still-unknown location via the Internet. Upon its discovery, bank officials shut off the data link between Washington and Chennai, where Satyam has long operated the bank’s sole offshore computer center responsible for all of the bank’s financial and human resources information.

“I want them off the premises now,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick reportedly told his deputies. But at the urging of CIO De Poerck, Satyam employees remained at the bank as recently as October 1 while it engaged in “knowledge transfer” with two new India-based contractors.

BJP leader VK Malhotra says the members got the Cash for Vote draft report late. So the meeting will now be held on October 17. “The draft has been circulated among the members. The cash-for-vote scam broke just before the Vote of Confidence called by the UPA in July this year. Amar Singh and Ahmed Patel were accused of horse-trading before the crucial vote in the house.

“My other option was to shut shop. The officials were hounding me with threats,” says Tiwari. Tiwari – with the help of the Anti-Corruption Bureau – installed a hidden camera in his shop and captured the inspectors asking for money on tape. Based on the evidence from Tiwari’s tapes, the Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested 15 people on Monday, including an Assistant Commissioner and an engineer with the Labour Department, nine inspectors in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and three Delhi Police constables. These men have been taking money from shopkeepers.

On Friday, SC declined the plea of Index Medical College, Indore, to admit 150 students for 2008-09 as MCI, the statutory body which certifies whether a college be granted permission, said the institution’s infrastructure was inadequate for teaching students. After the court was apprised of MCI’s adverse report by counsel Maninder Singh, a Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan sought the response of the Centre which had also inspected the college. Additional solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam, appearing for the Centre, supplemented MCI’s assessment, saying the central team too had found the infrastructure “woefully inadequate”. He told the Bench that no permission could be granted.

But the petitioner did not have to wait for even a day longer. Within hours of the SC’s thumbs down, the health ministry wrote to the chairman of Mayank’s Welfare Society, saying the college could admit 150 students this year itself by September 30, the apex court mandated last date for admission.

Legal sources told IANS on conditions of anonymity that Karunanidhi’s statement simply meant that the government would ask the newly constituted advisory panel to recommend the release and accede to her request. The Madras High Court struck down the government order rejecting Nalini’s plea for premature release Wednesday saying the improperly constituted advisory panel’s recommendations were wrong.

Nalini Murugan, alias Sriharan, who had accompanied the suicide bomber Dhanu to the election rally in Sriperumbudur where Gandhi was killed in May 1991, had sought her release saying she had spent more than the mandatory maximum 14 years in jail.

Kashir Dwivedi said: “I had left my office in Noida Sector 63 around 9.30pm(local time). Four men in a Tavera overtook my car (a Honda Civic) and parked in such a way that my vehicle got trapped. They tried to open my doors. Since they had been automatically locked, they brought out an iron rod from their car, smashed open the window and dragged me out on the road.”

“They tried to pick me up like a sack of potatoes and push me inside their car. I resisted and kept rolling on the road to avoid them, shouting for help,” he added. “By this time, a crowd had assembled. So the men fled. Before that, one of them hit me on the head with the iron rod. I lost consciousness for a while. When I regained sense, I called my wife Madhu with my mobile phone. She rushed to the spot and took me to the Kailash hospital (nearby).” The rattled Dwivedi was under observation in the hospital through the night and discharged Saturday.

A resident of Sector 61 in Noida where his office is located, Dwivedi is now scared to go to work although there has never been any labour trouble there. “This city seems unsafe,” said Madhu.

The Jamia Vice Chancellor went to meet the HRD minister at his residence to apprise him of all that’s been happening within the premises of Jamia University. Incidentally, the Jamia University named its distance learning center after the HRD minister in May last year.

The militants also fired and targeted troops with grenades, he said, adding that BSF troops and patrol parties retaliated the firing from the other side. The exchange of fire continued for nearly an hour, he said, adding that BSF troops also fired mortar bombs on militants. BSF troops beat back the infiltration bid as the militants later escaped to the Pakistani side. There was no loss of life or injury in the cross-border firing and searches are being conducted in the area.

The Pakistani troops also committed ceasefire violation, he said.

Presenting a comparative look on Pakistan and India, the CPI of last ten years indicated that ‘lower corruption better is the economy’. The difference in corruption ranking between Pakistan and India has increased from five in 1998 to 49 in 2008. The present economic status of the two countries confirms that the economic growth is inversely proportional to corruption. In 1998, the foreign exchange reserves of Pakistan and India were 1.6 billion dollars and 237 billion dollars respectively, and in the last ten years the gap in foreign exchange reserves of the two countries increased from 16 times in 1998 to 26 times in 2008.

‘Pakistan needs immediate enforcement of good governance and transparent administration to counter the acute problems,’ says Syed Adil Gilani, Chairman Transparency International Pakistan chapter. Pakistan has rectified the UN Convention against Corruption in 2007 which requires the country to establish and promote effective practices aimed at prevention of corruption, periodically evaluate relevant legal instruments and administrative measures with a view to determining their adequacy to prevent and fight corruption, he said.

