A senior government official confirmed the report Wednesday.

'He passed on earlier this night between 9.30 and 10.00 p.m. (local time),' Xinhua quoted the source as saying. 'He will be buried tomorrow,' the source added.

Yar'Adua had been battling acute pericaditis, an inflammation of the membrane around the heart, since November 2009 and was receiving treatment at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The Tamil Nadu Legislative Council Bill, 2010, which was introduced earlier in the day by Law Minister Veerapa Moily, was approved by voice vote.

AIADMK member V. Maitreyan said the bill has been brought by the government in a hurry after bulldozing other agenda. He said the council was abolished in the state in 1986 by former chief minister M.G. Ramnachandran and the party stood by that decision.

He said the government has succumbed to the 'bulldozing' of its ally DMK to bring the bill.

T.K. Rangarajan of the Communist Party of India-Marxist and D. Raja of Communist Party of India also opposed the bill.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Venkaiah Naidu said his party was not against the bill in principle but the government should call an all-party meeting to discuss the issue of bicameral legislatures to have a uniform policy throughout the country.

He said state governments have been changing their stand on creation of a council. Naidu said the Tamil Nadu assembly had passed resolutions for or against the council depending on who was in power in the state.

Tarlcohan Singh, independent member from Haryana, and Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa of the Shiromani Akali Dal demanded that the government should bring a bill to create a legislative council in Punjab too. Members from Assam also demanded a council in their state.

In his reply, Law Minister M. Veerapa Moily said the constitution makers had left the choice to each state whether to have a council. He said commissions appointed by the government had never spoken against creation of these bodies.

The minister said that legislative councils had a role to play in view of the decentralisation of power through panchayati raj institutions.

'Panchayats, zila parishads have become important segments...talent has to be picked up and brought to the houses,' he said.

Moily said the Punjab government had conveyed to the central government in 2002 that there was no need of a council due to small size of the state.

He said Assam government had not responded to certain queries about creating a council in the state.

He said the central government had an open mind on the issue and if a state assembly passes a resolution for creation of council, the government will consider it. He added that the state has to bear the expense for running the council.

This was 63-year-old Ibrahim's final bid to strike out the July 2008 sodomy charge by his former aide Mohammed Saiful Bukhari Azlan, The Star newspaper said Wednesday.

This is Ibrahim's second sodomy trial. He was dismissed as the deputy prime minister in 1998, tried and imprisoned. He was subsequently acquitted.

Chief Judge of Malaya Justice Arifin Zakaria held that the medical report dated July 13, 2008 - prepared by three Kuala Lumpur doctors and used as a basis by Ibrahim to apply to quash the charge - must be read in entirety.

Ibrahim had sought to strike out the charge based on the findings of the report that 'there were no conclusive clinical findings suggestive of penetration to the anus/rectum'.

Justice Zakaria said: 'It is our finding that it does not support the appellant's (Anwar) contention that the charge be struck out at this stage.'

On Feb 17, Ibrahim had lost a plea before the Court of Appeal.

His lead counsel Karpal Singh submitted that the Court of Appeal judges were wrong in not concluding that the charge and prosecution against Ibrahim was made in bad faith and was a miscarriage of justice due to the conclusion made in the medical report.

He pointed out that it was vital for the prosecution in a sodomy case to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there was 'penetration' and therefore, the charge was unsustainable.

'This is an obvious case where there should not be a formulation of a charge, let alone the prosecution. How could (there) be semen in the body of the complainant if there is no penetration?'

'This is a battle of development. We are not feeling troubled. We have to win this battle,' Raman Singh said while speaking at a session on 'Democracy, Development and Extremism' at a conference organised by the Jagran Forum here.

He said his government has taken several steps to usher development in the Maoist-affected areas of his state.

Chhattisgarh's Bastar region, comprising five districts -- Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Bastar and Kanker -- has been the nerve centre of Maoist militancy since the late 1980s.

Maoists carried out the biggest ever attack in their nearly four decade-old violent movement April 6 in Dantewada district and massacred 76 security personnel.

Singh said that the Bastar region had been ignored in terms of development for over five decades.

'Roads were not built and electricity not provided to the villages in the region in the name of preserving tribal culture,' he said.

The chief minister said Maoists collected ransom, brutally murdered villagers and burnt schools and government offices in the region.

Terming Salwa Judum as a movement of tribals against the excesses of Maoists, Singh said he gave it his full support.

'No political party could have started this movement. It is a self-motivated response and will be so. AK-47 (of Maoists) is being opposed by bow and arrow (of the tribals). They (tribals) will find a way,' he said.

Singh said there was no exploitation of tribals in Bastar and therefore there was no ground for a 'people's revolution' as propagated by the Maoists. He said no land had yet been given to big private sector companies to set up factories in tribal areas.

The day-long conference on 'Democracy: Challenges of Consensus Building in India' was attended by several senior political leaders.

