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THE CONTACT WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ISSUE - 649, 12 JAN. - 18 JAN. 2016 PH: (905) 671 - 4761

Indo-Pak Foreign-Secretary talks set for delay; NSAs may meet first

New Delhi The India-Pakistan peace process may take a hit as the foreign secretary-level talks are unlikely to take place at the end of this week as planned. New Delhi, which is not willing to call

off the entire peace process, is, however, preparing to halt the talks for now till the Nawaz Sharif government in Islamabad takes action against the perpetrators of the Pathankot terror siege.

Sources said a final decision will

be announced in a day or two.

Home minister Rajnath Singh met external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and national security adviser Ajit Doval separately on Monday and discussed the Pathankot siege

and the dossier shared with Pakistan. Mr. Doval is learnt to have shared all vital leads with Pakistan on the attack, and New Delhi is awaiting action by the Nawaz Sharif government on the Jaish-e-Mohammed handlers in Pakistan, including its chief Maulana Masood Azhar, who roams freely on Pakistani soil.

The home minister is learnt to have told Ms Swaraj that India’s anti-terror pitch to Pakistan “needs to be very strong” after New Delhi put the ball in Pakistan’s court, sharing evidence to prove that the attack was sponsored Continued on Page 2

Border defence installations on Pak terror outfits’ hitlist

By ABHISHEK BHALLA The conspiracy behind the attack on the Pathankot airbase was part of a larger plot to target defence installations in India.

Even as Pakistan claims to have begun cracking down on those who are responsible for the attack, intelligence inputs indicate that military installations in border areas are still vulnerable targets.

Sources said terror outfits like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba are still preparing to carry out more

such strikes.

“Defence installations continue to be put on a high alert with intelligence inputs pouring in that they are still on terror radar,” said a top intelligence official.

With inputs indicating that Pakistan-based terror outfits are planning more such strikes, India has urged Pakistan to go after these groups.

“It has been communicated that Pakistan must launch a massive offensive against terror group targeting India in the same manner as they did after the

Trim beard, wear western-style clothes, Islamic State manual offers terrorists ‘tips’ to avoid detection LONDON A chilling Islamic State manual has emerged online in which the dreaded outfit advised would-be jihadis from West to trim their beards and wear western-style clothes to avoid being identified

The 58-page Englishlanguage manual is titled ‘Safety and Security Guidelines for Lone Wolf Mujahideen’ by security services while plotting terror attacks.

The 58-page English-language manual titled ‘Safety and Security Guidelines for Lone Wolf Mujahideen’, advises would-be lone terrorists hoping to Continued on Page 2

US bombs pile of Islamic State cash in Iraq Mosul A US-led coalition air strike has destroyed a cash storage facility used by Islamic State jihadists in the Iraqi city of Mosul, a US defence official said Monday. Two 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs struck the facility, destroying “millions” of dollars

Peshawar school attack. Only then can bilateral relations improve,” said a senior government official.

Days before the Pathankot attack, central security agencies had reported that a group of eight to 10 terrorists had crossed over the border into India. A similar report from the Punjab government had said at least 15 terrorists from Pakistan had breached the border.

A high-level meeting, chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, on Monday reviewed the security

situation in the country and steps taken to foil more terror strikes in general and on defence installations in particular.

India has identified Jaish-eMohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar and his brother Abdul Rauf Asghar, the mastermind of the IC-814 hijack case, among the four handlers of the Pathankot attack terrorists, and has urged Pakistan to initiate action as a condition for any future talks.

Continued on Page 2

Two 2,000-pound bombs struck the facility, destroying ‘millions’ of dollars worth of cash. worth of cash, the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We estimate in the millions of dollars... from all their illicit stuff: oil, looting, extortion,” the official said. The strike came early Monday. CNN, which first reported the strike, said the US military believed between five and seven civilians had been killed.

Continued on Page 2

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Trim beard, wear western-style clothes....

Continued from Page 1 launch an attack to trim their beards, wear aftershave and even pretend being Christian in a bid to avoid being detected by security services.

The document says: “No doubt that today, at the era of the lone wolves, brothers in the West need to know some important things about safety in order to ensure success in their operations. “We thought a lot of non-Arabic speaking brothers would find it interesting and may apply it in their blessed operations. If you can avoid having a beard, wearing qamis (kurta), using miswak (traditional toothbrush) and having a booklet of dhikr (Islamic worship) with you, it’s better.

“It is permissible for you to wear a necklace showing

a Christian cross. As you know, Christians - or even atheist Westerners with Christian background - wear crosses on their necklaces.

“But do not wear a cross necklace if you have a Muslim name on your passport, as that may look strange.”

The advice goes on: “If you want to use perfume, don’t use the oily, non-alcoholic perfume that Muslims use, instead use generic alcoholic perfume as everyone does, and if you are a man, use perfume for men.”

The booklet includes suggestions for where to stash fake passports and to use nightclubs with loud music as the best place to “secretly discuss the details of an operation”.

The booklet, believed to be created by an ISIS instructor, is being shared on social media.

Indo-Pak Foreign-Secretary talks...

Continued from Page 1

by Pakistan-based terror outfits. There is also speculation that the NSAs of the two nations may meet first, possibly in a third country, to discuss the evidence on the

Till that time, it will be difficult for India to hold the talks,” an observer remarked.

The National Investigation Agency on Monday refused to give a clean chit to Punjab SP Salwinder Singh

Verma and cook-cumhelper Madan Gopal in a personal vehicle which was hijacked and later used by the terrorists on the night of December 31. While Mr. Verma was left bleeding with a cut below his throat

Pathankot attack and cross-border terror linkages to Pakistan before the FSlevel talks take place.

Further, there is a possibility that Pakistan could ask for more time to crack down on perpetrators functioning from its soil. If Pakistan seeks more time to act on leads given by India, New Delhi could consider postponing the talks for a few days to enable Pakistan to deliver on its promise of fighting terror. “At a time when Pakistan is seen to be doing something on the leads, outright cancellation of the talks may not be possible. But India expects Pakistan to take a big step in the crackdown of those responsible for the Pathankot terror attack.

“as yet” in the Pathankot terror probe after he was questioned at the NIA headquarters in New Delhi till late Monday evening, and his questioning was expected to continue again on Tuesday. The SP is learnt to have been unable to give a clear picture of the sequence of events with his statement having contradictions. The NIA also plans to question the SP’s cook-cum-helper Madan Gopal in new Delhi and has issued summons to him. If required, both Mr. Singh and Gopal will be confronted, a senior MHA official said. The NIA is yet to decide whether Mr. Salwinder Singh will be an accused or a witness in the case. Mr. Singh had claimed he was abducted while travelling with his jeweller friend Rajesh

by the terrorists, the other two were abducted. On Monday morning, the home minister’s meeting with Mr. Doval followed the daily security review meeting with the chiefs of intelligence agencies. Top sources said while the Pathankot counter-terror “operation” overseen by Mr. Doval was successful and resulted in minimum damage - the twin concerns of the home minister are how the airbase became so “vulnerable” that terrorists could enter and the “time lapse” in the sanitisation and mopping-up exercise that could have been minimised with a more incisive response. The NIA moved to secure a “black corner notice” from Interpol (used to identify unidentified bodies) to ascertain the

identity of the four bodies of terrorists who attacked the Pathankot airbase. It is also preparing to approach Interpol to issue “blue corner” notices for the missing persons, if any.

The NIA has also sent some body tissues of slain terrorists to CFSL to collect DNA samples and to ascertain their identities.

During its questioning of the Punjab SP, the NIA is trying to join the dots about his visit to the shrine along with Gopal and Mr. Verma, who were visiting the shrine for the second time the day the attack took place .The NIA has recorded the statement of the caretaker of the shrine, who is related to the cook, who confirmed to the sleuths that Gopal and Mr. Verma had come in the morning of December 31 and again in the evening, claiming he was not aware of the reason for his visit to the shrine twice, official sources said. The NIA had recorded his statement in Pathankot but he has been asked to come on January 13 as his statements are also contradictory in nature, sources said. A 10-member NIA team is, meanwhile, continuing search operations in Punjab and has already recovered a AK47 magazine, a mobile phone and binoculars from the IAF base in Pathankot.

India on high alert ahead of Republic Day Border defence installations...

New Delhi An additional 10,000 paramilitary personnel have been deployed in Delhi to ensure greater security cover ahead of the Republic Day celebrations where French President Francois Hollande will be the chief guest. The deployment of the additional paramilitary forces in the national capital comes a week after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot IAF base in which seven security personnel were killed.

“Highest possible security cover will be given in Delhi in the run up to the

Republic Day and during the celebration where the French President will be the chief guest,” a Home Ministry official said. A total

of 50 companies (100 personnel in each company) of paramilitary forces were deployed to ensure security

of Republic Day in 2014.

The number had been increased to 95 companies in 2015 when US President Barack

companies of paramilitary personnel, the official said.

Delhi has already been put on a high alert after the Pathankot terror attack.

Government is also not ready to take a chance during the visit of Mr. Hollande, as Paris saw one of the worst terrorist attacks on November 13, when 130 people were killed by seven gunmen.

Apart from deployment of forces on the ground, government will also ensure air security by Obama was the chief deploying anti-aircraft guest. guns and ensuring no-fly This year, it has been zone in many areas of decided to deploy 100 Delhi.

Pakistan opposes preconditions for Afghan-Taliban peace talks ISLAMABAD Pakistan on Monday said that no precondition should be attached for talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, as a key meeting of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US began here to revive the stalled peace process and encourage the militants to end 15 years of violence.

The four-day talks came as Taliban waged an unprecedented winter campaign of violence. “It is

important that no preconditions are attached to the reconciliation process, as it will create difficulties in bringing Taliban to the negotiating table,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said at the meeting. The group was set up last year to facilitate the reconciliation process in the war-torn country. “The primary objective of the reconciliation process is to create conditions to bring Taliban to the negotiating

table and offer them incentives that can persuade them to move away from using violence as a tool for pursuing political goals,” Aziz said.

“It is therefore important that no preconditions are attached to the reconciliation process,” Aziz added. “Proper sequencing is required in the negotiating process,” he said, adding that “threat of use of military action against the group will cause hindrances and

cannot proceed the offer of talks to all groups.” He said that it was important to undertake a realistic assessment of the opportunities as well as anticipated obstacles in the process and then develop clarity on how to proceed further. “I want to reaffirm that Pakistan values its brotherly and neighbourly relations with Afghanistan, and is firmly committed to continue serious efforts for long term peace and stability in Afghanistan,” he added.

Continued from Page 1 Six terrorists who snuck into the country from IndoPak border in Pakistan, had attacked an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on the intervening night of January 1 and 2. They were killed during a counter-operation

by Indian forces that lasted for three days, in which seven security personnel were killed.

In view of the heightened threat perception, the security for the Republic Day parade will also see an additional deployment

10,000 of paramilitary personnel as French President Francois Hollande will be the chief guest for the event.

Following the ISIS attack on Paris, security agencies have decided to increase the deployment.

Meanwhile the National Investigation Agency, which is investigating the Pathankot attack, grilled Superintendent of Police Punjab Salwinder Singh. He is expected to be questioned on Tuesday as well.

US bombs pile of Islamic...

Continued from Page 1 too slowly, the Pentagon has The US-led coalition carrying indicated it would consider out plane and drone strikes a wider array of targets even if these might cause civilian deaths, provided these attacks yield significant gains against the jihadists.

The defence official said the coalition had targeted cash-holding facilities once or twice against the IS group in Iraq in the past year, but the and Syria has been most recent action was increasingly targeting the “probably” the biggest to jihadists’ money-making date.

It was not capabilities, including by immediately clear if the bombing trucks that ferry money had been in US illicit oil across Syria. Under dollars, some other foreign pressure from critics who currency, or local dinars, the say the campaign is moving official added.

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North Korea’s explosion may not be of a ‘hydrogen bomb’ Last week, North Korea’s news service reported that Kim Jong-un had “made the final decision on January 3 to go ahead with the hydrogen test and accordingly we have conducted hydrogen bomb test at 10 a.m. on January 6 with total success.” The weapon was to be used to defend against the United States. The test was immediately condemned by officials around the world — in the US, China, Russia, South Korea, and the United Nations to start.

A hydrogen bomb is about a thousand times more powerful than an “ordinary” atom bomb, and actually uses a small atom bomb to trigger the H-bomb explosion, so this would be a significant development if true. However, many observers quickly pointed out that all the signs indicated that it wasn’t an H-bomb, but a “boosted” A-bomb, using a small

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amount of nuclear fusion to produce copious amounts of neutron radiation that, while contributing little to the explosive yield directly, caused additional fissions that would boost the bomb’s yield.

Forensic scientists have been trying to collect clues that would indicate what kind of device it was. Access to the actual site of the explosion is, of course, forbidden, but information will come from the aircraft circling North Korea and sniffing for radioactive fission products that have been vented into the atmosphere. By measuring the atomic weights of the isotopes in the fission products, it’s possible to determine which kind of weapon it was. Combining that information with the explosive yield of the weapon, forensic scientists should be able to make a pretty accurate determination. According to news reports, few people today believe that an actual H-bomb was exploded.

South Korea resumes broadcasting propaganda via loudspeakers In response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, the South Korean military has resumed an earlier practice of broadcasting propaganda via loudspeakers located along the border between the two nations. The propaganda is broadcast at 11 sites near the border, and includes a great deal of content, according to the South Korea’s military: pertinent truth about the repressive state including a purge of the North’s highranking officials, criticism about the Kim Jong-un regime, the superiority of democracy, international news, weather information, and K-pop (Korean pop) music, a genre of music popular in South Korea.

This seems to me, and probably to most people, to be a very mild form of retribution by the South Koreans against the North.

But apparently its psychological effect is enormous, because it infuriates the North Korean government so much that they claim that it’s an act of war. South Korea was broadcasting such propaganda to the North starting in 1962, only taking down the loudspeakers in 2004 when because of a landmark agreement between the two.

The speakers were reinstalled in 2010 after the North torpedoed the South Korean warship, Cheonan, killing 46 sailors (see below). However, because of furious objections by the North, the speakers were not used at that time.

South Korea resumed propaganda broadcasts for a couple of weeks in August 2015 after land mines planted by the North Koreans exploded and wounded two South Korean soldiers. The broadcasts ended after an August 25 agreement. The new decision, following the announcement of the “hydrogen bomb” test, was to resume the broadcasts and also impose some sanctions - to suspend social and cultural exchange and aid projects by civic groups, and to limit entry into the Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC), which is a major source of foreign exchange to North Korea. The South Korean government says that further action will await a decision by the United Nations Security Council.

In taking these actions, the South is risking the possibility that the North might decide to retaliate militarily, something that could spiral into a larger war.

SUNNY BAINS

North Korea’s nuclear test revives memories of the 2010 Cheonan attack On March 26, 2010, the South Korean warship Cheonan was sunk by an explosion. It was immediately assumed that the attack came from North Korea, but for weeks, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak carefully avoided accusing the North of being responsible for the explosion because of the fear that merely saying so would also compel him

to a declaration of war. It took two months for nationalistic fury to cool down enough.

At that time, South Korea imposed what have become known as the “May 24 Sanctions,” a set of measures that ban any trading activities between the two Koreas, except for the Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC). South Korea demanded that the north apologize for the Cheonan attack before the sanctions would be lifted, but the North has refused to do so.

Instead, on November 23, the North Korean military launched dozens of artillery shells on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, killing four people, including two civilians. The “May 24 Sanctions” have never been fully lifted, but last year ’s August 25 agreement (mentioned above) between has improved relations between the two Koreas - until now.

US intelligence officials concluded that North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-il (the current leader’s father) personally ordered the torpedo attack on the Cheonan. South Korea didn’t directly blame Kim, but suggested that the attack might have been ordered by military subordinates without Kim’s knowledge, a scenario believed by many to be unlikely. The six North Korean sailors aboard the submarine that attacked the Cheonan were given “hero” status.

China faces limited influence and high frustration dealing with North Korea After North Korea’s nuclear test, US presidential candidate Donald Trump said: “China has total control over them (North Korea) and we have total control over China, if we had people who knew what they were doing, which we don’t we have no leadership in this country. We have China because of trade. They say they don’t have that much control over North Korea, they have total control because without China they wouldn’t be able to eat. China should solve that problem and we should put pressure on China to solve the problem.”

Trump followed that remark by saying that, as president, he would impose a 45% tax on Chinese goods imported into America. I guess business mogul Donald Trump doesn’t understand international trade very well because that tariff would

cripple many American companies, such as Apple, whose iPhones are manufactured in China. Many American companies would go out of business.

It would also be nice if someone running for president had the vaguest clue about American history. The June 1930 SmootHawley Tariff Act not only worsened the Great Depression but also triggered World War II. Germany and Japan were both in the same Great Depression, and these tariffs were a financial disaster for them. The SmootHawley act pretty much shut down exports of Japan’s biggest cash crop, silk. In September 1931, almost exactly a year after Smoot-Hawley, Japan invaded Manchuria and later northern China. In November 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. So in my opinion it’s pretty certain that a 45% tariff on China today would trigger world economic disaster and World War III. As for China’s supposed control over North Korea, it’s true that China could starve the North Koreans, but that would not by any means cause the supernationalistic North Koreans to bend to China’s demands on nuclear testing or anything else. All it would do is destabilize North Korea’s government and result in millions of North Koreans pouring into China to look for food. And that’s the optimistic case. The pessimistic case for China is that the North Korean government would completely collapse, and China would be dragged into a major new war between North and South Korea.

The current North Korean president’s predecessor and father, Kim Jong-il, had good relations with China until the 2010 Cheonan incident, but relations have gone downhill since then. When Kim Jong-un took over as child dictator at the end of 2011, China repeatedly made clear its displeasure with Kim about the nuclear tests, to which the Chinese were adamantly opposed. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has visited an astonishing 37 countries since becoming president in 2013, but so far North Korea has not been one of them.

Even more humiliation for Kim occurred in September of last year during China’s massive celebration of victory in World War II. South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye attended the victory parade, and sat right next to Xi on the reviewing stand. Kim had been told that he could attend as well, but he would not be on the reviewing stand at all but placed on the side. Kim chose not to attend but sent a North Korean official who was seated in the furthest corner to the rear.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi this week was extremely blunt, demanding “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula: “The Peninsula nuclear issue has existed for a quite long time and is very complicated. China insists on finding a solution to the issue and each side’s concerns within the Six-Party Talks framework. Work toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and maintaining the peace and stability of the Peninsula conform to the common interests of all parties concerned, and each party should be aware of its responsibility. This calls for concerted efforts of all parties.”

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Pope Francis urges Europe to keep welcoming migrants, says security fears can’t replace humanity

‘If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours.

And if they don’t, they never were yours.’ So said Khalil Gibran. Of his many wonderful quotes, this is one of the most famous, not least because it was paraphrased and set into a hit song by Sting. It’s not just people that sometimes we have to let go of.

Sometimes it’s situations.

Promises. Possibilities.

Arrangements. Attachments.

Involve-ments. Something now seems to be trying to make its way out of your life.

Let it go lovingly and it may yet return in the same spirit.

Nature abhors a vacuum but human nature abhors an overly full container. When, for example, we see a sign saying, ‘No Vacancies’ we turn away. We none of us want to fill up a space that belongs to someone else or take up a seat that is spoken for. Might you have been giving out the wrong sort of signal lately? Have you allowed your actions to suggest that a pressing need is being met while secretly you’ve been pining for a change? If you really want something new to enter your world, you may need to be a little more candid.

Get ready for a test of strength, a trial of endurance, a war of nerves, a battle of brains, a tussle, a scuffle, a showdown. Not physically.

Mentally. Emotionally.

Psychologically. What’s really going on now is a conflict between two strong wills. One is your own. The other ... well, if you don’t instantly know whose will I mean, you will soon find out, and you will feel like the pressure to act is becoming unbearable. So act. Don’t act out of anger, act out of wisdom. You can win any fight or competition just as long as your heart is full of kindness not anger.

You are waiting for someone to reach a decision. You may have to keep waiting for now.

Unless, that is, you reach a decision of your own. You don’t have to leave your fate in the lap of the gods. You can take it out of their lap and put it in your own. Might you make a choice that’s not so wise? It depends on how much you trust those gods. If you’re willing to respect them and accept what transpires, you’ll much like how things turn out. And if you’re suspicious now, you’ll still be suspicious later. In which case, seize what chance you have!

Some things just won’t mix and match. They clash and clang. They fight, down to their very last atom, for their individual identity. Think, for example, about purple and green. Or sugar and salt.

Or Republicans and Democrats. You can, of course, put them together successfully, but that success will have something to do with the way that they contrast with each other, not the way they blend and merge. Now think of the way that two particular people in your world interact. Much will improve if an expectation is altered and an accommodation is made.

People, like boats, want to be firmly anchored when life’s seas are rough. In our efforts to resist the winds of change, we will often affix ourselves to a deep belief and hope this prevents too much ‘drift’. This is all fine if the anchorage point is genuinely strong. Often, though, we tie ourselves to ideas that appear to have solid foundations, but are actually floating just as freely as we are. Even if storms have been blowing over your life lately, they are calming down. You don’t have quite as much need for security as you may currently think.

Pope Francis insisted Monday that Europe has the means to welcome refugees without compromising its security or culture, saying the continent bears the “moral responsibility” to care for others who have fled their homes to seek a better life.

In a speech to the Holy See’s diplomatic corps, Francis lamented the distinction made between refugees fleeing conflict and persecution and migrants escaping poverty, saying both deserve international protection.

Human history has been marked by great waves of migration, he told the ambassadors from the 180 nations that have diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Humanity today must not let security fears replace the principles of respecting the dignity of others, he said.

“Europe has the means to defend the centrality of the human person and to find

the right balance between Lampedusa, where he cel- the issue, showing the imits twofold moral responsi- ebrated Mass in honor of portance it has in the Holy bility to protect the rights of the thousands of people See’s foreign policy under the first Latin American pope, who ministered to Paraguayan migrants in the slums of Buenos Aires before his election.

In his speech, Francis acknowledged fears about security in the wake of extremist attacks in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. But he said those fears its citizens and to ensure who have died crossing the should not result in Europe assistance and acceptance Mediterranean and de- losing its values of solidarto migrants,” Francis said. nounced the “globalization ity and humanity.

He called for a frank and of indifference” that the “Human history is made up respectful dialogue to begin world had shown to people of countless migrations, among countries of mi- fleeing their homes for bet- sometimes out of an grants’ origin, transit and ter lives abroad. awareness of the right to reception “so that with On subsequent trips, choose freely, and often greater boldness and cre- Francis has visited refugee dictated by external cirativity, new and sustain- camps, while closer to cumstances,” he said. Citable solutions can be home he has opened the ing Biblical accounts, sought.”

Vatican’s doors to two refu- Francis said today’s miFrancis has made migra- gee families and called on grants are “possessed of tion the top priority of his parishes around the world the same determination pontificate: His first trip to do the same. which Moses had to reach outside Rome as pope Francis devoted nearly his a land flowing with milk and was to the Italian island of entire speech Monday to honey.”

US Powerball jackpot reaches record $900 million Ticket sales for the multistate Powerball lottery soared Saturday as people dreamed of winning the largest jackpot in US history, which grew by $100 million to hit $900 million just hours before Saturday night’s drawing.

If no one matches all the numbers, the next drawing, on Wednesday, is expected to soar to $1.3 billion.

The US saw sales of $277 million on Friday alone, and more than $400 million in tickets were expected to be sold Saturday, according to Gary Grief, the executive director of the Texas Lottery.

At a newsstand in New York City’s Penn Station,

cashier Setara Begum said she was exhausted from taking about $10,000 worth of orders that ranged from a single $2 ticket to one man buying $500 worth of tickets.

“I’m going crazy! I can’t take it anymore!” she said, burying her face in her hands but giggling.

The Powerball jackpot has

grown from its $40 million starting point in early November as no one has won.

This kind of huge prize was just what officials with the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs the game, hoped for last fall when they changed the odds of matching all the Powerball numbers, from about one in 175 million to

one in 292.2 million.

The tougher odds made the ever-larger prizes inevitable.

The bigger prizes draw more players, who in turn make the jackpots even bigger. “We anticipate that by the time sales close tonight, around 75 percent of all the combinations will be wagered on,” Grief said.

The odds are a matter of statistics and probability, but they’re facts that most players may not completely understand, said Ron Wasserstein, executive director of the Alexandria, Virginia-based American Statistical Association.

“Once you get numbers that size, it’s hard for people to wrap their minds around them,” Wasserstein said.

Merkel wants expulsion rules toughened after Cologne sex assaults German Chancellor Angela Merkel today backed a toughening of expulsion rules for convicted refugees, as protesters took to the streets against a shocking rash of sexual assaults blamed on migrants during New Year’s festivities.

Both women’s groups and supporters of the xenophobic PEGIDA movement mobilised in separate rallies in Cologne, as Merkel declared that refugees found to have committed a crime even those who have not been given jail terms

should be required to leave Germany.

“If the law does not suffice, then the law must be changed” she said, vowing action to protect not just German citizens, but innocent refugees too. Outrage

is growing in Germany over the revelations that hundreds of women ran a gauntlet of groping hands, lewd insults and robberies in mob violence last week in the western city.

Most of the assailants were

of Arabic or North African background, according to eye-witnesses, police and media reports. The majority of suspects identified by federal police are also migrants, adding fuel to criticism of Merkel’s liberal migrant policy which brought 1.1 million new asylum seekers to Germany last year.

Waving German flags and signs meaning “Rapefugees not welcome”, “Germany survived war, plague and cholera, but Merkel?”, hundreds of PEGIDA supporters shouted “Merkel raus” (Merkel out).

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Supreme Court considers harsher punishment for child sex offenders As incidents of child abuse across the country witnessed an alarming 151 per cent jump in the last five years, the Supreme Court on Monday asked Parliament to consider amending penal provisions for awarding harsher punishment to those convicted of raping or sexually abusing children in any manner.

At present, most convicts get away with a jail term ranging between two and ten years.

“These days children between the age of two and ten are increasingly becoming victims of sexual abuse while the law is vague and only talks about women below the age of 16 for prescribing punishments.

Parliament may think of redefining the term child and impose further rigorous punishment to those involved in sexual abuse of children,” a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra said.

