City News

About 1,500 people from all walks of life Tuesday joined campaign for a strong Lokpal bill and 25 people are on fast in support of anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare at Freedom Park in the heart of the Karnataka capital. More >

Six people, suspected to be members of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, were on Monday sentenced to life imprisonment by a Karnataka court for a terror attack at the prestigious Indian Institute of Science here in 2005 that killed a retired professor. Fast track court Judge VR Revankar awarded the punishment to Mohammed Riaz-ur-Rehman of Andhra Pradesh, and Afzar Pasha, Mehboob Ibrahim Saab Chopdar, Noorulla Khan, Mohammed Irfan and Nazim Uddin alias Munna, all from Karnataka.

Bewildered supporters of “Slut Walk” Bangalore went home disappointed on Sunday morning after the city police clamped down on a scheduled march citing security reasons. “We had information that there might be a law and order problem,” said G. Ramesh, the local Deputy Commissioner of Police. “So, we asked the organizers to call it off.”

The organizers of the march, however, were surprised by the authorities’ volte-face. “We had written permission from the cops,” said Vikram Hemanathan, an engineering graduate who felt the time was right to bring the march to the city, “but we were given a call on Saturday night and were told of the cancellation.”

Pipping past the four metro cities of New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, southern technology hub Bangalore has emerged as the best city to live in India, a global survey said on Tuesday.

Despite its top Indian ranking, Bangalore’s worldwide rank is very low at 141st position in a list of 221 cities globally in terms of standard of living, compiled by the ‘Quality of Living Survey – Worldwide Rankings, 2011′ by the global HR (human resources) consultancy major Mercer.

The probe into last Saturday’s blaze in the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has literally run into a haze.

More >

World’s largest professional networking site LinkedIn today announced opening of a technology centre in Bangalore, its first such office outside of North America.

LinkedIn, which has more than 135 million members globally and over 12 million users in India, has appointed Ganesh Krishnan to lead engineering operations in India, a company statement said. Earlier, he had stints with Yahoo! and CISO.

It was over two hours of pure euphoria for metal heads in Bangalore on Sunday. After the initial fear of the concert getting cancelled, the Gods of metal – Metallica — finally appeared on stage, with James Hetfield belting out Creeping Death.

Never has Bangalore seen such a turnout for a concert with more than 50,000 fans singing along with James in perfect unison, joining him For Whom the Bell Tolls and the cult classic Fuel.

Energy minister Shobha Karandlaje, the lone woman minister in the DV Sadananda Gowda cabinet, is facing the toughest challenge of her ministerial career in the wake of the power crisis arising out of coal supply to thermal plants in the state.

Amid complaints that her failure to manage the power situation had aggravated the crisis, Karandlaje in an interview to The Times of India dismissed her critics and reiterated her resolve to make Karnataka self-reliant in power generation in the next few years. Excerpts.

In the space of eight months, up to August 2011, Bangalore’s traffic police booked over 4 lakh cases of illegal/wrong parking of all class of vehicles including cars. The precise number is 4,25,379. This means over 50,000 cases of wrong parking are booked every month, as per Bangalore city traffic police records.

In Bangalore, wrong parking occurs due to lack of parking space and it takes almost 20 to 35 minutes to find parking space in the central business district comprising MG Road, Brigade Road, Kamaraj Road, Commercial Street and Residency Road.

The long-delayed Metro rail service in this tech hub is set to roll out after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dedicates the first phase of the multi-crore project to the nation mid-September, a top official said here Tuesday.

“The first phase (Reach-1) of the ‘Namma Metro’ service will commence after the prime minister flags off the inaugural trip in the second week of next month. The tentative launch dates are Sep 15 or Sep 17 depending on his (PM) convenience,” state-run Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) managing director N. Sivasailam told reporters here.