Nifty in tight range; Axis Bank, SBI, RIL most active

The benchmark Nifty was trading in tight range of 5875-5900 since the beginning of trade. On the one side, Reliance, DLF, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, NTPC, Bharti Airtel and Hindalco were dragging the markets down, at 12:07 hours.

However, SBI, ONGC, Infosys, L&T, ITC, BHEL, Sterlite, HUL, HDFC, Tata Steel and ICICI Bank were supporting the benchmarks.

According to Devina Mehra of First Global, the market would be close to the fairly valued range. “We don’t see a very big move on either side right away,” she adds. She further says, 2011 is more likely to be a down than an up year.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was trading at 19,637, up 35 points and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 2 points to 5,587.

Largecaps

SBI (could be merger news), Infosys, Sterlite Industries, L&T, ONGC, Grasim and Kotak Mahindra Bank were the top gainers, with rising 1-2%.

However, Reliance Industries slipped nearly 3% post disappointing fourth quarter earnings. Axis Bank too plunged over 4% on the back of margin pressure in fourth quarter while topline & bottomline numbers were good.

DLF, Jindal Steel, Hindalco, Jaiprakash Associates and Siemens were other top losers.

Infosys, Axis Bank, Jubilant Foodworks, SBI, Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank were the most active shares on exchanges.

In midcap space, Prestige Estate shot up 15%. Jubilant Foodworks, 3M India, Dish TV India and Shree Global gained 4-6% while Gammon Infra, MindTree, KEC International, JM Financial and Shree Cements slipped 2.5-5%.

In smallcap space, FAG Bearings, Kama Holdings, JVL Agro, Falcon Tyres and Thomas Cook were up 8-16%. However, Tuni Textile, Parrys Sugar, Centrum Finance, Dion Global and Money Matters declined 4-5%.

About 1415 shares advanced as against 1206 shares declined on Bombay Stock Exchange.

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Gaddafi Safe And His Morale High: Spokesman

Tripoli : Muammar Gaddafi is in a safe place and his morale is high, a regime spokesman said today after an overnight NATO air strike on the Libyan leader’s compound wrecked his office.

“The leader is working from Tripoli. The leader is well, is very healthy, is leading the battle for peace and democracy in Libya,” Mussa Ibrahim told reporters outside the destroyed building at Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya residence.

“The leader is in a safe place. He is leading a battle...  he works every day. He led the battle to provide people with services, with food, medicine, fuel,” Ibrahim told a news conference in the presence of several ambassadors.

He called the NATO raid “an attempt to assassinate the leader and other political leaders of this country” and “an act of terrorism.”Ibrahim said three people were killed and 45 wounded—15 seriously—in the air strike.

He also accused the NATO alliance and the Libyan rebels battling his regime of being afraid of peace.

“The rebels are scared of peace, NATO is scared of peace.  They know that in peace they will be kicked out of this country,” Ibrahim said.

“Why don’t you come in on the ground and test our honesty, our transparency? We said yes to elections, yes to a referendum, yes to a transitional period, yes to negotiations.”

An international coalition intervened on March 19, launching air raids and missile strikes under a UN mandate aimed at protecting civilians from Gaddafi’s forces fighting the rebellion that erupted in mid-February.NATO took command of air campaign on March 31. (AFP)

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Nearly 500 Taliban Flee In Daring Afghan Jailbreak

Kandahar : Almost 500 Taliban fighters and commanders escaped from a prison in an audacious jailbreak in southern Afghanistan which the government admitted today was a security “disaster”.

The Taliban said it sprung the inmates out of the prison in Kandahar through a one-kilometre tunnel that took five months to dig, and claimed all those who escaped belonged to the militia, including over 100 commanders.

The daring breakout in the Taliban’s heartland, the second from the prison in three years, threatens to undermine recent gains claimed by NATO forces in the area after a US-led troop surge, just as the annual fighting season begins.

It is also a major embarrassment for Afghan forces who are due to take on greater responsibility for security in their country ahead of the planned withdrawal of foreign combat troops in 2014.

Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar, said that 488 people had escaped, the vast majority of whom were thought to be Taliban.

He added at a press conference that intelligence cells and security forces at the prison had “failed in their duties” in not detecting the tunnel, which he later said was a kilometre long.

A total of 26 inmates have now been recaptured and two others were shot dead after resisting arrest by security forces near Kandahar city, Wesa added.  The escapees, who represent over a third of the prison’s total population, came from its political section.  Kandahar prison is the largest in southern Afghanistan and holds Taliban captured on nearby battlefields, which are among the country’s bloodiest.

An AFP reporter who visited Kandahar prison after the jailbreak said journalists were shown a hole in a cell about half a metre wide and three metres deep which officials said was the mouth of the tunnel.

Clothes and personal belongings were scattered nearby, apparently abandoned by inmates before they made their escape.  Confirming the breakout, President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omer described it as a “disaster”.  “This is a blow, it’s something that should not have happened,” he said.

“We’re looking into finding out what exactly happened and what’s being done to compensate for the disaster that happened in Kandahar.”

Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said the Islamist militants were responsible for the mass breakout, which took place over several hours.

A separate Taliban statement said they had started digging the tunnel from a nearby safe house five months ago and that it passed under several government checkpoints and a major highway. AFP

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Al Qaeda Threatens Nuclear Hellstorm If Osama Is Caught Or Killed

Washington : Al-Qaeda terrorists have threatened to unleash a “nuclear hellstorm” on the West if their leader and world’s most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden is nabbed.

A senior al-Qaeda commander has claimed that the terror group has stashed away a nuclear bomb in Europe which will be detonated if bin Laden is ever caught or assassinated, according to new top secret files made public by internet whistleblower WikiLeaks.

The documents are secret details of the background to the capture of each of the 780 people held at or have passed through the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, along with their medical condition and the information they have provided during interrogations.

The documents have been released to select European and US news outlets and reveal that the day 9/11 terror killings took place in United States, the core of al-Qaeda was concentrated in a single city of Karachi in Pakistan.  The intellectual author of September 11 attacks watched the horrifying scenes of the planes crashing into the twin towers of World Trade Centre beamed live on TV with key al-Qaeda commanders at a safe house in Karachi.  While in a nearby hospital, the accused mastermind of the bombing of USS’ Cole off Yemen waters was recovering from an tonsillectomy, the alleged organiser of the 2002 Bali bombing was buying lab equipment for a biological weapons programme.

Within a day much of the al-Qaeda leadership disappeared back to Afghanistan to plan for a long war, the Washington Post reported quoting the fresh leaks on whereabouts of the international al-Qaeda terror brigade.  The cache of classified military documents portray the planning of the 9/11 terror attacks and whereabouts of its plotters including the world’s most wanted terrorist Osama Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri on that fateful day.

The Guantanamo detainees are assessed “high or medium or low” in terms of their intelligence value and the threat they pose while in detention and the continued threat they might pose if released.

The leaks say that four days after September 11 attacks, bin Laden visited a guest house in Afghanistan’s Kanadhar province where he told his gathered Arab fighters to “defend Afghanistan against infidel invaders” and to “fight in the name of Allah”.

The intelligence report says after the 9/11 attacks began a peripatetic three weeks for bin Laden and his deputy as they criss-crossed Afghanistan handing out assignments to followers, meetings with top Taliban leadership and delegating control of al-Qaeda to the group’s ‘shura’ council, presumably because he feared being captured or killed as US forces closed in.

The leaks also refer to a meeting held close to Afghan capital Kabul’s guest house where bin Laden gave instructions to continue operations against Western targets, dispersed his fighters from training camps and send women and children including, some of his wives to flee to Pakistan.  The tapes also refer to a meeting in October 2001 between bin Laden and Taliban leader Jallaudin Haqqani, who continues to lead a deadly insurgency against the US and its allies in Afghanistan.
It was only after dispersing his fighters and handing the reins of his dreaded organisation to ‘shura’ council that bin Laden and Zawahiri fled to the cave complex in Tora Bora near Jalalabad where he was last seen giving a speech to his close followers on November 25.

