The attack on school children in France's Toulouse town was targeted against which community?

Four people, including three children, were killed, when a man on a scooter opened fire outside a Jewish school in Toulouse in southwestern France on March 19. The attack left several injured, two of them seriously, and followed the killing of three soldiers in two separate shootings in the same region a week earlier by a man who escaped on a scooter.

The government on March 20 heaved a sigh of relief as amendments moved by the Opposition to the President's address on the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) were defeated in the Rajya Sabha, where UPA is in minority, with the help of Samajwadi Party and BSP while ally Trinamool Congress remained absent during voting on the fiercely contested issue.

Roy was promoted to the Union Cabinet as the minister for railways and was sworn in on March 20. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh introduced him to both the Houses of Parliament. Roy, a member of the Rajya Sabha, was till now the minister of state for shipping and recently replaced Dinesh Trivedi as the railway minister who was forced to resign after Congress caved in to Mamata Banerjee's pressure.

Asma al-Assad, the British-born wife of the Syrian president, Bashar Al-Assad is being added to a European Union sanctions blacklist after details of her online shopping sprees emerged in leaked emails. The 36-year-old former investment banker and other relatives of regime members will join 114 Syrians — topped by her husband— and 38 organisations subject to freezes on their assets and bank accounts in EU member states. She shopped online in London and Paris, spending tens of thousands of pounds on jewels, furniture and a Venetian glass vase from Harrods.

Two Italian tourists were abducted in the tribal-dominated Ganjam district of Odisha by Maoists, who demanded an immediate end to anti-Naxal operations and release of some of their jailed colleagues. The Italian tourists were on a trekking tour on the Ganjam-Kandhamal border when they were abducted by Maoists on March 17. Talks are on between the Indian governement and the Maoists but ultras seem reluctant to join the process voicing doubts over sincerity of the administration towards meeting their list of demands.

A special CBI court had awarded death sentence to Balwant Singh Rajoana and one Jagtar Singh Hawara in 2007. Beant Singh was killed in the high-security Punjab civil secretariat in Chandigarh, when a suicide bomber, Dilawar Singh, blew himself up, on August 31, 1995. Rajoana was the second human bomb to be used in case Dilawar failed in his mission.

The patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church led Egypt's Christian minority for 40 years during a time of increasing tensions with Muslims. He died on March 17 at the age of 88 after battling liver and lung problems for several years. The patriarch, known in Arabic as Baba Shenouda, headed one of the most ancient churches in the world, which traced it's founding to St. Mark, who is said to have brought Christianity to Egypt in the 1st Century during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero.

Thanks to its aggressive shopping in international arms bazaars and very limited indigenous supplies, India was the world's largest arms importer between 2007 and 2011, according to the latest data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The most visible trend during 2007-11 was how China, which was the largest recipient of arms exports in 2002-2006, fell to fourth position in 2007-11. During this period India accounted for 10% of global arms imports and the four next largest recipients were South Korea (6% of arms transfers), Pakistan (5%), China (5%) and Singapore (4%).

Two months after being forced to skip the Jaipur Literature Festival, novelist Salman Rushdie hit out at the Congress, suggesting that his presence there was blocked because of "useless electoral calculations" and told Rahul Gandhi that "it did not work". The renowned author, who has been castigated by fundamentalist Muslim groups for his book 'The Satanic Verses', observed that blocking his presence in Jaipur "led the Congress party down the road" in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

The Indian defence establishment is watching with concern the Baburam Bhattarai government's fresh move to eventually halt the recruitment of Gorkhas in Indian, British and other armies in line with the recommendations of its parliament's report "Nepal's Foreign policy in the Changed Context, 2012" which says recruitment of Gurkhas to fight in foreign armies should be ended . They complained that since Britain granted retired Gurkha troops the right to remain in the United Kingdom, the amount of income Nepal earns from the arrangement has declined.