India in blacklist dilemma over AgustaWestland

Defence Minister A.K. Antony is leaning toward barring Anglo-Italian helicopter firm AgustaWestland from doing business in the country because of a corruption scandal, but he could be outvoted by cabinet colleagues, several government sources said.

Some cabinet ministers and even officials within the defence ministry fear such a move could set back India's efforts to modernise its military, the sources told Reuters. India plans to spend $100 billion in the next decade on military hardware.

China wants to take Sino-India ties to new stage: Li

Seeking to enhance cooperation with India, China's new Premier Li Keqiang told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that Beijing would like to promote strategic cooperation and partnership with New Delhi to a "new stage".

Hours after his endorsement as Premier yesterday, Li told Singh over phone that enhanced bilateral cooperation would contribute to enlarging the two countries' space for development and common interests.

 China will, as always, "attach great importance to its ties with India, and would like to work with it to promote their relations of strategic cooperation and partnership to a new stage," state-run Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.

Li, an English-speaking bureaucrat and a reformist leader, was yesterday as elected as the Premier of the world's second largest economy by about 3,000 deputies of the NationalPeople's Congress, known as the rubber stamp Parliament.

Thanking Singh for congratulating him, Li said China and India are the two largest Asian powers and developing nations, which are also two ancient civilizations and emerging economies.

Money laundering case: ICICI Bank suspends 18 employees

ICICI Bank suspended 18 employees, a day after the lender and two of its peers were accused of indulging in money laundering activities.
The suspension is pending the bank's investigation into money laundering charges, sources in ICICI told PTI. The probe is expected to be completed in two weeks. Country's three largest private banks, including ICICI Bank, were yesterday accused of indulging in money laundering both within and outside, with an online portal Cobrapost claiming that a sting operation conducted by it has revealed a scam.

Tyre of Thai Airways plane from India explodes

A tyre of the Thai Airways International aircraft from India exploded while landing at Suvarnabhumi Airport here early this morning. All 287 passengers and crew members were evacuated from the twin-engine Airbus 330-300 aircraft that had left Kolkata at 2.48 a.m., the Bangkok Post online reported.

Anji Reddy passes away

K Anji Reddy, promoter and chairman of the country's second largest drug maker Dr Reddy's Laboratories, passed away today. Reddy was 73-year-old and is survived by a son and a daughter.

State Bank of Travancore suspends Bitti Mohanty

The State Bank of Travancore has suspended 'Raghav Rajan', the probationary officer working with them and said to be Bitti Mohanty, convicted in the 2006 German woman rape case and now in police custody seven years after he jumped parole.