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Steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal's daughter to wed on Tuesday

         Paris: Vanisha Mittal, the only daughter of Britain's 5th wealthiest man, Lakshmi Mittal, will marry Amit Bhatia, a city financier, in Paris on Tuesday. The six-day wedding party includes a banquet for 1,000 guests at the Palace of Versailles, and the guest-list includes Bollywood icons and the cream of Indian high-society. The wedding will involve a series of traditional Indian ceremonies and astring of lavish parties. It is expected to cost several million pounds.

EC stays Uttar Pradesh Rajya Sabha results (Go To Top)

         Lucknow: The Election Commission is understood to have asked the Returning Officer of the Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh not to declare the results in the wake of complaints from Congress that nomination papers of two of its candidates were rejected "unconstitutionally". The returning officer for the elections in Lucknow was asked not to announce the results till a complaint received from the Congress was disposed of. The order came after a Congress delegation met Election Commission here on Monday. UP returning officer RP Pandey had on Saturday rejected the papers of Congress nominees Harendra Agarwal and Madan Mohan Shukla, saying that they had discrepancies. The Election Commission is likely to meet later in the evening to decide the issue.

Natwar, Kasuri talks on peace process (Go To Top)

          Quingdao (China): Pakistan expressed the hope on Monday for a peace process with India, but said there was still a need to build trust with its long-time rival. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri met his Indian counterpart Natwar Singh, in the eastern Chinese coastal city of Qingdao on the sidelines of the third Asia Cooperation Dialogue forum scheduled for Tuesday. It was the first meeting between top political officials from the two countries since last month's Indian elections in which the Congress party defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Indian foreign ministry had said the ministers' talks over a working lunch had been warm and producive and they had agreed to stay in touch to provide continuous political guidance for the peace process. During the two days of meetings, Pakistan and India also agreed on Sunday to establish ways to notify each other before missile tests. After tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998 that provoked international condemnation and tough sanctions from the United States, both sides declared a moratorium, saying more tests were unnecessary.

Best Bakery case re-trial adjourned till July 17 (Go To Top)

         Mumbai: The legal row between the Maharashtra and Gujarat governments over the appointment of prosecutor in the Best Bakery case continued today with both sides staking their claims over the issue. The trial court asked both states to resolve the impasse by July 5 failing, which the matter would be referred to the Supreme Court for its ruling. The case has now been adjourned till July 17.

Dr Qadeer Khan pardoned: Musharraf (Go To Top)

          Islamabad: Pakistan nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was accused of transferring nuclear technology to other countries, has been pardoned and is no longer under house arrest, the country's President Pervez Musharraf has said. He reportedly said that Khan is no more under house arrest, but he is keeping himself inside his house for his own security. Earlier, it was believed that Khan, who is known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme, would be jailed for 14 years for secretly transferring nukes information to other nations, including Libya and Iran.

Clinton blasts Bush for jumping gun on Iraq (Go To Top)

          New York: Former US President Bill Clinton feels that in waging war against Iraq, his successor only managed to shift the focus away from USA's no. 1 enemy, Osama Bin-Laden. According to New York Daily News, in interviews to promote his new book 'My Life', Clinton criticized the Bush government for hurrying on the Iraq issue without waiting for the UN inspectors to finish their search for WMDs in the country. "I still believe, as I always have, that the biggest terrorist threat by far is Al Qaeda and the Al Qaeda network." In "launching of the war, I believe we made an error in not allowing the United Nations to complete the inspections process," New York Daily News quotes Clinton as saying in an interview to the CBS. "Let me say this: I think the Iraqis are better off with Saddam (Hussein) gone, if they can have a stable government. But there have been more terrorists moving into Iraq in the aftermath of the conflict," Clinton added. He also said that the war against Iraq had turned America in to a 'magnet for terrorists'.