The court was hearing a plea filed

by Supreme Court Women Lawyers’ Association (SCWLA) through its General Secretary Prerna Kumari demanding castration of child sex abusers.

court cannot prescribe a particular punishment for a particular offence.”

Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi who had been specially

But the bench rejected this plea saying: “the court cannot enter into making a law or imposing a punishment which is the realm of Parliament. We leave these matters to the wisdom of lawmakers. Even otherwise the

summoned for seeking his views on the subject had submitted to the court that such demands were entirely based on “emotions and sentiments” and the court shall not take a decision on it,

Delhi biggest taker for free condoms after Goa Delhi is only preceded by Goa when it comes to utilising free condoms provided by the government, according to a ‘Condom Fate Study’ recently conducted by National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO)

under the Union Health Ministry.

Goa reported 100 per cent usage.

Apart from being a widely-used method for family planning by couples, condoms are also gaining acceptance among highrisk groups such as sex workers and transgenders. NACO’s study was aimed at assessing the fate of free condoms and determining gaps in supply and distribution of free condoms from

State AIDS Control Society (SACS) to end users and found that more than 93 per cent of free condoms supplied by the government are being utilised across India.

“The findings revealed that in total 96,210 free condoms were distributed among high-risk groups during the one-month tracking period. At end of the tracking period, 13,871 condoms were left unutilised. 82,339 condoms were tracked during the period. Based on sexual encounters that highrisk groups like sex workers engaged in during the period, it was observed that more than 93 per cent of the total free condoms received through peer educators’ network were utilised. The utilisation is highest in Goa (100 per cent) and lowest in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra (89 per cent),” said a senior NACO official.

but leave it to Parliament which shall take some “rationale-based decision”.

Senior lawyer Mahalakshmi Pavani who appeared for SCWLA said the PIL was triggered by the recent shocking incident in Bulandshahar district of Uttar Pradesh, where a 28-day-old baby girl was raped on December 6, 2015. It also cited gang rape of two minors in Delhi in the second week of October.

Significantly, the court asked the Centre why no particular sentence was prescribed for those committing sexual assault on children while provisions were made for sexual intercourse by husband with wife during separation, sexual intercourse by a person in authority, gang rape and punishment for repeat offenders when rape laws were amended in 2013.

Pressing for castration as a punishment, Pavani said the

Madras HC had recently asked the Centre to consider it. “Madras HC itself speaks that between the year 2012 and 2014, the number of these crimes had increased from 38,172 to 89,423 i.e. more than double and this is alarming.”

She noted that several countries like US, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Indonesia, Russia, New Zealand and Argentina have introduced castration to deal with child sex offenders.

Madras HC was not the first to demand castration. In 2011, a Delhi Sessions Court Judge Kamini Lau had called for a nationwide debate on the issue.

The judge had suggested the measure as an alternative sentence to imprisonment.

But in 2013, the Justice Verma committee rejected the demand for castration, noting the punishment “fails to treat the social foundations of rape.”

We were taking notes at Modi’s Wembley event, says British Minister The diaspora event at London’s Wembley Stadium on November 13 addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was frequently recounted at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) celebrations in the Indian high commission on Saturday, with a minister saying British politicians were “taking notes on what we could learn”.

Shailesh Vara, a justice minister in the David Cameron government, told the gathering of leading people of Indian origin that he and his colleagues were at the stadium and were taking notes on “how to win the next election”.

Vara hoped India would soon allow British lawyers to practice there.

The event last year, which attracted nearly 60,000 people, was unprecedented in the history of British politics, where a gathering of a thousand or few thousand is considered a good turnout. The acting high commissioner, Varinder Paul, said henceforth the “big” PBD event in India will be held once in two

years, while it will normally be held in the Indian missions in various countries.

January 9 was chosen as the day for PBD as it was on this day in 1915 that Mahatma Gandhi, the “greatest Pravasi”,

Presentations were made on various aspects of contemporary India, such as on doing business, education, health and social media. Raj Loomba, a member of the House of Lords, called for as much at-

returned home from South Africa to lead India’s freedom struggle. The webcast by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on the day was watched here. She said the government was considering issuing Aadhaar cards to non-resident Indians and Overseas Citizens of India.

tention to providing security to women as on building smart cities in India. The gathering was attended by MPs Bob Blackman, Virendra Sharma, Alok Sharma and leading British Indians such as Pratik Dattani, Manoj Ladwa, Shitij Kapoor, Jaffer Kapasi.

Hostage threat leads to mock drills at residences of VIPs The Delhi Police are conducting mock drills at the residences of VIPs, including ministers and important government buildings in the Capital after receiving specific intelligence input on high profile people being on the radar of terrorists, who may be planning a hostage siege.

Delhi Police’s elite units - Crime Branch and Special Cell - have made a list of people and buildings which face the terror threat. The list includes names of several BJP leaders, including Cabinet ministers and Special Protection Group (SPG) protected politicians. “Real life situations are created during mock drills, where terrorists are countered, people are rescued and emergency services are pressed in to check the preparedness and response time. Even the possibility

of attack at a minister’s house cannot be ruled out. Dummies are kept and commandos are undergoing training to rescue them. Evacuation and exit plans are being prepared for such a situation,” a senior officer said. Delhi is under high alert after the terror strike at Pathankot airbase. As per the intelligence input, terrorists might attempt a strike around Republic Day. Security has been beefed up across the city as French President Francois Hollande is also scheduled to come to India as he has been invited to be the chief guest at the Republic Day parade.

According to sources, Delhi Police have received inputs that two Jaish-eMohammed key members have sneaked into the Capital and are reportedly planning high-profile attacks.

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12 Jan. - 18 Jan. 2016

Vietnam army probes mysterious ‘space balls’ HANOI Vietnam’s military is investigating the appearance of three mysterious metal balls believed to be debris from space - which landed in the country’s remote north, a senior army official said Friday. Two metal balls were discovered in northwestern Yen Bai province on January 2, army spokesman Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan told AFP. Later a larger ball weighing some 45 kilograms (100 pounds) landed in a maize field in neighbouring Tuyen Quang province, he said. “We are still identifying where they came from,” he said, adding the army had determined they did not contain explosives or hazardous material.

The metal balls fell from the sky, he said, scaring local residents. “Before and after these objects were discovered, the Vietnamese army was not conducting any military activity in the region,” Tuan said.

Witnesses told state-run media that they heard what sounded like thunder before the balls plunged to the earth. The Ministry of Defence has pledged to release the findings of the probe. Thanh Nien newspaper said that the initial investigation suggested the objects could have been made in Russia

and come from missiles or spaceships. Nguyen Khoa Son, a professor from the Vietnamese Space Science and Technology Program, told the VietnamNet news site that the balls might be the result of a failed satellite launch. He said the balls did not appear to be damaged and could have fallen from

an altitude of less than 100 kilometres (62 miles). In November, three mysterious objects also fell from the sky onto Spain’s southeast.

According to NASA, more than 500,000 pieces of debris are currently orbiting Earth, and bits of space junk plummet to the planet every year.

First Pakistani Sikh Ranger shines at Wagah Border ceremony Lahore For the first time ever, a Sikh Pakistani Ranger has participated in the traditional beating retreat ceremony at the Wagah Border involving Indian and Pakistani forces.

People from both sides of the border welcomed the Sikh ranger, Amarjeet Singh, with a huge round of applause when he came for the ceremony, Dawn news reported.

The surroundings filled with the sound of claps when he shook hands with the soldiers of Indian Border Security Force.

Amarjeet is a resident of Nankana Sahib, the holy city of Sikhs situated close to Lahore. He is said to be the first person ever from the Sikh community to join the Pakistan army.

Amarjeet joined the

Pakistan army in 2005 and completed training this year, after which he was included in the defence forces on the Wagah Border, media reports said.

The paper further reported that Amarjeet said he was proud of being a part of the Pakistan army and would be happy to lay down his life for the nation.

Sikhs once thrived in each city of Pakistani Punjab until they migrated in huge numbers after partition in 1947.The ‘lowering of the flags’ ceremony is a daily military practice at the Wagah Border.The Border Security Force and the Pakistan Rangers have jointly followed it since 1959.

Air Strike Kills Dozens In Syria As UN Envoy Visits Damascus Beirut An air strike reportedly killed dozens of people in a rebel-held town in Syria on Saturday as a UN envoy visited Damascus to advance preparations for peace talks planned this month despite opposition misgivings. Agreement was also reached for aid to be delivered on Monday to an opposition-held town besieged by progovernment forces where United Nations says there have been credible reports of people dying of

starvation, sources said.

Aid will be sent simultaneously to two villages blockaded by rebels.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 57 people were killed in the air strike, which hit a court house and prison in the town of Maarat al-Numan in Idlib province. It identified the jets as Russian, and said the court house was operated by the al Qaedalinked Nusra Front.Russia has been staging air strikes in Syria in support of

Iceman’s gut microbes shed light on human migration MIAMI The gut microbes of the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy found frozen in a European glacier in 1991, have shed new light on the

bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, an age-old pathogen that has evolved into different strains according to the region of the world in which

history of human migration, scientists said Thursday. Researchers thawed the mummy of the man, also known as Otzi, who was killed by an arrow when he was between 40 and 50 years old and hiking across the Otztal Alps between modern-day Italy and Austria. When they tested the contents of his stomach, they found a

it is found. About half the people on the planet harbor the bacterium in their stomachs. It can cause ulcers or gastrointestinal distress and is typically spread among children when they play in the dirt.

While researchers cannot be sure if the Iceman was sick due to the infection, they were intrigued by their analysis of the geographic

history of the bacterium.

“Surprisingly, a strain of bacterium in his gut shares ancestry with an Asian strain,” said the study in the US journal Science. “In contrast to the fact that most modern Europeans harbor a strain ancestral to North African strains.” If the stomach contents of the Iceman is a good reflection of Europeans 5,300 years ago, the analysis suggests that African migration had not yet resulted in intermingling with the Asian strain of the bacterium.

“This one genome has put things into wonderful perspective for us,” said Yoshan Moodley, a researcher at the University of Venda in South Africa. “We can say now that the waves of migration that brought these African Helicobacter pylori into Europe had not occurred or at least not occurred in earnest by the time the Iceman was around.”

President Bashar al-Assad since September. The

building was struck with four missiles. The dead

included 23 members of the Nusra Front, three women and at least one child, the Observatory said.Syrian officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The war has raged on since last month when the Security Council endorsed a plan for peace talks, a rare case of US-Russian

agreement over a conflict that has killed 250,000 people. The talks are due to begin on January 25 in Geneva.The Syrian government told UN envoy Staffan de Mistura on Saturday it was ready to participate but wants to know who would take part from the opposition, Syrian state media reported.

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12 Jan. - 18 Jan. 2016

Italian bottle cap tycoon leaves workers •1.5 million in will

London Workers at an Italian factory were delighted by an unexpected Christmas bonus, receiving cheques for thousands of euros bequeathed to them by their late boss who died in June, reports said on Saturday.

Piero Macchi, the founder of Enoplastic, which produces screwcaps, synthetic corks and labels for drinks bottles, quietly changed his will shortly before he died, leaving staff at the company’s Bodio Lomnago plant in the Italian Alps a total of •1.5 million ($1.64 million).

“It was all managed by his wife Carla, my mother, who sent a touching letter of thanks with each of the cheques,”

Macchi’s daughter Giovanna, the current joint manager of Enoplastic, told Corriera della Sera newspaper. The cheques landed just before Christmas, with new staff receiving •2,000 and the oldest staff 10,000 and some workers got even more when Macchi knew they needed it. Macchi, a lover of both good wine and machinery, turned a hobby into a lucrative business when he founded Enoplastic in 1957 -- the company now produces 2.5 billion units a year and exports to more than 80 countries. “We always think of ourselves as a big family and this Christmas present is a sign of that,” one worker told the Varese News newspaper.

Russian patient dies after doctor’s punch MOSCOW Russia opened an investigation on Saturday after a hospital doctor was captured on video punching a patient with a blow that killed him instantly.

The shocking incident in the southern city of Belgorod raised questions over a coverup culture in state medicine, with the investigation only opened days later after security camera footage was released on YouTube and aired on national television.

Belgorod’s Investigative Committee said in the statement released Saturday that the incident took place on December 29. It gave no explanation for the apparent delay in investigating the crime. It said the doctor was suspected of causing death through negligence, for which he could serve up to two years in jail. In the video, the strongly-built doctor in medical clothing drags the barechested male patient from the examination table, asking him “why did you touch the nurse?” and pushes him out of the doorway. When the patient returns, the doctor deals him a single blow to the

Indonesian passengers stung by delay due to bee on plane JAKARTA A bee delayed an Indonesian passenger plane for four hours after getting stuck in vital

airline spokesman Benny Butarbutar said in a statement.

“Due to safety concerns, Garuda Indonesia decided to delay the

flight.”Another Garuda official confirmed it was a bee that became trapped in the pitot tube, a vital piece of equipment which measures airspeed.

The airline did not say whether the bee survived the ordeal. After being repaired, the plane took off and landed safely in Jakarta on Tuesday afternoon. Butarbutar insisted the incident was beyond the airline’s control, but said that passengers had nevertheless been given money as compensation. It is not the first time an errant bee has caused an aviation incident. Last June, British budget airline Flybe was forced to abandon a flight shortly after take-off when a bee became lodged in an instrument.

named the doctor as a surgeon at the hospital, Ilya Zelendinov and the patient as 56-year-old Yevgeny Bakhtin.

Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova has ordered the state health watchdog to carry

medics notice the patient lying motionless and attempt unsuccessfully to revive him. The medics drag away the patient’s body and then an orderly mops up blood stains. The doctor hit the patient in the face after he “kicked a nurse during a procedure,” the investigators said. “The cause of death of the victim was trauma to the skull and brain from hitting the back of the head on the hard surface of the floor.” Russian media

out a check into the incident, state television reported Saturday. Russian medics have long operated in a culture of secrecy with patients having little recourse to compensation for medical errors. Last year two Russians resorted to taking guns to hospitals and shooting dead doctors for perceived mistakes in their treatment. Both killed themselves at the scene.

Great shark dies after days in Japan aquarium

The latest bee delay emerged as beleaguered carrier Malaysia Airlines announced it was reversing a decision to restrict check-in luggage for some Europe-bound flights due to “unseasonably strong headwinds”. The U-turn came after the move, announced Tuesday, baffled aviation analysts, with one describing it as “ludicrous”.

Sri Lankan seeks $300m for rare blue star sapphire

equipment and causing a problem with the aircraft’s controls, the airline said Wednesday.

The flight, operated by Indonesian flag carrier Garuda, was scheduled to take off Tuesday morning from the western island of Sumatra and head for Jakarta. But the pilot of the Boeing 737, which was carrying 156 passengers, decided not to take off after noticing a problem with the controls, according to Garuda.“An investigation found that the incident occurred because the plane’s electronic engine control suffered a technical problem after an insect got into a pitot tube,”

face and a crash can be heard as the middle-aged man falls backwards onto the floor.

Meanwhile the doctor continues to scuffle with another man accompanying the patient, and it is only minutes later that the

COLOMBO A Sri Lankan gem trader who owns the world’s largest blue star sapphire has decided to sell the dazzling stone, with a dizzying asking price of $300 million. The rare, egg-shaped stone weighs 1,404.49 carats and has been authenticated as the biggest of its kind at the Gemological Institute of Colombo (GIC), a private laboratory in the Sri Lankan capital. “Looking at the reserve price of other very famous gems, I have now valued this at over $300 million,” the owner, who wants to remain anonymous for fear the stone might be stolen, told AFP. Unlike blue sapphires which have complete clarity of colour, blue star sapphires, a form of corundum, are opaque - but when placed under light reveal a six-line star.

TOKYO A great white shark which was captured and exhibited in a Japanese aquarium, one of only a few such sharks to ever be displayed in this way, has died just after three days, the facility said Saturday.

The shark, about 3.5 metres (11’5’’) in length, was trapped in a fisherman’s net and taken to an aquarium on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa on Tuesday. It was exhibited in the Sea of Dangerous Sharks section at Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, but died on Friday, according to the facility.

The aquarium, popular for its giant tanks where it exhibits whale sharks, said it is investigating what caused the death of the fish of the same species as that featured in Hollywood buster “Jaws”.

“It is very difficult to keep great white sharks,” said Keiichi Sato, an expert in cartilage fish, of the Okinawa Churashima Foundation.

Two aquariums in the United States, including Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, have had the species in captive for short periods in the past, he said.“It is rare that the kind of shark is spotted in the coastal waters of Okinawa in the first place, and even if they get caught in fishermen’s net they usually die immediately because they must keep moving at high speed,” Sato told AFP. “We have almost no knowledge about (the great white’s) nature, so although it died we would like to share what we learnt from this experience with researchers of the world,” he added.

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12 Jan. - 18 Jan. 2016

Chhota Rajan has special relationship with Indian government, claims former top cop

Former Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar has claimed that the Indian government has a special relationship with underworld don Chhota Rajan, who was deported from Bali in November last year. Kumar made the assertion during a session at the Delhi Literature Fest late last evening with journalist Avirook Sen. “The short answer- yes there is,” Kumar said to Sen’s question. Kumar reiterated his statement when session moderator Madhu Trehan asked him whether this was a fact or just hearsay.

“If I say it, it is true,” he said.

The former top Delhi police officer in his tell-all memoir “Dial D for Don” had claimed that he had received a call from Dawood Ibrahim in June 2013.

Kumar had written that post the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, he had telephonic

conversations with the fugitive mob boss on three different occasions.

The book, which was released last year, also was in the news for its disclosure that that at one point in the 1990s Dawood wanted to surrender.

Responding to a question, Kumar said that all hopes must not be pinned on Chhota Rajan in order to get to Dawood.

“There is hope in a manner of speaking, but let us not pin all our hopes on Chhota Rajan,” Kumar said. Chhota Rajan, a former aide of Dawood, is currently lodged in Tihar Jail.

The session also saw Kumar sharing some of his recollections from controversial cases over his long career, including the Ansal Plaza shootout and the Mandal Commission protests.

UK website releases eyewitness accounts of Netaji plane crash A British website, set up to catalogue the last days of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, has released what it claims are eyewitness accounts of the day he was reportedly killed in a plane crash in Taiwan on August 18, 1945.

The latest set of documents quote several people who were reportedly involved in the matter related to the accident as well as two British intelligence reports that revisited the crash site to establish the facts.

The website also sheds light on what may have been the freedom fighter’s dying words, which reflected his devotion to the cause of India’s freedom.

“For 70 years, there have been doubts in certain circles whether such a tragedy at all took place.

Four separate reports each corroborating the other constitute irresistible evidence to the contrary,” says a statement issued by www.bosefiles.info.

The documents say that early in the morning on 18 August 1945, a Japanese Air Force bomber took off from Tourane in Vietnam with Bose and 12 or 13 other passengers and crew.

Also on board was Lt Gen Tsunamasa Shidei of the Japanese Army and the planned flight path was Heito-TaipeiDairen-Tokyo.

The three-member Netaji Inquiry Committee, instituted by the government of India in 1956 and

Mumbai thief force-fed 48 bananas to excrete stolen gold chain The Mumbai police force-fed four dozen bananas to a chainsnatcher to recover a stolen gold chain which he had swallowed in an attempt to not get caught,

an officer said on Saturday.

The incident occurred in the Ghatkopar east fish market in the eastern suburbs late Wednesday night when the accused, Gopi R Ghaware snatched and ran off with a woman’s 25 gms gold chain.

As the woman screamed, some residents gave chase, pinned him down and hammered him, according to investigating officer Kailash Tirmare of Pant Nagar Police Station.

A police patrol in the vicinity arrived and took charge of Ghaware, a resident of Wadala and took him to the nearby Rajawadi Hospital for treatment.

An x-ray revealed on Thursday morning that a metallic object -purportedly the stolen chain -was lying in his stomach, proof of the 25-year old thief’s first ever crime.

The woman victim had not yet lodged a compliant so the police interrogated Ghaware who admitted to swallowing the gold chain.

Police arranged for another x-ray on Thursday evening which confirmed the earlier x-ray report.

Then it ordered a basketful of bananas and forced Ghaware to eat them till the wee hours.

Early on Friday, he was escorted to the loo by four policemen, who also filmed the morning ablution as the chain finally slithered out of Ghaware’s system.

Police ordered him to wash it with phenyl and placed him under arrest. He was produced before a magistrate on Friday and remanded to custody.

This is not the first time Mumbai police has gone bananas to retrieve stolen goods swallowed by thieves.

Last April, a thief Anil Yadav, was fed five dozen bananas and liquids in an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve a Rs 60,000 gold chain whose large pendant got stuck in the food pipe.

Aided by the special diet, he finally excreted it after three days. But the disgusted victim refused to touch the chain, took it to a jeweller in a plastic bag and got a new chain for herself.

Later in July, a thief successfully relieved himself of a ‘mangalsutra’ worth Rs 30,000 after eating two dozen bananas, laxatives and several litres of milk.

headed by Major General Shah Nawaz Khan of Bose’s Indian National Army (INA), was told that since “the weather was perfect and the engines (of the aircraft) worked smoothly” the pilot decided to overfly Heito and proceed straight to Taipei, arriving there late morning or

side was defective”.

He said the pilot told him “it was a brand new engine”.

He went on to say: “After slowing down the engine, he (the pilot) adjusted it for about five minutes.

The engine was tested twice by Major Takizawa (the pilot). After being adjusted, I satisfied myself

early afternoon.

Major Taro Kono, a Japanese Air Staff Officer and one of the passengers, told the committee: “I noticed that the engine on the left side of the plane was not functioning properly. I, therefore, went inside the plane and after examining the engine inside, I found it to be working all right.”

He added the accompanying engineer “also tested the engine and certified its air-worthiness”.

Captain Nakamura alias Yamamoto, the ground engineer in charge of maintenance at the airport, concurred with Major Kono “that the engine of the left

that the condition of the engine was all right. Major Takizawa also agreed with me that there was nothing wrong with the engine.”

However, soon after the aircraft was airborne there was, according to Colonel Habib ur Rahman - Bose’s ADC and a copassenger, a loud explosion.

He described it as “a noise like a cannon shot”.Nakamura, who was watching from the ground, said: “Immediately on taking off, the plane tilted to its left side and I saw something fall down from the plane, which I later found was the propeller.”

11-yr-old girl tries to stab teacher on mother’s instructions An 11-year-old girl, student of a higher secondary school in Tamil Nadu, tried to stab her teacher with a chisel on

instructions from her mother who was upset on being told to get the headmaster’s permission for her to attend classes which she had skipped, the police said on Saturday.

The teacher, however, managed to overpower her.

Police said the sixth standard girl of the school at Chinnakadai area had left school on Friday without informing her teacher, violating rules which did not permit children go out in the afternoon for safety reasons.

Fearing that her teacher would reprimand her, she brought her mother with her to school.

The teacher asked both of them to meet the headmaster and

take his permission to attend classes.

The enraged mother entered into a heated argument with her and asked her daughter to pounce on the teacher and stab her, police said.

The teacher raised an alarm when the girl rushed towards her with the chisel and informed the headmaster. She also managed to overpower the student and informed police.

Police tried to take the girl to the police station, but released her after the mother raised a hue and cry.

Later a woman inspector and woman sub-Inspector questioned the duo, who alleged that the teacher was targetting them and they were being harassed frequently.

The mother claimed her daughter had taken the chisel for ‘protection’.

The mother also met the teacher on Saturday and apologised to her for their behaviour, parting on a conciliatory note, police said.

No case had been filed against the woman, police added.

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Saini Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance from the GTA for their slim, fair, beautiful, 5’2"/ ’83 born daughter, born, raised, educated in Canada, Bachelors in Business Management, and employed in the Finance division of a reputable Canadian company. The boy should be clean shaven, born, raised and educated in Canada & professionally employed. Please email sub2405@gmail.com or call 416-741-0777 *** 651 *** Seeking a suitable match for a Canadian born punjabi tonk kshatriya girl, 31 yrs. old, 5'-3'' tall, diploma in accounting & professionally employed. The boy should be indian born Hindu punjabi, age between 32 to 36, tall between 5'-10" to 5'-11", attractive, athletic built, fair complexion, bachelor or master degree. Looking for a match in Punjab India or in Canada.

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12 Jan. - 18 Jan. 2016

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employed. GTA preferred. Please email recent picture & bio-data to: sanjog60@hotmail.comOr Call: 1-204-881-7405 ***649*** Tonk Kashtriya parents seeking a suitable match for their Canadian Citizen daughter, 28 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, CGA, B.Com working in govt. job. The boy should be well educated and professionally settled. Caste no bar. Toronto based family is prefered. Please send your biodata & recent picture to: singhjag_@hotmail.com Or Call: 416-722-9771 ***649*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their well settled daughter, DOB 1981, 5’6” tall, born and raised in Canada, well versed in both cultures, family oriented, chartered professional accountant designation and professionally employed in senior management position. The boy should be well educated with family values.

Please Call: 647-298-9665 ***649*** Jat Sikh family seeking a suitable match for their son, 41 yrs. old, 6’ tall Turbaned, B.Sc. Computer Science degree, professionally employed, non- drinker, nonsmoker. The girl should be beautiful, Well educated, between 30-38 yrs. old, not lets than 5”-3’ tall, Candian Immigrants or citizen. Please email recent picture & bio-data to : sks10@hotmail.ca Or Call : 1-604-807-8121 ***649*** Canadian Citizen Toronto resident Jat Sikh parents seek a compatible match for their Turbaned son with trimmed beard, 05/1987 born, 5'- 6.5" tall, family oriented, non vegetarian but non alcoholic, B.Engg., M.Engg. from Toronto based Universities, suitably employed with an Engineering Company in Toronto drawing handsome salary. The girl should be slim, university graduate, well settled.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: rav9106@gmail.com or call: 647- 294-9721 *** 649*** Jatt Sikh family seeking match for handsome son, 38 yrs old, 5’8 tall, American citizen from California, University graduate, Masters degree in Accounting. Girl should be living in USA. If in Canada, must be willing to relocate. Caste no bar. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: julietkaur1@gmail.com or Call: 916-913-5905 *** 649*** Seeking a suitable match for a Canadian born punjabi tonk kshatriya girl, 31 yrs. old, 5'-3'’ tall, diploma in accounting & professionally employed. The boy should be indian born Hindu punjabi, age between 32 to 36, tall between 5'-10" to 5'-11" , attractive, athletic build, fair complexion, bachelor or master degree. Looking for a match in

Punjab India or in Canada.

