Sukumar Choudhuri, the author of many remarkable as well as awarded books and recipient of 'Ekhon Kabita', 'Mayamegh', 'Durer Kheya', ‘Sadvaabana’, 'Sahityasetu' and many other awards of repute, has been invited to grace legendary ‘World Poetry Festival 2010' to be held at Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi, Kolkata between 19th and 21st March 2010. The three-day festival will be attended by more than 30 foreign poets and about 300 Bengali poets from different countries of the world.

New Delhi: More corporates are expected to throw their hat into the ring as the IPL bidding process for the two new teams begins afresh on Tuesday.

Reports emanating from different quarters indicate that business houses were now looking at the team auction more proactively after it "has started to make business sense".

Atul Chordia, chairman and chief executive of Panchshil Realty and part of the consortium bidding for the Pune team, was quoted as telling a business daily that they were not concerned about the bid price going up.

National carrier Air India today created history of sorts when, at a little past midnight last night, the first all-women crew ultra long-haul Boeing 777-200 LR non-stop flight from Mumbai to New York was flagged off by Civil Aviation Secretary Madhavan Nambiar.

Flight AI 141 was the first of 22 all-women crew flights operated by the airline across its domestic and international network to mark the centenary of International Women's Day today.

NAGPUR: Vidarbha Rajya Sangram Samiti, the umbrella body of all pro-statehood organisations, would resort to a jail bharo agitation in all villages, towns and cities of Vidarbha on March 23 to press the demand for separate state, said former Lok Sabha member Jambuwantrao Dhote.

He was speaking to mediamen after attending the meeting of the VRSS office-bearers which was attended by former MPCC President Ranjit Deshmukh, Prakash Ambedkar, Jogendra Kawade and others.

NAGPUR: BJP corporator Sandip Joshi has finally arrived with the party nominating him as the chairman of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) standing committee. TOI spoke to him about his plans for the next 13 months after the taking over ceremony on Saturday. Excerpts from the interview...

Q: What will be your priorities?

NAGPUR: The Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court has directed the state CID to investigate the death of a seven-year-old girl, who died in the car of BJP president Nitin Gadkari in May, last year.

A division bench of justice A P Lavande and justice P B Varale issued the directives on Friday on a criminal writ petition filed by Vimal and Ashok Thakre, the parents of Yogita Thakre, who had demanded a CBI probe into the death.

The HC bench directed the state CID to complete the probe at the earliest.

In 2000, two women Vishakha Rao-Jathar and Sharmistha Gandhi, both MBAs, quit lucrative jobs as management specialists in the corporate world of Mumbai and returned to Nagpur aspiring to be teachers at a local engineering college. Destiny played a joke and both were left jobless after the engineering college failed to see the light of the day.

NAGPUR: Tragedy struck Sakhre family of Bhankheda the second time in just over a month. It had lost eldest son Prateek, 28, to illness just five weeks ago. On Sunday when the family was preparing for the ritual after completion of one-and-quarter month of Prateek’s death, the body of their second daughter, 20-year-old Pallavi, was found in community latrine for the women’s, strangled to death by her lover. Initial investigations revealed that Pallavi was fourmonth pregnant.