Ace poet, lyricist and film producer Gulzar has received the coveted Akshaya Samman for 2008 by Governor Murlidhar Chandrakant Bhandare on the occasion of the 10th annual Akshaya Utsav at Utkal Mandap open-air auditorium on Saturday.
 
After receiving the award, Gulzar said, “I can only try to do what the much loved Khoka Bhai had done in the field of music, writing and philosophy.”

“But I do not think I can go beyond half of what he had achieved.”

The first Akshaya Samman was awarded to legendary playback singer Manna De.

Haryana deputy chief minister Chander Mohan, who had been absconding for nearly a month, resurfaced at Jaipur on Sunday. As it turned out, he had married Anuradha Bali, the 35-year-old divorcee, secretly and had also converted to Islam. Bali is a former law officer from Haryana.

Talking over television from hiding, Chander Mohan confessed that he had taken a second wife, for which he had to change his religion. “My new name is Chand Mohammad and my wife’s name is Fiza,” he said. “I was attracted towards Islam since childhood. I have known her (Anuradha Bali) for a long time and now we are happily married.”

After his confession Chander Mohan was sacked by the state’s Congress government today.

Indian Stock markets opened strong on Monday and gained further ground during first few hours. The markets, however, could not sustain at higher levels and slipped during the last one hour of trading session. BSE Sensex closed at 9161 with a gain of 196 point. NSE Nifty closed 70 points higher at 2784. Buying was witnessed in select counters in Power, Telecom, Real Estate, Metals and Capital goods sectors.

BSE Sensex touched and intraday high of 9432 and a low of 9095.

BSE Auto index started the day stronger but towards of the end of the session, ended only 1.2% up. Banking, Capital Goods, Metals, PSU and Technology counters ended the day stronger. Midcap stocks were marginally down while smallcap stocks gained.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee denied having made any phone call to Pakistan President when Mumbai was under siege by terrorists, calling the hoax calls a means of diverting attention from India’s case that the Mumbai attacks had a Pakistani hand behind them.

“I have seen several misleading stories about a hoax telephone call from me to President Zardari of Pakistan,” Mr Mukherjee said in a statement.

“We were informed by friends from third countries that Pakistan President Zardari believed that he had received a threatening telephone call from me on Nov 28, after the attack on Mumbai. We immediately clarified to those friends, and we also made it clear to the Pakistan authorities, that I had made no such telephone call,” he said.

Intel, in the journal Nature Photonics, has claimed world record performance in optical communications using silicon photonics.

The major utilization of the Silicon photonics-based photo dectors is to send and receive optical information, particularly in very high-bandwidth applications like supercomputers. “Silicon photonics is essential for ultra-fast transfer of data (in) future computers powered by many processor cores,” reported Intel.