Vegetarian preferred. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: canadian.alliance@yahoo.ca *** 649*** Canadian Citizen Toronto resident Jat Sikh Sidhu family seek a suitable and compatible match for their niece who is slim, fair complexioned and residing in India. 04/1994 born 5' 5" tall, B. Pharma and has scored 6.5 bands in IELTS recent test. Girls grandparents, uncles and close relatives well settled in Toronto.

Interested, please email with latest photo and profile to sidhugur@yahoo.ca or call: 416 457 9826 *** 649*** Well educated Jat Sikh Sidhu family seeking US based professionally qualified match for their son, 84 born, 6'-2" tall, Master’s in Engineering and currently working in USA. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: gurpreetjan@gmail.com or Call:1- 916-339-7051 *** 649*** Jatt Sikh Family seeking USA/ Canada based match for their very beautiful daughter, 27 yrs. old, 5’4" tall, never married, well settled, born and raised in USA, Master of Science in Nursing – Nurse Practitioner/Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Well cultured in both English and Punjabi with traditional values, (non-drinker/ non-smoker). The boy should be Jatt Sikh and equally qualified.

Please send your bio-data and recent pictures to:dhaliwal.sr86@gmail.com or call: 1-734-394 – 9805 *** 649*** Tonk Kashatrya parents seek a suitable match for their 35 yrs. old, Canadian, divorced (no kids), beautiful daughter, 5’-2" tall, well educated, well diversified in both Eastern and Western culture and seeking the same, citizen or permanent resident. Caste no bar. call: 905-672-6107 *** 649*** Wanted suitable girl for Jatt Sikh Gill boy, 28 yrs. old, 6'-2" tall, software developer, US citizen.

Family settled in America from past 30 years. Girl should be in USA only and willing to relocate.

Please send your bio-data and recent pictures to: gillpom0@gmail.com or call: 1-440-941-2261 *** 649*** Wanted suitable boy for Jatt Sikh Gill girl, 26 yrs. old, 5'-5", patient access representative, Associates degree, US citizen.

Family well settled in America from past 30 years. The boy should be well settled. Please send your bio-data and recent pictures to: pkg89@yahoo.com or Call: 1-216-352-3646 *** 649*** Jat Sikh parents seeking a suitable match for their Canadian born daughter, 27 year old, 5’-6” tall, working as health analyst, also pursuing MBA, well versed in both cultures. The boy should be educated. Please send your recent picture & bio-data to:

bhajan119@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-204-668-3958 ***649*** Lubana Sikh parents seeking a suitable match for their son, 24 yrs. old, 5’-11” tall, currently in Canada on work permit, Diploma in Network Technician. The girl should be Canadian Citizen/ Immigrant. Cast no bar. Please email recent picture & bio-data t o : manjeet_singh6217@yahoo.com Or Call: 905-929-2624 ***649*** Suitable match for Canadian citizen jat Sikh Gill boy, age 33 years, 6’-2" tall,Vegetarian, diploma in Civil Engineering, well settled in Toronto area living with his parents and younger brother, belongs to Ludhiana area.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: bsgill7@gmail.com or call: 647.800.9185 or 647-7400987 *** 649*** Goswami Brahmin Punjabi NRI only son, 1984 born, 5'- 8" Tall, in.BSc med., MBA, Advance course in management (Australia), Residing in Australia since 2009, earning 60K Australian dollars. Parents are well settled in USA. Father is in medical field. Sisters are married in US,UK, Australia. The girl should be educated, tall, caring, beautiful, US citizen or Green card holder. Brahmins or Khatri preferred. Call: 1-559-765-9965 or 1-559-289-1945 *** 649*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter 31 yrs. old, 5-3” tall, R.N. working in her own field, beautiful, family oriented, born & raised in Vancouver. The boy should be raised in Canada, professionally employed, family oriented & from lower main land, Calary or willing to relocate.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: pam_johal@yahoo.ca Or Call: 1604-780-8010 ***649*** Jat Sikh family seek a suitable match for their son, 42 yrs. old, 5-10” tall, Canadian Citizen, Divorcee, working as a family Physician, clean shaven. The girl should be educated, between 26-32 yrs. old, family oriented. The girls on sudent visa/vistor visa/work permit can also be considered. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: gill.jay@gmail.com Or Call: 647-847-7534 ***649*** Looking for a professionally qualified match from Canada/ America for Jatt Sikh Canadian PR Boy, 28 yrs. old, 5’-11” tall, MBA from India, postgraduation from Canada, non-drinker and belongs to a respectable family. Girls on student visa/ work permit will also be considered. Please email recent picture & bio-data to: vir.canada@yahoo.com Or call: 647-629-2031 ***649***

Issue - 649 (11)

12 Jan. - 18 Jan. 2016

3 girls fall into sea while ‘clicking selfie’, man drowns in rescue bid Ramesh Walunj was praying at a temple overlooking the sea on Saturday morning when he heard screams for help from the direction of the Bandra Fort below.

Losing no time but not forgetting his justpacked tiffin box, the 40year-old rushed down the steps and raced on the slippery rocks on to the edge of a small cliff where he was told that three girls had fallen into the water while taking a selfie on their phones.

The girls are residents of Baiganwadi in Govandi and had studied together until Class 12. Tarannum Ansari (18) had since joined SNDT College in Ghatkopar, while Anjum Khan (19) and Masturi Khan (19) studied at Mehta College in Chembur and Rajiv Gandhi College in Navi Mumbai respectively.

“They planned to go to Bandra Fort on Saturday morning. They walked to the edge of the rocks and were taking pictures when a large wave hit them from behind. The

girls lost balance and fell,” said Ramachandran Dhawale, senior inspector, Bandra police station. He added that while Tarannum and Anjum fell into the water, Masturi did not and she tried to help them get out. By then, Dhawale added, Ramesh had arrived and helped Masturi pull out Anjum.

Eyewitnesses say Ramesh was the only one among the onlookers who went into the water after Tarannum, while others watched on. “The third girl had been washed some 15 feet away from the shore.

Ramesh is a good swimmer and reached her but once she grabbed hold of him, the tide swept them away,” said Ramesh’s neighbour Raju Makwana.

The police version is different, however, and states that Ramesh swam some distance, but turned when he couldn’t spot her and he was washed away by a wave.

The police reached the spot past 11 am, some 15 minutes after Ramesh was last seen and could only

identify him using the wallet that he had left behind with his clothes and lunch box. “They found his driving licence

Mumbai Fire Brigade Prabhat Rahangdale said it would resume on Sunday. “It is a very rocky and dangerous beach

given first aid and treated for shock, the police said.

The police recorded statements of Anjum and Masturi and allowed them

inside and came to our house,” said Suresh Sawant, a maternal uncle who had met Ramesh just 10 minutes before he went to the temple.

Initially, two Mumbai Police boats and fishing trawlers were pressed into the search and rescue operations, but by 4 pm, a Coast Guard helicopter had also been called in.

While the search operation was called off later due to fading light, Chief Fire Officer of the

where people sit despite warnings not to do so. We will continue the operations to find the missing persons,” he said. Another fire brigade official added the stretch of sea between Worli and Santacruz was being searched, though chances of finding Tarannum and Ramesh alive were minimal.

Anjum was admitted to the ICU at Bhabha Hospital and discharged at 6.30 pm after being

to go home.

Ramesh, a resident of Jaffar Baba Colony, a hilltop slum overlooking the Bandra Worli Sea Link, worked was a driver with a family living at Bandstand. Accustomed to leaving home at 8.30 am, he was told by his employer on Saturday morning to report to work a few hours late.

“He left home at 10.30 am after I packed his lunch box. But since he had time on his hands, he

Only some Russian strikes in Syria are against ISIS, says US official

Only a third of Russia’s air strikes in Syria are targeting Islamic State and its imprecise attacks are forcing the population to flee, fuelling Europe’s refugee crisis, a senior U.S. official said on Saturday.

Of the 5,000 air strikes carried out by Russia since it began its air offensive in Syria on Sept.

30, about 70 percent hit rebels opposed to President Bashar alAssad, rather than supporting the efforts of the U.S-led coalition, the official told reporters in Brussels.Rescue workers and rights groups say Russia’s bombing in Syria has killed scores of civilians at busy market places and in residential areas. Russia denies this.

The Kremlin launched its

air strikes saying it wanted to help Assad, its main Middle East ally, defeat Islamic State and other militant groups.

“We are not convinced of what the Russian intentions are,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

“For a while, very few strikes were going against ISIL and after a lot of public condemnation they turned a number of strikes against ISIL,” the official said, referring to Islamic State, the militant group that controls territory in Syria and Iraq.The U.S. official said Russia used fewer precision-guided munitions than the United States and its allies.

“The Russian strikes that are not precise cause me great concern because I think there is an indirect

correlation to the refugee flow,” the official said. “It is not just the pressure it is putting on NATO and the EU, it is also the humanitarian cost,” the official said.

Amnesty International said last month that Moscow’s actions had violated humanitarian law.

Amnesty estimates at least 200 civilians were killed by Russian air strikes between Sept. 30 and Nov. 29, which Russia denies.

Russia’s Defence Ministry has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, saying it takes great care to avoid bombing residential areas.

Syria’s civil war which began in 2011 has driven 4.4 million Syrians into neighboring states from where many are trying to reach Europe.

went to the temple to sit there for some time,” said Ramesh’s distraught wife Kalpana.

He leaves behind daughters Raveena (16) and Mansi (14) and son Hriday, who will turn three years in April. A natural swimmer like many of his neighbours, Ramesh was the sort of man who helped out in a crisis, neighbours say.

“He has saved two lives but we have lost the only earning member of our family,” wailed his sister, Jayashree Chavan.

Ramesh only took the trail atop the fort and out its gate to reach Bandstand on days when he was late to work. Another neighbour Pushpa Kajule recalled running into Ramesh only 24 hours before the incident.

“He was holding his tiffin box and running down the steps. He told me he was late for work. I can’t believe I had such a normal conversation with him only a day ago,” she said.

Issue - 649 (12)

12 Jan. - 18 Jan. 2016

Nabbed al Qaeda-linked Bengaluru cleric earlier worked with LeT Maulana Syed Anzar Shah, the 51-year-old cleric arrested by the Delhi Police special cell from Bengaluru, allegedly radicalised over 10 suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives who were among those accused of plotting the assassinations of several rightwing leaders in 2012, police sources said. Shah was operating a website www.ittagullah.com for motivating youths towards jihad and frequently visited the states of Gujarat, Andhra

Qaeda founder chief Osama bin Laden, they said.

Previously associated with LeT, Shah was connected with al Qaeda’s Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) module that was busted in December 2015 by the special cell with the arrest of three AQIS militants, including the module’s India head Mohammad Asif , said police.

This is the fourth arrest in the ongoing operation against AQIS. Those indoctrinated by Shah included Dr Zafar Iqbal Sholapur, Dr Nayeem Siddique, Abdul

Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, among others to deliver provocative speeches.

He himself was inspired by al

Hasan who were prime conspirators in the 2012 assassinations plot.Eleven LeT militants were arrested in August

India’s Mumbai to get ‘world’s first slum museum’

MUMBAI The teeming Indian metropolis of Mumbai - home to the neighbourhood made famous by the film “Slumdog Millionaire” - is to get the world’s first slum museum, organisers said on Tuesday.

The museum will showcase some of the myriad of objects that are produced every year in Dharavi, one of Asia’s biggest slums and the setting for Danny Boyle’s hit 2008 movie. “It will be the first museum ever created in a slum,” Spanish artist Jorge Rubio, who is behind the initiative, told AFP. The small mobile museum will open in February for two months and display everything from pottery and textiles to recycled items, Rubio added. The organisers of ‘Design Museum Dharavi’ say

they want to challenge people’s perceptions of slums by highlighting the creative talent that resides in them.

More than a million people live in the maze of alleyways that make up Dharavi with many working in the area’s minifactories, which produce every kind of goods imaginable.

Following the success of “Slumdog Millionaire”, the slum has become a tourist attraction and guides offer tours of its hundreds of workshops. In 2010 Britain’s Prince Charles cited Dharavi as a role model for sustainable living, praising its habit of recycling waste. Last year the slum hosted its first art biennale. More than half of Mumbai’s 20 million inhabitants live in slums, enduring cramped conditions, poor ventilation and a lack of toilets.

2012 in connection with the conspiracy and the case was later transferred to National Investigation Agency (NIA) which submitted a chargesheet against 12 of 25 accused for criminal conspiracy and other charges in February 2013, said a special cell officer.

“Interrogation of the arrested LeT operatives had revealed that they were motivated by the provocative speeches delivered

by Maulana Syed Anzar Shah, the then imam of Masjid-eNoorani in Bangalore. Shah was not named in the case as investigators did not have sufficient evidence against him. Being the imam, he used to deliver hate speeches during the Jummah Sermons and Bayaans (Friday sermons) intended to motivate young Muslim boys towards Jihad,” said a senior special cell officer.

After the arrest of suspected LeT militants, the officer said, Shah went underground for a few months as his name surfaced as prime motivator and instigator and he feared that NIA officials will arrest him as well in

connection with the conspiracy.

During that time Shah even planned to flee to any Gulf country. Shah, the officer said, used his contacts in Gulf countries to obtain Azad (free) Visa.

He had even visited Pakistan a few years ago. Two passports have been recovered from his possession.

About his latest involvements, the officer said, “Shah was acting a motivator and instigator on behest of suspected AQIS militants Mohammad Asif and Abdur Rehman, who was arrested from Cuttack soon after Asif ‘s arrest in Delhi last month.

Shah was introduced to Asif by Rehman whom he had met at a religious congregation in Bangalore in 2014-15.”

Shah’s interrogation has revealed that he had played a key role in radicalising Umer Hyderabadi, a resident of Hyderabad, and sending him to al Qaeda’s training camps at Waziristan along the Afghanistan-Pakistan borders with the help of Asif and Rehman. Asif had asked him to act as a provider of logistics support whenever the need arose.The special cell officials claim they have evidence of communication between Shah, Rehman and another arrested AQIS member Zafar Masood, too, mostly carried out through voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services.

The investigators have also traced a money trail connecting Shah and Asif, the official said.

Sukhbir Singh Badal appeals NRIs to build powerful Punjab New Delhi Punjab Government acknowledges the contributions NRIs of Punjabi origin in the development of Punjab and has ensured that their interests are guarded well.

The state government has set up a Department of NRI affairs for the same.

The government has also setup Punjab State Commission for NRIs headed by a retired judge of a high court. The commission has the powers of civil court for early disposal of the cases related to NRIs. The commission has already disposed of 885 cases out of 1163 in tenure of four years and is working towards disposing all the pending cases.

The state of Punjab has also worked extensively to address the property related issues of the NRIs. Amendments have been made in the laws related to tenancy to ensure that NRIs can get their property evicted from the tenants without any hassles.

NRIs can now get their multiple properties vacated from the tenants under the Punjab Rent Act, 1995 as amended by the Punjab Rent (Amendment) act, 2013. Under the new Punjab Security of Land tenures (Amendment) act, 2013 and the PEPSU tenancy and agriculture (Amendment) Act, 2013 NRIs can now get their ancestral agricultural property and property purchased by NRIs within five years, vacated

from tenants.

Punjab has also made 10 percent reservations for NRIs in allocation of residential and industrial plots. A simplified process of stamping/ embossing of power of attorneys at divisional headquarters and district levels

has been introduced for the ease of NRIs. “Punjabi Diaspora has played a crucial role in the development of Punjab. We seek their continued support in finding synergies to build a stronger Punjab. Their broader perspectives and new ideas are definitely the founding stones for greater innovations. We whole heartedly welcome them to contribute towards progress of their motherland.” said Sukhbir Singh Badal, Deputy CM, Punjab.

To ensure the safety of the NRIs 10 Exclusive NRI Police stations have been setup and more such police stations are being planned. Apart from that NRIs can avail the services of security guards for themselves and their properties through

PESCO at reasonable rates.

To safeguard NRIs and daughters of Punjab from marriage related frauds, the compulsory Marriage Registration Act has been enacted.

38 Honorary NRI Nambardars have been appointed by the state Government for higher involvement of Punjabi Diaspora in the state. The state Government has also issued privilege cards to the NRIs, which can be issued from the specialized website for NRIs (www.nripunjab.gov.in). Now the NRIs can also get mobile SIM during their stay in India.

Tota Singh, Minister Incharge NRI Affairs Punjab, applauded the impact Sangat Darshans, which were held under the chairmanship of Prakash Singh Badal, to listen and resolve the problems of NRIs at Moga, Jallandhar and Ludhiana. He stated that during these Sangat Darshans 656 complaints were received.

Out of which 384 complaints have been resolved and others are under process. It’s pertinent to note that all the complaints pertaining to districts Muktsar Sahib, Mansa, Bathinda, Barnala, Fazilka, Pathankot and Rupnagar have been resolved.

With these initiatives, Punjab surely wants to facilitate NRIs to showcase their love for their motherland and contribute in its economic and social development.

Issue - 649 (13)

12 Jan. - 18 Jan. 2016

China to limit family size for up to 30 years BEIJING China will stick to family planning restrictions for up to 30 years, a senior Chinese official said on Monday, rejecting concern that limits on the number of children had shrunk the pool of

workers needed to support an aging population.

Last year, the ruling Chinese Communist Party announced it would relax its long-standing and controversial "one-child policy", allowing all couples to have two children.

But critics say the policy change comes too late to avert a dangerous population imbalance as many couples are now not keen on having more children.

China's population is set to peak

at about 1.45 billion by 2050 when one in every three people is expected to be more than 60 years old, with a shrinking proportion of working adults to support them. But officials would adhere to family planning restric-

tions "for the long term", Wang Pei'an, vice minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, told a news conference. "This long-term adherence is at least 20 years, 30 years," Wang said.

"After a period of time, along with demographic changes, and along with changes in the population's socio-economic development situation, we will adopt a different population policy."

Bangkok airport apologizes for snake found on luggage cart Bangkok Bangkok’s main international airport issued an apology after a snake was found on a luggage cart in the terminal over the weekend and startled passengers in the arrival hall.

Suvarnabhumi (pronounced “Suwanapoom”) International Airport, built on land previously known as “Cobra Swamp,” said it would like to “apologize for the incident that frightened passengers” on Sunday.

Passengers spotted the snake coiled around the base of the trolley after a female traveler had loaded bags onto it and was preparing to leave the arrival hall, Thai media reported. “After be-

ing alerted, security officers captured the snake right away and no passengers were injured,” Airports of Thailand said in a statement Sunday that described the reptile as “a small baby snake” but did not identify the species.

Snake expert Thanaphong Tawan at a Bangkok snake farm run by the Thai Red Cross Society said the snake appeared to be a Malayan Bridle snake, a non-venomous variety, based on a picture taken at the airport and published by Thai media.

The statement sought to “reassure that clear and strict measures have been imposed to prevent all poisonous animals from slipping into the airport’s buildings” and it was believed “the baby snake managed to slip into the airport because it was very small.” Meanwhile, on the resort island of Phuket, a Chinese tourist was bitten on the nose by a python while leaning in to kiss it on the head while visiting a snake show over the weekend, The Bangkok Post reported Monday.

Peach app is flavour of the month London Every so often a new app or website will suddenly appear on the tech scene and get everyone talking. You might remember Ello, dubbed the "antiFacebook", which exploded on to the market in late 2014 only to be mostly forgotten about by

2015. And then Meerkat, a live video streaming app which gained early momentum but is now overshadowed by Periscope, the Twitter-owned app that essentially does exactly the same thing. More recently, there was Yo. An app that only allowed people to say Yo to each other.

He said it was difficult to give a specific time on how long the restrictions on family size would be maintained, saying it was an issue that had to be dealt with "in line with the times". Asked about the danger the two-child policy would prevent China from getting rich before it got old, Wang said an ageing population was a global problem and "an inevitable trend of a society's development".

China's main problem with its labour force was not the number of workers but "how to improve the quality of workers", he said. Wang said there was a demographic "imbalance" in China between poorer regions with higher fertility levels than cities, where many people are reluctant to have more children.

The one-child policy was introduced in the late 1970s to prevent population growth spiralling out of control, but is now regarded as outdated and responsible for shrinking the labour pool.

It has also led to the problem of an aging society, with a smaller number of productive young people, a phenomenon usually seen in industrialized countries.

With the adoption of the two-child policy, China's labour force could rise by more than 30 million by 2050 and its aging population will be reduced by 2 percentage points by 2030, Wang said.

Suspicious powder prompts Swedish airport evacuation, flights delayed

Skavsta Skavsta Airport in southeastern Sweden was partially evacuated on Sunday and flights were delayed for several hours when suspicious powder was found after a passenger had checked in luggage, airport officials said.

The check-in area and baggage hall of the departure terminal were evacuated, delaying three flights by up to four hours while police and a bomb squad investigated the suspicious bag, airport spokesperson Joakim Lindholm said. The terminal was reopened and services returned to normal after the bag

had been moved to a safe area.

The suspect bag belonged to “an elderly lady”, who had cooperated with police, Lindholm said, but he couldn’t provide more details. An investigation was expected to “take some time”, he added.

Arriving flights weren’t affected by the incident but some of Sunday’s seven remaining European departures might see short delays, Lindholm said.

Last year, the airport, which serves European destinations, served around 1.7 million passengers. It is located 100 km (60 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm.

Smell test for motorcycle taxi candidates JAKARTA So stiff is competition between Indonesia's motorcycle taxis app companies that new entrants are going to extreme lengths to stand out.

Aris Wahyudi, the founder of the newest motorcyclesharing company, reckons he has found a unique way to win business: not-so-smelly drivers.

"We took the decision to do an odour test for our customers' satisfaction," Wahyudi said, speaking in a sweltering basement car park, where prospective drivers are lining up to have their armpits sniffed as part of a selection test.

Dozens of companies have set up in Indonesia in the past year or so, seeking to emulate the success of Go-Jek, the first local firm to use smart phones to tap into the country's millions of traditional motorcycle taxis, known locally as ojeks.

There are now nearly 40 such firms operating in Indonesia, including Malaysia's GrabBike, and local firms Ojeks Syari, which advertises the Islamic credentials of its jilbab-wearing, women-only drivers, and Limobike, which offer a deluxe service with Vespa-style scooters. Endang Ahmad, 37, takes his job as a professional armpit-

sniffer very seriously.

"I have already found many types of body odour smell," he says, clutching a clipboard which he uses to score candidates as they stand, arms outstretched, in front of a fan meant

friends, family and investors to set up UberJek, which has no connection to global car-sharing service Uber, says his company is the only one to conduct such stringent smell checks.

When the company launches in

to simulate the headwind of a motorcycle ride. "The ones who have sweat smell and armpit smell mixed we don't give a pass." How to respond to the rapid expansion of ride-hailing services in Indonesia, a mostly tropical, sticky country of some 250 million people where public transport is patchy, has caused friction within the government.

Last month, President Joko Widodo overturned a ban on such services only hours after his transport minister imposed it, amid a popular outcry on social media.

Wahyudi, a former electronic engineer who took money from

a month or two with some 3,000 drivers, customers will be able to use the app to rate drivers based on their smell. Drivers who accumulate too many negative reviews will get a warning and could be suspended if they fail to scrub up. Muhammad Ali, 44, wants to supplement the salary he earns working in a bank by driving a motorcycle taxi in the evenings. He has come prepared for the odour test.

"I have brought Rexona (deodorant) because, according to my wife, I have smelly body odour," he said. "But I am really optimistic I can pass all the tests today."

Issue - 649 (14)

12 Jan. - 18 Jan. 2016

Jiah Khan suicide case: Prosecutor outlines loopholes in CBI chargesheet The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has not made much progress in the last one and half year in the Jiah Khan murder case, Special Public Prosecutor Dinesh Tiwari told India.

Tiwari said that he was now looking at alternate measures to ensure the rapid trial of the more than two-year-old death case.

Talking exclusively to IndiaToday.in, Dinesh Tiwari said that there were several loopholes in the chargesheet relating to the suicide case and that a

Special Investigation Team (SIT) team should be formed to carry the case forward.“We have read the chargesheet and feel that the CBI has not done much

Germany names refugees word of year Linguistic experts on Friday named “refugees” the most important word in Germany in 2015, as it has dominated debate in a year when the country is expected to record a million requests for asylum. A panel of experts from the Society for German Language picked the word (“Fluechtlinge”) from 2,500 expressions deemed as having “significantly influenced public discourse this year and which has also accompanied political,

social and economic life in a particular way.” Second place went to “Je Suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), a slogan used worldwide as a sign of solidarity with France following the deadly attack in January that decimated the editorial team of Parisbased satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. In third place was “Grexit”, a word coined over the possibility that Greece would be forced to leave the eurozone because of its debt woes.

investigation in the last one-and-a-half year.

We are wondering if we should ask for a SIT to further look into the case. We are also considering the option of calling a few witnesses directly to the court,” Tiwari said.

The public prosecutor also expressed his disappoin-tment over the insufficient amount of evidence submitted in the chargesheet. Tiwari said that the chargesheet was lacking several essential information such as call records and messages

Saudi Arabia for a couple weeks in OctoberNovember 2011 and Egypt for several months in 2012, the Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.

attorney’s office said.

Police said it was unclear whether the alleged assailant, Edward Archer, a 30-year-old local man, acted alone or as part of a wider conspiracy.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the suspect had traveled to Egypt and Saudi Arabia in recent years for reasons that were unclear on Saturday.

Archer, who was captured on a video surveillance camera opening fire at point-blank range, was in

Homicide police captain James Clark told a news conference on Friday that Archer had “stated that he pledges his allegiance to Islamic State, follows Allah and that is the reason he was called upon to do this.”

The episode comes amid heightened security in the United States following last month’s assault by a radicalized Muslim couple in California that killed 14 people, and the November terror attacks in Paris.

The wounded policeman,

In an unpleasant news for Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, a court in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh has issued a non-bailable warrant against him for allegedly ‘denigrating’ a Hindu god by posing as Lord Vishnu on the cover page of a magazine.

