NEW DELHI: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will kick-start the party's campaign from Gujarat on Saturday, crossing swords with BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.

Not really teeming with exciting stroke makers, England, from a fan's perspective, may have just become a lot less watchable after the unceremonious sacking of Kevin Pietersen.

NEW DELHI: Zaheer Khan provided India with a much-needed breakthrough as he dismissed Kane Williamson (113) in the post tea session on the first day of first Test at Eden Park in Auckland.

SEOUL: North Korea confirmed that leader Kim Jong-un will be a candidate in next month's parliamentary elections, which will be closely watched for clues on power shifts in Pyongyang.

WASHINGTON: US Vice President Joe Biden urged Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Tuesday to pursue dialogue and compromise to end the country's crisis as he called for the "immediate" pulling back of riot police.

 PANAJI: Politicians should be paid salaries equivalent to top executives of the corporate world, said Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy, while discussing ways to make the Indian government corruption-free.

NEW DELHI: The government on Tuesday set up a four-member seventh central pay commission headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur.

AUCKLAND: For an itinerant international team, the heaviest baggage to lug around is the memory of a crushing defeat. India will surely feel its weight and pain when the first Test begins on Thursday morning, barely five days after being bamboozled by a lowly-ranked outfit; after all, there was hardly any time for them to recover from the 0-4 whipping, let alone make the mental or game-switch from one format to another.

AUCKLAND: New Zealand are quietly confident of being able to exploit the green state of the Eden Park wicket and upset India in the first Test starting in Auckland on Thursday.

NEW YORK: Tests have confirmed there was heroin in at least some of the scores of plastic packets in the New York City apartment where Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead, a law enforcement official said Monday, and authorities are working to determine whether the drug was mixed or tainted with anything else.