New Delhi, Nov 22 : Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil today asked the states to raise special forces to counter terrorism which is fast spreading its tentacles across the country.

Virgin Mobile surely deserves lots of congratulations for expanding its range of mobile phones, with the launching of its latest addition ‘vKewl’ in the Indian market.

Targeting youth, vKewl comes packed with a 1.3 megapixel camera having video recording capability, an MP3 player, FM radio, MMS, speakers and headsets.

The CDMA-capable phone features vBytes and WAP connection, 1.8-inch display screen with resolution of 176 x 220 pixels , 256 MB flash memory together with 64 MB SRAM.

New Delhi, Nov 22: Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil will inaugurate a two- day annual Directors General and the Inspectors General of Police Conference here today.

Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will address the conference on Sunday.

During the conference, police chiefs from all states, chiefs of para-military forces and security agencies will try to work out a joint strategy on countering threats from militant and fundamentalist groups.

New Delhi  - India and Turkey Friday decided to boost trade and energy cooperation and discussed ways to deal with global challenges like the deepening financial crisis and terrorism.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh in New Delhi after meeting with President Pratibha Patil and other Indian leaders.

"The discussions with Prime Minister Erdogan will contribute to the upgrading of our relations to a new level that befits the 21st century," Singh said after the talks, adding the two sides had chalked out a "concrete action programme".

New Delhi, Nov 21 : The External Affairs Ministry on Friday expressed reservations over Indian cricket team touring Pakistan.

The series to be played from January 5 to February 19 includes three Tests, five One-day Internationals and one Twenty20 International but is in doubt because the Indian government is yet to clear the tour.

The Ministry fears that any untoward eventuality during the tour can decimate all the efforts made in building up the Indo-Pak relations.

New Delhi - The Indian Navy has been given formal approval for "hot pursuit" of pirates in Somali waters and will be deploying another warship to tackle piracy in the region, officials and news reports said Friday.

The United Nations has recently authorized the Indian Navy to enter Somali territorial waters to take anti-piracy measures, a navy official said on condition of anonymity.

So far a UN resolution had restricted the hot pursuit permission to the navies of US and French, the CNN-IBN network reported.