BCCI cools down, tour to go on
Mumbai, January 12
India's cricket board has withdrawn its threat to pull out of the current Australian tour if a ban on Harbhajan Singh was not overturned by the International Cricket Council. “There is no question of the tour being called off,” board spokesman Rajiv Shukla quoted president Sharad Pawar as saying on Saturday.

Hogg slur ‘not racist’, hearing tomorrow
Sports page: Vintage Sehwag slams 113

Pranab admits Chinese incursions
New Delhi, January 12
Allaying apprehensions about Chinese incursions across the Line of Actual Control, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said there were some Chinese incursions but there was no need to press a panic button, as the issue was being addressed through adequate “mechanisms”.

PM’s China visit: Boundary not key issue, focus on trade
New Delhi, January 12
The boundary row will take a back seat during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s China visit (January 13-15) and the focus will be on improving all-round bilateral ties, particularly trade.

96 killed in Sri Lanka clashes
Colombo, January 12
At least 95 Tamil Tigers were killed in fierce fighting with Sri Lankan troops in the island’s embattled north, the military said today, as clashes intensified after the government last decided to pull out of a six-year-old ceasefire with the rebels last week.

LTTE chief injured?

SC ban on bull taming defied
TN to file review petition
Chennai, January 12
The Supreme Court ban on “jallikattu”, the sport to tame wild bulls, has already been defied in a remote village in southern Tamil Nadu and the police today registered a case against the organisers, while the state government has decided to file a review petition in the apex court tomorrow as it is practically impossible for it to implement the order.

Bharat Ratna
Basu says not in race, Maya wants it for Kanshi
Kolkata, January 12
Veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu today asserted that he was not in the race for Bharat Ratna. “I am not in the race for the country’s highest award,” Basu told the CPM mouthpiece Ganashakti.

HC: Sex after false promise of marriage is rape
New Delhi, January 12
Establishing sexual relationship with a woman on a false promise of marriage amounts to rape, a court in Delhi has held while sentencing a man to seven years in jail for sexually exploiting her neighbour.

3 electrocuted
Kapurthala, January 12
A pall of gloom descended at a Kapurthala village, Lakhwariya, falling under Sultanpur Lodhi subdivision, on the eve of Lohri today as three young devotees were electrocuted when they were trying to change the ‘chola’ sahib’ of the Nishan Sahib (cloth wrapped around the Nishan Sahib) in the village gurdwara.

Entry fee on taxis registered outside Punjab may be cut
Chandigarh, January 12
Heavy entry fee levied by the Punjab government on taxi cabs is likely to be withdrawn or reduced substantially in a few days. Sources said a meeting of the taxi cab operators would be held with state transport commissioner R. Venkataratnam on Tuesday to resolve the issue.

Health projects to go under scanner after World Bank rap New Delhi, January 12 Acting tough after a World Bank revelation about corruption in health sector projects, the government said today that it would set up four groups to probe the charges and warned that those guilty would be punished. The Centre also said the union health ministry had been working on framing detailed guidelines and modalities to increase and strengthen procurement capacity of states in order to curb corruption in health-care projects.