Dhoni has been asked to be present in court on February 25th in the controversial cover case.

In September last year, the Supreme Court on Monday stayed the criminal proceedings against Dhoni and also issued notice to social activist Jayakumar Hiremath, who had filed

the case against the cricketer.

Dhoni had earlier approached the apex court seeking quashing of a criminal case against him in the Karnataka High Court for allegedly outraging religious sentiments for his portrayal of Lord Vishnu on a magazine cover.

The Karnataka High Court, however, refused to quash the case, prompting Dhoni to file an appeal in the apex court.

Dhoni is currently in Australia to play five One Day International’s and three T20Is against the hosts from January 12th to January 31st.

ISIS terrorist executes his mother in public An ISIS extremist has executed his mother in public in the Syrian city of Raqqa for allegedly asking him to leave the terrorist organisation and escape.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 20-year-old Ali Saqr al-Qasem killed his mother Lena, 45, on Wednesday in the Syrian city of Raqqa. The sickening act was witnessed by a large crowd in front of the postal building where the victim worked, according to activist group ‘Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently’.

Qasem had reported his mother to his ISIS

IS sympathiser who shot US cop charged with attempted murder The suspect who shot a police officer in Philadelphia while claiming allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) was charged on Saturday with attempted murder, the district

exchanged between Jiah and her boyfriend Sooraj Pancholi. “Unfortunately, many evidences have not been added in the chargesheet.

For example, all call data records, BBM chats between Sooraj and Jiah, mobile tower locations of people, etc,” Tiwari said.

“We are looking at the future course of action. We are seeing if we should approach the Bombay High Court again,” he added. Tiwari also said that Jiah’s mother Rabia Khan refused to believe the evidences indicating that her daughter had committed suicide.

Lord Vishnu cover controversy Non-bailable warrant against MS Dhoni

Jesse Hartnett, 33, was shot three times in his left arm as he sat in his patrol car late Thursday in the northeastern city.

The Philadelphia district attorney’s office tweeted on Saturday that Archer was being held without bail after he was “charged with attempted murder and related crimes for the shooting of police officer Jesse Hartnett.”

Stills captured from video surveillance and released to the press show the suspect opening fire as he walks towards the patrol car, extending his arm into the vehicle and then continuing to fire as he flees on foot.

Hartnett got out of his vehicle despite being wounded and managed to return fire, hitting the suspect, who was quickly arrested.Authorities said they were astonished Hartnett survived.

It was unclear how the suspect obtained his firearm, which was stolen from police in October 2013, authorities said.

superiors, who then sentenced her to death and ordered him to be the executioner. It is believed she was shot dead with the Syrian Network for Human Rights reporting that her actual crime was “communicating with a third party”.

The 20-year-old used an assault rifle to execute his mother, after she was found guilty of apostasy. The jihadi’s mother, who wanted to escape with him, told her son “the coalition will kill all members of the organisation.”

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For a thriller, Amitabh and Farhan’s film is short on surprises Cast: Farhan Akhtar, Amitabh Bachchan, Manav Kaul, Aditi Rao Hydari, Neil Nitin Mukesh Director: Bejoy Nambiar Ratings: 2 Stars Writers Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi set the ball rolling in the first minute. A slo-mo song gives us a quick look at the happy-go-lucky life of Anti Terrorism Squad officer Daanish Ali (Farhan Akhtar) and his wife Ruhana (Aditi Rao Hydari), a dancer, and their kid. And with one bad call, things fall apart. It’s a pity then that Chopra and Joshi along with director Bejoy Nambiar are not able to sustain the momentum for the remaining 80 minutes of this revenge thriller which fails to keep viewers

on the edge of their seats.

Daanish and Ruhana are grappling with an irreparable loss which has marred their marriage.

While Daanish is suspended and now living with an officer friend, Ruhana has moved in with her mother. Enter Pandit Onkarnath Dhar (Amitabh Bachchan), a wheelchairbound chess teacher, who steps in as a self-appointed shrink and relationship counsellor and also brings some zing to the proceedings with his high spirits.

Chess brings Daanish and Onkar together but what truly binds them is grief.

While Daanish blames himself for an ill-conceived move, the physically-challenged but smarter Onkar is desperate to make a move in the case of his daughter’s death. It’s labelled an accident; he is convinced it is murder.

How? Well because he saw the guilt in the eyes of the killer. It’s enough to

have Daanish pursuing the antagonist, which here is Yazad Qureshi (Manav Kaul), a Kashmiri politician with a secret. It is here that

Wazir loses traction for Qureshi’s secret is barely one from the moment he arrives on screen. A percussive background score is used repeatedly to heighten the tension with little success. This is a game in which all the moves are predictable and the game’s winner already known. The film has three sincere, troubled characters but their journey is

impeded with far too many plot contrivances and conveniences as well as superfluous songs. Every time Ruhana and Daanish are on screen, a sappy song arrives. Too much is revealed, more so spelled out, in the first half, leaving little for the audiences to discover or unravel in the second. The smart, killer move is there in the script, and it’s an ingenious one

too, but unfortunately it is left for too late. There are a few memorable moments - the drunk chess being one - but they aren’t enough to lift the pace. The best moments are when Bachchan is involved, giving the otherwise sombre affair a little dose of humour and wisdom. Akhtar is affective in the part of a grieving parent and a dutiful officer who uses his eyes to

convey his woes Hydari’s Ruhana is reduced to the sidelines along with Seema Pahwa and John Abraham, whose appearance here is never quite justified. Neil Nitin Mukesh eager to make the most of his small screen time goes over the top. For a film centred on a game of mental fortitude and strategy, Wazir is short on ideas but more so surprises.

people. Bullock and Thornton (as the consultant of Castillo’s rival) also joust well, hinting at a lot of unfinished business. How-

ever, having set that line of realpolitik versus idealism, the film treads uncertainly, seeking to play both to the head and the heart.

Our Brand is Crisis Cast: Sandra Bullock, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie, Joaquim de Almeida, Ann Dowd Director: David Gordon Green Ratings: 2 Stars There is something deeply disturbing about American political strategists helping an unpopular politician return back to presidency in a country as different as Bolivia. That was the idea behind the 2005 documentary by the same name that followed an American political consultancy firm, including James Carville of Bill Clinton fame, which did the job in 2002. If Our Brand Is Crisis recognises that irony, it doesn’t show.

It’s hard to see what exactly informs this strange mix of satire/political vehicle that only manages to en-

gage due to Sandra Bullock’s proficient turn.

Apparently Bullock’s Jane Bodine has retired due to some financial mismanagement, which is never brought up again. Apparently she has no respect for

crowds” and not “getting her hands dirty” – try making the connection. Apparently her politician client, Castillo (Almeida), considered an elite with no real connect to the country, thinks little of hiring only Americans for

politics or politicians but hates a rival, Pat Candy (Thornton),enough to risk altitude sickness to fly down to La Paz to help her Bolivian client. She explains her being in the business as “staying away from the

his campaign. Apparently die-hard Bolivian patriots are the only ones who see the real side of Jane, which – what would you know – is just crying out to be discovered. When the film is on surer ground, it is on a

roll. Like when the scene of eggs being cracked on Castillo’s head by a member of the crowd jolts Jane into action. Weatherbeaten till then, she storms into Castillo’s campaign headquarters and declares that he won’t apologise for punching that guy back, as he isn’t the apologising kind. It’s then that she gives the logo of Castillo’s campaign: when the other guy is talking hope (“the most powerful brand”), you can only counter with fear. Tell the people the country is facing grave problems, and you are the only one with the experience and the strength to make it alright.

“Our brand is crisis,” she announces. It’s a powerful supposition, buttressed by Jane’s string of quotable quotes from important

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Anushka Sharma to play a wrestler in Salman Khan’s film?

Anushka Sharma has finally been roped in for Ali Abbas Zafar’s upcoming film Sultan. She will be seen opposite Salman Khan in the film. Sultan has been in news for its leading lady and after much speculations, Ali Abbas Zafar chose Anushka for the female lead actor.

Earlier there were reports, that Anushka might be the the one opposite the Dabanng actor but at that time she took to Twitter to deny that she was not a part of Ali Abbas Zafar’s directorial venture Sultan.

And now that she has been finalized for the role, a source has revealed about her character in the film to DNA. The source said, “It isn’t another typical Salman film. The leading lady has a prominent role. She plays a mature woman - a wrestler. She has to look on par with Salman. For the first time, she will essay a character slightly older than her age and it’s a trademark shift from her girl-next-door kind of roles.”

He further added, “Since she is also playing a wrestler in Sultan, her look will be more realistic or deglam throughout the film.

She doesn’t need to look like a million bucks.”

The report also suggests that an international prosthetic expert, who has been helping the director for Salman Khan’s look, will also be helping Anushka for her character in the film.

Talking about Anushka’s charcter in the film and why is she the perfect choice for Sultan, Ali Abbas said,

We wanted to cast a great actor opposite Salman.

That was the main criterion. Anushka is a terrific actress and a star in her own right.”

“She can pull off a film effortlessly. But the biggest plus point is that she is athletic, she understands

the language and the mannerisms and it will be easy for her to get into the skin of the character. Also, she has previously romanced Shah Rukh and Aamir Khan. Now, it’s Salman.

They look great together.

Once the look is out, you will see,” added the direc-

tor.

Apart from Salman Khan and Anushka Sharma, Sultan also stars Randeep Hooda as Salman’s coach and Amit Sadh as Salman’s younger brother in the film. The film is all set to hit the screen on Eid this year.

Shraddha Kapoor eager to try stunts in films ‘Aashiqui 2’ actress Shraddha Kapoor, who performed a gravity-defying stunt for a promotional event recently, is eager to do similar stunts for her films.

“I was very excited because where do you get a chance to hang off the top of a building? So I wanted to try it. It’s very rare to get such an opportunity. Now I’ve had a taste of it,” said Shraddha Kapoor told the media after performing a stunt for Lakme 9 to 5 Weightless Mousse Foundation.

“My confidence has gone up, so why not do it in my movies as well,” she added.

Shraddha’s pictures, while

she was rehearsing for the stunt, had gone viral and she had even tweeted about it. On Saturday, Shraddha performed her stunt without any fuss, smilingly dressed in a pink outfit.

Reportedly, Shraddha went up the 34th floor of a fivestar hotel here for the stunt.

“I think it’s the first time that anybody is doing anything like this for a brand association,” she said.

“It’s very exciting to have a launch of this kind to get a visual representation of this fabulous product,” the actress said after performing some elegant moves while hanging in the air along with other dancers and came down similarly.

Here’s why Varun Dhawan left an awards gala mid-way

Moments after his highoctane stage performance at an awards gala on Friday, Varun Dhawan apparently walked out of the event, his face drained of colour. Reason? The actor had just been told about his make-up artist’s son meeting with a fatal accident, say sources.

The youngster, who was nominated in the Best Actor (Male) category for ‘Badlapur’, did an aerial act with a human pyramid a tribute to martyrs of the recent Pathankot terror attacks. But after receiving the sad news, he didn’t wait

for the Best Actor awards to be announced, although he had a good chance at winning it (the trophy was jointly given to Ranveer Singh for ‘Bajirao Mastani’ and Amitabh Bachchan for ‘Piku’). Instead, he decided to be with the makeup artist in his hour of grief.

“Varun treats his staff members like his own family. As soon as he heard about the death, he rushed to be by his make-up dada’s side,” says a source.

Varun Dhawan was not available for comment, but a source close to the actor confirmed the story.

Sonakshi Sinha yet to sign biopic on Dawood’s sister Haseena Sonakshi Sinha is yet to take a call on the biopic to be made on underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s sister Haseena, saying she was surprised with the film’s content.

Gossip mills are abuzz that Sonakshi has been finalised to play the protagonist in the film, titled “Haseena The Queen of Mumbai”.

“We are just in talks for it. Till I sign on the dotted line I would prefer not to talk about it,” Sonakshi told PTI. To be directed by Apoorva Lakhia, the film will depict the emotional saga of the underworld don’s sister. “I wasn’t surprised... I felt good that the makers felt I could carry off such a powerful role. I was surprised because of the content as I have never done that be-

fore,” Sonakshi said.

When asked if the content was a worry factor for her while signing the film, she said, “No...not really.”

The 28-year-old actress will be seen next in Abhinay Deo’s “Force 2” and “Akira”, directed by AR Murugadoss.

“2016 will be an actionpacked year. I am still in talks for some more projects, very soon there will be some announcements made,” she added.

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Demi Lovato feels most beautiful when she is ‘naked’ Demi Lovato has her own definition of beauty as for her it is more important to feel beautiful inside and the outer appearance does not require much work.

The 23-year-old “Cool for the Summer” hitmaker says one also need to take care of self to stay

confident, reported People magazine.

“I feel the most beautiful when I’m naked. Just completely stripped down, completely organic, me. That’s when I feel the most confident, because that’s the most natural state that I could possibly get in.

“The key for me is selfcare. I love myself the most when I’m taking care of myself,” Lovato said.

Apart from her self the singer also credits her boyfriend Wilder Valderrama for complementing her every now and then.

“He tells me every day I’m beautiful, so that’s enough for me.”

Emma Stone to be the next Cruella in ‘101 Dalmatians’

Guess who is the next Cruella de Vil in Disney’s upcoming origins flick ‘101 Dalmatians’ none other than Emma Stone.

The Oscar-nominated star is in early negations for the role with the team, reports Us magazine.

The live-action spin-off of the classic 1961 animated film is currently being written by Kelly Marcel, the writer for ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. No director has been finalised yet. Stone would be the second actress to play Cruella in a live-action Disney film.

Back-to-back tragedies for Kaley Cuoco

Sylvester Stallone will not play ‘Rambo’ again Action star Sylvester Stallone said he will not be reprising his role as the iconic military war hero

ter, reported Variety.

“The heart’s willing, but the body says, ‘Stay home!’It’s like fighters that go back

‘Rambo’ again.

Despite saying for years that he was working on a script for the fifth installment of the film, the 69year-old actor said he was happy where 2008’s ‘Rambo IV’ left the charac-

for one last round and get clobbered. Leave it to someone else. As an action film, I was very satisfied that it dealt with the Burmese situation. “...It was so brutal, which civil war is, I was shocked

they even gave me an Rrating. I didn’t want to compromise. I said, ‘This is probably going to be the last decent film of this genre that I’m going to do as a solo act.’

When that was accomplished, I never felt the same willingness to do it again,” Stallone, who first played the iconic character in 1982, said.

The actor is also not involved in the ‘Rambo’ TV series, which is in development at Fox and focuses on the character’s son.

“I don’t want to cast aspersions. But it’s delicate to try to replace a character with his son. I’ve seen the son of Flicka, the son of Tarzan, the son of King Kong, the son of Godzilla.

It’s a very difficult premise,” she said.

Actress Kaley so so much- loved being held Cuoco has been and cuddled. Slept right on left devastated my pillow every night. I can after two of her dogs died within days of each other.

The Big Bang Theory actress, who was still mourning the loss of her pet Petey, who she had had for 14 years, was left “in shock” when another beloved dog, Chester, suddenly died.

Taking to Instagram, Cuoco, wrote: “It hasn’t been a great week for dogs so with a heavy heart I must tell you, sweet Chester (aka Chedder cheese) has passed away.

“We rescue these angels blindly and have no idea what problems they may have.. I’m still in shock but I just keep feeling blessed to have him in my life even for a small amount of time. He was such a joyhilarious ears and followed me everywhere I went.

“He loved people

sleep knowing that he felt extreme love towards the end of his life.

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MI5 tried to recruit Afzal Guru’s son Ghalib scores 95% in Class 10 boards, wins praise Indian-origin ‘new Jihadi John’ Britain’s intelligence services had tried to recruit Indian-origin IS terror suspect Siddhartha Dhar as a double agent before he managed to flee to Syria, a media report claimed on

had earlier been tracked and stopped in the street

by MI5 officers in what is known as a “bump” operation. The 32-year-old Dhar was warned he was on MI5’s “radar” and his activi-

Sunday. Dhar, who was dubbed the “new Jihadi John” after he emerged as the key suspect as the masked terrorist seen in a recent Islamic State (IS) video threatening an attack on Britain, was allegedly contacted twice by MI5 officers before he was arrested for terrorist offences, the ‘Sunday Times’ reported. Quoting a security source the paper said that Dhar, who goes by the name of Abu Rumaysah,

ties were being monitored.

Dhar was contacted by MI5 for a second time and was offered the chance to work for the agency. It is not known how he responded, the newspaper claims.

Dhar, a Hindu-born Muslim convert and former bouncy castle salesman from London, was allegedly warned that he was likely to end up in jail or dead unless he agreed to become a double agent gathering intelligence on terrorist suspects for the

security service.

A few days after the second contact was made, in September 2014, Dhar was arrested alongside extremist preacher Anjem Choudary on suspicion of links to the banned Al Muhajiroun. The security source told the newspaper, “MI5 had a lot of intelligence on Dhar. He was regarded as a militant Islamist and although he was a potential threat, he was also a potential asset to MI5”. “It is a tried and tested tactic to try to recruit those who may pose a threat to the security of the state...Dhar was bumped and told he was on MI5’s radar. They basically said: ‘We know who you are, what you are up to, who you have been meeting with and what you are planning’. “They are basically saying: ‘We’ve got you. For the person on the end of that, it’s quite terrifying. They think they are part of some covert conspiracy, and then someone comes up to you in the street and says we know all about you.

Ghalib Guru, son of Parliament attack convict Mohammad Afzal Guru who was hanged three years back, has scored an impressive 95% marks in the 10th standard examinations conducted by the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Examination.

Ghalib secured 474 marks out of 500, according to the results declared on Sunday.

He has secured ‘A1’ grade in all five subjects.

Ghalib’s performance in the examinations became a talking point on the social media with many lauding the boy “for excelling despite hardships”.

Afzal Guru was hanged to death on February 9 in 2013 following his conviction in the Parliament attack case. How-

ever, the topper in the class was a boy from Awantipora in Pulwama district.

While the family was not immediately available for comment, a year after her husband , Guru, was hanged, Tabasum Guru had told Hindustan Times

Kashmiri news outlet Kashmir Monitor, Ghalib had said that he wanted to be a doctor.

“Papa knew that I want to become a doctor and would always tell me to work hard. He used to repeat this whenever I visited him in jail,” said

that all she wanted was a “normal and peaceful life” for her family.

“We are a normal family. I want my son to lead a normal life. We have nothing to do with politics,” Tabasum had said.

In a 2013 interview to

Ghalib, who loves reading science books and playing cricket, the report said.

“When I visited him in August, papa gifted me a copy of the Koran and a book on science, which I have preserved,” he said.

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Bihar govt website calls Indira rule worse than British, Cong fumes New Delhi The Congress, a constituent of the ruling coalition in Bihar, has been left red-faced as the state government’s official website called former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s rule worse than the British reign in India.

Enraged Congress leaders

have planned to take up the issue with chief minister Nitish Kumar.

“It was he (Jay Prakash Narayan) who steadfastly and staunchly opposed the autocratic rule of Indira Gandhi and her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi. Fearing people’s reaction to his opposition, Indira Gandhi had him arrested on the eve of declaring National Emergency beginning June 26, 1975. He was put in the Tihar Jail, located near Delhi, where notorious criminals are jailed,” reads a paragraph on modern history in the website.

“Thus, in Free India, this septuagenarian, who had fought for India’s freedom alongside Indira Gandhi’s father, Jawahar

Lal Nehru, received a treatment that was worse than what the British had meted out to Gandhiji in Champaran in 1917, for his speaking out against oppression,” it says.

The references were made in the history of Bihar section under state profile. “The references to Indira Gandhi are

totally unacceptable and we will raise the matter in the party and request the leadership to take up the issue with the chief minister,” state Congress leader Chandan Yadav said.

“Indira Gandhi was a very popular leader and people in Bihar still remember her for empowering the downtrodden through the Belchi struggle and Garibi Hatao movement.”

Bihar government officials feigned ignorance about the contents on the website. “I am not aware of it. We will get it checked,” said senior bureaucrat Pratyaya Amrit when contacted by Hindustan Times.

Janata Dal (United) spokes-

man Neeraj Kumar said the truth should be reflected. “I don’t remember what is there.”

The government’s official website was launched on February 11, 2014. More than a year on, the ruling JD(U) and Congress along with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) of Lalu Prasad joined hands to form a mahagathbandhan or grand alliance that went on to defeat the BJP in the 2015 assembly polls.

The Congress recorded its bestever performance in 25 years, winning 27 of 41 seats it had contested as part of the grand alliance.

“The movement started by JP, however, brought the Emergency to an end, led to the massive defeat of Indira Gandhi and her Congress Party at the polls, and, to the installation of a non-Congress government the Janata Party at Delhi, for the first time. With the blessings of JP, Morarji Desai became the fourth Prime Minister of India.

JP remained the Conscience of the Janata Party and of post-Gandhi, post-Nehru India. He gave a call to all Indians to work ceaselessly towards eliminating ‘dictatorship in favour of democracy’ and bringing about ‘freedom from slavery’,” the website says.

Acid attack survivor Laxmi becomes face of fashion brand Lucknow Flawless skin, a perfect figure and a beautiful face just a few things most of us would intuitively associate with a brand ambassador of a fashion label.

But here’s a campaign that challenges the stereotype. A

survivor Laxmi as their ambassador. The initiative marks the beginning of a campaign, led

by Viva N Diva, in which more acid attack survivors will get the chance to be faces of different brands. “Such initiatives change mindset. I have per-

face that has undergone several reconstructive surgeries will now represent a fashion label. Clothing brand Viva N Diva has signed acid attack

sonally experienced it when I got my first anchoring assignment. When we walked the ramp during a programme organised by Hindustan Times

in Lucknow, people supported us. I am sure this initiative will also bring about a positive change,” Laxmi said. Giving details about the initiative, Ayushi Rastogi of Viva N Diva said they were motivated to provide acid attack survivors a platform through which they could shed the tag of being a victim. “To the eyes that are used to seeing fashion models dolled up in front of cameras, this view was both disturbing and inspiring. For a moment, we saw beauty in a very different way and all that we could think of was to capture it in a way that gave it meaning,” said Rastogi.

Emphasising their campaign should not be looked down upon as a form of charity, Rastogi said “We have worked with Laxmi like we work with any other model both in terms of payment and profit sharing as well as in terms of the shoot.”

India a tolerant country with few intolerant people says Taslima Nasreen New Delhi India is a tolerant country with a few intolerant people and it is time to focus not just on Hindu fundamentalists but on Muslim fundamentalists as well, Bangladeshi

author has Taslima Nasreen said.

“I think India is a tolerant country, but some people are intolerant. In every society, there are some people who are intolerant,” the selfexiled author said at an event in New Delhi on Saturday, while referring to the recent violence in Malda in West Bengal.

She said while there was talk about Hindu fundamentalists, one has to talk of Muslim fundamentalists as well.

Nasreen said absolute freedom of speech was necessary even if it offended some people.

“I think we should have freedom of expression even if that offends some people. If we do not open our mouths, society will not evolve.

Of course, we should fight against misogyny, religious fundamentalism and all kinds of evil forces only to make the society a better one.”

The writer was participating in a

discussion on ‘Coming of the Age of Intolerance’ at the ongoing Delhi Literature Festival .

The author had drawn the ire of fundamentalists in Bangladesh for her controversial books like ‘Dwikhandito’ and was forced to leave Bangladesh in 1994 for allegedly hurting religious sentiments with her novel ‘Lajja’.

On the other hand, BJP ideologue and writer Sudheendra Kulkarni said absolute freedom could only be exercised with responsibility.

“There is no freedom whatsoever to show any religion in bad light, knowing that it will hurt sentiments and insult others. I completely disagree that writers should have absolute freedom.

Freedom must be exercised with responsibility,” he said.

Kulkarni said India as a country was “essentially tolerant” and that the debate must not be politicised.

“We should neither exaggerate nor belittle the incidents of intolerance.

We should never politicise this debate, making it out as if it is between political parties. It is not that intolerance has begun in May 2014 (when the Narendra Modi government came to power),” Kulkarni said. In September last year, a debate over what many writers said was a “growing climate of intolerance” saw over 40 writers and filmmakers returning their awards to protest the killings of rationalists and writers like Narendra Dabholkar and M.M.

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MUSLIM RSS TELLS MADRASSAS TO HOIST FLAG ON REPUBLIC DAY

SHADOW OF JIHAD on India’s Silicon Valley

Cops keep a close watch on madrassas after cleric’s a

Lucknow In the backdrop of a teacher being beaten for teaching students national anthem, Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM) affiliated to RSS announced a nationwide campaign to convince the madrassas to do flag hoisting on Republic Day. Uttar Pradesh MRM coordinator Merajidhwaj Singh said they would launch ‘Jhanda Falani’ campaign writing letters to Islamic seminaries Darul Uloom Deoband and Nadwa asking them to hoist flag giving out message of significance of national festivals like Republic day. Singh also said that it’s a campaign to stir a deep feeling of oneness for the country adding that it has nothing to do with the religion.

Reacting to the nationwide campaign, Darul Uloom Deoband press secretary Maulana Ashraf Usmani said does “RSS do the flag hoisting at its offices and does it also believes in the national anthem.”

MRM will convene its national working committee meeting on January 20 and 21 at Varanasi to discuss about the campaign and to list out the madrassas which are not covered.

MRM is an RSS wing for Muslim people and Indresh Kumar is its national coordinator.

Close on the heels of the arrest of Bengalurubased cleric Maulana Anzar Shah Qasmi

by Delhi Police Special Cell for his alleged links with terror outfit al-Qaeda, a few selected madarassas in Bengaluru and the communally sensitive Dakshina Kannada district have come under the scanner of the police.

“Maulana Qasmi was always under suspicion for his activities. His latest hate speech in Kashmir was sufficient evidence for his anti-national activities. Besides, his financial dealings with Pakistan-based terror group and contacts with the al-Qaeda have been exposed by anti-terror investigators,” source in the Bengaluru police said.

“There have been sporadic incidents of communal violence in all these districts.

When we traced the origins, many of those who triggered these incidences were influenced by teachers in madrassas. This is a dangerous trend, which needs to be kept under check,” the source added.

