New Delhi, July 25 : External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told a private news channel that he has no bitterness against the Left parties and that he was sad for the turn of the event in which the Left parties parted ways with the United Progressive Alliance.

When asked whether there was any possibility of Congress party allying with the Left, Mukherjee said: “How can I say right now. Let us wait, how circumstances will unfold. Let us not predict and be political astrologers. I do not keep options open and do not keep options closed."

New Delhi, July 25 : About 253 million Chinese log on to the Internet regularly, making the country the largest web-user market, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said on Thursday.

The semi-official organization, regarded as the most authoritative source of statistics on the country''s Internet users, said China had overtaken the US in terms of the number of netizens in the first half of this year.

According to www. internetworldstats. com, the US had 218 million net-users till December 31, 2007, and China, 210 million. Based on the US'' growth trend, CNNIC estimated its number could have reached 230 million by the end of June.

New Delhi, July 25: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will file a complaint with Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, alleging that Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh had offered bribe to three of its MPs for abstaining themselves during the trust vote in the Lok Sabha on July 22.

The Lok Sabha Secretariat last night asked the three MPs - Ashok Argal, Mahaveer Bhagora and Fagan Singh Kulaste - to present their version officially to take the case forward, official sources said.

On Wednesday, Chatterjee had said that nobody would be spared if found guilty.

New Delhi, July 24 : Indian and the United States army will undertake joint manoeuvres on counter-terrorism in Mizoram from next month.

Operation Vajraprahar will be the fourth round of joint exercises between the special forces of the two countries.

Earlier, Indian and American forces have held similar complex battle manoeuvres in Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir and in the Alaskan mountains in the US.

New Delhi, July 24 : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today met President Pratibha Patil and briefed her about the special session in the Lok Sabha.

A Rashtrapati Bhavan spokesperson said the meeting lasted 25 minutes during which the President was informed about the deliberations of Lok Sabha''s special session among other issues. The session ended on Tuesday.

New Delhi, July 24 : CPI (M) politburo member Sitaram Yechury has said that it was strange that after four years of Left support, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has alleged that they wanted him to behave like a “bonded slave”.

“The Prime Minister has accused the Left parties as wanting to treat him as a bonded slave. Strange that it took him over four years of being the PM on the strength of the support of the Left parties to hurl such accusations,” Yechury said in an editorial in the forthcoming issue of People Democracy.