New Delhi, Apr 21 : Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari will inaugurate the Civil Services Day here today.

The theme for this year is `Excellence in Governance''.

This Day is observed by all the Central Civil Services to rededicate and recommit themselves to the cause of the people. It provides a unique opportunity for introspection as also chalking out future strategies to deal with the challenges being posed by the changing times.

The Day is being celebrated since 2006.

New Delhi, Apr. 20: Union Government has extended the term of a Commission, which was set up to analyze the centre-state relations in the backdrop of the changes in the polity and the economy.

According to the sources, a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday decided to extend the term of the Commission till June 30.

The Commission headed by Justice M M Punchhi was set up in 2007 to look into the new issues of centre-state relations in view of the sea changes that have been taken place in the polity and economy since the Sarkaria Commission had last looked into these issues.

New Delhi, Apr 20: Former Union Minister Jagdish Tytler on Monday asked for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the incident of shoe-throwing by a journalist on Home Minister P Chidambaram, which had brought Tytler''s role in the 1984 Sikh riots to the centerstage.

On April 7, Jarnail Singh, a journalist of the Dainik Jagran newspaper, had thrown a shoe at Chidambaram during a press conference at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi.

New Delhi, Apr 20 : India will remove a 60 per cent import duty on up to one million tons of white sugar for the next four months, a top government official said.

The government also decided to drop a requirement that raw sugar only be imported for re-export.

Three state-run trading firms and a farmers'' cooperative -- the State Trading Corp of India Ltd, the MMTC, the PEC and the National Agriculture Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) -- would be allowed to import up to one million tons of white sugar tax-free.

New Delhi - At least five separatist rebels were killed in an encounter with government troops in India's north-eastern state of Assam Monday, a news report said.

The combat between rebels belonging two separatist militant outfits, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland and Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam and the army took place in central Sonitpur district, the PTI news agency reported quoting defence sources.

New Delhi - India placed an Israeli-built spy satellite into orbit Monday to enhance its defence capabilities and help security agencies monitor its borders in the aftermath of the November Mumbai terrorist attacks, news reports and officials said.

The locally built PSLV-C12 rocket carrying the 300-kilogramme radar-imaging satellite and a 40-kilogramme education satellite, lifted off from the Satish Dhawan spaceport in Sriharikota city, 90 kilometres north of southern Chennai city early Monday morning.