Two out of the three associates of Maulana Qasmi are supposed to be based out of Kodagu and Dakshina Kannada districts, which reported communal killings following disturbances relating to the birth anniversary celebrations of controversial ruler Tipu Sultan last year.

“We see a link among the clerics, particularly those known for their fiery speeches. Madrassas hosting such clerics are being monitored by security agencies. We are also supporting the surveillance activities,” the source noted.

Qasmi was born and brought up in Bengaluru and turned a cleric following his education in the city.

He worked at a madrassa for 10 years in Byrasandra but was fired from it following some internal dispute.

It is said that Qasmi was in touch with alQaeda sympathiser Mohammed Abudl Rahman Katki who was arrested last year.

The police are trying to establish whether Katki introduced Qasmi to other terror operatives in his network. Meanwhile, the

Delhi Police claimed that with the arrest of Qasmi, they have nabbed four suspected operatives of al-Qaeda.

While Mohammed Asif, believed to be one of the founding members and the Indian head (amir) of AQIS’s motivation, was held from Seelampur in northeast Delhi, another operative Abdul Rahman was nabbed from

Jagatpur area of Cuttack in Odisha.

The third arrest, Zafar Masood, allegedly acted as a financier for the module. He was arrested from mohalla Deepa Sarai in UP. They were all booked under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. “Maulana Qasim had met Mohammed Asif at a religious congregation in Bangalore, following which he was introduced to Abdul Rahman and Zafar Masood. He was asked to act as a provider of logistics support whenever the need aroused,” a senior Delhi Police official said.

According to the police officers, the Special Cell has evidence of communication between Qasmi, Abdul Rehman and Zafar Masood, too, mostly carried out through voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services.

The investigators have also traced a money trail connecting Shah and Masood.

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Illegal madrassas in Malda raise brows

By Soudhriti Bhabani As unrecognised madrassas have come majorly under scanner following the Burdwan accidental blast probe in October 2014, there are still hundreds such Islamic education institutions that are being run illegally across West Bengal’s northern Malda district.

They are functioning right under the nose of district administration with no government officials making any effort to crack down on these units.

Areas like Kaliachak, Golapganj, Sujapur, Sahabazpur, Mojjampur and Baliadanga are Muslim-dominated pockets that house a number of illegal madrassas located within 40km radius of Malda district headquarters English Bazar.

According to rough estimates, there are 32-odd madrassas that are recognised in Malda district but on the other hand the total number of illegal madrassas in the district stands somewhere between 150 and 200.

Sources said that there has been a trend where illegal finances are being pumped in to purchase government land and set

up Islamic education institutions illegally across the rural outskirts of these districts.

Many of these madrassas are allegedly encouraging antinational sentiments among minority students.

They are doing a brain wash so that they can easily fall prey to become jihadis,” said Malda district BJP leader Biswapriya Roychowdhry.

Asked about the total number of madrassas in Malda, district magistrate Sharad Devidi seemed to have no actual knowledge of the situation of ground zero.

“I have no idea about it. State education department would be able to give you the exact figure. I will have to check with them,” the DM told Mail Today.

Devidi also said that there was no official record available about the actual number of unrecognised madrassas in Muslimdominated areas across the district.

After 2014 Burdwan blast it had been noticed by central investigation agencies that several illegal madrassas were being used by Islamist terrorists to train new recruits, including women.

Purnea tense after mob attack

By Giridhar Jha The situation remained tense but under control on Friday in the Purnea district of Bihar, a day after an irate mob ransacked Baisi police station while protesting the derogatory remarks made against the Prophet allegedly by Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha leader

arrest

Karnataka coastal town in spotlight after the arrest of 3 IM operatives The Karnataka Police and intelligence agencies were under the impression that the link between the Indian Mujahideen (IM) and the communally- sensitive coastal town of Bhatkal, where the terror outfit took shape nearly 10 years ago, was over.

However, with the arrest of three alleged operatives of the IM on Thursday, the focus has yet again shifted to Bhatkal that witnessed several communal riots in the past. Bhatkal had not been under the intelligence scanner ever since Abdul Samad Siddibappa Bhatkal the younger brother of IM founder Muhammad Ahmad Zarar Siddibapa (also known as Yasin Bhatkal) was let off by the Maharashtra ATS after arresting him for his suspected role in the 2010 Germany Bakery Blast case in Pune. The ATS, according to sources, could not establish his links in the blast case. The police and agencies also learnt that Riyaz Bhatkal also had shifted his base reportedly to the India-Nepal border.

“Since we found out that Yasin Bhatkal and his friend Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri (Riyaz

Bhatkal) were not in touch with any youths from Bhatkal, a minimum surveillance was maintained. That’s how we were able to nab the three Church Street blast suspects,”

sources in the police department said.

Yasin, a key conspirator in several bomb blasts, was arrested from the Indo-Nepal border in 2013.

However, the police and intel agencies suspect that his friend Riyaz, who has been absconding since 2005, is trying revive the terror network. Till 2008, Bhatkal, which is around 500 km from Bangalore, was popular

as “smugglers’ cove” as high-end electronic items from Dubai were being sold at small outlets in the town. It drew the national attention after it was found out that the founders of the IM were from the town. Long before the security agencies could detect IM, Yasin, who was familiar with the geography of the Uttara Kannada district, which is part of the Western Ghats, had set up training camps in Bhatkal with his friend Riyaz. In 2008, the police stumbled upon the training camps in the jungles of Uttara Kannada district and the adjoining Dharwad district. Since 2005, the jungles in the two districts of Dharwad and Uttara Kannada were the bases for IM to plot attacks. In 2008, the police came across Pakistani flags, jehadi literature and campaign materials at abandoned training camps in the jungles. A few patches of forests were also cleared for training purpose. The police were of the opinion that IM operatives might have carried out target practice and training in assembling bombs in the jungles.

Kamlesh Tiwari.

The ‘peaceful’ protest march, taken out by a local minority wing of the Islamic Council of India, turned violent when the mob stormed into Baisi police station and set vehicles on fire causing substantial damages to government property.

Taking stock of the situation, Bihar DGP PK Thakur said that antisocial elements in the procession had taken advantage of the situation to cause trouble.

Meanwhile, senior officials of the district administration and the police were camping in Baisi to prevent any flare-up.

Purnea district magistrate Pankaj Kumar Pal said that the law and order situation at Baisi and adjoining areas was under control and a section of armed police had been deployed there as a precautionary measure.

The violence in Purnea apparently caught the local administration off guard since it had not apprehended any trouble during the procession.

According to sources, the organisers had taken prior permission to take out a ‘peaceful’ rally against Tiwari’s allegedly blasphemous statements but a section of protesters chose to vent their anger by resorting to violence.

Eyewitnesses said that the procession had remained peaceful and a memorandum addressed to the President was submitted to the local officials but a certain section of the mob took to violence on their way back.

The local administration had made security arrangements along the route of the procession for which the permission was duly granted but it could do little when the mob, comprising mostly youngsters suddenly attacked the police station.

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Mother gives her daughter the best gift, becomes her surrogate in US

In a carefully planned surrogacy, a 54-year-old grandmother in the US has given birth to her daughter’s baby, honouring a vow to her daughter who suffered three heartbreaking miscarriages.

Kelley, 28, and Aaron McKissack, 33, had tried for three years to have a baby of their own. The couple attempted multiple infertility treatments and experienced three miscarriages.

The last one ended in heartbreak on Christmas day in 2014.

However, the final round of In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) did leave the

couple with four remaining embryos.

Kelley’s mother, Tracey Thompson then offered to be a surrogate for her daughter and son-in-law, using the remaining embryos from previous treatment, the Medical Center of Plano, Texas said in a statement.

“My lovely mom offered to give me to greatest gift I could ever have in my life,” Kelley said on her mother’s gesture. When Kelley was a teenager, she had jokingly asked her mother to carry her baby. “She said, ‘If I can’t carry my own baby will you carry it for me?’ “ Thompson told CNN affiliate KTVT. “Of course I

would, not dreaming that I would actually be doing it.”

This promise was kept when an embryo was successfully implanted into Thompson in April 2015. She was seven years past menopause but in excellent health.

Thompson underwent several medical treatments beforehand to allow her body to carry a baby. “It is such a blessing that I can do this for my daughter,” said Thompson. She gave birth to Kelcey McKissack, a healthy 6-pound-11ounce baby girl, on January 6 at The Medical Center of Plano.

Muslim woman evicted from Donald Trump’s rally for silent protest A Muslim woman was evicted from a Donald Trump presidential campaign rally after staging a silent protest against the Republican frontrunner, who has called for a ban on Muslims entering the US. Television footage from the event in South Carolina shows the woman, named as Rose Hamid, a 56-year-old flight attendant, wearing a head scarf and loose fitting green shirt reading “Salam. I come in peace.” She stood in silence looking at the podium as the rest of the crowd sat.

Later, she was escorted out as Trump supporters wave placards bearing his name in her face and chant for him.

Hamid said one supporter of the billionaire real-estate mogul bawled at her: “You have a bomb, you have a bomb.”

“The ugliness really came out fast and that’s really scary,” Hamid told CNN after Friday night’s rally.

Trump, who leads the polls for the Republican nomination for the White House, ignited a global firestorm last month when he called for the temporary ban on

Muslims entering the US, following an attack in California by a radicalized Muslim couple that left 14 people dead.

“There is hatred against us that is unbelievable,” Trump told the rally, according to CNN, after

ejected from a political rally sends a chilling message to American Muslims,” CAIR executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement carried by US media.

Muslims in the United States have faced a back-

Hamid and several others were ejected.

“It’s their hatred. It’s not our hatred.”

But a prominent Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), condemned Hamid’s removal and called on Trump to apologize.

“The image of a Muslim woman being abused and

lash following the November terror attacks in Paris and the San Bernardino attack in California on December 2.

Critics of Trump’s bombastic run for the presidency accuse him of fanning the flames and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton says he is the “best recruiter” for the Islamic State extremist group.

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Hindu gods forgotten in India revered in Japan KOLKATA Did you know that at least 20 Hindu deities are regularly worshipped in Japan?

In fact, there are hundreds of shrines to Goddess Saraswati alone in that country, along with innumerable representations of Lakshmi, Indra, Brahma, Ganesha, Garuda and others. Even deities forgotten in India are worshipped in Japan. A unique exhibition at Indian Museum here is set to throw light on the country’s long lost history that survives in a foreign land. The Japan Foundation and filmmaker and arthistorian Benoy K Behl have collaborated to hold an exhibition of rare photographs that will be inau-

gurated on Monday and will continue until January 21. “The exhibition will be a rare treat for the eyes and the mind,” said Indian Museum education officer Sayan Bhattacharya.

The research that accompanies Behl’s photographs reveals startling facts about the importance of Indian heritage in Japan.

For instance, the 6th century Siddham script is preserved in Japan, though it has disappeared from India. ‘Beejaksharas’ (or etymology of alphabets) of Sanskrit in this script are regarded as holy and given great importance. Each deity has a ‘Beejakshara’ and these are venerated by the people, even though

most of them cannot read it. Some Japanese tombs are adorned with the Sanskrit alphabet.

At Koyasan, they still have a school where Sanskrit is taught in Siddham, Behl’s research revealed.

A number of words in the

UK panel says limit on Indian, non-EU workers could affect recovery London The influential Home Affairs Select Committee of parliament has said the annual limit of 20,700 placed on Indian and other non-EU workers allowed to work in Britain could harm the country’s recovery at a time when the economy is growing.

Several business and trade lobbies have criticised the Tier 2 cap with a high salary criteria that prevents companies from recruiting people with special skills that are not available in Britain or the European Union. It has affected several Indian and other professionals.

Until mid-2015, the cap introduced in April 2011 was not reached, but recruitments peaked as the British economy showed signs of recovery last year. This created a panic of sorts since health officials were unable to recruit much-

needed nurses from India and other countries.

To remedy the situation, the David Cameron government in October allowed nurses to be included in the “shortage occupation

list”, which is not subject to the cap. The committee cited this as another example of how the cap is not working. The committee said in its latest report the cap was not “fit” and may even be “counter-productive”. It is also not contributing to the government’s aim of reducing net migration to “tens of thousands” instead of the current hundreds of thousands.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the

committee, said: “The latest net migration figures show a third of a million people entered the UK last year, roughly the size of Cardiff, making the Tier 2 cap of 20,700 minimal in comparison. Yet it blocks the recruitment of vitally needed skills required by individual employers and the economy as a whole.”

He added: “Salary, the main measure used in implementing the cap, is a crude tool for getting the skills we need…Employers need the right of appeal to challenge a system that is slow, unimaginative and cumbersome.”

The inclusion of nurses in the shortage occupation list will enable 1,200 nurses from India, who faced the prospect of leaving Britain after working for six years, to stay since professions included in the list are not subject to restrictions.

Japanese language have their roots in Sanskrit. In Japanese supermarkets, a major brand of milk products is called ‘Sujata’. The company’s personnel are taught the story of Sujata who gave sweet rice-milk to the Buddha, with which

mainly from Andhra Pradesh. All five senior students four from B Tech second year and one from third year named in the complaint are from Andhra Pradesh as well.

According to the complaint, the ragging a se-

ries of usually demeaning or insulting activities that freshers are made to do has been on for the last few months. Ragging has been outlawed after instances of humiliated students killing themselves.

The seniors allegedly call

of view. The dominant and admired language was English, which it remains till today.” The National Geographic had carried an 18-page story on ancient Indian art revealed through Behl’s photography to the world. The exhibition will also explain how India’s relationship with Japan. “The deep-rooted spirit of the Buddha’s teachings energizes the Japanese people. Buddhist temples are numerous and vast numbers of people visit these every day. Besides the Buddha, many ancient Indian deities and practices (prevail) in their temples.

An Indian feels quite at home in Japan,” Behl wrote.

11-year-old Indian-origin girl tops Mensa test in UK

London A 11-year-old Indian-origin girl in the UK has achieved the top possible score of 162 on a Mensa IQ test, becoming one of the youngest brainiest students in the country.

Mumbai-born Kashmea Wahi achieved the top score of 162 out of 162, putting her in the league of scientists Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking and in the top 1% of the country’s brightest.

Students ‘forced’ to watch, imitate porn by seniors in Bhopal college Bhopal A group of B Tech firstyear students at a prestigious institute in Bhopal have accused their seniors of forcing them to watch pornography and imitate the acts for ‘ragging’.

The matter, raised by a group of male students of the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (MANIT), came to light on Saturday when they lodged a complaint on the national anti-ragging helpline, which in turn informed the institute.

The complainants, whose number could not be ascertained by HT, are

he broke his period of austerity, before he achieved enlightenment. “All this and more are revealed through Behl’s photography,” Bhattacharya added.

Apart from the language, there are deeper civilizational connections that can be traced to early developments of philosophy in India, he said.

Behl wrote in his research, “In many ways, this philosophic understanding is most well preserved in Japan. Japan has not had the breakdown of cultural norms which India suffered when a colonial education system was created.

Therefore, most Indians learnt about our own culture from the Western point

the juniors to their hostel rooms, forcibly show them porn movies and ask them to imitate the acts, the complainants said. Some junior students who didn’t want to be named told HT that the accused habitually ragged students.

“Junior students are very disturbed with their activities in the hostel. Earlier too, complaints were lodged against them, but the management didn’t take strict action against them. This encouraged them further to continue ragging inside the campus,” a first year student said.

“It’s overwhelming to be compared with the likes of Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein, the comparison is implausible and I believe it would take loads of achievements for anyone like myself to be able to get into the league of such legends. Anyways, I am buzzing with excitement,” Kashmea said.

Both Hawking and Einstein are thought to have an IQ of 160.

The daughter of IT management consultants, Vikas and Pooja Wahi, at Deutsche Bank in London took the test to prove a point to her parents.

The Cattell III B Mensa test is a well-known international evaluation process and Kashmea stumbled upon it while browsing her iPad. Cattell III B has 150 questions, often assessing comprehension through passages of texts, while the maximum score that can be achieved is 161 for adults, and 162 for under18s.

The high achiever at school felt it would be a good way to convince her parents to get off her case for not being buried in her books for long hours.

“We are ecstatic at Kashmea’s Mensa achievement. Although we always believed she had the intellectual prowess, the acknowledgement is reassuring that she does possess the ability, the energy which if well channelised, can lead to something wonderful,” her parents said.

The student of Notting Hill and Ealing Junior School, in west London, was instrumental in her school team making it to third place in the Oxford Maths challenge last year, loves net ball, plays competitive lawn tennis and has competed in national level chess tournaments, winning medals and trophies.

“I can confirm that Kashmea is one of the youngest to achieve 162 in the supervised test as it can only be taken by people over the age of 10 and a half,” a Mensa spokesperson confirmed.

Mensa is believed to be the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world. Membership is open to anyone who can demonstrate an IQ in the top 2% of the population, measured by a recognised or approved IQ testing process.

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It’s time for you to tap in to that inner resource that you have always known existed.

Your ability to heal is extraordinary, and there’s no point in denying it any longer. Your mind is like a sponge, thirsty to soak up any new knowledge or practice about the healing arts. You might spend today browsing a New Age bookstore.

Once begun is half done, as the saying goes.

This certainly applies to you today, Taurus. Yes, it’s true that you have a considerable amount of work ahead of you, but surely you know that you can get it done. Trite as it may sound, making a list (no, you don’t have to check it twice) will help you break the projects down into manageable chunks.

How annoying when work gets in the way of pleasure, but there are times when professional opportunities are simply too good to pass up. That beguiling creature you’ve had your eye on will just have to wait for you another day. For now, Gemini, focus on the business at hand.

With the current aspect at play, the payoff could be tremendous!

One disadvantage of attics is that so much junk tends to get stored up there. Today is the day for you to clean house. You’ve been putting this off long enough and now must face the dust and debris in your own personal attic. Whether it’s emotional messes that need cleaning up or business matters that beg for attention, know that you will be hurting yourself.

It seems your ship is about to come in, Leo. At least, the planets seem to think so. Your years of cultivating business relationships will pay off in the form of increased sales or new business opportunities. It seems this success spills over into your personal life as well.

Life on the home front has never been more serene.

Why does being patient have to take so long? quipped one frustrated soul. Could it have been you, Virgo? Waiting has never been your strong suit, there’s no question about it. You will get through today more easily if you concentrate on finding an outlet for your pent-up frustration. A visit to the gym or a vigorous cleaning of the house would help.

We all know the adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” But you can’t help feeling that you have tried and tried and tried to no avail. All that is about to change, Libra, as you begin to reap the fruits of your labors. You can expect to see things from a new, unusual perspective. This will allow you to sidestep the obstacles that have been blocking you recently.

Whatever you want, Scorpio, you need only ask for it and there is a good chance you will get it. And it’s about time, too. It seems you have been working exceptionally hard lately. You are certainly due for a raise, if not a promotion. Gather your thoughts, collect your supporting evidence, and ask for what you deserve.

It’s time once and for all to tie up all those loose ends of projects left undone. Much as you may dread it, think of it this way, Sagittarius: by completing these tasks you clear space for exciting new projects to come your way. Know that everything bodes well today for all things financial and professional. Perhaps you’ll get that bonus that’s due you!

Junk mail and a few telephone solicitations would almost be a welcome relief from the intense communications you've been having with people lately. All this intensity is interesting, to be sure, but also more time consuming than you'd like. You barely have time to handle your own affairs, much less those of others.

It isn’t nearly as bad as you think, Aquarius. In fact, things are definitely looking up. Of course, you’ll never know that if you refuse to drag yourself out of bed to see for yourself. Your hard work of the last few months has left you enervated and somewhat drained. But today you begin to see the payoff! It’s time to get up, get dressed, and dazzle the world with your brilliance.

Think of yourself as a marathon runner. You have a very long distance to travel, but the sweetness is not just to be found in crossing the finish line, but rather in relishing all the sights along the way.

While your head today is overflowing with plans and ideas, you begin to feel deflated when you begin to consider all the logistics of realizing these dreams.

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Technology Good news! Twitter planning to expand tweet’s 140-character limit to 10,000 Want to convey more to your friends and policymakers on Twitter?

Soon, you may be able to tweet in 10,000 characters on the micro-blogging site.

According to media re-

ports, Twitter is building a new feature that will allow users to tweet longer than its traditional 140-character limit.

The company is currently considering a 10,000-character limit, recode.net reported, adding that Twitter may launch this feature toward the end of the first quarter.

This is the character limit the company uses for its

Direct Messages product.

According to the report, it is also possible that the 10,000-character feature may change before it is finally rolled out.

There is, however, no offi-

cial launch date set so far.

“Twitter is currently testing a version of the product in which tweets appear the same way they do now, displaying just 140 characters, with some kind of call to action that there is more content you can’t see,” recode.net said, quoting sources.

Clicking on the tweets will then expand them to reveal more content.

The 140-character limit has been around as long as Twitter has and has become part of the product’s personality.

Twitter is also working on the idea of changing its

reverse chronological timeline.

The micro-blogging site is experimenting with a Facebook-type way of sorting your timeline where tweets are sorted by relevance and not in reverse chronological order as it happens now.

According to motherboard.vice.com, Twitter is working with algorithms similar to the

ones Facebook uses to order items on your news feed.

“This is an experiment.

We’re continuing to explore ways to surface the best content for people using Twitter,” a company spokeswoman was quoted as saying.

Twitter has been hinting towards an algorithmicdriven news feed for more than a year.

The test is part of CEO Jack Dorsey’s promise for bold changes to Twitter to help get it out of its slow growth, Wall Street Journal reported.

“You will see us continue to question our reverse chronological timeline, and all the work it takes to build one by finding and following accounts,” Dorsey said earlier this year.

“We continue to show a questioning of our fundamentals in order to make the product easier and more accessible to more people,” he added.

The reverse chronological timeline has been fundamental to Twitter since it began nine years ago and has made sense for a realtime service.

China domain ‘.cn’ becomes world’s largest

China’s country code domain “.cn” is now the world’s most commonly used, the state media reported.

It had 16.36 million users by the end of 2015, topping Germany’s “.de”, Xinhua cited China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), which manages the domain, data released on Friday.

The .cn domain is also world leading in domain resolution service, security and the ratio of benign uses, said CNNIC head Li Xiaodong. As China began to require real-name reg-

istration in 2009, the .cn domain protects users’ interests and reduce online theft, phishing and fraud, Li said.

The domain is not only widely used by Chinese institutions and companies but also by overseas institutions and multi-nationals, according to the CNNIC. It is used by all central and provincial governments in China and most telecom companies and commercial banks.

Multi-nationals including Apple Inc., Microsoft, Samsung and Amazon own .cn domain names.

Get ready for Li-Fi: The revolutionary Facebook backup plan would keep it running on Android technology to transform wireless Internet!

Facebook is ready with a contingency plan should Google ever pull its Android app from the Play Store,

really go down the tubes, engadget.com reported on Tuesday.

To begin with, Facebook

according to a media report.

Facebook and Google are at odds with each other given their competing ad and search interests, but according to sources, the world’s largest social network is ready if things ever

would replicate many of the services that one gets through Google Play-enabled apps, like in-app purchases and updates.

It has also explored ways to help people download its app outside of a store, and considered alterna-

tives to Google Maps for location info, the report said, adding that Facebook may have even gone so far as to test Android users’ dependence on its app.

It’s not known if Google was aware of this fallback before now, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the search giant had at least considered the possibility.

The report added that it’s doubtful that Zuckerberg and crew would give up a competitive tool like Facebook app any time soon, as this would mean shooting itself in the foot given the social network is a big draw to the Play Store and a source of in-app revenue.

Forget Wi-Fi! The new entrant in town is the revolutionary technology Li-Fi that has become the talk of the internet.

Imagine downloading your favourite movie while standing under a light bulb in a few seconds!

Now with this new technology, you won’t have to imagine things but you can actually see them happening in reality. Excited?

What is Li-Fi? Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) is high speed technology which enables data transmission through visible light communication i.e it transmits high-speed data using lights.

The term was coined by German physicist Harald Haas during a TED Talk when he outlined the idea of using lightbulbs as wireless routers.

Why are we calling it revolutionary?

Imagine all these billions of lightbulbs becoming wireless hotspots delivering connectivity at amazing speeds!

When tried in laboratory, LiFi technology, achieved an amazing speed of 224 gigabits per second.To put it simply, the speed is comparable to that of 18 movies of more than 1 GB

If all goes well, this new technology could transform the way we use the Internet. It is touted as being nearly 100 times faster than the traditional Wi-Fi technology based on transmission of radio waves.

downloading every single second.

It has been estimated that it will become a $113 billion industry by 2022.

Will this visible light communication have a bright future? We will just have to wait and watch!

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Picture of deformed mountain lion goes viral A hunter tracking down a mountain lion that attacked a dog in the US state of Idaho has stumbled upon a rare deformed big cat, triggering an Internet sensation on the biological mystery. Fish and Game officials said that the male

mountain lion that injured the dog near Preston, Idaho, was killed last week near the Utah border.

What the hunter discovered after examining the corpse can only be described as bizarre, even monstrous, CNN reported.

A photo released by Idaho Fish and Game shows the big cat had another set of fully-formed teeth and whiskers growing out of the top of its head.

Wildlife officials say they have never seen a deformity like that but have of-

fered up several theories.

They say it’s possible the teeth could be the remnants of a conjoined twin that died in the womb and was absorbed into the other fetus. They then grew on their own.

Another explanation is a

so-called ‘teratoma’ tumour. This type of abnormality, whose Greek name translates to ‘monster tumour,’ can grow teeth and hair. In humans, it can grow fingers and toes.

Mountain lions are common, though rarely seen, in Idaho and can be legally hunted. They usually prey on deer, elk, moose and other wild animals but sometimes attack domesticated pets and livestock. Fox News reported that the deformed mountain lion has became an Internet sensation after a photo featuring its unusual deformity was posted online and shared around the world.

The owner of the dog, badly injured by the mountain lion said his pet was recovering. The dog suffered puncture wounds to its body, the report said.

Japan Railway runs a train so that this girl can attend school It is rare that government authorities are in a position to consider the emotional factor in a situation and cater to that.

But, Japan Railways has acted differently.

A train runs on a particular route only to ensure that a girl can go to school. Isn’t that overwhelming?

The Kami-Shirataki train station in the northernmost island of Hokkaido, Japan was abandoned due to its remote location but one train still comes twice a day to pick this girl every day.

