US fast food chain McDonald's will launch all-vegetarian restaurants at various pilgrimage sites across India, with the first outlet to open in Amritsar, near the Golden Temple, by the middle of 2013.

The second planned all-veggie outlet will be in Katra in Jammu & Kashmir for pilgrims going to the Vaishna Devi.

All the new outlets will be company owned and infrastructure wise, they will be similar to existing outlets. It will cost about Rs.3 crore per restaurant.

McDonald's currently operates 271 outlets in India through two companies, Connaught Plaza Restaurants which is a joint venture with McDonald's that operates in the Northern and Eastern regions, and Hardcastle Restaurants that has a Development Licence to operate in Western and Southern parts of India.

McDonald's has over 33,000 restaurants in 118 countries.

[ Back to Top ]

India won the Nehru Cup trophy for a third consecutive time, beating Cameroon by 5-4 at the finals in the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium in Delhi.

Coach Koevermans termed the victory as incredible and said the team had to straighten out a few things during half time, and the win was a superb effort by the players, including skipper Sunil Chhetri, Robin Singh, Denzil Franco, Mehtab Hossain, Clifford Miranda and Thierry Makon who all scored.

[ Back to Top ]

Bangalore police have arrested Dr Nayeem Siddiqui 26, in connection with terror modules busted recently, taking the total number of arrests in the case to 14. A laptop, cell phone and Rs.10,000 cash were recovered from him.

Police say Siddiqui played a major role in recruiting and providing logistics and funds to the 13 other suspects who include a journalist and a DRDO junior research fellow.

Police are investigating whether Siddiqui was involved in the SIMI module that was busted in 2008 in Hubli and surrounding areas. They suspect a link between an earlier Simi group that reinvented itself as the Indian Mujahideen after the government banned it. One of the arrested reportedly said Siddiqui an MBBS, was a core member of the group.

[ Back to Top ]

Raj Thackeray's comments branding Biharis as 'infiltrators' fuelled a controversy with party leaders including Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh who said the Thackeray family in fact belonged to Bihar and had settled in Western Madhya Pradesh from where they migrated to Mumbai.

Thackeray had threatened to drive Biharis out of Maharashtra if authorities in Bihar take legal action against Mumbai police who picked up a teenager from there without informing their counterparts in that state. He was reacting to reports that the Bihar chief secretary wrote to the police commissioner in Mumbai expressing his displeasure over the arrest of the youth.

Thackeray and his party have often launched violent campaigns against Hindi-speaking people in Maharashtra.

[ Back to Top ]

The survivors and witnesses of the Naroda Patia massacre celebrated the special court verdict that led to the jailing of MLA Mayaben Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi and 30 others who were involved in the horrific episode.

They said however, that they would never be able to forgive Narendra Modi who as Chief Minister has ignored them for over a decade.

[ Back to Top ]