According to World Bank report on ‘Doing Business 2009’, Pakistan has not initiated any reform to ease out regulatory burden of doing business during the last one year.

Pakistani authorities on Sunday released dramatic security camera footage of the suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad [Images] that depicted the final minutes before a truck packed with 600 kg of explosives blew up, causing widespread destruction. more at http://www.desihotmasala.com/2008/09/cctv-footage-islamabad-bomb-blast-watch.html

Sanjay had actually visited the office to get a copy of his original ration card which was in a poor condition. But when he was asked to pay up for it, he decided to expose the officials. “I wanted to test how sincere the officers were, so I gave Chief Ministers name,” says Sanjay.

Her mother suffered severe injuries and is now battling for life at the RML hospital. An old grandmother, a handicapped aunt and an uncle is all the family she has left with.

Simran’s grandmother wailed, “My entire family has been wiped out.”

To make matters worse, the family said they have been asked to pay money to get possession of the dead bodies. “I paid Rs 500 per dead body,” Simran’s grandmother said.

However, the administration claimed that it is unaware of such things. Councillor Krishna Tirath said, “I have no idea who is taking money.”

According to a restricted report by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, Libya’s contacts with Khan date back to 1984, more than 10 years earlier than previously assumed. The report, which was circulated to the IAEA’s board of governors on Friday, said that Libyan officials met with Khan in January 1984. “During this meeting, Khan described to a senior Libyan official the technologies for acquiring nuclear material, and the necessary resources and capabilities, and offered to sell Libya centrifuge enrichment technology,” the report said. Further “senior level contacts” took place between Libya and Khan between 1989 and 1991, in which Libya acquired information on first-generation centrifuges. It was only in 1995 that Libya re-established contact with Khan and his network to acquire more efficient second-generation centrifuges, the report said.

In December 2003, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi stunned the world by renouncing Tripoli’s weapons of mass destruction programme. Libya’s subsequent cooperation with IAEA inspectors has helped unravel Khan’s network.

Surat Police Commissioner R M S Brar also believes that the planting of so many bombs on odd locations in the city was not possible without the local support. “The terrorist operations of such massive scale is not possible without local support. The planting of bombs, the selection of places, transportation of explosive materials was not possible without locals,” Brar said. Both Ahmedabad and Surat police have launched massive combing operations since two days in various parts of the two cities to nab the locals involved in terrorist acts.

Ahmedabad crime branch had carried out massive operations last night and detained several persons. The Surat crime branch had also carried out massive combing operations last morning. “In the combing operations we had questioned 280 people and made preventive arrest of 90 people,” Brar said. He further said, “We have found some leads in the case but we will not declare about it yet.”

The Union home ministry and the Assam government, which originally kept the records of Nagaland, do not even have the valid “map” of the state which ironically is in the throes of violence sparked by the demand to carve out Greater Nagaland by extending the existing boundaries of the state.

The matter came as a shock to home ministry officials when it was brought to light for the first time by Nagaland during its submission before the Local Commission on the Assam-Nagaland Border here last week.

al-Zayet, known in certain circles as ‘Fat Man’, has earned a reputation for extravagant spending and is known to be 1 of 180 so called ‘whales’ who frequently bet over £1million a night at casino tables.

The arrears in question were accumulated by al-Zayet in March, 2000 during a single evening of blackjack at exclusive casino Aspinall’s Club in London. When, after a disagreement about the croupier dealing his hand, he cancelled the £2million cheque given to the casino to cover his evening’s losses.

Arguing that both the firms had “possibly evaded octroi levy” for the purchases, the corporation has slapped notices asking if the firms paid octroi on the purchases. The BMC’s Vigilance Department has asked the firms to pay 0.1 per cent of the total worth of these aircraft as octroi levy, if not paid so far. This would mean that Ambani senior may have to pay an additional Rs 4 crore for his aircraft while his younger brother may also end up shelling out an equivalent amount.

Civic sources also said that the two firms could also be asked to pay a fine of ten times the octroi amount for the alleged evasion. A RCDPL spokesperson said, “We have received the intimation and we are looking into the allegations. We will abide by the rules and regulations.” Meanwhile, an RTTPL spokesperson confirmed the issuance of notice but refused to elaborate further.

“We are keeping the highway free. All our camps are on the roadside. The police are free to divert the traffic from Palsit in Burdwan, which they are not doing. They can try and run vehicles on the expressway if they want,” Banerjee said.

Even the NHAI project director didn’t sound reassuring. “There has been no change in the ground situation so far. The condition is still not conducive for resuming traffic movement today. We are losing Rs 25 lakh a day as toll. I will seek the help of the state police failing which we would clear the expressway with central forces,” the director said. Singh also lodged a complaint with the Singur police saying that leaders of the agitation refused to receive the copy of the court order and that the camps dotting the expressway were all illegal.

Firing a fresh salvo against the beleaguered former army chief, ruling PPP chief Asif Ali Zardari accused Musharraf, who has often targeted the country’s politicians for indulging in corruption,” of misappropriation and said “rogue” ISI members could have benefitted from it.