The Guantanamo leaks have a trace of bin Laden till the Tora Bora caves and according to US intelligence, the al-Qaeda chief is known to have survived intense US air strikes on the caves and escaped the dragnet of American special forces sent to hunt him down.

WikiLeaks said that bin Laden and his deputy Zawahiri separated from Tora Bora, while the latter is supposed to have taken refuge with an Afghan family, little is known about the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted man.  According to the new documents, in December al-Qaeda top lieutenants gathered at Zarmat, in mountainous regions of Afghanistan between Kabul and Khost, where they began to plan new attacks until they were finally captured.  Among those who met at Zarmat were Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the self-described mastermind of 9/11 attacks, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged planner of the USS Cole attack and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a key facilitator for bin Laden.

They were addressed by bin Laden at a gathering which was teeming with fighters who were waiting for al-Qaeda to return their passports so they could flee across the border to Pakistan.

After the Zarmat conclave, Mohammad and other senior al-Qaeda fighters began their return to Karachi.  Gradually, Mohammad and other operatives were picked up by Pakistanis working with CIA and FBI. Ramzai Binalshibh, a key liaison between September 11 hijackers was arrested at a safe house in Karachi on the first anniversary of the attacks.PTI

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Truck Rams Into Wagon R Near Shahdara, One Killed, Two Critical

New Delhi : A truck driver on Monday night rammed into a Wagon R from behind near the Shahdara flyover, killing one of the three youths inside the van and critically wounding two others, reports India TV reporter Inderjeet.

The Wagon R, which was coming towards Shahdara from Dilshad Garden, turned turtle and was again hit by a Tata 407 mini-truck coming from the opposite direction.

Rahul, 30, Mohit 28 and Honey 25 were injured in the mishap. They were rushed to Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital in Shahdara where Rahul succumbed to injuries.

The truck driver escaped with his vehicle soon after the accident.

Ramveer, a helper sitting inside the Tata 407 described how the  mishap took place. "The truck rammed into the Wagon R from behind, the vehicle turned turtle and hit our mini-truck which was going in the opposite direction.

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VHP Defends Sadhvi Pragya, Lt Col Purohit

Indore  : The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) today came in defence of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Colonel Prasad Purohit, prime accused in the Malegaon blasts, and called the imposition of MCOCA against them as ‘political conspiracy’.

“MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) was not imposed on the Mumbai terrorist attacker Kasab, but the same act has been applied in the case of Sadhvi and Purohit,” said the International General Secretary of VHP Praveen Togadia, adding, “both of them are a victim of political conspiracy”.

Thirty-five people were killed in the blast in the powerloom city of Malegaon in Nashik district in September 2006.

Addressing media persons here, Togadia said that the VHP will support all those who are “falsely” implicated in cases like above.

Reacting to Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh’s remark of April 16 in which he alleged that some of the senior BJP and RSS leaders were involved in the Ajmer blast accused Sunil Joshi’s murder, Togadia said, “Whenever I hear Digvijay I always feel that I am listening to a Pakistani”.

On the issue of Ram temple in Ayodhya, Togadia said, “If need arises we will launch a movement for the construction of the temple in Ayodhya”. PTI

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No Govt Interference In Sai Trust: Swami Ramdev

Puttaparthi  : Yoga Guru  Swami Ramdev  on Monday  said that there should not be any government interference in the affairs of Satya Sai Central Trust here.

“There should be trust on Sai Trust. Crores of people have played their role towards the Trust. So there should not be any type of government interference in the Sai Trust activities,” Ramdev told reporter after paying homage to Sai Baba here at the Sai Kulwant Hall at Prasanti Nilyam.

Ramdev said it was the first time he was visiting the place.

“Sai Baba was god to all those people particularly the poor people who are benefited from the exemplary works undertaken by Sai Baba in the fields of providing drinking water, setting up educational institutiions and extending world class health facilities.

“His demise is not only an irreparable damage to India but to the whole of humanity,” Ramdev said, adding, “His works and blessings can not be expressed in words. He was social reformer and we need to take inspiration from him”. PTI

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