The Japan Railways de-

cided to keep running the train when they found that a high school girl uses the

adjusted to her school timings.

The services of the train are

train regularly to go to her school. The girl is the only passenger in the train and even the timings have been

likely to continue till the girl graduates high school and after that the services will be closed.

Man donates finger at Tirupati as gratitude for Sonia, Rahul bail A man has claimed that he chopped off his left hand’s little finger and offered it at Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh as a “token of gratitude” after Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were granted bail in the National Herald case. Suresh said he had been to Tirupati on December 25 last year and “chopped off” his little finger and dropped it in the temple’s hundi (donation

box). As the news was brought to the notice of State Housing Minister M H Ambareesh, Suresh claimed he was immedi-

ately summoned to the Congress leader’s house on Saturday and given the epithet of ‘Congress Eklavya’.

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Man claiming to be ‘Jesus’ arrested for alleged plot to kidnap Obamas’ dog Washington Officials in Washington say they’ve arrested a North Dakota man who allegedly traveled to the

nation’s capital to kidnap a dog belonging to President Barack Obama.

D.C. Superior Court documents say Secret Service agents interviewed Scott D. Stockert of Dickinson, North Dakota, at a Washington hotel after receiving information that he was on his way to the capital to kidnap a “pet” owned by the first family.

The first family has two Portuguese water dogs, Bo and Sunny. Officials arrested Stockert after finding weapons in his car.

A court document says that Secret Service agents interviewed Stockert on Wednesday after they received information from a Secret Service office in Minnesota that Stockert

“was on his way to Washington, D.C., to kidnap the pet that belongs to the first family.”

During the interview, agents

asked Stockert whether he had access to any weapons, and Stockert acknowledged having two guns in his truck. Agents searched the truck and found a shotgun and rifle as well as a machete, a billy club and ammunition. The court document says Stockert was not a registered gun owner and that he was charged with violating District of Columbia laws on carrying a rifle or shotgun outside a home or business.

According to court documents, Stockert told agents that he was “Jesus Christ” and that his parents were President John F. Kennedy and actress Marilyn Monroe and that he came to Washington to announce he was running for president. His

At Rs 69 crore, CEO Tim Cook lowest paid among top Apple execs

New York Tech giant Apple yesterday revealed the salary of its top brass in a proxy filing. The company’s chief executive Tim Cook made $10.3 million pere year (Rs 69 crore) last year as Apple’s CEO, but other top executives each made $25 million each in 2015.

Apple said that it exceeded maximum performance goals for net sales and operating income, resulting in the maximum potential payout for its employees.

Cook’s compensation rose 11.5% in

2015, a year when its sales grew 28% and profits by 35%, the company said on Wednesday. Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri’s annual compensation rose about 81% to $25.3 million in 2015.

In fact, Cook was the lowest-paid of the company’s top executives.

Angela Ahrendts, the senior vice president for retail and online stores, was the highest paid, with a total pay package of $25.8 million.The big difference between Tim Cook and the other execs is that Cook does not receive any stock awards.

attorney, Michael Madden, did not immediately return an emailed request for comment late Friday. His telephone voicemail was not accepting new messages.

Online court records show Stockert was ordered released from custody Friday but must wear an ankle monitor.

The first family’s search for a dog to join them at the White House was widely publicized. On election night in 2008, then President-elect Obama said that his daughters, Sasha and Malia, had “earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House.” Bo, a male Portuguese water dog, joined the family in 2009 and was a gift from then Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy. Sunny, a female Portuguese water dog, joined the family in 2013.

The dogs have been a regular presence at White House events.

Late last year, they accompanied first lady Michelle Obama to receive the White House Christmas Tree and to welcome children to the White House during a preview of the home’s holiday decorations. The decorations included larger than life replicas of the two dogs.

Lottery fever as record US jackpot soars to $800m

NEW YORK The largest jackpot in US lottery history has soared to a whopping $800 million, driven by feverish excitement among players dreaming of becoming millionaires in the drawing Saturday.The Powerball prize skyrocketed from $675 million in 24 hours as a staggering number of people bought tickets. No winner claimed Wednesday’s jackpot draw, which was worth a mere halfbillion dollars. With the jackpot, and excitement, mounting, long lines formed at stores selling lottery tickets, so the prize continued to grow. In the Powerball lottery, which takes place each Wednesday and

Saturday at 10:59 pm (0359 GMT), five white balls are drawn from a drum containing 69 balls, and one red one is pulled from a drum with 26. To win the jackpot, a ticket holder has to match all the numbers on the six balls selected. The winner can choose to be paid the full jackpot in annual installments over 29 years - or take a lower one-off payment in cash.The lump sum in Saturday’s prize would be $496 million before federal taxes, the Multi-State Lottery Association said. The previous jackpot record of $656 million, in March 30, 2012, was scooped by three winners from North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Texas.

Pentagon award to recognise US drone operators WASHINGTON The US military will create a new way to recognize drone operators and other service members who contribute to America’s fighting efforts from afar.

According to a Pentagon memo due out Thursday, the military will introduce a new “R” designation known as a “device” that can be attached to medals given to drone operators and other non-combat troops, such as cyber warriors who hack enemy networks.

The new honor comes as part of a yearlong Pentagon review of how the US military gives awards, sometimes criticized as taking too long or being too stringent. Among the report’s other recommendations are that the cases of about 1,100 medals given for bravery be reevaluated to see if they could be upgraded.

Some of those medals could in theory be increased to Medal of Honor — the military’s highest award. “Although there is no indication that members were inappropriately recognized, the secretary determined that unusual Medal of Honor awards trends reported by the recent Military Decorations and Awards Review justified a review,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

Only 17 troops have been given Medals of Honor in America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, far fewer than in previous conflicts,

such as the Vietnam War. The US military is struggling to recruit and retain sufficient operators to fly the thousands of drones currently deployed across the Middle East, Afghanistan and parts of Africa.

Drone pilots have complained of low morale, long hours and of the psychological impacts stemming from killing people remotely.

“As the impact of remote operations on combat continues to increase, the necessity of ensuring those actions are distinctly recognized grows,” the memo states. The “R” (for remote) will be a small bronze letter that can be affixed to a medal ribbon, and will be awarded to “service members

who use remote technology to directly impact combat operations.”

Former defense secretary Chuck Hagel nixed a proposed new combat medal for US troops who launch drone strikes or cyber attacks, after a torrent of criticism from veterans and lawmakers. Hagel opted to scrap the new “Distinguished Warfare Medal” for a device that could be added to existing medals.

Current Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who started his job in February, is expected to sign off on the changes Thursday. The Pentagon is also creating a new “C” designation for medals that were earned during combat.

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Car talk is electric at Vegas tech show LAS VEGAS Talk by automakers attending the CES tech show this week in Vegas was nothing short of electric. Ford, General Motors and Volkswagen have made it

clear they are betting on electric vehicles for the future, even though the segment is only a small sliver of the global industry.

Some of the vehicles unveiled at the Consumers Electronics Show have been concepts or prototypes, but GM displayed the final version of its Chevrolet Bolt, which aims to capture buyers who are interested in electric propulsion without the price tag of a Tesla. The boldest statement however came from California startup Faraday Future, which on Monday in Las Vegas unveiled its FFZERO1 concept car, resembling a Batmobile and touted as a game-changer in the industry.The company, which has revealed little about its financial backing or management, has already said it would invest $1 billion in a Nevada manufacturing plant and that it expects cars to be produced withing two years.

Volkswagen used CES to unveil

its BUDD-e - a version of its hippie favorite Kombi minivan transformed into an electric, connected vehicle of the future.

The German automaker, hit by a global scandal over its diesel

cars, said it expects the electric ones to be on the road by the end of the decade.

Ron Montoya of the auto research firm Edmunds.com, said VW has a possible winner with the minibus. “You can easily see that being a production car,” he said.“Not only would it be a very stylish car that a lot of people have emotional connections with, but it could be potentially one of the first (electric) minivans.” In a move that could make electric cars affordable to a mass market, GM showed its definitive version of the Chevrolet Bolt and confirmed it would be in production later this year.The Bolt is designed to travel 320 kilometers (200 miles) between charges. And it will cost under $30,000 after tax breaks, GM said. It also features some of the connected technology found on rival vehicles including a Wi-Fi hotspot offering access to apps and services. “The Bolt

New app alerts women to stop saying sorry at work

NEW YORK Saying sorry might sound like good manners but a new app is helping women to stop apologizing so often that they undermine their authority, particularly in the workplace.

“Just Not Sorry” highlights each time a user types a key word or phrase such as “sorry,” “I think” or “I’m no expert” in email, said its creator Tami Reiss.So far, 53,000 users have downloaded the free app, which can be used with Gmail on the Google Chrome web browser.

It was launched Dec. 28, said Reiss, chief executive at Cyrus

Innovation, a software development consultancy.

Other red-flag words on the app include “just,” “actually,” “does this make sense?” and “try,” she said, based on the premise that women use such terms to soften their demands at work or try to be likable and in so doing devalue themselves.

Reiss, 33, said she came up with “Just Not Sorry” after watching a popular video by comedian Amy Schumer spoofing a panel of accomplished women, all of whom pepper their remarks with endless apologies.

EV is truly the first EV that cracks the code of long range and affordable price,” GM chief executive Mary Barra told a CES forum.

Ford meanwhile reaffirmed its plan to invest $3.5 billion over the next five years in electric car development, with a goal of producing 13 new EV or hybrid vehicles by 2020. Several other automakers are also committed to electric, and some see the segment gaining traction, even though electrics only represented 0.08 percent of the global auto fleet at the end of 2014.

There are signs consumers are warming to EVs. In Norway, for example, one out of every five cars registered last year was electric. “EVs will play a bigger role in the automotive future there’s little question about that,” said Kelley Blue Book analyst Akshay Anand. “The Bolt is a big step simply because of its price and range.” Anand said there is still some reluctance, however.

Lower fuel prices have reduced the sense of urgency and “most consumers want an EV as a primary vehicle, so range and charging time are critical factors.

One company that has had success in some respects is Tesla, whose highly regarded electric vehicles have become a hit.

But its price tag has been too high for the general public.

Faraday Future and others have hinted about a new ownership model, raising the prospect of plans that allow consumers to get a car as needed without a hefty commitment.

US court rules selfie monkey can’t own photo copyright

SAN FRANCISCO A US judge has ruled that a macaque monkey who snapped grinning selfies that went viral last year online does not own the copyright to the photographs.

Activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals brought the case in San Francisco on behalf of Indonesian simian Naruto, who shot to fame last year after a photographer published pictures taken by the monkey with his camera. PETA petitioned the court to have the macaque “declared the author and owner of his photograph.” But in a preliminary ruling Wednesday, Judge William Orrick said that “while Congress and the President can extend the protection of law to animals as well as humans, there is no indication that they did so in the Copyright Act.” The photos were taken in 2011 on the Indonesian

island of Sulawesi by British nature photographer David Slater.

He later published a book of his photographs, which included two selfies taken by six-year-old Naruto. The San Franciscobased company that published the book - Blurb - was named as a co-defendant in the case.

In filing the lawsuit, PETA had argued that “US copyright law doesn’t prohibit an animal from owning a copyright, and since Naruto took the photo, he owns the copyright, as any human would.” Slater insists he owns the rights since he set up the tripod and walked away for a few minutes only to find out that the monkey had grabbed his camera and snapped away. When the copyright controversy erupted, he said that the widespread distribution of the photos on the Internet had cost him a lot of money by robbing his book of potential sales.

GM unveils Bolt electric car in Vegas LAS VEGAS General Motors on Wednesday unveiled the production version of its Chevrolet Bolt electric car, on which the US auto giant is pinning its hopes for the emerging segment.

The Bolt aims to appeal to consumers looking at a more affordable price tag than the luxury, market-leading Tesla.

“It’s more than a car, it’s a platform that can be upgraded,” said GM chairman and chief executive Mary Barra, speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. “Who are our customers? Anyone who wants to save time, money and the environment in a car that is truly fun to drive.” The Bolt, set to go into production later this year, is designed to travel 320 kilometers (more than 200 miles) between charges. It also features some of the connected technology found on rival vehicles including a Wi-Fi hotspot offering access to apps and services.

The price tag is expected to be in the range of $30,000 after government tax incentives, which is less than half the price of the current Tesla models on the market. “The Bolt EV is truly the first EV that cracks the code of long range and affordable price,” Barra said.

The new GM car will be

compatible with various connected platforms such as Apple CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto.

Bolt will also feature its own dedicated smartphone app,

if their view is blocked by passengers.

Barra said the Bolt is the next step for GM toward more autonomous vehicles, and possibly new ownership models

which will manage vehicle information and functions, such as charge status, maintenance and navigation. The app will include a “gamification” feature that allows owners to “compete” by comparing driving styles to determine who is driving most efficiently. The Bolt also includes a rear camera connected to the interior rear-view mirror, enabling drivers to see behind them even

such as car sharing, two concepts other auto manufacturers are also eyeing.

“Down the road, the connectivity... will one day help us offer other technologies and transportation solutions that customers will demand,” she said. “Everything from carsharing apps to ownership models and automated driving, and one day self-driving cars.”

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Consumer Electronics Show awash with altered realities LAS VEGAS Altered realities abounded at the Consumer Electronics Show gadget-fest on Thursday, touching everything from sex and sports to sales and space exploration. Virtual reality (VR) headsets immersed people in fictional worlds, while augmented reality (AR) eyewear overlaid digital data on the scenes around them. “Virtual reality takes you to another place, while augmented reality brings another place to you,” said Ari Grobman of Lumus, an Israeli company that specializes in optics technology for augmented reality.

“I don’t see them as competing forces at all; they are very complementary.” Facebookowned Oculus began taking preorders for its eagerly-anticipated Rift VR headsets at a price of $599 when the CES show floor opened on Wednesday. Rift was slated to begin shipping in March. The Oculus booth at the CES trade-only event had a seemingly endless queue of people waiting to dive into Rift.

HTC used CES to announce enhancements to a Vive VR headset it is bringing to market.

“For too long, the promise of virtual reality has been little more than a promise,” HTC chief executive Cher Wang said in a

release. “Today we stand on the precipice of a new era.” While video game players have been natural early targets for virtual reality, the technology is being

player that you can get,” former quarterback Trent Dilfer said while taking part in a virtual reality panel at CES. “I think coaches that don’t implement

put to use for education, medicine, sports, porn and more.“Virtual reality is a big deal here,” Gartner analyst Brian Blau said at CES. “I was trying to count the number of booths that at least had a VR headset, and there were too many.”

Young startup STRIVR Labs mentally trains US pro football quarterbacks by virtually putting them into plays using Rift headsets. “It takes you as close to the real life experience of a

this are really missing the boat.”

Virtual reality is also being used for fan experiences, such as providing the illusion of being at a stadium or trying to block hocky pucks fired at a net by pro players. California-based porn company Naughty America is using virtual reality to put viewers in the heart of the action in sex scenes, a demonstration showed.

“I think everyone has been looking for that in adult

entertainment and it is here,” Naughty America vice president Lauren S told AFP. “Seeing is believing.” Naughty America has added VR videos to the online porn catalog that can be accessed by people with monthly subscriptions to the service. US space agency NASA used Rift at CES to let people virtually fly around a towering rocket that it plans to launch in 2018.

The International Space Station is equipped with Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented-reality headgear. “I think it is going to increase the speed at which we can do our science,” said Hugh “Trey” Cate of NASA. San Francisco-firm Skully was at CES with its first augmented reality motorcycle helmet. A tiny projector displayed driving directions, or showed what was going on behind a rider by tapping into a camera built into the rear of the $1,499 helmet.

“Motorcycle riders are fanatics, and they are really excited about this,” Skully manager of special projects Clint Masterson told AFP. Lumus AR technology has been used by US military jet pilots.“It is battle-proven,” Grobman told AFP. “It has been in combat almost daily in Iraq.”

Silicon Valley-based Atheer Labs uses Lumus optics

engines in a “smart glasses platform” aimed at businesses.

People wearing the glasses see information float in front of them, and can interact with it using gestures, head motion or voice commands, according to Ketan Joshi of Atheer. “This is the evolution of computing,” Joshi said.“Information surrounds you and you can interact with it by literally reaching out and touching it or talking to it.”

Industries in which AR is being put to work include manufacturing, health care, insurance, and oil-and-gas, according to Joshi. Workers in the field are able to remotely tap into computer or brain power in the office for help with unfamiliar or puzzling scenarios. Grobman envisioned a day when a car driver could slip on AR glasses to get help with a roadside repair or someone could use them to have a spouse guide them through cooking dinner.

Travelers might one day slip on AR glasses to get translations displayed as they explore places where they don’t speak the language. “We don’t believe, in the end, people will be wearing these glasses day in and day out,” Joshi said. “It is more the genie who comes to my aid and we solve a problem together.”

Green cars in Norway win Nikki Haley seen as potential world’s biggest market share Republican vice-presidential pick

OSLO Zero emission cars accounted for 17.1 percent of new car registrations last year in Norway, the industry said on Wednesday, the highest market share for clean vehicles anywhere in the world.

“Never has the market share of electric cars been as high as in 2015,” Christina Bu of the Norwegian Association for Electric Cars said. Almost 26,000 zero emission cars all of them electric except for nine hydrogen vehicles were registered last year in the Scandinavian country, out of a total of 150,700 private new cars, the Information Council for Road Traffic said. The most sold models were the electric version of Volkswagen’s Golf, the Tesla S, Nissan’s Leaf, the BMW i3 and the Renault Zoe. In 2014, zero emission cars made up 12.5 percent of the

Norwegian market. The Scandinavian country is cementing its role as a pioneer in the field.

By comparison, in neighbouring Sweden green cars represented four percent of new car registrations last year, while in France they accounted for just 0.9 percent.

Norway offers numerous incentives to encourage buyers to opt for green cars: while regular cars are heavily taxed, green car owners benefit from tax exemptions, and, under certain conditions, the use of collective transport lanes and free parking. Authorities plan however to very gradually reduce some of benefits, controversial due to their high cost. “The choice of a zero emission car has to remain profitable. The electric car market is still not viable without subsidies,” insisted Christina Bu.

WASHINGTON South Carolina’s IndianAmerican governor Nikki Haley’s choice to give the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address has fuelled speculation about her as a potential vice-presidential pick. Born Nimrata “Nikki” Randhawa to Sikh immigrant parents from India, Haley will give the Republican response to Obama’s final annual address to the Congress Tuesday night. A day later she will speak to Republican leaders gathered for the Republican national committee’s winter meeting in Charleston at a private event aboard the USS Yorktown in Mt Pleasant, South Carolina, influential Politico reported citing sources. The following day, just before Republican presidential hopefuls gather for the debate, Haley is expected to have a private meeting with New Jersey governor Chris Christie, according to a source familiar with her plans.

“All this comes on the back of a strong year that saw her prospects in the veepstakes improve as Haley signed off on legislation removing the Confederate flag from Columbia and oversaw a state battered by a tragic massacre and a massive flood,” the Politico said.

In August, at the RNC summer meeting in Cleveland, Haley

was invited to be its luncheon headliner, the Politico noted.

In recent months, Haley has fostered a close relationship with Christie as well as with two other Republican White House hopefuls: Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, it said. Over the course of the primary campaign, she has been exchanging text messages with all three candidates.

Haley said Thursday she plans to address the challenges in South Carolina and the nation that she thinks are the most important in her Republican response to Obama’s address.

Haley declined to reveal details of what she plans to say, except to repeat that she is giving an “address” to the nation rather a “response” to Obama.

“I certainly am not one to compete against the president or try to imply that I could be,”

Haley told reporters, according to Charlotte Observer. Haley’s selection, the Observer said, is seen as part of the Republican Party’s attempts to win over female voters, who will have a chance to elect the first female president if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee. But she called such talk a “waste of time”. When asked about being given such an honour, she smiled and said she was humbled by it. “You have to know I always go back to that 5 year old Indian girl that lived in Bamberg. That just wondered what was out there,” Haley said. Haley was first elected South Carolina governor in 2010, becoming both the first woman and the first Indian-American to hold the top office in the state. She was re-elected in 2014.

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New technology puts health care in palm of your hand LAS VEGAS Managing your health care is moving increasingly to the palm of your hand - with new smartphone-enabled technology and wearable sensors that examine, diagnose and even treat many conditions and ailments. The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas saw the debut of new applications for “virtual checkups” and ways to treat pain, manage stress and monitor conditions such as diabetes.

French-based health group VisioMed introduced its Bewell Connect health management suite, which includes a smartphone app that communicates with its connected blood pressure and glucose monitor, thermometer and blood oxygen sensor. “If I have all these indicators I can get a pretty good assessment of your health,” said Benjamin Pennequin, research director for the group. “This is like a personal virtual checkup.”

But the app goes further: If you have symptoms such as chest pain or shortness of breath, it poses a series of questions and delivers potential diagnoses, and allows the user to share the data with a physician. And a simple button on the app can connect you to a doctor: In France the

app locates nearby providers in the national medical service, and Bewell is working to establish a network of connected physicians in the United States.

A hand-held connected device unveiled by Las Vegas-based startup MedWand allows consumers to measure temperature, heart rate, oxygen levels and includes a camera to examine the throat and inner ear to enable doctors to perform an exam online.

Lead engineer Terry MacNeish said the data from the $250 gadget allows for a more thorough exam than most other kinds of telemedicine. “If you’re just Skyping your doctor, it’s just medical chat,” MacNeish said.

“With this we can get a picture of your tonsils, we can take your temperature. It’s much more precise.”

MedWand is working with existing telemedicine doctors and plans to start selling the device in June in the United States and globally. MedWand has been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration and he said insurance companies are generally positive because a telemedicine exam costs less than one in a doctor’s office. “The patient saves a lot of time and so does the doctor,” he said.

Putting more health data in

consumers’ hands is a big theme at CES. US-based medical device maker Omron unveiled its wrist-worn blood pressure sensor

band, which blocks pain signals to the brain, and is an alternative to drugs for people suffering from debilitating pain related to

which delivers information to a smartphone. “Most people only get their blood pressure checked at the doctor’s office once or twice a year,” said chief operating officer Ranndy Kellogg.

“This is continuous monitoring.

If there is something wrong with your heart, you really want to listen.” Tech-savvy startups and others are introducing new ways to treat pain, in some cases taking techniques which have been around for decades and adapting them for smartphones and connected wearables.

NeuroMetrix debuted its Quell leg

diabetes or other ailments. It recently received approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

NeuroMetrix founder Shai Gozani, a medical doctor who also has a PhD in neurobiology, said the device “triggers your brain to upgrade its pain modulation” by acting on the opioid receptors in the same manner as opiates - but without drugs.

While Quell is a device which treats pain anywhere in the body from a single band, iTens offers a smartphone-controled patch

which attaches to specific muscles to treat pain, using technology known as TENS, or transcutaneous elenctical neuromuscular stimulation. The technology has been around for decades in hospital settings but is only now hitting the consumer market with smartphone technology and sensorembedded devices.

“The electrical impulse intercepts the pain signal before it reaches the brain,” said iTens spokesman Scott Overton, showing the device on the CES floor. Tech innovators have found other paths to effectively hack into the body’s neural pathways for therapy.

Biotrak Health showcased a headband to help users control muscle tension that often leads to migraines and other kinds of pain. The Halo headband “alerts you when you are tense and allows you to control your own tension,” said spokesman Adam Kirell.

A wrist-worn device meanwhile from ReliefBand technologies takes aim at nausea associated with motion and morning sickness. The device, which looks like a wristwatch, acts on the P6 or median nerve - the same technique used in centuries-old treatment from acupuncture.

Sikh attorney appointed top Barack Obama says he was himself surprised by his public crying prosecutor in New Jersey

NEW YORK A Sikh-American attorney has been appointed as the top prosecutor in the most populous county in New Jersey, becoming the first South Asian to occupy the post in the state. Gurbir Grewal, 42 was sworn in as acting Bergen county prosecutor on Monday. A report in news website NorthJersey.com said Grewal, a former federal prosecutor, has fought major whitecollar crimes for the US attorney’s office and most recently served as chief of the economic crimes unit in Newark. The report quoted

Grewal as saying that he hopes to work to build on the reputation of his office and enhance it. He told the gathering at his swearing-in that he “cares deeply” about the county and is “deeply committed to public service.”

“I want to spend my time here just seeing how I can make this an even better place,” he said.

Grewal described his appointment as an “honour and privilege” and said the office of the Bergen County prosecutor in “many real ways sets the standard for other prosecutor’s offices throughout the state.”

NEW YORK US President Barack Obama has said that he himself was surprised by his public crying this week while talking of steps to tackle gun violence. “I was, too, actually,” Obama told CNN during a town hall on gun laws in a suburb.“I think a lot of people were surprised by that moment,” he was asked about his weeping incident at the White House this week.“I’ve said this before. It continues to haunt me. It was one of the worst days of my presidency,” Obama said.

Wiping away tears as he spoke of children killed in Connecticut in 2012, Obama unveiled a series of executive actions on guns, including expanding mandatory background checks for some private sales.Obama said he visited Newtown two days after what happened. “It was still very raw. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen Secret Service cry on duty. It wasn’t just the parents. You had siblings, 10-year-olds, eight-yearolds, three-year-olds who in some cases didn’t even understand that their brother or sister weren’t going

to be coming home,” he said.Obama said that he’s never owned a gun but said that doesn’t mean he he’s spearheading a ‘conspiracy’ to take away other Americans’ constitutional right to

campaigning for presidency.

“Michelle and I are, then, campaigning out in Iowa, and we’re going to farms, and we’re going to counties, and at one point, Michelle turned to me, and

purchase firearms.“I have never owned a gun,” Obama said.“I grew up mostly in Hawaii, and other than hunting for wild pig, which they do once in a while there’s not the popularity of hunting and sportsmanship with guns as much as there are in other parts of the country,” he said.Then Obama recollected the conversation he had once with Michelle while they were

she said, you know, if I was living in a farmhouse where the sheriff’s department is pretty far away and somebody can just turn off the highway and come up to the farm, I’d want to have a shotgun or a rifle to make sure that I was protected and my family was protected,” Obama said.“And she was absolutely right. So part of the reason I think that this ends up being such a difficult issue is because people occupy different realities,” he said.Obama strongly refuted allegations that he wants to take everybody’s gun, describing it as a conspiracy.“Part of the challenge in this is that the gun debate gets wrapped up in broader debates about whether the federal government is oppressive and there are conspiracy theories floating around the Internet these days all the time,” he said.