Bangalore, Wednesday, Aug 13, 2008: The Indian software industry is flooded with fake CVs and the leading software companies have begun taking stringent action on the employees as well as all concerned people. Indian knowledge workers are upwardly mobile and in great demand globally.

The recent “India Fraud Survey Report – 2008” by KPMG emphasizes the alarming rise in fraudulent documentation by employees.

With the recent spate of documentation fraud, NOSTOPS has launched a new initiative that will serve as an online databank of live ‘verified & screened’ knowledge workers, which employers use to query & authenticate prospective employees.

Rajiv Dabhadkar, Founder – NOSTOPS and the CEO –‘ NOSTOPS.ORG’ said that “There is a large gap between the multiple skills
demanded from the employer (required to remain globally competitive) and the skills learnt in educational institutions. This industry-academia mismatch is one of the affects of globalisation that gives opportunities for ‘document abuse’, which is seriously manipulated & misused towards the outward migration of Indian knowledge capital as well”.

“Every industry has a small lot of – not so right people and the recruiting industry is no exception. NOSTOPS has been striving hard to set right this malady. Through this initiative we hope to begin making the difference to our members by
providing them an opportunity to do the right thing… and to be sought by the employers rather than beating the system or by
opting for services from little known agencies/people wherein monitoring quality service from them will be very difficult.”
said Mr. Dabhadkar.

About 60 per cent of Indian firms have detected frauds in past two years, according to the KPMG report and India Inc is still
unprepared to handle this menace. Making the situation even worse, at least 5 per cent companies have had losses exceeding Rs 10 crore (Rs 100 million) and more than double of them have estimated the hit on their bottom lines in the range of Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million) to Rs 10 crore.

According to the “India Fraud Survey Report – 2008” survey, over 70 per cent of companies believe that fraud in India would
further increase in next two years, while over 80 per cent respondents recognised fraud as a problem in the corporate
environment in the country. Indicating about 54 per cent rise in the number of fraud occurrences since the previous survey in
2006, about 60 per cent of respondents confirmed having experienced fraud at their companies, as against just 39 per cent two years ago

Blasts take place whenever BJP is in trouble: DigvijayDenied elbow room by Maya, Ajit in a fixFarmers protest ‘land grab’, Maya village turns fortressHaving said no, SP does a rethink on joining Govt
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The checking of the currency chests began on Saturday and continued on Sunday.

Among the 628 currency chests, 62 are in districts that are along Indo-Nepal border. “They are being checked on a priority basis,” a senior RBI officer said. From all indications so far, it appears that the problem is confined to Dumariyaganj, the RBI officer said. The vaults of the12 banks that drew currency from Dumariyaganj have been checked and no fake currency notes were found, he added.

However, the temple administration is ‘casual’ about tax evasion and argues that as it is a renowned dharmic institute, it should be granted an exemption. According to a highly-placed official from the TTD properties wing, “The TTD has been earning income only through the offerings made by millions of devotees across the world. The construction of guest houses and mutts in Tirumala was possible only because of donations,” he said. “Why should we pay tax to the TUDA? In fact, none of the government bodies has taken up development activities in the past two decades in Tirupati.” This, even as the state government is sketching bigger plans for Greater Tirupati.

Tuda chairman C Bhasker Reddy, who is also an ex-officio member of the TTD trust board, launched a broadside against the TTD for its tax evasion. “All these years, we kept mum as it is a sensitive issue related to the sentiments of the people. But it is affecting our revenues. All the dharmic institutes in Huda and Vuda regions pay tax. Even the state government has asked the TTD to pay it when the latter approached for an exemption”, he noted.

Stating that officials in India understood only the “crack of a whip”, the apex court on Friday ordered that a policeman turning away a person without registering his complaint could face contempt of court charges and cool his heels in jail if he failed to justify non-registration of the FIR.

Brushing aside the apprehensions of some counsel who felt that an order as harsh as this could be prone to misuse by those who had an axe to grind against the police, the bench said that in India, officials were activated only by the crack of a whip.

“In India, officials act only on huntering (flogging). India understands only ‘chabuk’ – this is the meaning of swaraj and this is the concept of swaraj (self-rule),” Justice B N Agrawal said.

Security forces are in the look-out for over one lakh Bangladeshis who had entered the country legally and have gone missing, a senior police officer has said.

“Over one lakh Bangladeshis who entered India with valid passports and visa are traceless as on date,” Meghalaya’a Additional Director General of Police Kulbir Khrishna said while speaking at a seminar ‘Changes in Security Perspective of Indo-Bangladesh’ here.

He said the number of these missing Bangladeshis could be ascertained as they had valid documents. However, the total illegal migrants in India could be astounding, he said.

Pointing that there was evidence to show the involvement of HUJI, which has proximity to Bangladesh’s intelligence agency DGFI and Pakistan’s ISI, in a number of terror attacks in the country in the recent past, Khrisnan said the porous border has fomented the movement of insurgent elements and illegal migrants.

“The seat of power in Bangladesh is occupied by elements who comes from different streams of thoughts. This makes it further difficult to deal with the problem,” he added.