• INDIA’s crown jewels take a small bruise as an inter-state racket dealing in IIM entrance question papers comes to light. The Common Admission Test (CAT) is cancelled and rescheduled for February as the CBI makes dramatic arrests from a Delhi hotel while the examination was going on. •Snow and silence shower in the Valley as India and Pakistan agree on a ceasefire across the LoC. Even in Siachen, the 150-km stretch of the Actual Ground Position line, the guns fall silent. Adding to the optimism, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee hints at a possible one-to-one with top Pakistan leaders. To a specific question on whether he will meet counterpart Jamali when he visits Islamabad on December first week, Vajpayee says he will try to meet everybody. • A resurgent India prepays $1.3 billion multilateral debt from its surplus cash with the Reserve Bank of India. Finance Ministry reports also put the government’s short-term overdraft with the central bank in surplus at Rs 130 billion. • MUMBAI Police gets to probe its own stamp of shame. Reaffirming its trust in a special team from Maharashtra which is probing the fake stamp scandal, the Bombay High Court keeps on hold a decision to hand over the case to the CBI. Meanwhile, the dragnet extends to the India Security Press in Nasik. A retired chief purchase officer and two employees are arrested while four, including the then general manager, have been suspended. • UNDER fire for failing to curb the anti-Bihari violence that killed 56 people, the Assam government decides to seek a CBI probe. Meanwhile, Bihar transporters, who had stopped sending trucks to Assam after the killing of four drivers from the state in Assam, threaten to stall movement of all vehicles from other states passing through Bihar to Assam. • UNION Minister Murasoli Maran (69) passes away at a private hospital in Chennai after prolonged illness. He was Union Minister of Commerce and Industry until recently and was divested of the portfolios due to his illness. Maran is survived by his wife Mallika and sons Kalanidhi Maran, Dayanidhi Maran and daughter Anbukkarasi. • SCOTLAND YARD arrests a suspected would-be suicide bomber — a Briton of Pakistani origin — and searches houses in central and western England as part of a series of anti-terrorism operations. Meanwhile, Turkish police arrests a man they say ordered and helped plan a suicide bomb attack on an Istanbul synagogue. The suspect is arrested with a false identification while trying to pass across the border to Iran.
