New Delhi/Kolkata, May 18 (IANS) Has West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee offered to step down after the CPI-M’s disastrous performance in the polls? While he Monday refused to confirm or deny the speculation, party leader Sitaram Yechury said he was not aware of any such move.

“Not before us,” Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo member Yechury told reporters when asked if the chief minister had offered to resign.

Kolkata, May 18 (IANS) West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Monday refused to answer any question about his reported offer to resign from the post.

The chief minister went to the state secretariat, Writers’ Buildings, in the morning and stayed there the whole day. He refused to answer persistent questions thrown at him by the media.

Kolkata, May 18 (IANS) Amid speculation about his offering to resign, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Monday met Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) patriarch Jyoti Basu but refused to speak to the media.

The chief minister went to the state secretariat, Writers’ Buildings in the morning and came out of it in the evening only, and left for Basu’s house in the satellite Salt Lake township. He did not speak to media persons despite repeated questions.

London, May 18 (ANI): The day is not far when it would be possible to see signs of life on planets far away from our own solar system-thanks to space telescopes that could soon be able to detect “biosignatures” in the light from planets orbiting other stars.
Talking at an astrobiology meeting, scientists revealed that it could be possible to get clues of life on such exoplanets via tiny fraction of the parent star’s light that interacts with the planet on its journey towards Earth.

London, May 18 (ANI): A Susan Boyle fan is selling miniature dolls resembling the Britain’s Got Talent star on the Internet.

Washington, May 18 (DPA) Two US astronauts wrapped up a difficult spacewalk Sunday to repair a failed component on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

The main goal of spacewalkers Mike Massimino and Mike Good was the repair of Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which was first installed during a 1997 servicing

By R. C. Sahu
Bhopal, May 17 (ANI): Hundreds of people visited a three-day puppet festival here in which entertaining skits were performed by various artistes.

Kuwait City/Cairo, May 17 (DPA) Kuwait has elected its first women lawmakers in a move seen as a historic success for women in the Gulf state’s male-dominated parliament.

Four female candidates came in the top 10 positions in three electoral districts in Saturday’s vote, Kuwait’s official news agency KUNA reported Sunday.