Conrad Green, executive producer of the show, is desperate for the former prime minister to come and strut his stuff for the American public, Daily Mail reported on its website Monday.

The media mogul has called on Blair - who this week returned to help boost Labour's flagging election campaign.

Whether 250,000 pounds for signing up to an entire series of 'Dancing with the Stars' would appear good value to Blair is uncertain.

Last week the Mail revealed that the former prime minister can make as much as $350,000 for just four hours' work speaking to millionaires at a convention centre in Kuala Lumpur. Green said he would pair Blair with Ukrainian dancer Karina Smirnoff, 31.

'I think she would be very happy with him,' Green said. 'Tony is very popular in the States and I think he may as well come out here and give it a try.

'Hopefully he might be able to squeeze it in between solving the Palestinian problem and all those other things he's got on.'

Although he has completed some unpaid humanitarian work since standing down in 2007, Blair has earned millions advising banks, companies and Arab governments.

He has also made huge amounts from public speaking engagements. Last year he said that he had 'got out of politics early enough to have a second act in life' and complained that the media attacked him for doing so.

He also insisted that it was only in the UK that he was disliked whereas in the US nobody complained about how much money he was making.

The next series of 'Dancing with the Stars' begins in the autumn and will be shown in the UK on the cable TV station, Watch.

Green said he wants to use Blair's pulling power to convince former US president Bill Clinton to join him on the show. 'I did ask Clinton once - we rang up his office. But sadly the conversation only lasted as long as it took to say 'Dancing with the...' before they hung up.'

The election date, announced on state-run television, was part of a 'roadmap' designed to end the country's deepening political crisis brought on by a seven-week protest calling for a dissolution of parliament, said The Nation online news service.

The United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), better known as the red shirts, has been staging a demonstration in Bangkok since March 12 to pressure Abhisit into dissolving parliament and holding new elections.

The increasingly aggressive protests have already led to clashes with authorities that have claimed 27 lives, including six soldiers, and left more than 900 wounded.

Abhisit, leader of the Democrat party, has vowed to clear the red shirts from their main protest site on Ratchaprasong Road, in the heart of Bangkok's chief commercial district, and to restore law and order but has also promised a political solution to the crisis.

The UDD has been calling for the dissolution of parliament within one month. Its response to the November 14 deadline was not immediately known.

The protest, described by observers as the first popular uprising against the Thai establishment since the communist threat of the 1960s and 1970s, has raised issues of class struggle, the country's huge income gap, injustice and the role of the centuries old monarchy.

Abhisit said one of the preconditions for a reconciliation process will be that all parties concerned must join forces to uphold the monarchy, said The Nation.

The government will guarantee a free press and set up an independent body to investigate the confrontation between troops and protestors on April 10th that left 25 people dead and more than 800 wounded.

The social issues raised by the unusual protest, which has seen the heart of Bangkok seized by protestors since April 3, would also be investigated.

Manohar Parrikar, convener of the BJP's newly formed governance cell, told IANS that the code of conduct would be shortly evolved by the cell after discussions with other senior party leaders and chief ministers of party-ruled states.

'The fulcrum of the code of conduct are these three principles, namely development of social, personal and financial character,' said Parrikar, an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay alumni and a former chief minister of Goa.

'Every person in a political life should be ready to be scrutinized by anyone at anytime till he is in public life...When you are in social life, there are so many people who meet you. So how do you place them. There will also be women meeting you. So all these aspects...you should have a clear cut understanding that you should not misuse your power for any purpose,' Parrikar said.

Parrikar, who was in the race for the BJP's president's post recently, further said that party workers and elected functionaries needed to adequately handle both time management techniques and obstinate bureaucrats.

'Time management is one of the most important factors. How do you manage your time? If time management is properly understood, then this problem can be reasonably taken care of,' he said.

The leader pointed out that new ministers often faced a problem while balancing their attention between an eager cadre and governmental responsibilities.

'If they don't have appropriate control on the bureaucracy, they will not be able to implement the programme of the party. They need to be capable in tackling bureaucracy in order to get proposals of the government implemented,' Parrikar said, adding that some aspects of the code of conduct could be implemented within four months.

'The code will first evolve after discussions with stakeholders. The basic principle is that we are not going in with any fixed methodology. These are the areas of our operation and thinking,' Parrikar said.

He added that he would be incorporating inputs from chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and other senior party leaders before formalising the code.

A bare-breasted woman in handcuffs, an online adult super store and a pornographic blog were among dozens of dodgy accounts followed by the prime minister among his list of supporters, community groups and wife Therese Rein.

An embarrassed spokesman for Rudd admitted an automated program selected Twitter accounts for him to follow.

'While the Kevin PM Team try to monitor the follow backs, with more than 900,000 followers this is a very large task,' the spokesman said.

To 'follow' someone on Twitter usually requires a user to view and approve a profile.

