It’s now Aamir Khan’s turn to sell India to the world! The Bollywood hero has been engaged by the tourism ministry to be the face of its brand campaign ‘Incredible India’ to showcase the country’s rich heritage and culture. The campaign, launched in 2002 to promote the country’s unique heritage and cultural aspects, has been a success that has helped boost tourism in India.

Three members of a Bengali TV reality show, including two producers and a contestant, were remanded in police custody for five days for allegedly pushing a Midnapore hotel caretaker from the fifth floor for asking them to stop their night-long drinking. The team from Fatafati, a reality show on ETV Bangla, were shooting a special episode. The caretaker has serious head injuries

 

Controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who was asked to leave India in March, has returned to New Delhi. Taslima returned after spending four months in Sweden and was immediately whisked away to a foreign diplomat’s house by security agencies, the sources said. Taslima, author of controversial book "Lajja", was forced to leave India after spending weeks in a safe house in the capital and was also shunted out of Kolkata in November following huge protests over her previous writings that criticize Islam and its treatment of women.

The chief medical officer (CMO) of Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah district was found murdered at his official residence last weekend. A police official said it appears that CMO Om Prakash was battered to death with a heavy object, such as a huge stone, while he was asleep. Although the motive for the murder is yet to be ascertained, the police have identified a servant as a key person of interest. Gopi, the sweeper, used to work at Prakash’s official residence and had not received his salary for the past four months. He is now missing.

 

Three members of an inter-state gang of thieves, believed responsible for around 30 cases of temple thefts in Karnataka and Kerala, were arrested at Kumbala, police said. Four idols were recovered from them, said an official at Kumbala police station. A number of temple thefts have been reported from north Kerala’s Kasargod district in the last one year

 

A "Bollywood slut list" circulating on the MXit cellphone chat service in South Africa that lists local Indian girls described as "easy and willing", has caused great alarm — even prompting a suicide attempt. There has been growing concern over similar lists being spread by teens and schoolchildren. The list says girls from Benoni, South Africa are "the sexiest in the country", modelling themselves on Bollywood actresses. The lists allegedly also name some school girls who have had repeated abortions and indulge in promiscuous behaviour with men old enough to be their fathers. "At any given moment, millions of messages from MXit’s 7.5 million users are in circulation, making it very difficult to trace the lists and remove them," a company spokesman said, adding that MXit was doing its best to remove the offending lists from its database.