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Essential HuffPost
A video of Samajwadi Party MLA Laxmi Gautam has been making the rounds of social media. The Sambhal-based politician was seen vociferously scolding a police official for neglecting the complaints of a woman. She said, "If this will be your behaviour with the public, how will they come to you for justice?"
A day after details of legal notices sent by Bollywood actors Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut to each other were all over the news, a friend of the actress has reportedly revealed intimate details of their toxic, long-drawn-out relationship that lasted two years.
To help Instagram users keep up to date with their friends photos and shares, the popular photo sharing website will soon changing their timeline to an algorithmic one. As of now, the photographs which were posted recently showed up on the top, which the company thinks makes users miss out on most content. To avoid that they will be rolling out modified feed, the one like Instagram's owner Facebook uses.
Main News
Business tycoon Vijay Mallya reportedly diverted money to foreign countries by using nearly three lakh bank transactions. The development came on a day on which the CBI sources said it had brought 17 banks, from which a total of Rs 7,000 crore were borrowed, under its ambit of investigations. Till now, CBI was probing irregularities in the Rs 900 crore loan given to Mallya by IDBI.
Inaugurating the 4-day World Sufi Forum in New Delhi and addressing the gathering of Sufi leaders and scholars from at least 20 countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Islam was a religion of peace. "When we think of the 99 names of Allah, none stand for force and violence. The first two names denote compassionate and merciful. Allah is Rahman and Raheem," Modi said.
India has asked the high commission in Islamabad to set up a special counter to facilitate visa for Pakistan fans. The eagerly-awaited India-Pakistan T20 World Cup match is scheduled for 19 March in Kolkata.
Two flights bound for Kathmandu and Bhubaneshwar were grounded shortly before taking off when security agencies were alerted of a bomb threat call on the airlines at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, on Thursday. Reportedly, the passengers aboard the aircraft – Royal Nepal Airlines (Delhi-Kathmandu) and Air India (Delhi-Bhubaneswar) – were immediately offloaded and the planes were taken to an isolated bay where they were checked for bombs.
Off The Front Page
Persons with hearing impairment may soon be able to get driving licences after passing certain tests. The road transport ministry is planning to incorporate provisions including some sort of "prominent identification" of vehicles driven by such persons. "We are considering all aspects. This is a genuine demand from one segment of the society and they must not be deprived of their right," Gadkari said.
A 100-year-old woman from Gopalganj, Bihar reportedly fainted after hearing AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi remarks about how he won't say 'Bharat mata ki jai'. The woman, who had worked with Mahatma Gandhi during India's freedom movement claimed that the shocking comment was the reason she fainted. Now, her family members have filed a case against Owaisi in the Gopalganj court.
P Harikrishna has become India's new best chess player, replacing Vishwanathan Anand, who had held the title for almost 28 years. As per the current live rating, Anand's Elo stands at 2763.0 as compared to Harikrishna's 2763.3. Those numbers mean Harikrishna has become world No 13 pushing Anand down to the No 14 position.
Opinion
Actor-filmmaker-singer and outspoken gentleman Farhan Akhtar is great at many things, but there's one thing that people seem to have wilfully ignored, that he is a terrible, terrible singer. Suprateek Chatterjee argues that he is a Bollywood personality who is using his fame and position of privilege to tell an entire generation that actual talent doesn’t matter — good looks, a reed-thin voice, perhaps a little auto-tune software, and some charisma, is all it takes.
The experience of liberal democracies in countries other than India shines a light upon the outdatedness of the sedition law that we use so loosely, writes Narayan Lakshman in his column in The Hindu. "The Government of India frequently speaks of India becoming a superpower comparable to some democratic Western nations. Yet as this government goes about arrogating to itself the right to victimise those who challenge the legitimacy of its actions or raise dissenting slogans against widespread inequities in the country, it may have paused for thought if it bothered to glance through the historical evolution of jurisprudential thought on sedition laws in these very same nations," he writes.
As an international sportsman, I have never been able to understand the role of politicians in sports, writes Kirti Azad in his column in The Indian Express. "Practically all the sports federations are controlled by politicians and their cronies, whose interest in involving themselves in various federations defies logic," he writes. "That's why a separate law is required to be passed by Parliament. If that takes time, all sports federations, including the state bodies of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), should be asked to register themselves under the Societies Registration Act, 1860," he says.
Indian filmmaker and writer Paromita Vohra dissects the latest trending topic in Bollywood, Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut's breakup history, in her column in Mumbai Mirror. "Uptown Men with Uptown Girl wives — fair, feminine, sweet, 'classy' but mildly bohemian — develop a fatal attraction to someone more earthy, wild, less sophisticated seeming, not so neatly pretty but more sexually frank," she writes.
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