Child pornography leads to hands-on child abuse Melbourne A recent study finds that with the dramatic expansion of child pornography market, it becomes a catalyst for some to engage in hands-on abuse of children.The warning is contained in a research report to the child sex abuse royal commission as it tackles how to abuse-proof institutions where

children are at risk, reports News.com.au.The report

prepared by University of Tasmania researchers on child exploitation material in the context of institutions says, while there is no evidence to support a direct causal link between viewing child pornography and abuse, the ‘material may be a strong risk factor’ for people already disposed to sexual aggression

and deviancy with children.

Jeremy Prichard and Caroline Spiranovic, who have published research on the explosion of child porn on the internet, point out that research in the area is relatively new and very few studies have examined child pornography in the context of workplaces.

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World’s most wanted drug lord ‘El Chapo’ captured in Mexico Mexico Mexico recaptured the world’s top drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in a pre-dawn shootout and chase through drains on Friday, returning him to the same prison he escaped from six months ago, in a boost for the beleaguered government.

The head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel was captured in a car wearing a filthy vest after fleeing through tunnels and drains from a raid on a safe house in the city of Los Mochis, in his native northwestern state of Sinaloa.

“Mission accomplished: We have him,” President Enrique Pena Nieto said on his Twitter account. “I want to inform all Mexicans that Joaquin Guzman Loera has been arrested.”

For Pena Nieto, the capture of a trafficker who twice slipped out of Mexican prisons is a sorely-needed victory after his presidency was tarnished by graft and human rights scandals and the shame of the kingpin’s flight from the maximum security Altiplano prison in July.

It also provides relief to U.S.Mexico relations, strained by suspicion of high-level

collusion given the apparent ease with which Guzman gave Mexican authorities the slip after the United States requested his extradition.

Guzman now faces possible extradition to face trial in the United States. That process could take months, although U.S. Republican party presidential hopeful Marco Rubio was among those calling for Washington to immediately pursue extradition.

Once featured in the Forbes list of billionaires, Guzman led a cartel that has smuggled billions of dollars worth of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States and fought vicious turf wars with other Mexican gangs.

He was caught early on Friday after Mexican marines raided his safe house, killing five and capturing six of Guzman’s henchman. They pursued the drug lord through the northern city’s drains and caught him after a car chase through the outskirts, Attorney General Arely Gomez said.He was flown to Mexico City and later transferred in a naval helicopter back to the Altiplano.

Guzman, whose nickname means “Shorty”, first escaped

prison in 2001 by bribing prison officials, and went on to dominate the world of Mexican

his accomplices knew exactly where to dig into the prison remain scarce. His recapture on

drug trafficking. He was recaptured by Pena Nieto’s government in 2014 but escaped in July by capitalizing on the drug-tunneling skills his cartel honed on the U.S. border. A milelong tunnel equipped with electric lights, rails and a motorbike came out directly into the shower of his prison cell and he simply slipped away.The escape heaped embarrassment on Pena Nieto, who had resisted a U.S. request to extradite Guzman and had said previously that an escape would be “unforgivable.”

Dozens of people were arrested over the jailbreak, though details of who Guzman bribed and how

Friday involved Mexican marines, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. Marshals, a senior Mexican police source and a U.S. source said.

STORM DRAINS After stopping his getaway car, the Marines took Guzman and waited for reinforcements at Hotel Doux, a love motel on the outskirts of town that rents out rooms by the hour.

Los Mochis residents described gunfire and explosions from about 3:30 a.m. (0930 GMT).

Schools were closed as helicopters clattered overhead.

“The teachers were coming out

terrified because they had heard the rumors that he was fleeing in the city’s drains,” said Ana Bertotti, 30, a housewife who crossed town to find her child’s kindergarten closed.

One photograph widely circulated on social media, but that could not be independently verified by Reuters, appeared to show Guzman sitting handcuffed on a hotel bed, in a room that resembled those shown on the Hotel Doux website.

He was wearing a filthy vest and a poster of a scantily clad woman was pinned on the wall behind him.Another photo appeared to show Guzman without handcuffs and wearing the same vest in the back of a vehicle next to one of his top assassins.

U.S. officials and the DEA, which has had a bumpy relationship with its Mexican counterparts since traffickers tortured a U.S. agent to death in 1985, took no credit and congratulated Mexico on the capture.“This notorious criminal is - and will remain - behind bars, until he faces justice in a court of law,” said DEA Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg.

Spain’s Princess Cristina goes on trial for tax fraud

First Sikh Lord mayor of British city passes away London The first Sikh mayor of UK’s Leicester city, Culdipp Singh Bhatti has passed away after a long struggle with cancer.

The 80-year-old died peacefully at his home on New Year ’s Day.Lord Bhatti represented the Rushey Mead ward on Leicester City Council for the Labour Party from 1983 until he stepped down before last year’s election. He rose to become deputy council leader and in 1995 the city’s first Sikh Lord Mayor. He was awarded the Order of Member of the British Empire (MBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in June 2005, for his services to children in Leicester.Leicester East MP Keith Vaz led the tributes to the veteran Labour councillor. “I first met Culdipp Bhatti 30 years ago on the first

day I arrived in Leicester. He was a man of integrity, honour and dedication to his family and to the people of Rushey Mead and his beloved city of Leicester,” Vaz was quoted as saying by Leicester Mercury.“He was a history maker breaking the glass ceiling when he was first elected. We shall miss him terribly and quite simply we will never see his like again,” he said.

Bhatti was born in Punjab and came to England in 1959. He married Bhupinder Kler in Wolverhampton in 1961 and had three children, Paul, Deepa and Roopa.

In the late 1970s he trained to be a teacher of Mathematics at Leicester University. Bhatti’s funeral will be held on Monday at GilroesCemetery in Leicester.

Madrid Spain’s Princess Cristina, the sister of King Felipe VI, and her husband will go on trial on Monday for corruption in a high stakes case likely to further damage the monarchy’s image.

The highly anticipated trial of the royal couple and 16 other accused will run until June at a court in Palma, on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, where the Spanish royal family has a seaside holiday home.

Cristina, 50, will be the first direct member of the royal family facing criminal charges since the monarchy was reinstated following the death of dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975.

The case is centred on the shady business deals of the Noos Institute, a charitable organisation based in Palma which her husband, former Olympic handball player Inaki Urdangarin, chaired from 2004 to 2006.

As a result of their indictment, last year, King Felipe VI, who took over from his father Juan Carlos in June 2014, stripped Cristina and her husband of their title as Duke and Duchess of Palma de Mallorca, in a bid to undo damage to the monarchy’s image ahead of the trial.

Juan Carlos had given the couple the title when they married in 1997 in a lavish ceremony at the height of the popularity of the Spanish royals.

“Felipe VI cannot allow there to be the slightest doubt over the rigour of his sister’s trial,” historian Pilar Urbano, who has

law by Spain’s gossip press, Urdangarin has also been charged with influence peddling, document falsification, money

written extensively about the royal family, told AFP. The trial must be “exemplary, the opposite would hurt him,” she added. Urdangarin, 47, and his former business partner Diego Torres are suspected of embezzling EUR 6.2 million (USD 6.7 million) in public funds paid by two regional governments to the Noos Institute to stage sports and other events.

He is accused of using his royal connections to secure inflated contracts without competing bids and siphoning off some of the money into Aizoon, a firm he jointly ran with his wife Cristina to fund a lavish lifestyle.

Once dubbed the “ideal” son-in-

laundering and tax fraud.

Cristina, a mother-of-four with a master’s degree from New York University, faces the lesser charge of tax evasion.The examining magistrate in the case tried for years to prove her active involvement in her husband’s business dealings.

But he ran into the firm opposition of public prosecutors who managed to get her cleared of accusations of money laundering. The case was triggered by a complaint from anti-graft campaigners “Manos Limpias” or “Clean Hands”. Public prosecutors and the tax office both declined to press charges against her.

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Black pudding hailed as Angst as first ‘Mein Kampf’ a superfood in Britain reprints hit German bookstores

LONDON Made out of pig’s blood, pork fat and oatmeal, black pudding might seem an unlikely candidate for the shelves of Britain’s health food aisles.

But the breakfast staple, considered a delicacy in northwest England and the west Midlands, is the surprise inclusion on a list of superfoods to watch in 2016 produced by MuscleFood, a nutritional food retailer. The crumbly blood sausage, traditionally served with hearty favourites like bacon and fried egg, contains high levels of protein, iron, calcium and zinc.

“2015 saw healthy eating reach a new level and this year we predict this trend is only going to get bigger,” British media quoted Darren Beale of MuscleFood as saying. “It’s

been interesting to note how people are changing their habits depending on the new buzz words in clean eating. “Some of the foods have been on the up for a while like avocado oil and maca root, but others like mushrooms and black pudding have been a total surprise to us.”

But some experts have already cast doubt on the claim. The Institute of Food Research told The Independent newspaper that it tried to avoid using the term “superfood”, instead advocating a balanced diet. It also said that black pudding generally contained up to 20 percent fat and had relatively high levels of calories and salt. Last year, the World Health Organisation warned that sausages, ham and other processed meats cause bowel cancer.

LONDON New copies of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” will hit bookstores in Germany on Friday for the first time since World War II, unsettling Jewish community leaders as the copyright of the anti-Semitic manifesto expires.

The southern German state of Bavaria was handed the copyright of the book in 1945, when the Allies gave it control of the main Nazi publishing house following Hitler’s defeat.

For 70 years, it refused to allow the inflammatory tract to be republished out of respect for victims of the Nazis and to prevent incitement of hatred.

But “Mein Kampf” which means “My Struggle” fell into the public domain on January 1.

Copies of an annotated version running to 2,000 pages prepared by German researchers were to go on sale today, with the authors arguing that their version would serve to demystify the notorious rant, which in any case can be found just a few clicks away on the Internet.

The version by the Institute of Contemporary History of Munich (IFZ) has been in the works since 2009 and aims to “deconstruct and put into context Hitler’s writing”.Retailing at 59 euros (USD 65), the book looks at key historical questions, the

Canada minister once jailed under TADA bears no rancour towards India LONDON Nearly twenty-five years ago, Amarjeet Sohi was released from a jail in Bihar, after a 21-month incarceration under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities

Prevention Act or TADA. The next time Sohi travels to India, he will do so as a Canadian cabinet minister, handling the critical portfolio of infrastructure and communities.While Indian prosecutors accused him of being a Khalistan extremist, no formal charges were ever filed.

He maintained his innocence and the case against him was dismissed for lack of evidence.

Despite the trauma of that period, Sohi holds no rancour towards India, and maintains a close connection to the nation where he was born in 1964, in a village near Sangrur, Punjab.“What

happened to me is something I wish does not happen to anyone at all. But I have strong ties to India, those ties are still very strong and they will remain very strong,” said Sohi, who last

visited India in 2013.“I go back to India to visit my family. We have an extended family in our village (Banbhaura) and one of my sisters is in India,” he said in an interview with Hindustan Times. As he comes to grips with his portfolio in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, Sohi isn’t sure yet if it will include matters that will form part of the bilateral engagements between India and Canada. But he added, “I personally do want to explore those opportunities as a Member of Parliament, whether it ties into the infrastructure portfolio, I don’t know at this

time.”Sohi’s remit has three principal focal points in terms of investment -public transportation, social infrastructure and green infrastructure. Much of that ties into his passion for human rights and social justice.That partly emanates from his nightmarish imprisonment in Bihar: “The experience that I went through kind of shaped my thinking in those areas.

That’s why I strongly believe in creating communities where you feel part of it, where you feel your rights are not violated. I try to use those very difficult experiences to do some of the work we can do to build stronger communities.” Even after that exceptional experience aside, Sohi’s journey has been fascinating. He immigrated to Canada in 1981 and was a municipal bus driver before being elected to the city council of Edmonton in the province of Alberta. His election to parliament last year too was dramatic -- he won the Edmonton Mill Woods constituency by 92 votes after a recount, defeating then incumbent minister of state Tim Uppal. “We knew if we win this riding (electoral district), it will be by a very close margin so we were prepared for that,” Sohi said.

institute said, including: “How were his theses conceived?

What objectives did he have?

And most important: which counterarguments do we have, given our knowledge today of the

Kampf” outlines Adolf Hitler’s ideology that formed the basis for Nazism. He wrote it in 1924 while he was imprisoned in Bavaria for treason after his failed Beer Hall Putsch.

countless claims, lies and assertions of Hitler?” Education Minister Johanna Wanka has argued that such a version should be introduced to all classrooms across Germany, saying it would serve to ensure that “Hitler’s comments do not remain unchallenged”. “Pupils will have questions and it is only right that these can be addressed in classes,” she said. But the Jewish community questioned whether it was necessary to propagate the incendiary text again.

Partly autobiographical, “Mein

The book set out two ideas that he put into practice as Germany’s leader going into World War II: annexing neighbouring countries to gain “Lebensraum”, or “living space”, for Germans; and his hatred of Jews, which led to the Holocaust.Some 12.4 million copies were published in Germany until 1945, some of which can be found in academic libraries.Charlotte Knobloch, leader of the Jewish community in Munich, said she could not imagine seeing “Mein Kampf” in shop windows.

Indian-origin policewoman accused of shoe attack in UK

London A 38-year-old Indian-origin woman police officer in the UK is facing an internal inquiry over an alleged shoe attack on another woman, reportedly her husband’s lover.

Detective Sergeant Prabhjoat Sohi, who is one of the first ethnic minority female officers with Surrey Police and has been commended several times for her work, denied the charge of assaulting Rouksana Haji in April last year. According to court documents, she is accused of confronting Haji at a medical centre in north west London on April 9 last year and punching the woman before hitting her with her own shoe.

“She hit me in the face and my shoe fell off. She picked it up and hit me in the face three or four times, calling me a ‘dirty slag’,” Haji told police. This week a

court case against her was dropped as Haji failed to appear at Willesden Magistrates’ Court in London.

“Prabhjoat Sohi appeared at Willesden Magistrates’ Court where the common assault case against her following an incident in Pinner [north-west London] was dismissed by the court with no evidence offered,” a Surrey Police spokesperson said.

“She has not been suspended and the matter is the subject of an ongoing internal investigation,” the spokesperson said. Sohi has been commended several times during her 13-year career with Surrey Police as one of the first ethnic minority female officers on the force. It is understood that Sohi’s husband is still with Haji. Haji’s injuries were shown to the magistrates and were said to include marks and bruises to her back.

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Thai skin whitening ad provokes race storm BANGKOK A Thai company pulled an advert for skin lightening pills on Friday following an outcry on social media over a product sold with the tagline “white makes you a winner”. It is the latest marketing gaffe to draw accusations of

racism in a kingdom obsessed with skin colour. The advertisement for Seoul Secret’s ‘snowz’ supplement pills featured a veteran Thai celebrity attributing her professional success to her pale complexion.

“It’s not easy to stay at this point for a long time,” the 35-year-old Thai model and actress, Cris Horwang, says in the video. “If I stopped taking care of my body and white complexion, all that I have invested will be gone.” The model is then shown in black make-up, casting an envious look at a second woman with light skin who appears by her side. “A newcomer will replace me and turn me into a dark star,” she says in the video, using a Thai idiom to refer to her fame fading. Whitening creams and

pills are wildly popular in Thailand, where pale skin is upheld as the standard of beauty in the media and among many Thais who comment freely on the complexion of others.

Advertisements for the products are standard fare on billboards

and TV spots, but some companies have faced a backlash in recent years for going too far. Before its removal on Friday afternoon, the Seoul Secret video received more than 100,000 views on YouTube, as well as enquiries on the company’s Facebook page about how to order the product. But other social media sites drew posts railing against the advert for being racially offensive and reinforcing the country’s narrow beauty ideals. “It indicates that dark skin people are losers, and this is clearly racist,” a Thai commentator named Tammaijang wrote on the web forum Pantip.

Another post said: “Having dark skin can be beautiful - without being ashamed as well.” The

China admits first same sex marriage rights lawsuit

Beijing China’s first lawsuit on same-sex marriage rights has been accepted by a court, marking a milestone for gay, bisexual and transgender rights, official media reported.Plaintiff Sun Wenlin (pseudonym), a gay man, told state run Global Times daily that the court has accepted his suit against the civil affairs bureau in Changsha’s Furong district for not accepting his marriage egistration application.

Sun filed the case on December 16 after his marriage registration application was turned down by an official who said that only “one man and one woman” can be registered as married.

Sun claimed that local police

also visited his home after he filed the case, which has gained a high profile and has been hailed by many LGBT activists online.

“The officer kept emphasising that it is important to have a child to carry on one’s family name, but I can’t abide by people imposing their values on me,” Sun added.

“The original text of the Marriage Law does not say one man and one woman, but a husband and a wife. I personally believe that this term refers not only to heterosexual couples but also to same-sex couples,” he was quoted as saying by the Global Times previously. The court is expected to hand down a ruling on the case within six months.

skincare company issued an apology on Friday, saying in a statement that it did not intend “to convey discriminatory or racist messages”. “What we intended to convey was that self-improvement in terms of personality, appearance, skills, and professionality is crucial,” the statement said.

Yet some speculated that the advertisement was deliberately provocative as part of a marketing ploy to grab attention. “I don’t think the ad agency made this ad out of ignorance,” a prominent Thai culture blogger, called Kaewmala on her thaiwomantalks.com website, told AFP. “They haven’t been living on the moon, I’m certain they knew it would be controversial. It was most likely a calculated strategy, which in my view makes it even more objectionable.” While there has been a growing awareness about racism among Thais in recent years, those views have yet to be reflected in a media which still readily equates dark skin with “low class”, she added. In 2013, public criticism similarly led the US firm Dunkin’ Donuts to pull an advertisement in Thailand that featured a woman in “black-face” makeup promoting a new charcoalflavoured donut. Thai adverts for “Black Herbal” toothpaste, as well as other cosmetic brands, have also come under fire in recent years for causing racial offence.

Sub-zero swimming as Chinese ice festival opens

HARBIN Brave swimmers plunged into freezing waters while other visitors gazed at frozen palaces ahead of the opening ceremony for China’s spectacular Harbin Ice and Snow Festival on Tuesday.

The annual festival in the capital of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang is expected to draw more than one million visitors to admire castles and cathedrals sculpted out of ice and lit up at night in ethereal colours. This year’s display is the largest in the festival’s decades-long history, filling a park the size of more than 100 sports fields and using a record amount of ice and snow, according to the official Xinhua news agency.Though temperatures on Tuesday remained a biting -14 degrees Celsius (seven degrees Fahrenheit) even at noon, a number of festivalgoers took part in an ice-swimming competition, diving bare-chested and headfirst into freezing pools of water

cut into the ice.Those not inclined to take the plunge admired a vast expanse of ice block Chinese palaces, Russian churches and European colonnades, with vendors selling gleaming rows of candied fruit.

Visitors sledded and snapped selfies on the eve of the park’s opening ceremony, the translucent pagodas around them glowing in surreally neon pinks, blues and greens.Chinese and Dutch designers worked with more than 10,000 workers over three months to build the winter wonderland, according to Xinhua.

The centrepiece is a 15-story tower of ice, thought to be the world’s tallest. The festival’s schedule includes ice and snow sculpture contests, as well as performances and musical events. Local authorities hope that the festival can bring much needed tourist dollars to the region, historically one of China’s industrial bases, now hit by an economic slowdown.

Mao Ze-gone as leader’s statue ‘demolished’ BEIJING A gargantuan gold-painted statue of Communist China’s founding father Mao Zedong has suddenly been demolished, apparently for lacking government approval, state media said Friday, days after images of it went viral. Images of the statue of a seated Mao towering some 37 metres (121 feet) over empty fields in the central province of Henan made worldwide headlines this week.

But the 3 million yuan ($460,000) structure has been destroyed, the People’s Net news portal cited local officials as saying, adding the reason was “unclear”.

The website is linked to the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party. It cited reports from unspecified media as saying the likeness of the man who ruled China with an iron grip for nearly three decades until his death in 1976 “was not registered or approved” by the local government.

Pictures circulating online which could not be immediately verified by AFP - showed a

gaping hole in the rear of Mao’s massive golden torso, and his head shrouded in black. Local officials could not immediately be

discussion of history and seeks to use his legacy to shore up its support. China’s current President Xi Jinping has praised

reached. Construction was reportedly funded by several local entrepreneurs and finished in December after nine months of labour, the HMR.cn portal said this week.

Despite being blamed for millions of deaths, Mao is still widely revered in China and credited with uniting the country.

Meanwhile the Communist leadership tightly controls public

Mao as a “great figure” and revived some of his rhetoric and centralisation of power, while following the party’s 1980s conclusion that he also made “mistakes”. Some Internet users criticised the statue, pointing out its location in Henan, the centre of a famine in the late 1950s resulting from Mao’s economic policies estimated to have killed as many as 40 million people.

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Ultra-thin, high-def TVs battle for CES crown LAS VEGAS A battle for the title of best new television opened Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show, with titans fielding new slim, smart, ultra high-definition models.

LG Electronics fired an opening salvo with a new OLED television no thicker than four stacked credit cards. The South Korean consumer electronics colossus opened a packed day of press conferences at the annual tech extravaganza in Las Vegas with a line-up that included an OLED Signature panel touted as “quite literally, a picture on glass.”

The television measures an unprecedented 2.57 mm, LG Electronics USA marketing vice president David VanderWaal said during an on-stage presentation.

“Our passion and commitment for OLED has never been stronger,” VanderWaal said.

“OLED TV is already recognized as the best TV ever.” OLED displays have pixels that emit their own light, while pixels in LCD TVs are illuminated by backlights. OLED screens boast deeper blacks, allowing for a wider range of color than LCD displays. They also tend to come with higher price tags. LCD televisions remain “the king of screens” with sizes trending up, according to the Consumer Technology Association, the trade group behind CES. One in

every five televisions sold this year is expected to be 50 inches or more, measured diagonally, and feature ultra high-definition 4K resolution. LG was among the TV makers here introducing new models that will come with a freshly minted Ultra-High Definition Premium Certification signalling that they meet standards freshly established by an alliance representing manufacturers, technology companies and studios creating content. “The criteria established by this broad cross-section of the Ultra HD ecosystem enables the delivery of a revolutionary inhome experience,” UHD Alliance chairman Hanno Basse said in a release.

“And, the Ultra HD Premium logo gives consumers a single, identifying mark to seek out so they can purchase with confidence.”

Analysts told AFP they expected adoption of 4K ultra-high definition televisions to pick up speed this year as prices get in reach of more consumers and the displays become marketplace norms. LG built Dolby Vision technology into its new televisions. “Dolby Vision creates a picture so lifelike you will forget you are looking at a TV screen,” Dolby Labs senior vice president Giles Baker said during the presentation.

Dolby Vision has been used in

Australian lizards trained to avoid eating toxic toads SYDNEY Australian scientists Wednesday said they had devised an “innovative method of conservation” through feeding giant monitor lizards small cane toads so they won’t be killed

by larger-sized amphibians.Cane toads, an invasive species from Central and South America that were introduced to Australia in 1935, are so toxic they can kill predators that try to eat them and are continuing to spread across northern Australia at an estimated 40-60 kilometres (25-37 miles) a year.Scientists have said the spread of the cane toads - which an Australian university study found numbered about 200 million on the island continent - was causing catastrophic population declines in predators. But

researchers from the University of Sydney said they were able to teach free-ranging goannas in the Kimberley wilderness in northwesternAustralia to avoid eating the toxic toads about to invade the remote flood-plain.The scientists offered small, non-lethal cane toads to the wild yellowspotted monitors which have experienced a 90 percent plunge in population following toad invasions - with further trials confirming “just one or two toad meals were enough to convince a goanna not to eat another toad”. The goannas quickly learnt to avoid the adult cane toads in the wild after being exposed to the younger, smaller toads. “After training, giant monitor lizards, known as goannas, survived when the toads arrived, whereas untrained lizards were immediately killed,” lead researcher Georgia Ward-Fear said of the study, which was published Wednesday in the Biology Letters journal. “Our study provides the proof of principle required to set the framework for an innovative method of conservation,” the researchers added in their paper.

major films including box-office record-breaker “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” according to Giles. The LG television line-up included “Super UHD” LCD displays as slim as 6.6 mm and a new flagship 8K television measuring 98 inches diagonally.

Later in the day, leading television maker Samsung unveiled a new line of ultra-high-

televisions that he said marked the “start of a new era of TV.” “This year we are focused on bringing the television experience into the future,” Samsung Electronics America executive Dave Das said. “The new SUHD TV is a giant leap forward in time.”

New models have software designed to better consolidate traditional and online content,

definition LCD televisions capable of not only streaming games or shows from the Internet but able to serve as command centers for smart home devices, from locks and lights to thermostats and appliances.

Samsung Electronics visual display business president Hyun Suk Kim pulled back the curtain on new SUHD Quantum Dot

and remote controls that automatically detect and command accessories with no set-up needed. Samsung’s new SUHD televisions will also allow people to play more than 500 video games, including blockbusters such as “Assassin’s Creed” streamed online in partnership with Sony’s PlayStation Now service, without

needing consoles.

The TVs will also act as command centers in smart homes by incorporating technology from Silicon Valley start-up SmartThings, which Samsung bought in 2014, allowing them to control devices synched to the platform. “I think this is really a big step forward for opening up the market,” SmartThings founder and chief Alexander Hawkinson told AFP. “You can have a smart home basically for free as a starting point; it is pretty amazing.”

SmartThings is based on open standards, letting tens of thousands of developers tailor applications to work with the platform. “In 2016, we’re going beyond anything we’ve done before to offer a remarkable synergy of design, engineering and craftsmanship,” said Hyun Suk Kim. Sony unveiled a new flagship LCD televisions and boasted that it is ramping the quality of displays with “high dynamic range” technology that appeared to be a rage at CES. The Japanese consumer electronics and entertainment colossus said it has also broadened its line of ultra-slim Bravia televisions. Sony also introduced an Ultra 4K streaming service that taps into the company’s film and television library and is optimized for Bravia models.

