- India today rejected any conditions on its nuclear deal with US. The statement by Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee came a day after nuclear supplier nations ended a two-day meeting in Vienna without reaching agreement on lifting the 34-year-old embargo on nuclear trade with India.
- India will be helped by Russia, Spain and the United States in deep space tracking of Chandrayaan-I, its maiden moon mission that will be launched later this year.The spacecraft will be launched by indigenous Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and will carry 11 payloads, including six of foreign countries.
- India witnessed a spate of under reported ‘non Islamic’ terrorist attacks with a VHP leader and four other shot dead in Orissa. Octogenarian Saraswati was a member of the central advisory committee of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, one of India’s biggest Hindu nationalist groups. He had been leading an anti-conversion movement in the state.
- Also in Orissa 5 were killed in Maoists attack on Orissa girls school – The attackers hurled bombs and sprayed bullets during the attack which lasted barely 15 minutes. Eighty-year-old VHP leader Swami Laxmananand Saraswati had been spearheading an anti-Christian campaign in Orissa for the last 35 years. The police suspect the hand of Maoists, who not only have a strong presence in the area but are also opposed to the VHP. There were reports of road blockades by the VHP and ABVP in several parts of Orissa last night. Section 144 has been imposed across the district. Read more.
- Meanwhile Maoist guerrillas in Andhra Pradesh have urged on Muslims to join them for united war on State terror. Party spokesperson Azad in a statement termed ban on SIMI as reiteration of UPA’s policy to continue its brutal war on Muslims. He said that his party demanded lifting of the ban on not only SIMI but his own party and punish the criminals who had unleashed attacks and committed atrocities on Muslims and other religious minorities. The extremist party said that war on terror is a ploy to suppress the people’s struggles and plunder for wealth of our country.
- In Assam, former chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta today accused chief minister Tarun Gogoi of misleading people with false statements on influx to divert attention from the government’s failures on all fronts.
- Indian intelligence services maintain that Fugitive Mumbai mafiosi Dawood Ibrahim has been identified as one of those funding banned jihadi outfit SIMI’s terror campaign against India. According to a dossier prepared by intelligence agencies, Dawood, who masterminded the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, has been routing funds to SIMI through an aeronautical engineer, C A M Basheer, from Kerala.
- In Kashmir, a curfew has been imposed following recent protests . After a massive show of strength Friday in which tens of thousands of Kashmiris marched to the Eidgah lawns here to offer prayers, separatist leaders had called for a march to the city centre Lal Chowk Monday. Curfew was clamped in all 10 districts of the Valley in the morning. Additional police and paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were moved in late Saturday and all major cities and towns have been sealed off, officials said.
- The New York Times features an article today on the current civil unrest in Kashmir, where it seems that the bitter dispute between India and Pakistan has reappeared. It all started with a dispute over a 99-acre piece of land, which has for more than two months been encouraged by both separatist leaders in Muslim-majority Kashmir and Hindu nationalists elsewhere in India.
- In the US, despite scorching heat and average tarmac temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius during flying hours, IAF technicians ensured a very high availability of aircraft for all exercise related requirements,during exercise Red Flag at Air Force base, Nevada, USA. The exercise concludes its operations on 23 Aug 08.
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