An army officer and four Hizbul Mujahideen militants were killed in a fierce 30-hour-long gunbattle in Pulwama district of south Kashmir on Thursday, the second major operation in eight days.

Biting cold coupled with dense fog today kept Maha Kumbh devotees at bay on the occasion of Basant Panchmi with only a few hundreds turning up to take a dip in the icy waters of the Ganga.

Miep Gies, the office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager's diary, has died, the Anne Frank Museum said on Tuesday. She was 100.

In a short-list bereft of Indian writers, this year's Man Booker prize has gone to British novelist Hilary Mantel for her gripping 16th century tale titled Wolf Hall.

A few weeks ago, Pasquale Castaldo was waiting at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport for a delayed flight, when a man sitting across from him pulled out an Amazon Kindle book-reading device.

John Buchanan's newly-released book 'The Future of Cricket: The Rise of Twenty20', hasn't drawn eyeballs for its ideas on the T-20 format. Instead, it is Buchanan's swipes at Indian cricketers that have got media attention.

Seasoned cricket journalist Debasish Datta has put together a book, "Sunil Gavaskar, Cricket's Little Master", to mark Gavaskar's 60th birthday on Friday.

Archie Andrews, the redhead hero from Riverdale, has ditched a loyal and kind Betty to marry rich but spoilt Veronica, breaking the hearts of millions of plain Janes, who identified with the blond's character.

The Immigrants, a book which cautions Indian parents who are in a hurry to marry off their daughters to NRIs not to fall for "the US and the dollar bait" has been released.

Just William and Little Women could finally beat child wizard Harry Potter, which has sold more than 400 million copies worldwide, in a list of favourite books drawn up by the Children's Favourites.

A book on the journey of the traditional sari which has enamored Indian women down the ages and is now becoming popular in the foreign shores was recently launched in Britain.

A sequel to the famous book The Da Vinci Code, which took readers by storm, will be released in September. Announcing the launch month, author Dan Brown has said that the sequel, The Lost Symbol, is a thriller set during a 12-hour period

In her book, author Gina McKinnon has revealed some of the funniest tales of people who are starved of a saucy sex life and desperate for more satisfaction in the sack, British newspaper the 'Daily Star' reported.

A rare copy of the first Superman comic book sold for 317,200 dollars at auction- a super hero sized increase on the original 10 cents paid back in 1938.

It may be hard to believe but P V Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister had once telephoned Madhavrao Scindia to assure him that he regarded him as his successor.

A Dallas auction house says a soft-cover copy of the first Harry Potter book sold for just over USD 19,000.

Nigel Portwood, a top manager at the Penguin Group has been appointed the new Chief Executive of the Oxford University Press (OUP), which has significant presence in India.

Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has reportedly signed a US$ 2.5 million deal to write a trilogy that will chart her rise from a segregated neighbourhood in Alabama to the top ranks of the White House.

Vikas Swarup is overwhelmed by the international attention showered on him following the success of the movie Slumdog Millionaire that is based on his book Q & A.

Actress-turned-musician-turned-artist Suchitra Krishnamoorthi has donned a new hat - that of a writer. She has just released her fiction series for young adults - Swapnalok Society, a magical reality tale about life in downtown Mumbai.

Better known for burning books rather than collecting them, Adolf Hitler owned an estimated 16,000 volumes and was a voracious reader who loved Shakespeare, says a new book.

Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Monday lamented the inadequate coverage of the Parliament in the media, saying that it was mainly limited to disruptions and disturbances in Parliamentary proceedings.

Indian descent writer Jhumpa Lahiri, with her 'hypnotic eyes', has been placed among the top in the list of Thinking Man's Sex Symbols for 2008 that is headed by Serbian tennis player Ana Ivanovic.

India-born author Salman Rushdie blames Pakistan for the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes and has asked Britain to warn the country that “as long as Pakistan harbours terrorists it's not going to get any Western aid”.

Broadway theatres dimmed their lights and actors read out moving passages at the funeral of Harold Pinter - apparently conducted in accordance with precise directions left by the late great British playwright.