Pilot lands after journey from UK in 1942 aircraft SYDNEY Adventurer Tracey Curtis-Taylor on Saturday completed her epic flight from Britain to Australia, landing her vintage, opencockpit 1942 Boeing Stearman in Sydney. “I need a drink,” she joked after finishing the final leg of the three-month journey which saw her contend with some treacherous weather in the air and logistical obstacles on the ground. Modelled after pioneering aviator Amy Johnson’s historic 1930 solo flight from England to Australia, Curtis-Taylor said her journey was a homage to female pilots of the past. She said flying the open cockpit biplane had given her an “insight into something of what she (Johnson) went through getting here”. “The flying has been sensational and that’s why you do it,” she told reporters at Sydney airport shortly after her arrival. “To fly something like this, low level, halfway around the world seeing all the the most iconic landscapes, geology, vegetation... it’s just the best view in the world. Taylor, who flew from Cape Town to Goodwood, England in 2013, took off from Farnborough on October 1, with a flight path over Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The route of nearly 21,000 kilometres (13,000 miles) saw

her stop in places such as Vienna, Istanbul and Amman before she headed to Pakistan and India and on to Myanmar,

she spent seven hours trying to get fuel at one airport. “In the end I just lay down on the tarmac and went to sleep with

Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. She crossed the Timor Sea to Australia this month. Curtis-Taylor said she struck some bad weather, mostly in eastern Europe, as she flew the stick and rudder airplane with basic period instruments. But as the journey involved frequent stops because of the plane’s short range, many of her obstacles were not related to flying. “I’ve lost my rag several times dealing with people on the ground,” she said, adding that

my head on my handbag.” She said that it was an experience to fly over Australia, where her stops included the outback towns of Tennant Creek and Alice Springs and flying over the monolithic rock Uluru.

Curtis-Taylor, 53, said she would love to continue the adventure and fly up north along Australia’s east coast. But instead the plane, which the aviator said “did not miss a beat” during the epic journey, will be shipped to the United States.

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Youngsters need to take every opportunity as a challenge says MS Dhoni After having gone through the rigours and the grind of playing top-flight cricket for more than a decade, MS Dhoni announced his retirement from Tests in December 2014, during the tour of Australia. Dhoni, who is back in the country to lead India in the shorter formats of the game, spoke about his future, the possibility of playing in the Big Bash League (BBL) and guiding promising players coming through the ranks, in an interaction with the media.

When asked whether he will take part in the BBL after his retirement, Dhoni said, as of now, his focus is on helping India to do well in the international arena. “Well, it’s very difficult for me to say. We are quite focussed on international cricket as of now, and I can’t really make a comment on that. We’ll see how the future goes. It depends on when I retire, and if I’m in a position to play cricket because the quality of cricket in Big Bash [League] is high.

“It depends on the physical fitness and the will to carry on, because if you’re part of the Indian cricket

team for 10-15 years, sometimes you feel you’ve played too much cricket.

So, we’ll have to wait and watch,” he said.

In the abridged versions of the game, many times, a batsman has to adapt and play according to the situation. Even though Dhoni agreed that some cricketers find it difficult to slot in at different positions in the batting order, he believes that the youngsters in the camp should be shouldering more responsibility and take every opportunity as a challenge.

“I don’t think I ever had a

fixed slot, I kept moving up and down. However, yes, I admit, a lot of batsmen find it very difficult to do. At the end of the day, if everyone

is very rigid in the batting order, then it becomes difficult for the team. If you see the success of the Indian team, a lot of it has been because we had quite a few players who could bat at different numbers.

“Also, see the history.

We’ve had openers in First-Class batting at No. 3 for us, we’ve had people batting at No. 4 or 5 in their First-Class teams but they

ended up being openers for the international side. That flexibility and adaptability has to be there, you have to make the most of the number of overs according to the demands of the game,” he noted Dhoni noted that it is difficult to bat lower down the order, as generally one won’t get an opportunity to set the platform and then accelerate. Thus, one has to be flexible in his approach. “I don’t think giving a fixed slot really helps.

What helps is having a mindset where you take every opportunity as a challenge, and every challenge as an opportunity. I feel it’s important that the youngsters who get a chance get a good opportunity to bat. That’s why I’ve always been in favour of giving youngsters a chance to bat at No.5.

That’s the only place I have, and I can only trade that with them!

It’s advantage India at World T20 says Zaheer

Dave Richardson, who was also present in the function, said the governing body is aiming to cricket as popular as football worldwide. Former pace spearhead Zaheer Khan today said the Indian cricket team’s proficiency in playing spin will make the side a firm favourite when it guns for a second World Twenty20 Championship title on home turf come March-April. “I am sure India will come out with flying colours. Though

the format is T20, it is to be played in the sub-continent. Spin can be a part of it and the ability to play spin well can be an advantage,” said the former leftarm pacer, who has retired from all forms of cricket except IPL. Zaheer, an invitee at the event to extend the sponsorship tie-up between the ICC and MoneyGram for eight more years, said the dynamic nature of the Twenty20 format have ended up rubbing on to the ODIs as well.

Sania Mirza maintains top spot, Rohan Bopanna ninth in doubles rankings

International Cricket Council plays down Chris Gayle’s sleazy comments The International Cricket Council’s (ICC) chief executive Dave Richardson today said that West Indian batsman Chris Gayle’s controversial com-

ments in the Big Bash League (BBL) could have been avoided, adding the game will hardly be affected by the controversy.

Gayle was fined 10,000 Australian dollars ($7,190) for asking female TV pre-

senter Mel McLaughlin out on live television after a BBL match.

Gayle later apologised for the incident but said the reactions were “out of pro-

portion”.

“Gayle’s comments in BBL could have been avoided.

But I think cricket does not need to worry about it.

Cricket can easily move on from here on without worrying,” Richardson said at

a press conference here to announce ICC’s eight-year sponsorship (2016-2023) deal with money transfer services MoneyGram International.

The ICC CEO also spoke about the growth of women viewership and their involvement in the sport, which is a big plus for the game.

“Of the viewership of ICC events, 40 percent of them are women and it is much higher when it comes to T20s. It is a strategy to engage women in the game more through T20. It is not about females watching the game but about world audience watching women play,” he said.

“I can say that worldwide more than one million women are playing and the quality of the game is also increasing day by day.

India’s Sania Mirza continues to top the women’s double chart while her partner Martina Hingis of Switzerland maintained her second spot in the latest tennis WTA rankings issued on Monday.

Sania is atop the list with 11395 points while Hingis has 11355 points in her kitty.

Sania and Martina, the world number one women’s doubles team, have stitched a 26-match winning streak together, which has brought them

six titles in a row at the US Open, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Beijing, WTA Finals and now here.

It is the longest winning streak since Italians Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci’s 25 in a row in 2012. Sara and Roberta had won five titles in a row, at Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, the French Open and ‘sHertogenbosch.

Among the Indian men, Rohan Bopanna is the only one to feature in the top 10 of the doubles rankings, which is being headed by

Marcelo Melo of Brazil, followed by Horia Tecau of Romania and Netherlands Jean-Julien Rojer.

At 95th position, Yuki Bhambri is the highest placed Indian in the men’s singles rankings even though he dropped two places. Saketh Myneni is the next best Indian at 168th spot ahead of Somdev Devvarman (173rd). Novak Djokovic of Serbia tops the chart ahead of Andy Murray of Great Britain and and Swiss Roger Federer.

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Driverless Ford tackles snow problem New York Motoring giant Ford says it has conducted successful tests of its driverless cars in snowy conditions. The company said it had been running sensor tests for more than a year, but was now driving autonomous cars in a controlled, snowy environ-

to radar, which uses radio waves instead. But these sensors do not work well in snowy conditions, and the car's onboard cameras cannot see road markings obscured by snow. Ford said it had instead programmed the Lidar sensors to detect landmarks above the ground, such as

ment. Snow presents a challenge to driverless cars because the sensors they use to detect road markings and hazards do not work well in wintery weather. Google has also been testing its autonomous vehicles in the snow.

Lidar works by rapidly firing laser light away from the car and measuring how much light is reflected back - a similar principle

buildings and road signs.

The car could then compare this information to an existing high-resolution map of the road - generated by autonomous cars during more favourable weather- stored in its computer. This allowed the car to navigate the road even when visibility was poor.

Ford is the first manufacturer to test its vehicles in a model city built by the

University of Michigan.

"We're used to the conditions changing very rapidly. As humans, we understand that can happen and we know how to deal with it," said Greg Stevens, who leads driver assistance research at Ford. "We need to make sure that our autonomous vehicles can also deal with those situations in the same way." Rival car manufacturers such as Tesla, as well as technology giants Uber and Google, are also testing self-driving vehicles. Tesla has already released a car with an "autopilot" feature that can take over driving on some roads. On Sunday, the company revealed that it was developing an app that would let owners summon their car from a distance.

Tesla's Model S and X cars can already drive themselves out of a garage when summoned, but the company's owner, Elon Musk, told the BBC that people would eventually be able to summon their car across thousands of miles.

Deadly bacteria more prevalent than thought BANGKOK An often deadly and difficult to treat bacterial disease is much more prevalent than previously thought and kills tens of thousands of people worldwide each year, researchers said Monday.

Melioidosis, also known as Whitmore's disease, has long been known to be endemic in parts of South and East Asia, the Pacific and northern Australia. But a new analysis by a team of international researchers suggests the disease is also present across swathes of South America and sub-Saharan Africa and likely present in parts of Central America, southern Africa and the Middle East. "Our estimates suggest that melioidosis is severely under-reported in the 45 countries in which it is known to be endemic and that melioidosis is probably endemic in a further 34 countries that have never reported the disease," researchers led by Oxford University, the

Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) in Bangkok and the University of Washington in Seattle wrote in a report.

It was published Monday in Nature Microbiology. It is the first time scientists

handful of antibiotics. As a result, misdiagnosis is common.

The mortality rate -- around 70 percent -- is shockingly high, greater even than the H5N1 bird flu. Researchers estimated that as many as 89,000 people out of the

have attempted to map the disease's global spread using computer modelling based on data from known outbreaks going back to 1910.

The disease, which often affects the rural poor working in fields, is notoriously difficult to diagnose because it mimics many other bacterial infections but only responds to a

the 165,000 people who caught melioidosis in 2015 died from the disease.

They noted that annual global deaths from the disease were nearly as high as measles (95,000) and greater than deaths from leptospirosis (50,000) and dengue (12,500) -- "two current health priorities for many international health organisations".

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Health How to get rid of blackheads? Try these 3 effective home remedies!

Blackheads are one of the most common skin problem that we totally hate!

Those small bumps cropping on our noses, foreheads and chins surely gross us out. Blackheads occur when your pores become clogged with excess sebum and dead skin cells. If blackheads are not removed they might cause pimples and acne. Honestly, they can be quite frustrating to deal with. But the good news is, with home remedies, it’s quite simple to get rid of them fast and naturally.

With easily available ingredients at home, you can

clear your pores and banish those dreaded blackheads. Listed below are 3 most trusted remedies: Steam facial: One of the most efficient and easiest methods to get rid of blackheads safely and naturally is by steaming your face. Facial steaming loosens and softens the skin, naturally driving out the blackheads.

How to do it: Make sure your face is clean sans make up. Boil a little water in a pan and you may add a few drops of lemon juice if you like.

Lower your face on top of the steam that is coming

out of the water. Keep a towel on your head to lock in the steam. Make sure your face is at a distance from the water as it might burn your skin.

Your skin will feel soft after few minutes. Now, pat dry with a towel.

Baking Soda Treatment: Another easily available and effective treatment for blackheads is the baking soda therapy.

How to do it: Make a thick paste by mixing two to three teaspoons of baking soda with 1 teaspoon of water. Scrub the paste to the affected areas in gentle motions and

Bid adieu to cracked heels with these easy home remedies Winter is a time when those whacky cold winds leave you with a dry skin.

So, it is important to take

painful heels. Cracked heels is a common phenomenon during winters due to dry air and lack of

care of your skin specially your toes which are the most neglected part of the body to avoid cracked heels. Dry cracked heels are a common problem, but if not treated may lead to redness, inflammation and

moisture. Read on to know the best natural remedies to cure those cracked heels.

Candle wax For treating cracked heels, apply a mixture of candle wax and mustard oil and

leave it on overnight to see the difference.

Glycerin and rosewater Make a mixture of glycerin and rosewater and apply it to your feet for say 15 days and you will be amazed to see the results.

Sesame oil Cracked heel is a common problem but trust me, sesame oil works wonders.

Apply it on your cracked heels before going to bed and you will fall in love with your feet the very next day.

Banana pulp Apply pulp of ripe banana on the affected area. It helps a lot in fast healing.

Turmeric and tulsi mixture Make a mixture of turmeric, tulsi and camphor in equal parts and add a little aloe vera gel into it.

New drug shows promise to treat colorectal cancer A small molecule drug combined with chemotherapy may effectively treat colorectal cancer patients, says a new study.

The researchers demonstrated the efficiency of the drug called “PRIMA1met” in inhibiting the growth of colorectal cancer cells. Colorectal cancer is the cancer of the large in-

testine (colon and rectum) and it is known for its poor long term survival rates

among adults. “We are optimistic that the development of this drug as a targeted therapeutic approach against colorectal cancer, together with chemotherapy, holds good potential for patients,” said lead researcher Chng Wee Joo, professor at National University of Singapore (NUS).

massage for 3-4 minutes.

Rinse with warm water afterwards. The baking soda mixture will dry up the blackheads.

DIY Egg white pore strip: Pore strips and peel off masks from the shops can be quite heavy on your pocket, so it is a smart move to turn to an easy homemade pore strip. And what better than egg white with abundant protein content which helps tighten your pores.

How to do it: Separate the yolk from the white and whip it up. Using a make up brush, paint a layer of egg white over

the area you want to remove those blackheads from. On top of your egg white layer place some facial tissue or toilet paper.

Use another layer of egg white to hold it in place,

then let it dry and harden.

When the mask is dry, peel the tissue off, and then slowly pull it from one edge to the other. Wash your face gently to remove any residue.

New drug for children’s cancer found promising Researchers have identified a powerful new drug with “unparalleled” strength against forms of a children’s cancer that resist treatment.

The researchers focused on devising new treatments for stubbornly deadly forms of neuroblastoma -- a cancer that develops from immature nerve cells found in several areas of the body, including the abdomen, during childhood.

“Our preclinical results provide a strong rationale for fast-tracking this drug into clinical trials in children with neuroblastoma,” said study leader Yael Mosse, paediatric oncologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in the US. “We expect to begin a clinical trial early this year,” Mosse noted The researchers found that the new drug can treat some forms of neuroblastoma that resist the anticancer drug crizotinib.

Usually appearing as a solid tumour in the chest or abdomen, neuroblastoma accounts for a disproportionate share of cancer deaths in children, despite many recent im-

provements in therapy.

Neuroblastoma is particularly complex, with a bewildering variety of types and subtypes caused by

agent called PF06463922.

In the current study, the new compound was more powerful than crizotinib in

separate and interacting gene mutations.

In children with neuroblastoma, different mutations within the ALK gene respond differently to crizotinib.

One particular mutation resisted crizotinib, so the team sought a new-generation, more effective ALK inhibitor.

They tested numerous next-generation ALK inhibitors, and their data allowed them to pursue for further investigation of an

both neuroblastoma tumour cell cultures and in animal models - mice with implanted neuroblastoma tumours derived directly from human patients.

The researchers found that that the new compound showed more profound inhibition of ALK than crizotinib, and at far lower concentrations.

The tumours in the animals showed rapid, complete and sustained regression when treated with the compound.

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A hug is all you need: Discover the healing power of touch!

As a child, whenever you used to get hurt or felt sad, you rushed to your mother for a hug. When you grew old, a mere hug from a loved one or a friend was enough to uplift your mood. What is so special about this nurturing touch that each one of us crave?

It is so because human touch is the most powerful therapy in this world and a hug is the most intimate bond that two people can share. And I am not talking about a mere cursory hug but a wholehearted one, more

like a big bear hug. Nothing exemplifies love and affection like a good hug.

It not only provides emotional support but also renders numerous health benefits.

No other relief is as affordable, efficient and healing as a hug!

Psychotherapist Virginia Satir rightly says , “We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.”

Here are the reasons why you should. And today is

the perfect day to do so because the New Year is here: • Studies show that hugging your partner/lover could lower his or her blood pressure.

• Hugs are perfect for relieving stress and calming a troubled mind. When we embrace, we immediately reduce the amount of the stress hormone cortisol produced in our bodies.

• Holding a hug for an extended time lifts one’s serotonin levels, elevating mood and creating happiness.

• The nurturing touch of a hug instills a sense of trust and confidence and also alleviates the feelings of loneliness and anxiety.

• Blood levels of the hormone oxytocin were much higher in the women who

Use physically active lifestyle to fight obesity genes In a recent study, researchers have found that people around the world can use

a physically active lifestyle to reduce the effect of inherited obesity genes.

Researcher David Meyre and his team from the McMaster University have

shown that a physically active lifestyle can substantially decrease the

Coconut water best for pregnant women

genetic effect of the major obesity gene FTO on body weight in a multiethnic

population.

Meyre said this provides a message of hope for the people with obesity predisposing genes that they can do something about it.

His team looked at data from up to 17,400 people from six ethnic groups, who

were recruited from 17 countries and followed for more than three years.

First author Hudson Reddon said that to strengthen the confidence in their results, they used both basic and precise measures of physical activity and compared the traditional body mass index to the recently developed body adiposity index.

They analysed the impact of 14 obesity predisposing genes and found that physical activity can blunt the genetic effect of FTO, the major contributor to common obesity, by up to 75 percent.

There are chances of developing high cholesterol and blood sugar as our metabolism system is not that active.

-Eating too close to bedtime can also lead to indigestion and trouble in sleeping.

were hugged the most.

• Hugging is effective in protecting people from stress-induced susceptibility to infection such as viral infection.

• A hug can release tension in the body by com-

bating pain and improving your blood circulation.

• Hugs help soothe individuals’ irrational fears and boosts self-esteem. All of us want to be loved feel special and a hug is the perfect way to do that

Can’t resist midnight snacking?

Here’s why it bad for you

Are you one of those who are often found near the refrigerator looking out for stuff to eat during midnight? Do you find it hard to satiate your desire for food at night even after gobbling up most of what was left in the refrigerator?

If yes, it’s high time you should quit this habit of your’s as late-night snacking is a bad idea.

Here are a few reasons as to why it is bad for you: -The most obvious reason is that late night snacking leads to weight gain as one tends to eat mindlessly.

-Studies suggest that people who avoid midnight munching have much healthier circulatory systems than those who had no restrictions on eating.

Skin cells can heal injured hearts

Apart from other beneficial qualities, it has been found that coconut water is one of the best source of nutrients for pregnant women.

The Coconut Development Board (CDB) said that coconut water consumption during pregnancy helps to maintain the daily required levels of fluids and electrolytes in the body.

“Coconut water is rich in electrolytes, chlorides, magnesium, calcium, riboflavin and vitamin C besides containing moderate amounts of sugar, sodium

and protein,” said the CDB. CDB also pointed out that having coconut water in the first trimester helps to counter morning sickness, constipation, prevents dehydration besides improves immunity and relives fatigue.

“A pregnant woman’s body requires more fluids to replenish the needs of an unborn baby. It also helps to increase the volume of the blood in the body and prevents urinary tract infections and lowers high blood pressure,” the CDB added.

Usually after a heart attack, the heart is unable to replace its dead cells and patients are often left with little option of another heart transplant or cell therapy that transplants heart cells into the patient’s heart.

In far too many cases, however, the transplanted heart cells do not engraft well, resulting in poor recovery.

One reason for the engraftment problem is the quality of the heart cells. For a typical cell therapy, heart cells are made from different stem cells, but the quality of the heart cells will vary.

First author of the study that was conducted

by Kyoto University, Dr. Shunsuke Funakoshi said that the cells of different

maturation will be mixed and transplanted together.

During the research, Funakoshi took induced

cells. Heart cells differentiated from iPS cells effectively go through all stages of development.

the therapy should not only improve patient outcome, but also reduce the number of cells required, which

pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that were reprogrammed from skin cells and made them into heart

Currently, over a billion cells are needed for human heart cell therapies. Knowing which cells are best for

would further reduce both the time of the preparation and invasiveness of the procedure.

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COCONUT MACAROONIES

BBQ FRIED CHICKEN

Ingredients: 8 oz. high quality white chocolate 1 cup coconut oil 1 1/2 cups (10 1/2 oz.) sugar 1 tsp. coconut extract 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract 1/2 tsp. kosher salt 6 egg whites, lightly beaten 1 1/2 cups coconut flour Instructions: Heat the oven to 350° and spray a 9by-13-inch baking pan with nonstick baking spray then line the bottom with parchment paper. Place the white chocolate in a large bowl and pour the coconut oil into a glass measuring cup.

Microwave the coconut oil until it’s hot to the touch, then pour it over the chocolate and let stand for 1 minute. Using a

whisk, slowly stir the chocolate and oil together until smooth.

Add the sugar, coconut and vanilla extracts, salt, and egg whites and stir until well mixed. Add the coconut flour and stir until just combined. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, smooth the top, and bake until golden brown and set, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer the baking pan to a rack and let cool completely.

Unmold the macaroonies from the pan, discard the parchment paper, and cut into 12 bars to serve.

Ingredients: Canola oil, for frying 1 cup flour Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1 whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces, backbone discarded Instructions: Heat 2? oil in a 6-qt. saucepan over medium until a deep-fry thermometer reads 350°. Place flour in a large bowl, season with salt and pepper, and set aside. Generously season chicken all over with salt and pepper. Dredge chicken pieces in flour, shaking off excess. Place in oil and fry, turning for white meat, 20 minutes for dark meat. occasionally, until chicken is cooked Drain on paper towels and let cool for 5 through and dark brown, 15 minutes minutes before serving.

MUSSEL AND SALSIFY SOUP

CARROT AND PISTACHIO SALAD

Ingredients: 4 lb. mussels, scrubbed, beards removed 2 cups dry white wine 1 cup dry vermouth 4 tbsp. unsalted butter 3 shallots, peeled and sliced 4 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled A few sprigs of parsley, tied into a bundle with string 4 medium salsify, peeled and cut into 3/4" pieces Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste Buttered croutons, for serving Instructions: Combine mussels, white wine, and vermouth in a 8-qt. saucepan over high; boil, covered, until mussels start to

Ingredients: 1/2 cup diced fresh figs 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar 1 shallot, minced Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 3/4 cup plus 1 tbsp. olive oil 2 lb. multicolored carrots, halved lengthwise 1 head radicchio, roughly chopped 1/2 cup pistachios, roughly chopped Instructions: Heat oven to 375°. In a medium bowl, combine figs, vinegar, shallot, salt, pepper, and 2 tbsp. water; while whisking constantly, slowly drizzle in 1/2 cup olive oil until vinaigrette is emulsified and set aside. Toss carrots with 1/4 cup oil and salt; transfer to a baking sheet and

open, 8 minutes. Remove mussels and strain stock through a fine mesh sieve; reserve stock. Remove mussel meat from shells, discarding empty shells. Melt butter in pan; add garlic, shallots, and parsley and cook until soft, 5 minutes. Meanwhile, add reserved broth to a 2-qt. saucepan over medium-high; add salsify and cook until tender, 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove salsify and set aside; add broth to pan with shallots and garlic, along with half of the mussel meat. Simmer 5 minutes; remove parsley and purée until smooth; strain through a fine mesh sieve and return to pan. Add remaining mussel meat, the reserved salsify, salt, and pepper; simmer 5 minutes. Divide between bowls and serve with buttered croutons.

RAZOR CLAMS FANTASIA

ALSATIAN BACON AND ONION TART Ingredients: 1/2 cup crème fraîche 1 cup fromage blanc (available at Murray's Cheese) or cream cheese at room temperature 1/8 tsp. nutmeg, freshly grated 1 tsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste Freshly ground white pepper, to taste 1 3/4 cups flour, plus more for dusting 1 tsp. baking powder 3 tbsp. olive oil 2 egg yolks 8 strips smoked bacon, finely chopped 1 medium white onion, thinly sliced Instructions: Heat an oven to 500° with a pizza stone positioned on center rack. Mix crème fraîche, fromage blanc, nutmeg, and salt and white pepper in a bowl. Set aside.

Whisk flour, baking powder, and 1 tsp. salt

cook until brown and crisp, about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, heat remaining olive oil in a 12" skillet over medium-high; add half the radicchio and cook until its just wilted and browned in spots, 2–3 minutes. Add to a large bowl and toss with reserved vinaigrette, uncooked radicchio, carrots, and pistachios. Transfer to a platter and serve immediately.

in a bowl; make a well in the center.

Whisk oil, yolks, and 1/2 cup water in another bowl, and pour into well. Using a fork, stir until a loose dough forms.

Turn out onto lightly floured surface; knead dough for 1 minute. Divide dough into 3 pieces. Working with 1 piece of dough at a time, roll into a 12" circle, and place on a parchment paper—lined baking sheet. Spread 1/2 cup cheese mixture over circle, leaving a 1/2" border around edge. Sprinkle with a little of the bacon and onions. Transfer dough (on parchment paper) to pizza stone. Bake until lightly browned and crispy, 8–10 minutes. Repeat.

Ingredients: 3 lb. razor clams Kosher salt, to taste 1 cup plus 3 tbsp. olive oil 2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice, plus halves 1/2 tsp. Colatura 12 scallions, thinly sliced, 1/4 cup sliced greens reserved 8 cloves garlic, grated 1 (6") piece ginger, peeled and grated 3/4 cup dry white wine Instructions: Submerge clams in a large bowl of heavily salted cold water and let sit for 15 minutes to purge them of sand; drain and set aside. Stir 1 cup oil, the lemon juice, colatura, half each the scallions, garlic, and ginger, and salt

in a bowl; set sauce aside. Heat remaining oil in an 8-qt. saucepan over medium.

Cook remaining scallions, garlic, and ginger until fragrant, 1–2 minutes. Stir in clams and wine; cook, covered, until shells have opened, 4–5 minutes. Stir half the reserved sauce into clams. Transfer clams to a platter; spoon remaining sauce over top and garnish with reserved 1/4 cup sliced green scallions. Serve with lemon halves.

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