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The National Security Archive, a Washington-based NGO, has made the sensational disclosure that the United States launched secret spy missions against China from an airbase in Odisha after the China War of 1962. The missions, using the (in)famous U-2 reconnaissance plane, were approved by none other than Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, an apostle of non-alignment.

It was a coincidence that on the day the rationalist, Narendra Dabholkar, was shot dead in Pune, the newspapers carried the report that all the local bodies in Niyamgiri, Odisha, had voted against the proposed mining for bauxite in the region by a multinational company.

New Delhi: India will be represented by its Minister of State for Defence, Jitendra Singh at the two-day 2nd ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (Plus) ADMM Plus beginning on August 28 at Brunei.

Haryana’s political scenario is set to change. A close look at the developments of the past few months will help perceive the form the changes may take.

Rising Muslim-Buddhist tensions in South Asia are emerging as a new destablising factor in the regional as well as domestic security scenarios of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There has been an alarming escalation in the tensions between the Congress and its ally, the Kerala Congress(M), which is threatening to affect the cohesion and stability of the already (dis)United Democratic Front(UDF).

The most optimistic assumption at the end of a tumultuous August week in our financial market was that the rupee might after all stabilise at rs.60 to the dollar, by the end of fiscal 2014 (March), from the peaks it was scaling to above 65, let alone the uncertainty still hanging over its course in the coming days and months.

LUCKNOW: Irrespective of the Akhilesh Yadav government ban, VHP leaders Ashok Singhal and Swami Chinmayanand have announced that proposed 84-Kosi yatra would take place from August 25 to September 13 and sants from all over the country would participate in the yatra.

The Lok Sabha elections are still far off but a disclosure by AICC General Secretary, Digvijaya Singh, that he was prepared to contest against Leader of the Opposition, Sushma Swaraj, from Vidisha constituency in May 2014 Lok Sabha election, has all the elements of surprise. Vidisha has been a RSS stronghold and the constituency has been returning BJP candidates election after election. Such stalwarts as former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, newspaper baron, the late Ram Nath Goenka and the disgraced BJP minister Raghavji contested from there.

For a few years now, full-time faculty at government colleges and universities have been drawing salaries based on the recommendations of the sixth pay commission of UGC. This puts all these people from the rank of assistant professor and upwards in the top 5 per cent income bracket of the country, whose people they are supposed to serve. How is an academician whose salary is paid by the people supposed to serve the people?