New Delhi: Chinese officials use unfair tactics to grab Olympic berths for their players and favour them in tournaments held in their home country, top international badminton players, including India's Saina Nehwal, have claimed. Nehwal, Denmark's Peter Gade and Malaysia's Taufik Hidayat said officials favour local players while playing in China and sometimes these things become too much to swallow. World number five Saina, who lost to little-known Chinese girl...
06:17 PM, Apr 25, 2012
New Delhi: Soumyajit Ghosh and Ankita Das booked their London Olympics berths on Sunday in the Asian Olympic Qualification Table Tennis Tournament in Hong Kong, but it was heartbreak for top paddler Achanta Sharath Kamal. For both Ghosh and Ankita, the berths came via the continental quotas, after they topped from the South Asian region. Ghosh defeated Anthony Amal Raj 4-0 (12-10, 11-9, 11-6, 11-7) and Ankita downed K. Shamini...
04:41 PM, Apr 22, 2012
New Delhi: Indian ace Achanta Sharath Kamal failed to seal the fifth Olympic qualifying spot at the Asian qualification table tennis tournament in Hong Kong on Saturday, but he still has a chance to get a London Games berth. Sharath Kamal lost 2-4 (12-10, 9-11, 9-11, 11-6, 8-11, 8-11) to Kim Song Nam of North Korea at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium. By losing the match to the North Korean, whom...
10:51 AM, Apr 22, 2012
New Delhi: Achanta Sharath Kamal failed to seal the fifth Olympic qualifying spot at the Asian Qualification Table Tennis tournament in Hong Kong on Saturday but he still has a chance for a London Games berth. Sharath Kamal lost 2-4 (12-10, 9-11, 9-11, 11-6, 8-11, 8-11) to Kim Song Nam of North Korea at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium. By losing the match to the North Korean, whom he had beaten...
11:37 PM, Apr 21, 2012
The declared range is political. The demonstrated capability is not. Agni V truly epitomises the maturing of India's missile prowess and is a harbinger of ...
12:32 PM, Apr 20, 2012
New Delhi: The Olympic-bound trio of young Indian boxers spent their formative years under his guidance, but national youth coach G Manoharan remains an unsung hero and has been consistently ignored for the Dronacharya award despite being recommended five times by the boxing federation. Olympic-bound L Devendro Singh (49kg), Shiva Thapa (56kg), Sumit Sangwan (81kg) and even the 20-year-old Vikas Krishan (69kg) honed their skills at the youth level with...
07:24 PM, Apr 16, 2012
New Delhi: The "burden" of qualification off his back, star Indian boxer Vijender Singh is now gearing up to shoulder a fresh burden - the one of heightened expectations - when he appears in his third successive Olympic Games come July. The 26-year-old Olympic and World Championship bronze-medalist, who returned to the country on Saturday after bagging a London berth during the recently-concluded Asian Qualifiers in Kazakhstan, said he is...
05:50 PM, Apr 14, 2012
New Delhi: Movie viewers in India will soon be able to know why a film has been assigned a particular rating - U, A or U/A - by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). To keep the public better informed, the decision to specify more about what the Board felt about the contents of a film was taken in a recent meeting of the CBFC, officials said. "This move...
05:12 PM, Apr 10, 2012
New Delhi: Christians around the world are observing Good Friday today. The day marks the crucification of Jesus Christ at the end of the Lent period and devotees will spend the day fasting. Good Friday is the culmination of the 40-day Lent period during which they abstained from meat, alcohol and sweets. Good Friday is observed during the Holy Week, which also includes Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday....
08:29 AM, Apr 06, 2012
New Delhi: The Asian Olympic Qualifiers are his last chance to book a ticket to the London Games, but star Indian boxer Vijender Singh claims he is not the least bit intimidated by the challenge at hand as the situation is all too familiar. "I have always been under pressure ever since I won the bronze medal in the Beijing Olympics. It is nothing new for me. It's there before...
12:41 PM, Apr 02, 2012
New Delhi: Amit Kumar (55kg) and Yogeshwar Dutt (60kg) became the first set of Indian wrestlers to book their London Olympics berths by clinching a gold and silver medal respectively at the Asian Qualifying Tournament on Friday, even as the fancied Sushil Kumar (66kg) failed to make the cut in Astana, Kazakhstan. The finalists in each weight category in the ongoing event won tickets to the 2012 London Games and...
07:08 PM, Mar 30, 2012
Dublin: Korea scored in the dying moments of the final of the Olympics qualifiers here on Sunday to beat hosts Ireland 3-2 and book a berth for the London Games later this year. With only one spot up for grabs, the Irish led twice through goals from Peter Caruth and Timmy Cockram, but in the end it all turned out to be futile. Caruth scored Ireland's opener in the 13th...
03:01 PM, Mar 19, 2012
Nomi City, Japan: Punjab athlete Baljinder Singh has earned a berth for the London Olympics after finishing fifth in the Asian 20km Race Walking Championships, with a timing of 1:22:12. The 'A' qualification standard for the London Olympics was 1:22:30. The 25-year-old Baljinder hails from Dera Bassi, about 20km from Chandigarh on the Delhi-Chandigarh national highway. En route to Nomi, Baljinder won the Indian trials at Patiala on February 15...
05:35 PM, Mar 12, 2012
Lisbon: Benfica will need to end a four-game winless run to reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League at the expense of Zenit St. Petersburg. The Portuguese club is aiming to overturn a 3-2 deficit in the second leg of the round-of-16 series on Tuesday. Benfica will have to do that without key Argentine pair Ezequiel Garay, a central defender who is out with a left knee sprain, and suspended...
07:41 PM, Mar 05, 2012
When a school student in Anantnag asked his principal for his certificates, he was in turn asked to pay a bribe. The student, Zubair, simply turned on his cell phone camera and turned Citizen Journalist. ...
10:17 AM, Mar 05, 2012
Kolkata: The West Bengal government's move to extend the national grid to the Sundarbans delta for electrifying villages has come in for criticism from environmentalists. "The land is soft and setting up large and heavy transmission poles may lead to greater erosion, and change the tidal patterns when installed in rivers and creeks," SP Gon Chaudhuri, former director of West Bengal Green Energy Development Corporation Limited (WBGEDCL), told PTI. These...
12:24 PM, Mar 02, 2012
New Delhi: Olympic bronze medallist Vijender Singh (75 kgs), and Commonwealth Games (CWG) gold medallist Paramjeet Samota (+91 kgs) are among the Indian Elite Men Boxers, who were selected for the Asian Continental Olympic Boxing Qualification tournament to be held at Astana, Kazakhstan from April 5-12. Apart from Vijender and Samota, four other boxers - Suranjoy Singh (52 kgs), Shiva Thapa (56 kgs), Sumit Sangwan (81 kgs) and Manpreet Singh...
02:50 PM, Feb 28, 2012
Sandeep Singh, Bharat Chhetri and others are happy after thrashing France in the final but want to focus on the big goal, the London Games. ...
09:26 AM, Feb 27, 2012
HYDERABAD: With the city being selected to host the prestigious 11th Conference of Parties (CoP) from October 16 to 18, the municipal corporation of Greater Hyderabad is gearing up to improve the infrastructure and further beautify the city at a cost of Rs 400 crore. Representatives from 153 countries are expected to attend the Convention on Biological Diversity.Seminars and discussions will be held for 15 days from October 1 to...
10:39 AM, Feb 24, 2012
