JN Dixit cremated

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, top cabinet ministers, ambassadors and leading lights of India’s strategic and diplomatic community bade farewell to JN Dixit, national security advisor, as he was cremated here on Wednesday. He would have completed 69 years on January 8. He was cremated at the Brar crematorium in the Delhi cantonment. — HNS

Maoists call poll boycott

Ranchi: Maoist guerrillas have called for a boycott of upcoming assembly elections in Jharkhand. The Communist Party of India-Maoist, formed by the merger of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and People’s War Group (PWG), plans street plays and processions against the February polls. The group has put out pamphlets blasting both the ruling BJP and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in the centre. — HNS

Taliban commander killed

KANDAHAR: Taliban militants attacked a government office in southern Afghanistan, sparking a gunbattle that left five people dead, including a rebel commander, an Afghan official said on Wednesday. Kabul Gov Khial Mohammed identified the commander as Abdul Razzak and said he had helped organise many rebel operations in the province, which has been a focus of resistance against government and US forces. He said it was not the man of the same name who served as interior minister under the former Taliban government and is believed to have taken refuge in neighbouring Pakistan after the hardline movement’s ouster three years ago. — AFP

Aspiring actors duped

MuMBAI: Eight people have been arrested here for allegedly cheating aspiring actors of thousands of rupees after promising them roles in movies and television serials. Police said they were acting on a complaint filed by 61-year-old retired dramatics teacher Rashmi Sharma who complained of being cheated by Sai Productions, a company based in suburban Mumbai. Sharma was promised the role of a grandmother in a Bollywood production and asked to part with thousands of rupees as ‘security deposit’. She was further urged to rope in her former students one of whom, Harish Chauhan, is running a transport business in Goa. He, too, was lured into paying thousands of rupees, police officials said. — HNS

Activist’s term extended

BEIJING: Chinese authorities have added three more months to the sentence of a Shanghai woman serving 1.5 years in a labour camp for her campaign to abolish China’s family planning policies, a human rights organisation said on Wednesday. Mao Hengfeng’s original sentence was handed down by the Shanghai Public Security Bureau in April 2003. She was informed last month of the extension, according to a statement from New York-based Human Rights in China. — AP