The Supreme Court has rejected the plea of Vikas Yadav seeking hearing of his appeal by any high court other than that of Delhi. Vikas, sentenced to life imprisonment in Nitish Katara murder case, is the son of UP politician D P Yadav.

A bench comprising of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice HS Bedi rejected his plea mentioning that it did not carry any merit.

Vikas Yadav along with his cousin Vishal were awarded life term sentence by a sessions court in New Delhi on May 30. They were accused of killing Nitish Katara near Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh in 2002.

Reliance Communications and HTC Corporation entered into a strategic alliance to introduce the innovation-packed HTC Touch Diamond - CDMA (P3051) in the Indian market.

The recent declaration further strengthens the successful partnership between HTC and Reliance Communication to roll out superior and top-notch mobile handsets for India in the strong-growing CDMA market in India.

Under the alliance, the HTC Touch Diamond - CDMA (P3051) will be exclusively provided on Reliance Communications state-of-the-art wireless network spread across 15,000 towns and 4 lakh Indian villages.

Yuvraj Singh-is leading India Blue and S Badrinath is the captain of India Red.

India Blue is said to be the favourites to retain the trophy. It has presence of large number of star players including skipper Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthapa, Irfan Pathan, Dinesh Karthik and Virat Kohli. This has given them advantage over other two teams.

The other team in the tournament is India green lead by Mohd. Kaif.

Yuvi as the fans call him is eyeing for a double century in the first match. ''My form has not been that good in recent times.Therefore, I am aiming to score a double hundred and bounce back into form,'' he said after the net practice session.

Madrid - Spain was stepping up diplomatic activity Thursday in a push to be invited to an economic summit to take place in Washington in mid-November.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was scheduled to travel to the Asia-Europe meeting (ASEM) in Beijing, where he would meet European leaders and seek their backing for an invitation to the Washington summit, media reported.

Spain was carrying out "intense diplomatic activity on all levels," according to the daily El Pais.

The US has invited only members of the G-8 group - which Spain is not part of - plus developing countries with the largest economies to the summit, dealing with the challenges of the global economy in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Zurich - Credit Suisse became the first major European bank to unveil its third-quarter earnings Thursday warning that the banking business faced continuing tough conditions after the big Swiss bank confirmed a 1.26 billion Swiss-franc (1.08 billion dollars) quarterly loss.

Unveiling the third quarter results, the chief of Switzerland's second biggest bank Brady Dougan said: "We expect the market environment to remain very challenging and we are cautious with regard to the outlook for the fourth quarter."

Dougan went on to say that the third-quarter result was "clearly disappointing" but "understandable" considering the turmoil that has engulfed financial markets in recent weeks.

The full body of Central Election Commission (CEC) will visit Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh today to review the arrangements for assembly polls there.