Other profiles followed by the PM include a gay resort in Phuket, blogs offering sex shows via webcams and an online store selling adult goods, reported heraldsun.co.au.

Rudd is known as an eager Tweeter, using the medium to announce policies and recently the engagement of his son.

About 900,000 accounts follow the PM on Twitter, while he follows about 200,000.

Young Media Australia vice-president Elizabeth Handsley said Rudd's questionable online companions highlighted the dangers of social media.

'There seems to be an attitude with new media like Twitter that anyone can just get on and have a go without a problem,' she said.

'We need to understand the platform and know how it works before using it safely - this is an example of that.'

Persuaded by the government's manifold problems - Maoist insurgency, inflation, the Indian Premier League (IPL) fiasco, signs of tension within the ruling coalition - the opposition apparently convinced itself that the time had come for it to strike a blow.

Its confidence was perhaps boosted by the fact that it had a fair number of parties on its side, including both the friends and foes of the government as well as neutrals.

The foes included, first, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies such as the Janata Dal-United, the Shiv Sena and the Akali Dal and, secondly, the Left which comprises four parties - the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the Forward Bloc.

This indirect tie-up between the 'communal' BJP and the communists has been in place ever since they voted together against the nuclear deal in 2008.

Another set of foes presented a remarkable alphabetical soup with parties such as the AIADMK, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the Telugu Desam, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD).

Then, there were the neutrals such as Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), H.D. Deve Gowda's Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

The opposition's calculation was that with all of them present and voting, it would be able to give the government a run for its money, especially if the latter was unable to keep its flock together on the crucial day.

It is not impossible that the opposition had expected the Trinmool Congress to play truant, as it did on the day when the voting took place in the Rajya Sabha on the women's reservations bill, which it opposes in its present form.

Besides, there has always been a cloud over the loyalty of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) ever since it played footsie with the Left-led Third Front before last year's general election. These misgivings may have been strengthened by the aspersions that have been cast on the role of its two senior leaders, Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel, in the IPL imbroglio.

In the end, however, the opposition's house of cards came tumbling down even before it could be erected. The first gust which shook it was the BSP's decision to support the government. Not long afterwards, perhaps realising that theirs was a lost cause, the RJD and the Samajwadi Party decided to abstain from voting. So did the JD-S.

But the unkindest cut for the opposition was the decision of Jharkhand Chief Miniser Shibu Soren to stand by the government although his party is the BJP's ally in the state. Following Soren's 'betrayal', the alliance came under strain, but the damage is being repaired after Soren's apology.

As a result of these desertions, the government sailed through with flying colours. But its success is not entirely without problems. The most serious of these is the BSP's decision to cozy up to it. The suspicion, of course, is that this mending of fences was at the government's initiative since it feared the outcome of the cut motion. In an intriguing move a day before the voting, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) informed the Supreme Court that it might not pursue the disproportionate assets cases against Mayawati.

Although the opposition cried foul about this suspected manipulation of the CBI by the government for political purposes, the die had been cast. However, what this new bonhomie between the Congress and the BSP means is that the former will have to put on hold its plans to recover its lost base in Uttar Pradesh by wooing the Dalits, as heir apparent Rahul Gandhi has been doing by spending nights in Dalit homes.

The Congress seems to have decided to let Mayawati lord over Uttar Pradesh for the time being before making up its mind whether to renew its earlier offensive or opt for some kind of a semi-permanent understanding with her. As for Mayawati, she may have realized that she is no longer quite as powerful as before and that a truce with the Congress is preferable to a head-on confrontation.

However, any sign of a Congress-BSP thaw will further widen the gulf between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, driving the latter to the Left, which used to be its ally till last year. This will leave the RJD and the LJP out on a limb although they will continue to be closer to the UPA than to the Left's amalgam of a Third Front comprising, besides the four Leftist parties, the Telugu Desam, the BJD, the RLD, the INLD and a few floating members like the AIADMK, the Janata Dal-Secular and the Asom Gana Parishad.

The compositions of the three main political formations led by the Congress, the BJP and the Left may have remained more or less the same, but if the fine-tuning done by the BSP, the RJD and the Samajwadi Party has benefited the Congress, the reason apparently is that the latter is seen as a more stable political entity than the BJP and the Left.

The BJP, for instance, cannot but have noted that one of the reasons given by the BSP, the RJD and the Samajwadi Party to support the government was they did not want to be seen in the company of a 'communal' party. The Left's travails are, of course, well known since it has perceptibly been losing ground in its West Bengal bastion as successive recent election results have shown.

(01.05.2010 - Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. He can be reached at aganguli@mail.com)

Leaders

* Manmohan Singh

Heroes

* P. Namperumalsamy

* Sachin Tendulkar

* Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

* Rahul Singh

Artists

* Chetan Bhagat

Thinkers

* Atul Gawande

* Amartya Sen

* Sanjit 'Bunker' Roy

TIME 100 Alumnae

* Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan