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THE CONTACT WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ISSUE - 671, 14 - 20 JUNE 2016 PH: (905) 671 - 4761

Centre-appointed SIT to reopen 75 cases of 1984 riots

JIHADIS CUT OFF BEARDS TO SNEAK INTO EUROPE

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KEJRIWAL ADDS PUNJABI TADKA BEFORE POLLS Delhi CM is learning Gurmukhi from 2 tutors, talking to MLAs in local tongue to connect better with the masses

by Punya Prasun Bajpai Not too long back Arvind Kejriwal had made news addressing rallies in Punjab sporting a turban. But the next time he visits the pollbound state, he may be one delivering speeches in fluent Punjabi. The Delhi chief minister, who is eyeing victory in Punjab polls next year, is learning to speak in Punjabi and read and write in Gurmukhi.

"I have learnt Gurmukhi so that I can feel the pulse of the Punjabi population and

get familiar with their cultural heritage and social condition. Power can be achieved even without knowing the language and the script but then it will be difficult to connect with the masses," Kejriwal told Aaj Tak. CM TAKING TUITIONS AND REGULAR TESTS The change has not come overnight. It is a result of rigorous practice over the last two months. The CM is taking tuitions and regular tests to assess

progress. "I have been devoting two hours every morning to learn Punjabi.

This has been a regular practice for the last two months," Kejriwal said. The AAP leader has been reading newspaper reports and even governmentrelated documents in the Punjabi language to prepare himself for the big fight.

While he has been learning to communicate with people in Punjabi tongue

- Fate of 21 AAP MLAs uncertain as President withholds Delhi govt's dual office bill - CM Kejriwal had appointed these MLAs as parliamentary secretaries

Continued on Page 2

Spectre of Orlando-style lone wolf attacks worries intel

by Abhishek Bhalla Self-radicalised jihadis drawing inspiration from ISIS by following its activities online could carry out a lone wolf attack similar to the one witnessed in Orlando, intelligence agencies fear.

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES WARN STATES, SECURITY FORCES Central intelligence agencies

have warned security forces and states about the possibility of a lone wolf attack in the country.

While there is heightened surveillance of the cyberspace to combat the growing threat of digital jihad being practised by ISIS, monitoring the entire gamut of its activities remains a daunting challenge. "Our biggest concern as of now is a lone

wolftype strike. If a person decides to get a weapon and go on a killing spree or plant explosives somewhere without involving others, chances of detection are minimal," said a senior intelligence official. Inspired by ISIS, Omar Mateen killed 50 people in an Orlando club in the US and wounded several others as he went on a shooting

rampage on Sunday.

INCREASED RADICALISATION WORRIES INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES According to assessments made by intelligence agencies, the biggest hurdle in national security and increased radicalisation is the Internet as there is limited domain knowledge on the subject.

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Issue - 671 (2)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Spectre of Orlando-style lone wolf attacks worries intel Continued from Page 1 While intelligence agencies claim ISIS has not yet established a base in India, several youths have been attracted to it and even made efforts to travel to Syria. "The possibility of piggybacking on terrorist groups operating in India has opened up the possibility of ISISsponsored terrorist action on Indian territory," the Intelligence Bureau had earlier warned all state governments.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has been interacting with state governments drawing up a strategy to tackle the threat of ISIS. The strategy needs to keep pace with the rapidlychanging dynamics of the global jihadi group that has lured thousands of young men and women from across the world including non Muslims.

SPECIAL TEAM TO TACKLE THREAT OF DIGITAL JIHAD According to the strategy paper on ISIS, a special team needs to be set up that will work on the challenges of digital jihad.

Intelligence agencies have failed to check the growing online radicalisation of the youth who are getting a free flow of ISIS's venomous ideology on the cyberspace. There are close to 200 people being monitored across the country.

"Youth between 17 and 25 years of age spend hours on the Internet and this needs intervention with an effective counter-radicalisation

plan," the paper on ISIS says.

GOVT PLANS 24X7 'SITUATION ROOM' FOR MONITORING CYBERSPACE The government has planned a 24x7 'situation room' exclusively meant for a monitoring the cyberspace to tackle the threat of digital jihad.

Earlier in 2015, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) busted ISISinspired terror module called 'Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind' or the Army of Caliph in India carrying out countrywide arrests.

Investigations have also revealed that the group was making efforts to establish a channel to procure explosives and weapons, identify locations to organise terror training camps and motivate new recruits to target police officers, foreigners in India as well as to carry out terrorist activities in various parts of India. NIA claimed that those arrested were found to be in contact with some active members through chatting applications in order to motivate them to join ISIS.

sources close to the investigation said. A news agency linked to IS said the attack had been carried out by an “Islamic State fighter”, days after posting a similar claim following the massacre at a gay

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Continued from Page 1 he has been focusing equally on learning Gurmukhi, the language used in Punjab for all official purposes. Kejriwal, who is sparing no effort to repeat the AAP's stupendous Delhi victory in Punjab, says it is crucial to learn the language to make entry into rural Punjab. This assumes significance given the AAP's votebank which essentially resides in the rural areas.

"I am mentally preparing myself to take up the challenge in Punjab. This will help our party in running the government if we get to power in the state. This will ensure there is no communication gap and all official works are carried out with ease," Kejriwal said. He said that he was always willing to walk the extra mile even as his party was working hard to take on the BJP, Akali Dal and the Congress in the Punjab elections.

KEJRIWAL GOVT IN DELHI BOOSTS PUNJABI LANGUAGE The Kejriwal government in Delhi,

in order to boost Punjabi language, launched a campaign declaring that Punjabi would be made a compulsory language in all government schools in the Capital. The ad further said every school would have at least one Punjabi teacher and that their salary would be raised. The idea is to strike an emotional chord with the Punjabi people in Delhi who have their roots in the pollbound Punjab. "Without striking an emotional chord, it is difficult to reach out to the rural Punjabi voters," he said.

However, it is not only the language but also the organisational framework in Punjab which the AAP chief is focusing on. The party is trying to reach out to people at the lowest level of governance, the panchayats. It is listening to their issues. Having taken a complete round of the state, Kejriwal said he tried to know the state and now the party was trying to understand the issues concerning Punjab voters. "In the last leg, we will

come out with solutions to these problems and subsequently come out with our manifesto," Kejriwal said. On the issue of drug menace in the state, the AAP leader said Punjab's economy would automatically improve if people stop spending on drugs. He listed education and healthcare as the AAP's major planks in the upcoming polls.

DELHI CM RANTS UP A STORM ON TWITTER Kejriwal took to the Twitter to express his anger over the President rejecting the Bill to exclude the post of Parliamentary Secretary from the office of profit.

He said no MLA was given a single paisa, car or bungalow in their capacity as Parliamentary Secretary and said they were giving services for free. "Modiji says all of you sit at home.

Should not work," he said, adding MLAs were tasked to look after power supply, water supply, functioning of hospitals and schools. "Modiji says neither will work nor will allow to work."

already coarse and ugly presidential election, with Republican nominee Donald Trump showing no compunction in using the tragedy as a campaign weapon.

In a series of tweets and statements in the hours after the worst terrorist attack in America since 9/11 -- with the highest

attack on Obama to the TV studios, going as far as to suggest that he may be a closet Muslim with Islamist sympathies.

“We’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind,” Trump said conspiratorially in one TV interview. “And the something else

fatalities in a lone-wolf gun assault -- Trump excoriated his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama , painting them as weak --and possibly treacherous -leaders on the issue of terrorism.

Their “political correctness” stopped them from even using the expression “Radical Islam” which he felt was behind the attack. He went even further in attacking Obama.

“Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn’t he should immediately resign in disgrace!”

Trump tweeted soon after the attack, saying while he appreciates the “congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism,” from his followers, he wants “toughness and vigilance.”

For the same reason - not mentioning “radical Islam” - he also wanted Hillary Clinton to quit the Presidential race.

On Monday, Trump carried his

in mind, you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot--they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the ways he acts and can’t even mention the words radical Islamic terrorism. There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable.” Under pressure, Hillary Clinton said she was fine with calling it “radical jihadism or radical Islamism, I think they mean the same thing.”

But Trump has swooped down on the carnage to display national security credentials that seem

based on muscular exclusivity “If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen - and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can’t afford to be politically correct anymore,” he said earlier in a self-congratulatory statement that focused largely on terrorism and its connection to immigration, with barely a word on gun laws or homophobia, which is part of the fabric of fundamentalists in all religions, including Christianity. Reporting that Orlando killer shouted “Allah hu Akbar” as he slaughtered clubgoers, Trump went on to indicate that he would advance his agenda of a Fortress America that would begin with blocking the entry of Muslims into the United States.

“We admit more than 100,000 lifetime migrants from the Middle East each year. Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States,” he said, claiming that, “Hillary Clinton wants to dramatically increase admissions from the Middle East, bringing in many hundreds of thousands during a first term - and we will have no way to screen them, pay for them, or prevent the second generation from radicalizing.”

Donald Trump prepares ground for Fortress America over Orlando dead

WASHINGTON The blood on the dance floor has hardly dried and the victims have not been fully identified. But the carnage in an Orlando nightclub has become the backdrop of an

‘IS man’ stabs French cop to death PARIS A man who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group stabbed a French policeman to death on Monday night before he was killed in a dramatic police operation,

KEJRIWAL ADDS PUNJABI...

club in Orlando, Florida . French prosecutors have launched an antiterror probe after the policeman and his partner were killed at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville. Witnesses told

investigators the man may have shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) as he stabbed the policeman repeatedly outside his home before holing up inside with the woman and the couple’s threeyear-old son. Loud detonations were heard at the scene as elite RAID police moved in following failed negotiations with the attacker, who claimed allegiance to IS while talking to officers, sources close to the inquiry told AFP. “The anti-terror department of the Paris prosecution service is taking into account at this stage the mode of operation, the target and the comments made during negotiations with the RAID,” one source said.

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Issue - 671 (3)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Issue - 671 (4)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Orlando attack shows ISIS losing ground!

The so-called Islamic State has been claiming credit for Sunday’s Orlando Florida nightclub terror attack, but we know that the gunman Omar Mateen was acting as a “lone wolf,” without any known contact with ISIS. Nonetheless, ISIS may have indirectly caused the attack by its announcements in the last few weeks asking “lone wolves” to strike soft targets in Europe and America during the month of Ramadan, which started last week. A year or two ago, an exuberant ISIS was making enormous gains, capturing huge swaths of territory across Syria and Iraq, raping women and chopping off people’s heads to gain international acclaim and making money by selling oil from captured facilities. There were thousands of young jihadists coming from all over the world to Syria to join ISIS and to fight against the genocidal Syrian president Bashar alAssad.

But now losses are mounting in Syria and Iraq. It’s losing much of the territory it had gained, losing finances, and losing

prestige. The number of foreign fighters joining the flailing ISIS is dwindling, and there are even reports of infighting within ISIS resulting in executions of junior officers. Last month there were reports that ISIS was regrouping in Libya, setting up a base in its stronghold in the coastal city of Sirte, but now there have been new reports that troops from Libya’s unity Government of National Accord (GNA) have been advancing against Sirte more quickly than expected. ISIS is very far from defeated, but these setbacks are forcing the terror organization to rethink its strategy. A part of that strategy is to encourage lone wolf attacks and then take

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credit for them. They’ve taken credit for the killings in Bangladesh, which they had nothing to do with, and now they’ve done the same with the Orlando night club shooting. These may well be moves of desperation.

Although many people are taking pleasure in the troubles of al-Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS, you should not assume that the defeat of either of these organizations (something that’s probably not even possible) would bring peace and an end to the terrorist attacks. This is a generational crisis era for the Sunnis in the Mideast and south Asia, and the terror attacks and rising tensions are occurring organically, not under the control of any politician. No one could have predicted the rise of ISIS five years ago, and some

new, even worse organization could rise at any time.

SUNNY BAINS Just as the Holocaust and WW II would still have occurred even if Hitler had been killed in weeks ago. According to Saturday’s 1935, the Mideast is headed for a major online audio message, which has not yet regional war with or without ISIS or al- been confirmed, al-Zawahiri said: Qaeda.

“As leader of the al Qaeda organization And the Orlando nightclub shooting may for jihad, I extend my pledge of allegiance be just the start. once again, the approach of Osama to Al-Qaeda leader swears allegiance invite the Muslim nation to support the to Taliban’s new leader Islamic Emirate (of Afghanistan). ... We The rise of a major competitive jihadist pledge allegiance to you on jihad to group, the so-called Islamic State, is liberate every inch of the lands of the Muslims that are invaded and stolen from Kashgar to al-Andalus, from the Caucasus to Somalia and Central Africa, from Kashmir to Jerusalem, from the Philippines to Kabul, and from Bukhara to Samarkand.” The logic behind this pledge is that al-Zawahiri is a military leader, an Egyptian doctor-turned-militant, while Akhundzada is an Islamic legal scholar. The audio message alludes to the fact that when the Taliban were sheltering Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, bin Laden also pledged his allegiance to the Afghan Taliban leader.

However, bin Laden ended up bringing the Taliban a lot of grief in the form of the US war in Afghanistan that defeated the Taliban and threw them out of government after bin Laden set the 9/11/2001 attacks in motion.

Today, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are uniting because they are both concerned about the rise of ISIS. Although ISIS operates mostly in the Mideast, some Afghan insurgent commanders have broken away from the Taliban to pledge support to ISIS, forcing al-Qaeda and the Taliban to and ISIS has been displacing the influence reassess their strategic directions. That of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula may be one of the reasons that on (AQAP) in Yemen, and also of al-Qaeda Saturday, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al- in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in northern Zawahiri, in a 14-minute online audio Africa, especially in Egypt, Libya and message, pledged allegiance to the new Nigeria. To make matters worse for alhead of the Afghan Taliban, Haibatullah Qaeda, there has been infighting between Akhundzada. Both of the terrorist different Taliban warlords and factions in organization leaders have some major in Afghanistan, and this has helped ISIS. common: They both rose to their current Thus, the pledge of support may be a positions after their predecessors were desperate call for unity against ISIS. killed by the US military. Al-Zawahiri Another development is that the death became the new head of al-Qaeda after of Akhundzada’s predecessor, Mullah Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, has

by US Navy Seals in 2011. Akhundzada exposed a relationship between the became the new leader of the Afghan Taliban and Iran. This is a “marriage of Taliban after his predecessor, Mullah convenience” between Sunni terrorists Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, was killed and Shia terrorists, who concerned about

by US drone strike in Pakistan three a common enemy: ISIS.

MOBSTER FORCES HINDU EXODUS Criminals rule the roost in western Uttar Pradesh’s Kairana city where an organized extortion syndicate has left farmers and traders fearing for their lives.

Nearly 350 families have reportedly fled the area since 2014 due to repeated extortion and threat calls from gangster Mukim Kala. While locals said the city, falling under Shamli district, has “turned into Pakistan”, BJP MP Hukum Singh accused the Samajwadi Party government for “lawlessness” in the state.

EXTORTION RACKET RUN BY GANGSTER FROM JAIL Local traders said extortion calls were made from inside the jail where Kala is currently lodged. “We are getting threats on phone and through letters. If one refuses to give protection money, he is killed by the henchmen. We have no

option but to leave the city to save our lives,” a trader said.

Sompal, a farmer, said he received a demand for Rs 10 lakh after he sold a piece of land. “I was threatened that they will kill me if I refused to pay the money.

Police can’t help us. I have sold my land, now I am planning to leave this city forever,” he said.

Another trader, Shiv Kumar Saini said

Kairana had “become Pakistan”, where murder, loot and extortion were rampant. The district magistrate says he has been informed by the MP and got a list from him of the families that have purportedly fled the city.

“We have constituted a committee under the leadership of SDM Kirana to verify the allegation” the DM said.

MUKIM KALA RACKET: A POLL ISSUE The issue has also sparked a political tussle in Uttar Pradesh where assembly elections are slated to be held next year and parties are wooing various communities and caste groups while using any ammunition available to target rivals.

The BJP announced this week that would send an 11 member team of Members of Parliament, mostly from western UP, to asses then situation.

Issue - 671 (5)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Mystery deaths of three financiers

A textbook is not a sacred tome. Though it may contain the workings of a particular subject, it doesn’t even hint at the secrets of the soul. If we knew nothing about life except what the pages of ‘Biology For Beginners’ teach us, we might never experience our more subtle, heart-felt emotions.

We’d struggle to recognize the sensation of our racing heart, and the shortening of breath about which poets write and musicians sing. Pay more attention to your heart’s desires.

Try not to rationalize the very part of you that makes you so special. !!!

There is no future in archaeology. All it’s going to tell you about is the past. Unless you happen to dig up something so vital that it alters your understanding of everything. By and large, though, such discoveries tend to be fragments.

Even if you can piece them together you rarely get anything that is complete. A part of you now wants to look back.

But why? What can you learn or gain from this?

Look forward instead. Turn to greet a new wave of hope rolling into your love life. !!!

If the world is truly full of lunatics then might it not be the sane person that finds themselves enjoying an extended visit to the asylum? Might it not be better to ‘play the game’?

To assent quietly to the most preposterous propositions? Perhaps it is indeed better to keep your counsel, but as the famous Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius once said, ‘The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.’ State your case and state it boldly. Right is on your side. !!!

Until now, you heart’s desires (or at least one them) have remained stubbornly, frustratingly, tantalizingly, just out of reach. You feel like you’re trying to herd cats, chase shadows and hunt wild geese all at the same time. People like you typically have a quiver full of arrows and love to let them loose with sheer abandon, trusting that some, at least, will find their mark. All you need to do is take a deep breath, steady your gaze, focus on the best possible outcome and trust in yourself. The universe will take care of the rest. !!!

Someone, somewhere is telling you ‘it can’t be done’. Surely, nothing could be more likely to inspire you to take up the challenge than such an unequivocal statement.

Throughout history, sage figures have declared things to be impossible.

‘Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible,’ they said of the Wright brothers attempts to create the first airplane.

‘There’s a world market for maybe five computers.’ said the president of IBM. Don’t let the negativity of others hold you back. Put your faith in the future and the future will respond in kind. !!!

Are you the same person you used to be? In one way, yes. Yet you have dedicated a lot of time to an effort to understand more about life - and about yourself. That journey of discovery has taken you to many interesting places, and your experiences have significantly shaped your personality. So, you can’t really view the situation you now face through the eyes that you once looked out from. Don’t react to a problem in a way that you might once have responded. A moment of insight is possible!

Three bankers, all with ties to Deutsche Bank, committed suicide within the space of 18 months and there is growing speculation their deaths may have been linked to the Libor scandal.

Last year Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $2.5billion (£1.76billion) to resolve investigations in Britain and the US into the activities of its traders.

Meanwhile in Siena, Italy, authorities exhumed the body of banker David Rossi, 51, and reopened their investigation into his death in March 2013.

Mr Rossi, who worked as a communications director at the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank, was found dead in an alley beneath his office in the city.

The New York Post says a security video casts doubt on Mr Rossi jumping to his death because it shows him landing on the pavement on his back, facing the building.

The shocking video also shows two men appearing and walking over to Mr Rossi but offering no assistance as he lies, mortally wounded, on the ground.

A ruling on whether he killed himself or was murdered is expected later this month.

Mr Rossi’s bank - the oldest in the world, dating back to the 15th century worked closely with Deutsche Bank.

Ten months after Mr Rossi died William Broeksmit, 58, a top Deutsche Bank executive, was found hanging from a dog leash in his London flat.

And in October 2014 Calogero ‘Charles’ Gambino, 41, Deutsche Bank’s in-house lawyer, was found hanging from a balcony at his home in New York. Mr Gambino was a key part of the team

and extensive it was tumbled out over the next two years.

It was during that time that Mr Rossi, Mr Broeksmit and Mr Gambino died.

Mr Rossi’s widow, Antonella Tognazzi, has

defending the bank against charges relating to the Libor scandal.

Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) is the average interest rate in dollars that international banks charge each other for borrowing, which is crucial to the setting of $450trillion (£316trillion) in financial contracts around the world.

Every day a group of leading banks submits the interest rates at which they are willing to lend, thereby setting the Libor rate.

But several banks have admitted their traders manipulated the Libor rate over a number of years possibly as far back as 1991 - to boost profits and their own bonuses.

Several traders have been jailed in London and New York for their part in the scandal.

The Libor scandal first broke in the summer of 2012 but revelations about how deep

told the Italian press her husband ‘knew too much’ and hired a lawyer to investigate her husband’s death.

She pointed out that in his alleged suicide note he referred to her as Toni, a name he had never used for her.

Mr Rossi was closely involved in Monte Paschi’s $7.5billion (£5.28billion) takeover - financed by Deutsche Bank, using rates set by Libor - of another Italian bank in 2008.

Many banking analysts believed at the time Monte Paschi had paid too much for its rival.

Monte Paschi also got involved in risky derivatives, again based on Libor calculations, that made heavy losses during the financial crisis of 2008.

The New York Post’s Sunday business editor, Michael Gray, says dozens of bankers have committed

The Centre-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) will re-investigate around 75 cases of 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and some other states, a decision that comes months ahead of the assembly elections in Punjab, a Home Ministry official said.

A total of 3,325 people were killed in the riots.

Delhi alone accounted for 2,733 deaths while the rest occurred in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states. Delhi Police had closed 241 cases citing lack of evidence. The Justice Nanavati Commission had recommended reopening of only four of the 241 cases

closed by police but the five persons, including a The three-member SIT BJP wanted re- former MLA, were comprises two Inspector investigation of all the other convicted. The SIT was set General rank IPS officers and a judicial officer, a Home Ministry official said.

At the time of formation of the SIT about one-and-ahalf-years ago, the government had said it would submit its report within six months.

suicide since the global financial crisis began in 2008 but he said Mr Rossi’s and the two others stood out as suspicious.

Mr Broeksmit’s stepson Val told the New York Post there were several aspects of his death which remained baffling.

He said Mr Broeksmit had just emailed friends about how much he was looking forward to going on a skiing holiday a week later.

Although a psychologist had reported that Mr Broeksmit was ‘very anxious about authorities investigating areas of the bank at which he worked’ his depression over the Libor investigation had lifted prior to his death.

Val Broeksmit told the Post: ‘Yes he killed himself. But there’s a question: could it be suicide by extortion, could it be suicide by pressure or saying if you don’t do this, we’re going to do this? There’s a couple suspicions I have.’

A month before his death Mr Broeksmit wrote to fellow executives asking why he should take the lead on a stress test for the bank. He wrote: ‘Who is recommending that I do this? I am supposed to be an independent director and this puts me further into a role aligned with management,’ he wrote.

When Mr Gambino died found hanging from a balcony at his home in Brooklyn - he left behind no note and his family have never commented on his death, but the Post claims his death is suspicious.

Centre-appointed SIT to reopen 75 cases of 1984 riots

Impotence?

237 cases.

The CBI had reopened and re-investigated only four cases. In two of them, the probe agency had filed a chargesheet and in one,

up on February 12, 2015 following a recommendation by Home Ministry-appointed Justice (retd) GP Mathur committee.

416-887-4971

Issue - 671 (6)

14 June - 20 June 2016

JIHADIS CUT OFF BEARDS TO SNEAK INTO EUROPE

Hundreds of fanatical Islamic State terrorists are on their way to Europe posing as migrants after being driven out of their Libyan stronghold by British-backed forces, The Mail on Sunday has learned.

As the Libyan troops and jihadis fought a running battle in the port city of Sirte yesterday, we uncovered disturbing evidence that IS fighters are fleeing the onslaught and shaving off their beards and hair to blend in with refugees on their exodus across the Mediterranean.

Last night, the Libyan Brigades, secretly supported by elite troops from the British Special Boat Service, told me they were days away from regaining Sirte, which has been in IS hands for 18 months.

The jihadis briefly regained

into the city centre, coming under sniper fire.

Libyan officer Colonel Mohamed El-Gasri told me: ‘We have taken casualties but so have the militants. We need to secure the port to prevent any escape by sea.’

He said intelligence gleaned with the help of British and US Special Forces showed that families holed up in their homes may be supporting and harbouring IS. ‘Sirte was Muammar Gaddafi’s home town and there is still fierce allegiance to him and opposition to our forces, who killed him,’ he said.

‘We have been appealing for weeks for people to get out and, while tens of thousands have left, there are others who chose to stay.

‘This is not going to be easy, but we feel confident

control of the city’s port area yesterday after a fierce firefight with naval vessels – while other Libyan troops advanced

the city will be ours within days.’

In recent weeks, while some jihadis escaped into the desert, coastguard

patrols have witnessed others heading for the people-smuggling route further west to join the boats sailing for Sicily and Italy. We were told how they had dramatically changed their appearance to slip in unnoticed among refugees, and senior officers in the pro-government Libyan Brigades showed us photographs of cleanshaven IS members captured in Sirte.

In a deserted school in the suburb of Wadi Jarif, more than 100 IS fighters had been hiding during fierce fighting against the government forces before making a hasty exit. On the bathroom floors and in wash-basins, the evidence of their frantic deception was clear, in the form of clumps of dark

facial hair.

Col El-Gasri told me: ‘They have been cutting their long hair and shaving their beards. We know they work closely with peoplesmugglers and are joining the boats crossing the Mediterranean.’

IS gunmen took control of Sirte – birthplace of former Libyan leader Gaddafi – early last year, sending shockwaves through Europe, given the city’s proximity to Sicily, the Italian mainland and Malta.

Ever since, its citizens have endured the iron rule of the fanatics, with frequent floggings and executions.

The tide turned this spring when the Libyan Brigades, backed by the SBS and other Western special forces, began to push back the militants. Now the battle in Sirte appears to be entering its final days.

The British forces have a

direct line to the commander of this current operation, Bashir AlGardy.

He told me: ‘There are about 25 special forces here, British and American. They have all the technology, the drones and the missiles, and they are helping. I asked them this morning to locate a tank inside Sirte which was hidden, and firing at my men. It’s a good arrangement but we need a lot more.’

He said his men were so loyal that they once drove a truckload of jihadi bodies to his office. He showed me pictures of the grisly haul, saying fondly: ‘Look what my men brought for me.’ The Libyans say they are virtually powerless to stop the escaping jihadis as their appeal for more help from Western governments in the shape of equipment has fallen on

deaf ears. Despite promises, the Libyans say they have received no protective clothing, nightvision equipment or specialist training. While David Cameron has announced training for coastguard patrol crews, and a British warship is to be sent to Libyan waters once a UN Security Council resolution is in place, no help has arrived for Libyan naval forces in the Med. ‘These are the most dangerous terrorists in the world today, and they are on the Mediterranean coast with the stated aim of carrying out atrocities in Europe,’ said Col El-Gasri.

‘We cannot beat them alone.’

Colonel Reda Essa, the head of the coastguard in Misrata, about 150 miles west of Sirte, told me: ‘Until now we could not hold them back.

Dutch tourist who reported she was raped in Qatar convicted of sex out of wedlock, released A 22-year-old Dutch tourist who told police a man drugged and raped her in Qatar was convicted Monday of having sex out of wedlock but released.

The woman received a oneyear suspended sentence and a fine equivalent to $845, said her lawyer, Brian Lokollo. Having sex without being married is a crime in Qatar’s Islamicbased legal system. The woman had been behind bars in the host country of the 2022 FIFA World Cup since reporting the assault in Doha, Qatar’s capital, in March. Qatari authorities released her to the care of

the Dutch Embassy Monday ahead of her mandatory deportation, according to Lokollo. “We are very happy she’s going to be home soon,” Lokollo said. A judge sentenced the Syrian man she told investigators had raped her after a party at the W Doha Hotel’s Crystal Lounge nightclub, Omar Abdullah al-Hasan, to 100 lashes for illicit sex acts and 40 lashes for public drunkenness, a court official told Al Jazeera. The court official, who spoke to the state-owned outlet on condition of anonymity,

said Hasan will also be deported and described the victim’s sentence as “lenient.” “Had she been a Muslim woman, she would

have received at least five years in jail,” the court official said. “No one can get out of such charges here in Qatar.” The man,

who told investigators the sex had been consensual, was never charged with rape. The victim said she woke up in a strange apartment with her clothes torn and hazy memories from the club, Lokollo said.

Her mother said she is just glad her daughter is coming home to Utrecht following the ordeal. “This is the news I have been waiting for for days. I haven’t slept for nights, but I’m very happy,” the mother told Dutch national broadcaster NOS, according to The Guardian.

Dutch

authorities have confirmed the charges and sentencing. Netherlands Foreign Minister Bert Koenders wrote on Twitter he was "relieved" by the verdict and sentencing.

“The Dutch government and Embassy are in close contact with the defendant and her family in the Netherlands,” the Dutch Embassy of Qatar said in a statement on Sunday.

“We have provided assistance to her since the first day of detention. For the sake of the defendant’s case we will not make further comments at this point.”

Issue - 671 (7)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Thailand first in Asia to eliminate mother-to-baby HIV BANGKOK Thailand has become the first Asian country to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV, the World Health Organization

was “the first (country) with a large HIV epidemic to ensure an AIDS-free generation.” Belarus and Armenia were also declared free of mother-to-

said Wednesday, a milestone in the fight against the disease.

The announcement is a boost for a generation of Thai health workers who have transformed the nation from one of Asia’s most HIV-ravaged societies to a pin-up for how to effectively tackle the crisis. Describing the elimination as a “remarkable achievement”, the WHO said Thailand

baby HIV transmissions Wednesday but both nations have a much lower prevalence of the virus.

Previously Cuba was the only other country to have eliminated mother-to-child transmission under the WHO’s criteria back in July 2015. The global health body said Thailand’s routine screening and universal free medication for pregnant women with HIV

Baby born to brain-dead mother in Portugal LISBON A healthy baby was born in Portugal to a mother who

had been brain-dead for nearly four months. “The baby boy, weighing 2.35 kilos (five pounds three ounces), was born after 32

weeks without complications and by Cesarean section,” announced the Lisbon hospital that carried out the procedure. The mother had been declared brain-dead on February 20 after suffering a brain haemorrhage, the hospital said. “The foetus appeared to be in good health,” it added, so “the decision was taken with the family to follow through with the pregnancy.”

Drone footage shows the secret life of rare whales

WELLINGTON New Zealand researchers have captured stunning drone footage of endangered whales feeding off the Auckland coast, giving an unprecedented insight into the majestic giants of the sea. In a world-first use of drone technology, the researchers dispatched a customised “eye in the sky” so they could observe the rare Bryde’s whales

without disturbing them.

The resulting footage shows an adult and calf frolicking in the water and using a “lunge” feeding technique to feast on plankton and shoals of small fish.

The adult, a grey behemoth measuring 12 metres (40 foot) long, turns sideways and swims just under the surface, opening its huge mouth to funnel in food.

was crucial in stopping the virus being passed to new generations. If left untreated, mothers with HIV have a 15-45 percent chance of transmitting the virus to their children during pregnancy, childbirth or while breastfeeding.

But taking antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy significantly reduces those chances to just over one percent.In 2000 Thailand became one of the first countries in the world to provide free antiretroviral medication to all pregnant women diagnosed with HIV.Screening for the virus during pregnancy is also routine, even in the country’s most remote areas, the WHO added.

According to Thai government figures, the number of babies born with HIV has dropped from 1,000 in 2000 to just 85 last year, a large enough fall for the WHO to declare mother -to-child transmission over. A small number of cases are taken into account, as treatment with medicine is not 100 percent effective. It is a major turnaround for Thailand. The country went from 100,000 HIV cases in 1990 to more than a million three years later, fuelled in part by its huge sex trade. Health workers initially struggled to persuade governments to act. But an eventual push to distribute free condoms among sex workers throughout the late 1990s and the widespread rollout of antiretroviral drugs in the 2000s has seen huge success and won the country widespread praise.

“Thailand’s progress shows how much can be achieved when science and medicine are underpinned by sustained political commitment,” UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe said in a statement.

But there is still work to be done. The UN estimates there are some 500,000 living with HIV in the kingdom, while infection rates have risen slightly in recent years, particularly among gay men.

Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Thailand’s Minister of Public Health, said the landmark announcement “belongs to everyone” but added “a challenge remains: how we make this success sustainable.”

Each year, 1.4 million women living with HIV around the world become pregnant. The number of children born annually with HIV was 400,000 in 2009.

By 2013, the number was down to 240,000.

World’s shortest couple Brasilia The world’s shortest couple - who both measure less then three feet tall - have proved that size doesn’t matter when it comes to love.

Paulo Gabriel da Silva Barros and Katyucia Hoshino, from Brazil, both have forms of dwarfism and stand at 34.8in and 35.2in respectively. The pair, who hope to enter the Guinness Book of World Records, said they met on a social media website ten years ago and started chatting on MSN Messenger. Paulo, 30, who has a rare genetic condition called diastrophic dysplasia dwarfism, said it was love at first sight for him. ‘I found her very beautiful from the first moment I saw her,’ he said.

But the attraction wasn’t mutual. Katyucia, 26, who has achondroplasia dwarfism, which affects bone growth, initially blocked him on the instant messaging site.

She said: ‘The first time I started talking to Paulo, he was really annoying.

He had cheap-pick up lines.’ Paulo, who works

as a legal secretary, said: ‘She thought I was trying to flirt but I was just being nice. According to her I was a really boring guy.’

That would have been the

minute to say hello. we started speaking and she said I was more civilised.’

Two months later, Paulo travelled more than 186 miles to Katyucia’s home

end of the matter, if Katyucia hadn’t suddenly decided to unblock him 18 months later.

Katyucia, who now owns her own beauty salon that has been specially adapted for her size, said: ‘ One day something happened in my head and I went and unblocked him.

By then he was already more relatable.’

Paulo said: ‘When she unblocked me, it didn’t take me more than a

city of Londrina to meet her. He said he was bowled over by Katyucia’s beauty, but she was shy and unimpressed with his dress sense.

Paulo said: ‘What most attracted me to her, besides her beauty, was how sweet she was. It was her sweet personality.’

The beautician said: ‘He was wearing an orange shirt, jeans and sunglasses - thank God it has improved since then.’

Issue - 671 (8)

14 June - 20 June 2016

France to launch Huge monument found under sands in Petra ‘terror alert’ app

PARIS A new smartphone app designed to alert users to possible terror attacks will be launched by the French government Wednesday, amid growing security concerns over the Euro 2016 football tournament. The application, which will be free to download in both French and English, will send users a warning “in case of a suspected attack,” said the interior ministry, which has piloted and introduced the service. It will also alert users who must agree to be geolocated - about “unexpected events” such as the breaching of flood defences. Alerts will appear on the app less than 15 minutes after the incident has been confirmed by authorities, and will be customised according to user’s exact location. App users will also be able monitor alerts for up to eight different geographical zones, allowing them to check on family

members or friends. It will also provide advice on how to stay safe, with information tailored to each particular situation, the ministry added. The idea emerged after the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris, with Prime Minister Manuel Valls pushing for it to be launched in time for Euro 2016. The government hopes the app will help users - or app “ambassadors” as it calls them spread reliable, official information about the security situation across social media.

This could help prevent France’s emergency services hotlines from becoming overwhelmed, said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, adding the app would “keep the public up to date with what we know.” Authorities have pledged to protect the privacy of users. The launch comes a day after Britain warned that stadiums and fan zones could be targeted during Euro 2016.

Pakistan senator Hafiz Hamdullah almost hits journalist Marvi Sirmed, abuses her during TV show Very upset, and rightly so.

Here’s what happened. Sirmed was one of the guests on journalist Nadia Mirza’s talk show on Pakistani channel News One, and so was a Pakistan senate member Hafiz Hamdullah.

Hamdullah is infamous for his bad temper and has, in the past, threatened many guests during TV shows.

During the discussion, Hamdullah got annoyed at a comment made by Barrister Masroor, another guest taking part in the discussion.

When it was her turn to speak, Sirmed started her comment by saying “I agree with Masroor sahib to the extent that...” but was interrupted by the senator.

There began an argument. And it escalated very soon.

Sirmed, in her Facebook post and through her tweets, described what happened thereafter. She says, “he started abusing me with worst possible expletives. Called me a whore

and said “tumhaari shalwaar utaar doonga aur tumhaari maa ki bhi (sic).” and that translates to “I will strip you off your Salwaar and will do the same

to your mother too.”

That, Mr Hamdullah, is nothing less than an open rape threat.

When Sirmed responded with a “try that with women in your own family”, Hamdullah tried to beat her. Another guest on the show, Fayaz ul Hassan Chauhan, held Hamdullah back, and Sirmed was saved from his punches.

She says, “He had to be taken away by the News One security.”

She ends her Facebook post saying “And this religious merchant was fasting while he did all this.”

Amman A huge monument has been discovered buried under the sands at the Petra World Heritage site in southern Jordan.

Archaeologists used satellite images, drone photography and ground surveys to locate the find, according to the study published in the American Schools of Oriental Research.The large platform is about as long as an Olympic swimming pool and twice as wide. Researchers say it is unlike any other structure at the ancient site. The study, by Sarah Parcak of the University of Birmingham, and Christopher Tuttle, executive director of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, describes the find as “hiding in plain sight”.

Petra dates back to the fourth century BC, when it was founded by the Nabataean civilization, who inhibited parts of what is now Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Surface pottery suggests the platform was built in the midsecond century BC, when Petra

was at its peak. It is thought the structure may have had a ceremonial purpose.

The survey also revealed a smaller platform was contained

“I’ve worked in Petra for 20 years, and I knew that something was there, but it’s certainly legitimate to call this a discovery.”

Hundreds of thousands of

inside the larger one, which was once lined with columns on one side with a vast staircase on the other. Ms Tuttle told National Geographic that someone in decades of excavation “had to know” the structure was there yet it had not been written up.

tourists visit Petra each year, although numbers have been hit by the conflict against so-called Islamic State. The site is bestknown for the Treasury Building, which is carved from sandstone and featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Mammals thrived long before dinos died PARIS The prevailing theory that mammals only flourished after an asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is doubly wrong, according to a study published Wednesday.

Our warm-blooded predecessors thrived and spread over millions of years even as Tyrannosaurus and other flesh-ripping monsters lorded over the planet, researchers reported.

Moreover, these mammals took a big hit when the asteroid slammed into Earth, creating a hemispheric firestorm followed by a prolonged, bone-chilling drop in global temperatures.

“The traditional view is that mammals were suppressed during the ‘age of dinosaurs’,” and thus held in check, said coauthor Elis Newham, a doctoral student in evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago.

“However, our findings were that therian mammals - the ancestors of most modern mammals - were already diversifying considerably before the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event,” also known as the K-Pg boundary.

The researchers pulled together dozens of studies that challenged and chipped away at the old theory. But key to the new conclusion, they said, was teeth.

An analysis of hundreds of molars from mammals alive during the 20 million years before the K-Pg boundary revealed a huge variety of shapes - a telltale sign of varied diets and species diversity.The scientists were surprised to find a sharp decline in the number of mammals after the asteroid crash.

“I didn’t expect to see any sort of drop,” said lead author David Grossnickle, also of the

University of Chicago. “It didn’t match the traditional view that after the extinction, mammals hit

three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, including all dinosaurs which

the ground running.”

Once again, teeth told a story, this time revealing which mammals made it across the KPg boundary, and which did not.

Those with molars indicating a specialised diet - only bugs or only plants, for example - were less likely to weather the disaster than those with allpurpose chompers ready to eat whatever was available. The findings, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, may hold a lesson for today’s world, Grossnickle said.

Scientists say Earth is experiencing another mass extinction event, driven mainly by climate change - only the sixth in the last half billion years, he pointed out.

“The types of survivors that made it 66 million years ago, mostly generalists, might be indicative of what will survive in the next hundred years, or the next thousand,” Grossnickle said in a statement.The CretaceousTertiary extinction wiped out

could not fly. With the exception of a few crocodiles and sea turtles, there is no evidence that tetrapods - four-limbed vertebrates - weighing more than 25 kilos (55 pounds) survived.

The discovery in the 1990s of the 180-kilometre (110-mile) wide Chicxulub crater straddling the Yucatan Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico, pinpointed the likely spot where the asteroid hit.

After the K-Pg event, new forms of mammals such as horses, whales, bats, and primates emerged and spread in a dinosaur-free world.

Pre-mature Ejaculation?

416-887-4971

Issue - 671 (9)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Obama approves ‘more aggressive’ US military in fight against Taliban Washington US President Obama on Friday ordered the military to tackle the resurgent Taliban more directly, in tandem with Afghan allies, officials said.

US forces have been in an advisory role in Afghanistan since the start of 2015 and were only authorized to hit Taliban targets for defensive reasons, or to protect Afghan troops.

The changes mean US troops can now work more closely with local fighters in striking the Taliban.

“This is using the forces we have ... in a better way, basically, as we go through this fighting season, rather than being simply reactive,” Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said.“This makes good sense. It’s a good use of the combat power that we have there.”A senior administration official told AFP that US forces will more proactively support Afghans, and outlined plans to provide more close air support and accompany Afghan forces on the battlefield.But “this does not mean a blanket order to target the Taliban,” the official cautioned.

Obama was elected in 2008, promising to end one of America’s longest and most gruelling wars.

The first US troops arrived in Afghanistan 15 years ago, after the Taliban government refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and more than 2,000 US personnel have died in the ensuing war.

Afghan security forces last year took the lead in ensuring security across the country, but suffered a devastating string of setbacks at the hands of the Taliban.

Some 9,800 US troops remain in Afghanistan in an advisory capacity, down from a peak of around 100,000 in March 2011.

That number is set to drop to just 5,500 by the year’s end.

Still no US?troops on frontlines Currently, US forces are mainly confined to ministries or bases.

Only special forces assist their Afghan counterparts on the battlefield.

A US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the changes mean US troops can now embed with all Afghan troop units, not just their special

LeT chief Hafiz Saeed calls on Pak military to shoot down US drones

Islamabad LeT chief, Hafiz Saeed, who has a $10 million US bounty on his head, led prayers at a mosque in Islamabad on Friday and called on his country’s military to shoot down any American drones entering Pakistani territory.

The anti-US rhetoric came as the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan visited Islamabad for the first time since last month’s killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in western Pakistan.

US and Pakistan relations have been strained by the strike, which Islamabad has protested against as a violation of its sovereignty.

Friday’s public appearance by Saeed, whom the US and India accuse of masterminding a 2008 attack on India’s financial capital Mumbai that killed 166 people, was another reminder of the many sore points in the Pakistani-US relationship.

The United States has offered $10 million for information leading to Saeed’s arrest and conviction, but he remains free.

He maintains a low profile for much of the time, meaning his

occasional public appearances and pronouncements are closely watched.

“The US stands with India in their enmity towards Pakistan,” Saeed told a crowd of hundreds of people after leading Friday prayers at the Islamabad mosque.

“We want to request the army chief and make the air chief realize that it is their duty to shoot down any drone that comes into Pakistan and respond to it in kind.”

In response to the May 21 drone strike that killed Mansour, an Islamist charity Saeed heads, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has announced a series of anti-US protests in major cities, with Saeed expected to be a featured speaker. Pakistan’s top foreign policy official and its powerful military chief met Richard Olson, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, during a visit.

A statement from the military said chief of army staff General Raheel Sharif had expressed “serious concern” over the US drone strike. The US embassy in Islamabad said it had no statement on Olson’s visit.

forces.

Still, he said, US troops won’t be fighting on the front lines against the Taliban, and will stay in an advisory role.

of bloody Taliban assaults.

More than 5,000 Afghan troops died last year alone, prompting Obama to indefinitely postpone the withdrawal of US troops.

“Our mission is the same,” Carter said. “Which is to help the Afghans maintain control of the country and to avoid having a counter-terrorism challenge once again from Afghanistan.”

Taliban strengths The campaign to neutralize the Taliban has suffered multiple setbacks in the twilight of Obama’s presidency and Afghanistan’s fledgling security forces have struggled in the face

Afghan authorities on Wednesday recovered the bulletridden bodies of 12 security officials captured by the Taliban in eastern Ghazni province.

Gunmen kidnapped 40 others.

Local support for US efforts has been undermined by the unintended killing of Afghan civilians.

Last year, US missile strikes on a hospital in Kunduz killed 46 people and prompted worldwide

outrage.

At the same time, diplomatic efforts to engage the Taliban appear to have broken down.

The United States killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in Pakistan last month.

Obama then warned that the organization’s new leadership would fight on.

“We anticipate the Taliban will continue an agenda of violence,” he said during a visit to Japan.

Boost to Afghan forces Obama’s latest Afghan decision would appear to push any brokered solution well beyond his presidency.

But it could also significantly boost Afghan forces, who currently have limited close airsupport capacities.

That could help bridge the gap before the delivery of dozens of A-29 Super Tucano aircraft over the next 18 months.

“We are going to do what we can to enable Afghan forces to achieve strategic effects on the battlefield,” a second US defence official told AFP. “What we are doing now is taking a look at the battle space and making sure we provide the things we can,” he added.

Islamic State made $1 bn in revenue in 2015: US treasury Washington The Islamic State terror group made nearly $1 bn in total revenue last year, half of which came from the sale of oil, and earned as much $350 mn per year by extorting funds from the local population, a top US Treasury Department official has said.

ISIL’s sources of income include oil and gas sales, extortion and taxation, external donations, kidnapping-for- ransom, and previously, bank looting, Daniel Glaser, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing said.

“We estimate that in 2015, ISIL made approximately 1 billion dollars in total revenue, $500 million of which came from the sale of oil, primarily through populations under its control,” Glaser said, using the US’s preferred acronym for Islamic State.“We also estimate that ISIL may have earned as much $350 million per year, by extorting funds from the local population and in connection with the financial and commercial activity taking place in the territory it controls,” he said yesterday in written testimony for a House of Representatives committee hearing on security threats.

ISIL also gained considerable funds from seizing control of state-owned banks in northern and western Iraq in 2014 and early 2015, he told the lawmakers.

“These funds from the bank vaults were estimated to be at least half a billion dollars at the time of capture, making them an

important, albeit non-renewable, source of financing for ISIL in its earlier days,” Glaser said.

Other less significant sources of revenue include kidnapping-forransom (KFR).

primary source of revenue, he claimed.

“While difficult to quantify, the strikes have undoubtedly impeded ISIL’s ability to produce, sell, and profit from oil

“We estimated that ISIL earned between $20 and $45 million from KFR in 2014. However, we assess revenue from KFR declined substantially in 2015 and 2016 owing to the greatly reduced presence of potential Western hostages in or near the territories it controls,” he said.

The senior official said the ISIL clearly has vast financial resources, but the Obama administration has seen indications that America’s efforts to disrupt ISIL’s sources of revenue are bearing fruit.

Through airstrikes, the Coalition has directly targeted ISIL’s entire oil and natural gas supply chain: from oil fields, to refineries, to tanker trucks, targeting ISIL’s

as it had been doing,” he said.

Glaser also said that recent Coalition strikes have also reduced the levels of cash in ISILcontrolled territory.

US-led Coalition airstrikes have targeted ISIL’s cash storage sites, destroying tens of millions, and possibly more than 100 million dollars, and eliminated senior ISIL officials, including the group’s de facto finance minister.

For the first time since it proclaimed its caliphate in June 2014, the Islamic State has come under financial pressure following a sharp drop in oil production in territories it controls among other measures, a recent UN report had said.

Issue - 671 (10)

Mumbai based punjabi parents seek a suitable match for their son, born 81, 5’-11" tall, Engineering, settle in Brampton, doing business. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: sunitawasan@gmail.com or call: 647-621-1000 *** 674 *** 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 *** 673*** Brahmin parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 26 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall, Canadian Citizen, pretty, family oriented Vegetarian, university graduate. The boy should be Canadian/American, Immigrant/ Citizen, Vegetarian, Professionally qualified, employed from good family background. Boys on student visa for higher studies (university level) may also be considered.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: : bhupp1958@gmail.com Or Call : 905-956-2392 (or leave Message) ***671*** Jat Sikh family seek a suitable match for their daughter, 1985 born, 5'-5" tall, beautiful, intelligent, well-cultured, canadian immigrant, getting citizenship this year, B.Tech (india), pg project management (canada), working in admn.dept in canada. The boy should be equally qualified, Jat Sikh, wellsettled in canada. Brother and parents well settled in USA. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: dhillonintl@yahoo.com or call: 1718-414-4618 *** 671*** Well settled, landlord jatt sikh Bhullar family in india looking for a suitable match from canada for their 24 yrs. 5'-9" tall, handsome, only son, Studing business administration in canada. Please send your bio-data & recent pictures to: asbhullar33@gmail.com or call: 647-381 0541 or 905-497 5563 *** 671*** Jat Sikh parents seeking a suitable match for their daughter, born and raised in Canada, 29 yrs. old, 5’-7” tall, beautiful, family oriented, Master’s degree in Physiotherapy and professionally employed in Ontario. The boy should be well educated, professionally settled with family values. GTA prefered. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: sanjog60@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-204-881-7405 ***671** Punjabi (Malik) parents invite matrimonial alliance for their

14 June - 20 June 2016

daughter, 40 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall, slim, fair, beautiful, nevermarried before, M.A. B.Ed. degree holder, working as govt. teacher in Haryana (India), presently on visitor visa in Canada. Parents retired from govt. job and living in India. Uncle’s family is well settled in Canada. Caste no bar.

Please email recent picture and bio-data to: myresponse40@gmail.com Or Call : 416-887-7766 ***671** Jat Sikh Grewal parents seeking a suitable match for their son, 36 yrs. old, 6’-1” tall, Canadian Citizen, MBA degree holder, working with reputable bank. The girl should be educated, professionally employed and with family values. Please send you bio-data and recent picture to: grewal2016@yahoo.ca Or Call : 1-604-765-9214 ***671*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their beautiful daughter, 25 yrs. old, working as RN in Seattle (USA), Completed BSN in Nursing. The boy should be born in Canada/America, well educated, professional (Doctor/ Dentist), employed and with moderate family values. Please send you bio-data and recent picture to: madamk1940@gmail.com Or Call : 1-778-564-5300 ***671*** Saini Sikh family seek a suitable match for their son, 30 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, Canadian born, Diploma in Business Administration & human resources programme, working in his own field. The girl should be equally educated, Canadian born, beautiful, slim.

Please send you bio-data and recent picture to: gbsingh86@outlook.com Or Call : 416-904-7099 ***671*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their son, 31 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, Canadian born, working as a RN and Teacher.

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well versed in both cultures. The girl should be Canadian/ American, educated, beautiful with family values. Girl on student visa/work permit or from India may be considered. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: rskainth@rogers.com Or Call : 416-565-7965 ***671** Ramgarhia Sikh family seek a suitable match for their daughter, 27 yrs. old, 5’-1” tall, Master (M.C.A.), working as E.D.P. (Associate) in India, beautiful & family oriented. The boy should be educated, well settled, Canadian Immigrant or Citizen, family oriented. Please send you bio-data and recent picture to: taranmohie@gmail.com Or Call : 1-604-446-2571 Or : 011-9195929-03445 ***671*** Ramgarhia Sikh family seek a suitable match for their son, 27 yrs. old, 5’-7” tall, Canadian Citizen, B.Com (Canada), Working as a certified IT technician, owns construction business too. The girl should be Canadian/American Immigrant or Citizen, beautiful, family oriented, family is well settled in BC Canada, girls on student visa may also be considered. Please send you bio-data and recent picture to: harindersamby@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-604-537-7444 ***671*** Ramgarhia Sikh parents seeking a suitable match for their son, 28 yrs. old, 5’-9” tall, Canadian Immigrant, B.Tech in Electrical, professionally settled in his field, vegetarian. The girl should be educated, Canadian Immigrant/ Citizen. Girl on student visa and work permit may also be considered. Please Call : 416827-2892 ***671*** Jat Sikh Gill parents seek a suitable match for their Canadian born, 32 yrs. old daughter, 5’-2” tall, Bio-medical Engineer, working in her own field. The boy should be Jat Sikh, Canadian Citizen, Educated, professionally employed.

Call : 1-604-522-4470 ***671*** Ravidasia Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their son, 25 yrs.. old, 5’-7” tall, Canadian Immigrant, Diploma in Pharmacy.

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Please send your Bio-Data and recent picture to : gsingh7267@ gmail.com or call

: 1- 408 - 637 - 9319 ***671*** Handsome, intelligent and career oriented US Citizen, Clean shaven Saini Sikh boy living in Charleston, South Carolina, Working as IT professional in Top Aircraft firm of USA, Sep. 1984 born, 5 ‘- 8 “ tall, athletic built, BS in Information Systems from US, Currently pursuing MS from Harvard Etxn. The girl should be professionally qualified, vegan and family oriented. Caste no bar. Please send your Bio-Data and recent picture to : gsingh7267@ gmail.com or call: 1-408-637-9319 *** 671*** Jatt Sikh family seek a suitable match for their beautiful, slim, intelligent daughter, 28 yrs. old (Dec. 1987 born), 5’-5" tall, US Citizen, Currently pursuing Masters in Nursing. The boy should be well-educated, Jatt Sikh and currently residing in US or Canada. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to:gsranu@yahoo.com or call: 1559 301 7276 *** 671*** Parents seeking Jatt sikh professional boy for their daughter, 28 yrs. old, 5’-1" tall, with good family values, well versed in both cultures, born in Canada, just finished her Master’s in Public Health.

Please send your bio-data inclusive of a recent pivcture to: kirnsbirk@gmail.com or call: 416 648 6901 or 011-919815725235 (India) *** 671*** Tonk kshatriya Sikh family seek a professional, educated match for their beautiful, US citizen daughter, Born in 1987, 5'-2" Tall, BSN in nursing and currently employed. Boy must be American professionally educated. Please send your complete bio- data & recent picture to: Aransi87 @gmail.com or call: 1- 559-6816188 *** 671*** Jat sikh parents seeking a match for their slim, beautiful daughter, born and raised in India, presently a Canadian citizen, 35 yrs. old (never married), 5’-2" tall, Holding a Master’s degree (Computer Engineering) from Canadian university and professionally employed in Ontario, Canada.

The boy should be well educated, professionally settled in Canada/USA. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: jsingh_2014@hotmail.com or Call: 1-226-791-4566 *** 671*** Jat Sikh parents seeking a match for their daughter, born and raised

in Canada, 30 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, Master’s degree holder from a Candaian University, professionally employed, well versed in both cultures. The boy should be well educated, professionally settled between 28-34 yrs. of age, born or raised in Canada. Mainland area prefered. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: parmjit50@gmail.com Or Call : 1-604-317-7576 ***671*** Saini Sikh family seek a suitable match for their son, 25 yrs. old, 6’-2” tall, born and raised in Canada, University Graduate, working as Marketing Associate, clean shaven. The girl should be born or raised in Canada, well educated, family oriented, slim and tall. Lower main land area prefered. Caste no bar. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: rsingh301@outlook.com Or Call : 1-604-588-0069 ***671*** Jat Sikh Grewal parents seek a suitable match for their daughter, 28 yrs. old, 5’-2” tall, Canadian Citizen, working as Registered Nurse, beautiful and family oriented. The boy should be professionally educated, well settled, vegetarian, non-drinker with family values.

Please Call : 416-624-8279 Or : 905-861-9262 ***671*** Virdi Phull family seek a match for their son, 29 yrs. old, 5’-11” tall, Sardar, Mechanical Engineer, born and raised in Canada. Preference given to Canadian Citizen and willing to consider PR too. Phone or email please: Julyshaadi@gmail.com Or Call : 289-684-3919 ***671*** Seeking qualified match only from USA/Canada for Kashyap Rajput daughter from Nanimo BC, 5'-5" tall, well educated, degree holder, 29 yrs. old.

Traditionally raised with liberal values. The boy should be well educated, no Dastar, above 5’7". No students. Respond only if same caste to: preetymehra101@gmail.com ***671***.

Tonk Kshatriya family seek suitable match for their Son, 31 years old, slim, 5’11" tall, Canadian Citizen and working as Insurance Underwriter, well versed in both cultures. Born in India, been Canada for 9 years.

Girl should be professionally educated,slim, beautiful and family oriented. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: prabhjeet.s26@gmail.com or call 647-869-0626 or 631-8131000 *** 671***

House-Keeper Wanted White House Canada in Brampton, requires a Live-in housekeeper.

Hotel experience preferred but will train the suitable candidate.

Must be available to stand, walk and bend for extended periods of time. Duties include making beds, dusting, cleaning bathroom, vacuuming, replenishing supplies, cooking and elderly care (1 hr. daily approx) Pls. call 647-632-3999

Issue - 671 (11)

14 June - 20 June 2016

US, Iraqi officials can’t confirm report Islamic State leader Baghdadi injured BAGHDAD US and Iraqi officials fighting Islamic State said on Friday they could not confirm a report by an Iraqi TV channel that Islamic

headquarters close to the Syrian border.

The channel has good connections with Shi’ite politicians and Iraqi forces engaged in the battle

State leader Abu Bakr alBaghdadi had been wounded in an air strike in northern Iraq.A spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting the radical Islamist militants, Colonel Chris Garver, said in an email that he had seen the reports but had “nothing to confirm this at this time”.Kurdish and Arab security officials in northern Iraq said they also could not confirm the report.

Al Sumariya TV cited a local source in the northern province of Nineveh saying that Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders were wounded on Thursday in a coalition air strike on one of the group’s command

against Islamic State.

There have been several reports in the past that Baghdadi, whose real name is Ibrahim alSamarrai, was killed or wounded after proclaiming himself caliph of all Muslims two years ago.

The ultra-hardline Sunni group is under increased pressure in both Iraq and Syria, and the territory under its control has shrunk significantly since 2014, limiting the potential for its leaders to move around or seek shelter.

The US earlier this year announced an intensification of the war on Islamic State with more air strikes and more American

troops on the ground to advise and assist allied forces.

The US-led coalition has regularly flown raids out of Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, in operations aimed at killing and capturing Islamic State leaders.

A Kurdish intelligence official and an Arab from the Baaj area west of Mosul said the US-led coalition had conducted such a raid there earlier this week. The coalition did not confirm this raid.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces are positioned in an arc around the north and east of Mosul while the Iraqi army is trying to capture Falluja, the group’s stronghold near Baghdad.

The Iraqi army is also massing tanks and troops south of Mosul, in preparation for an offensive planned later this year to retake the largest city under the control of the militants.

In Syria, Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian government forces and US-backed Syrian opposition and Kurds are separately trying to advance on Raqqa, the group’s capital in Syria.

Japanese ‘naked restaurant’ to ban overweight, tattooed diners Tokyo Japan’s first “naked restaurant” opens in Tokyo next month with draconian rules of entry -- podgy prospective diners will be weighed and ejected if found to be too fat.

Following the lead of establishments in London and Melbourne, “The Amrita” -- Sanskrit for ‘immortality’ -- also has strict age restrictions, with only patrons between 18 and 60 allowed in, after they check in their clothes and put on paper underwear provided by the restaurant.

“If you are more than 15 kilos (33 pounds) above the average weight for your height, we ask you refrain from making a reservation,”

Erection Problem?

416-992-5489

a list of rules posted on the restaurant’s website states, explaining that patrons could be weighed if they do not appear to be within the correct weight range.

Guests found to be “overweight” will be refused entry to the restaurant,

Those who meet the restaurant’s entry requirements will be asked to lock away mobile phones and cameras in a table-top box.

The restaurant owners were not immediately available for comment when contacted by AFP.

which opens on July 29, and will not be entitled to a refund, its website points out. All payments must be made in advance on an online booking page.

The list of rules asks visitors not to “cause a nuisance to other guests” by touching or talking to fellow diners. Tattooed customers are barred from entry.

Guests will fork out up to 80,000 yen ($750) for tickets entitling them to eat food served by musclebound men wearing gstrings and watch a dance show featuring male models.

Meal tickets, not including a show, will cost from 14,000 to 28,000 yen depending on choice of menu.

Babri demolition, Godhra riots led Indian youths to al Qaeda: Delhi Police New Delhi Indians joining al Qaeda were moved by the 1992 Babri mosque demolition and 2002 Godhra riots, the Delhi Police told a local court on Sunday. The police named in its charge sheet 17 accused, 12 of whom are absconding, for allegedly conspiring, recruiting Indian youths and establishing a base of terror outfit al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) in Delhi. The accused were arrested between December 2015 and January 2016 from different parts of the country. The probe agency has alleged that al Qaeda was trying to set up its base in India under the banner of AQIS and some youths from districts of western Uttar Pradesh had already left India and joined its cadre in Pakistan.In its charge sheet, Special Cell of Delhi Police said for the purpose of jihad, some of them had gone to Pakistan and had met Jamat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, Lashkar-eTaiba (LeT) chief Zaki-urRehman Lakhvi and several other dreaded terrorists.“While delivering jihadi speeches in various

mosques, he (arrested accused Syed Anzar Shah) met Mohd Umar (one of the absconding accused) and they discussed atrocities on Muslims in India,

Uttar Pradesh in 2001.

These three Pakistani militants had come to India to take revenge of Babri Masjid demolition and had planned to attack Ram

especially Godhra and Babri Masjid issues.

“Umar got impressed with his jihadi ideology and speeches and committed himself to the cause of jihad and expressed the desire to receive arms/ ammunition training from Pakistan,” the charge sheet filed before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh said. It said that Umar was operating from Pakistan.Police said arrested accused Abdul Rehman had provided safe hideouts in India to Pakistani militants Salim, Mansoor and Sajjad, all members of Jaish-eMohammed, who were later killed in a shootout in

Mandir in Ayodhya but got killed, the charge sheet claimed. In its final report, the agency has charged five arrested accused -Mohd Asif, Zafar Masood, Mohd Abdul Rehman, Syed Anzar Shah and Abdul Sami -- for alleged offences under the provisions of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). All the 17 accused were listed in the charge sheet for alleged offences under sections 18 (punishment for conspiracy), 18-B (punishment for recruiting of any person for terror act) and 20 (punishment for being member of terror organisation) of the UAPA.

Issue - 671 (12)

14 June - 20 June 2016

IS blows up 3,000-year-old temple of Nabu in north Iraq in video, UN confirms Baghdad Islamic State insurgents have posted a video showing a 3,000year-old temple being blown up at the Assyrian city of Nimrud in

wisdom.

Nimrud was a 13th century BC Assyrian city, located 30 km south of the modern city of Mosul, which the hardline

northern Iraq, in their latest assault on some of the world’s greatest archaeological and cultural treasures.

The United Nations confirmed in a statement on Wednesday evening that satellite imagery showed “extensive damage to the main entrance” of the temple of Nabu, the Babylonian god of

Islamic State militants seized control of in June 2014.

The date of the Islamic State video was unclear and Reuters could not independently verify its authenticity.

It also showed scenes of bulldozers razing the ancient Gate of Nergal, part of the historic Nineveh city wall in

Mosul, which was reported earlier this year.

A bearded man in the video said that the destruction was meant to prevent Muslims from returning to idolatry. The group considers all pre-Islamic culture idolatrous, along with any religion outside its own radical interpretation of Sunni Islam.

As well as destroying Assyrian and Roman-era sites in northern Iraq, it blew up temples and other ancient buildings in the desert city of Palmyra in neighbouring Syria. It is also suspected of raising funds from selling artifacts.

The latest evidence of destruction comes as the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces are preparing an offensive to retake Mosul with support from the US-led coalition.

In the last two years archaeologists say Islamic State has inflicted incalculable damage to historic sites which they say form part of the world’s shared history.

Authorities have rounded up about 1,600 criminal suspects, including a few dozen believed to be Islamist radicals, in a nationwide crackdown aimed at halting a wave of brutal attacks on minorities and activists in Bangladesh, police said Saturday.

INCREASE IN ATTACKS ON MINORITIES The attacks - including two Hindus in the last week - have alarmed the international community and raised questions about whether Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s secular government can maintain security for minorities in the Sunni Muslim-majority country.

Police and paramilitary soldiers fanned out across the country Thursday night, raiding suspected militant hideouts and detaining about 1,600 people by Friday night, police said.

NO HIGH-LEVEL OPERATIVE ARRESTED The majority of those detained, however, are described as petty criminals. Only 37 of them are suspected to be radical Islamist militants, according to police spokesman Kamrul Islam. Those include three charged with alleged membership in the banned militant outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh.

None of those arrested is believed to be a high-level operator who might have organized or ordered attacks, police said. All the detainees are being held in jail.

Hasina’s government has faced criticism for failing to prosecute suspects for at least 18 killings carried out over the past two years. Victims include atheist bloggers, foreign aid workers, university professors, gay rights activists and religious minorities

including Hindus, Christians and Shiite Muslims.

PM SHEIKH HASINA LEADING THE DRIVE Hasina had announced the antimilitancy campaign after the wife of a police superintendent was shot and stabbed to death on

against Islamist militants, and her murder stunned the country’s establishment, many of whom considered the victim as one of their own.Speaking to Parliament on Wednesday, Hasina vowed to root out radicals bent on spreading terror and violence in

ISIS ‘kill list’ names 8,318 as assassination targets: Report

London A pro-ISIS hacker group has placed nearly 8,000 Americans on its longest “kill list” that also includes names of Canadians, Australians and Europeans, a British media report said today.

The pro-ISIS United Cyber Caliphate hacker group released a list of 8,318 people, including their addresses and email contact details, on a secretive messaging app service.

It urged its supporters to “follow” those listed and “kill them strongly to take revenge for Muslims”, Daily Mirror reported.

It is one of the longest kill lists any ISIS-affiliated group has

Bangladesh detains 1,600 in drive against Islamist radicals

June 5 as she was waiting with her son at a bus stop. The victim had been an ardent campaigner

a bid to restore the country to Islamic rule.“If they think they could turn Bangladesh upside

down, they are wrong,” she said.

“They will be exposed to justice in the soil of Bangladesh and their patrons will also not be spared.”

The attacks have followed a pattern: A group of young men wielding knives or machetes approach their victim as his or her guard is down, perhaps while strolling down the street or relaxing at home. The attackers spew hateful language, then hack and stab at the victim before disappearing, often without a trace. Many victims are killed with a machete blow to the back of the neck.Authorities have arrested some suspects in some of the 18 attacks, mostly lowlevel operatives accused of following orders to carry out attacks, but none has been prosecuted. Police have said they are waiting until investigations are complete before taking any suspects to court.

Hindu ashram worker hacked to death in Bangladesh Unknown assailants have allegedly killed an inmate of a Hindu ashram in Pabna district in Bangladesh.

62-year-old Nityaranjan Pandey, an inmate of the Thakur Anukul Chandra Sevashram was hacked to death, just outside the main gate of the ashram today morning.

Pandey has been working at the ashram as a volunteer for the past 40 years.

PAST INCIDENTS Last week, a Hindu priest was also hacked to death in Jhenaidah district by armed assailants in a similar modus-operandi. Ananta Gopal Ganguly (65), too was attacked early in the moring by three unidentified men who came on a motorcycle and slit Ganguly’s throat while he was on his way to the temple.

In the recent times, Bangladesh has witnessed a series of

month a Christian businessman was hacked to death by

grusome murders, specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and even some foreigners. Earlier this

unidentified men near a church.

Similarly in April, a Hindu tailor was also hacked to death in his shop in Tangail district.

distributed to date and reportedly includes the names of 7,848 Americans, 312 Canadians, 39 Britons and 69 Australians.

The rest of the targets listed are reported to be from a variety of nations including Belgium, Brazil, China, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, South Korea and Sweden.They are mostly military or government workers or people in the public eye, like royalty or celebrities.The list, written in both English and Arabic, was uncovered by the media group Vocativ, which specialises in investigating the hidden side of the web.It discovered it on a messaging app service called Telegram earlier this week.Vocativ has refused to share further details of those named on the list.According to a report by US intelligence firm Flashpoint, the United Cyber Caliphate was formed in April 2015 after a merger of several radical Islamic hacking groups.

Al Qaeda leader pledges allegiance to new Taliban leader Cairo Al Qaeda leader Ayman alZawahri, in an online audio message, pledged allegiance to the new head of the Afghan Taliban, who was appointed last month after his predecessor was killed in a US drone strike.

The veteran Islamist militant became al Qaeda’s leader after US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, and he is thought to be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, having been based there since the late 1990s.“As leader of the al Qaeda organization for jihad, I extend my pledge of allegiance once again, the approach of Osama to invite the Muslim nation to support the Islamic Emirate,” al-Zawahri said in a 14 minute recording.During its years in power, from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and it has been fighting an insurgency since to regain control of the country.The authenticity of the recording could not be immediately verified.Haibatullah Akhundzada, Islamic legal scholar who was one of former leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s deputies, was appointed a few days after Mansour was killed by a US drone attack in a remote border area just inside Pakistan.

Issue - 671 (13)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Pioneering solar pilots ‘make sci-fi a reality’ NEW YORK The Swiss pilot readying to cross the Atlantic in a solar-powered plane on the next leg of a recordbreaking, round-the-world mission says he is making science fiction reality.

Bertrand Piccard, a psychiatrist and balloonist, will next command Solar Impulse 2 when meteorologists determine the

best five-to-six day window for the ocean crossing from New York to either Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal or Morocco, depending on the wind and the weather.

“It gives the sensation of being in a science fiction story because you look at the sun and you understand that it’s your only source of power,” the explorer and father of three told AFP in New York.

“You see left and right, your four props turning with electrical motors, with no noise and it’s a vision of future,” he added in an interview at John F.Kennedy International Airport. Piccard, and Swiss entrepreneur and engineer Andre Borschberg, are two thirds of the way through circumnavigating the Earth in a bid to inspire a future powered by renewable energy technologies. Their single-seater plane, which they take it in turns to fly, weighs the same as a car

but has the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

They take off at night with a fullycharged battery and climb to 28,000 feet (9,000 meters) in the day before descending to 5,0006,000 feet, then catching the next sunrise, going up and down in waves.

The journey began on March 9, 2015 from Abu Dhabi, flying

across Asia, the Pacific and the United States.They must now cross the Atlantic, fly through Europe and return to the Middle East.Each pilot lives off special soups and meals designed to withstand extreme temperature changes and catnaps for 20 minutes at a time on a seat that extends into a business-class style flat bed.There is even time for Borschberg to practice yoga - sitting postures only he concedes - while Piccard does self-hypnosis to help recharge his batteries or sleep more efficiently.They need to call on great physical strength.When turbulence disconnects the auto pilot, Piccard and Borschberg must use their feet and upper body to deflect the yoke and the rudder as the plane swerves from left to right.“Sometimes it’s rock and roll,” smiled Piccard.

But he is never scared.He has been well trained and the worst that could happen, he says,

would be to bail out, but only as an unthinkable last-resort. “It would be really sad to lose the plane,” he said.

“We know it’s a prototype, it’s experimental so we have to be really careful with it.”Borschberg, who broke the world record for the longest continuous aviation journey on the 118-hour leg from Japan to Hawaii, said a positive mindset was vital.But that journey was fraught with problems and months of maintenance work followed.The task ahead is monumental.

The unstable situation in the Middle East throws up yet more challenges. Both pilots consider themselves superstitious and say they are focusing all their energies on making it back to Abu Dhabi.But they also see themselves as modern-day versions of the Wright brothers, the American aviation pioneers working 100 years ago.Their plane goes at the same speed as Wrights’ first plane, is also a single seater and also flies only in good weather, Piccard noted.

“You have to start somewhere,” agreed Borschberg, dismissing the impracticalities that make it impossible to replicate Solar Impulse 2 for commercial flight.“I’ll make a bet with you that in 10 years’ time you have airplanes for short haul flights with 50 passengers flying electric,” said Piccard.They could leave urban airports at night, he points out. No noise and no pollution would allow airports and airlines to double capacity by working overnight, he believes.“The aviation industry were all laughing when I started and now they are all working on electric airplanes,” said Piccard.“If you’re unsatisfied and do nothing you get depressed.

If you’re unsatisfied and you do something, you become a pioneer.

Musk explains his ‘cargo route’ to Mars

WASHINGTON SpaceX chief Elon Musk shed light Saturday on his new plan to send an unmanned spaceship to Mars as early as 2018, as part of his quest to some day colonize the Red Planet.Musk, the Internet entrepreneur who cofounded of PayPal and currently also runs Tesla Motors, earlier this year announced on Twitter that he was “Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018.” But there was little in the way of details at the time.He appeared to be referring to an upgraded version of the California-based company’s Dragon cargo capsule, which is currently used as an unmanned spacecraft to shuttle food and supplies to and from the International Space Station.In a new exclusive this week with The Washington Post, the entrepeneur drew parallels between people crossing the oceans in centuries past to unknown worlds.The monthslong journey is sure to be “hard, risky, dangerous, difficult,” Musk told the Post, but he was confident people would sign up to go because “just as with the establishment of the English colonies, there are people who love that.They want to be the pioneers.”Before that can happen, however, unmanned travel and a supply chain must be developed successfully.

“Essentially what we’re saying

is we’re establishing a cargo route to Mars,” he said.

“It’s a regular cargo route.You can count on it.It’s going to happen every 26 months.Like a train leaving the station.And if scientists around the world know that they can count on that, and it’s going to be inexpensive, relatively speaking compared to anything in the past, then they will plan accordingly and come up with a lot of great experiments.”The mission is private and not funded by the US government or NASA, which has previously said it would provide “technical support” for the 2018 mission.NASA also is studying the effects of longterm space flight on the human body and has announced its own separate plans to send people to Mars by the 2030s.

It remains unclear how people would survive the long journey of a year or more, needing adequate food and water and protection from space radiation during the trip. Musk has previously spoken of his vision of creating a colony of a million earthlings on Mars, in order to make humanity “multi-planetary” and avoid the risk of extinction on Earth.His most recent feats include managing to return the first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets to an upright landing on water and on solid ground, as part of his effort to make rockets that are as reusable as airplanes.

Lasers uncover hidden secrets of Cambodia’s ancient cities

PHNOM PENH Unprecedented new details of medieval cities hidden under jungle in Cambodia near Angkor Wat have been revealed using lasers, archaeologists said Sunday, shedding new light on the civilisation behind the world’s largest religious complex.While the research has been going on for several years, the new findings uncover the sheer scale of the Khmer Empire’s urban sprawl and temple complexes to be significantly bigger than was

previously thought.The research, drawing on airborne laser scanning technology known as lidar, will be unveiled in full at the Royal Geographic Society in London on Monday by Australian archaeologist Damian Evans.“We always imagined that their great cities surrounded the monuments in antiquity,” Evans told AFP. “But now we can see them with incredible precision and detail, in some places for the very first time, but in most places where

we already had a vague idea that cities must be there,” he added.

Angkor Wat, a UNESCO World Heritage site seen as among the most important in southeast Asia, is considered one of the ancient wonders of the world.

It was constructed from the early to mid 1100s by King Suryavarman II at the height of the Khmer Empire’s political and military power and was among the largest pre-industrial cities in the world.

But scholars had long believed there was far more to the empire than just the Angkor complex.The huge tranch of new data builds on scans that were made in 2012 that confirmed the existence of Mahendraparvata, an ancient temple city near Angkor Wat.But it was only when the results of a larger survey in 2015 were analysed that the sheer scale of the new settlements became apparent.

To create the maps, archaeologists mounted a special laser on the underneath of a helicopter which scans the

area and is able to see through obstructions like trees and vegetation.

Much of the cities surrounding the famed stone temples of the Khmer Empire, Evans explained, were made of wood and thatch which has long rotted away.

“The lidar quite suddenly revealed an entire cityscape there with astonishing complexity,” he said.“It turned out we’d been walking and flying right over the top of this stuff for ten years and not even noticing it because of the vegetation.”Among the new scans already published are a detailed map of a huge city complex surrounding the stone temple known as Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, a series of iron smelting sites dating back to the Angkor era and new information on the complex system of waterways that kept the region running.The new data also maps out the full extent of Mahendraparvata, information that will make future digs much more accurate and less time consuming.“What we had was

basically a scatter of disconnected points on the map denoting temple sites.Now it’s like having a detailed street map of the entire city,” Evans said.Further maps will be published in the coming months, he added.Long Kosal, a spokesman for the Apsara authority, the government body that manages the Angkor complex, said the lidar had uncovered “a lot of information from the past.” “It shows the size and information about people living at those sites in the past,” he told AFP, adding further research was now needed to capitalise on the finds.

Issue - 671 (14)

14 June - 20 June 2016

American climber Vanessa to start scaling K2 today Drone forces hour-long ISLAMABAD American female mountaineer Vanessa O’Brien will embark on climbing down Pakistan’s largest and world second largest mountain K2 today (Tuesday). Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Vanessa said: “I am here to strengthen friendly ties with Pakistan and also want to create history by becoming the first ever American female to scale down K2.

Vanessa is a distinguished British-American mountain climber and will attempt this summer to summit K2 in Northern Pakistan, which is home to the highest concentration of glaciers outside of the Arctic Circle as well as five of the 14 tallest peaks worldwide. O’Brien is a fellow of Royal Geographical Society and a member of The Explorers Club.

Vanessa is an accomplished explorer, public speaker and former business executive who

utilises sports diplomacy as a mean to transcend cultural differences and bring people together. K2 is the second highest mountain in the world, only 784 feet lower than Everest,

at 28,251 feet (8,611m), O’Brien achieved Guinness World Record in 2015 for being the fastest woman to climb the seven summits, the highest peak on every continent in the shortest period of time (295 days). Vanessa will be carrying the UN women’s flag

4,000 more flee IS-held city of Fallujah in Iraq: Aid group

Baghdad An aid group says 4,000 more people have fled the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah in Iraq after government forces retook

a key road to the IS stronghold over the weekend. The Norwegian Refugee Council, which works with refugees and internally displaced Iraqis, said on Monday that this brings the total number of residents who have fled Fallujah since the Iraqi offensive to retake the city started in late May to 27,580.

to signal gender equality and women’s empowerment. “Physical activity helps to build self-confidence, individual empowerment and promotes good health,” O’Brien said and

added: “It also teaches the principles of teamwork which aid in the process of conflict transformation and peace building.” Alongside women’s equality, Pakistan is close to O’Brien’s heart.

“As-salamu alaykum,” was the opening of her speech, when I was in London in the Women Achievers Congress. “I asked myself how I, as a climber, could repay the love and respect I received in Pakistan last year.

What stood out to me the most were the misconceptions about Pakistan, its people, the country and its culture. It was then that I realized attempting to become the first American and British woman to climb K2 would give me a platform to help break down those misconcep-

Terrorism must be eradicated by collective Accra Terrorism is a scourge which knows no borders and must be eradicated through the collective efforts of the civilised world, President Pranab Mukherjee said here as he expressed solidarity with Ghana which is confronting this challenge.In his address at the banquet hosted by Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama on Sunday, Mukherjee, who arrived here on a two-day visit, said India has been a victim of terrorism for three decades and shares Ghana’s concern that it has become a global menace.“It is a scourge and knows no borders; it has no ideology except the ideology of wanton destruction. It must be eradicated through the collective efforts of the civilised world. India is in solidarity with you as you confront this challenge,” he said.While Mahama quoted Mahatma Gandhi

and recalled the bond shared between Ghana’s first President Kwame Nkrumah and India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, both founding fathers of Non-Aligned Movement, Mukherjee quoted a poem of Rabindranath Tagore titled ‘Africa’ in his address.

“Today the world order demands global governance structures that are consistent with the new challenges that confront the global community. It is a serious anomaly that India, home to every sixth citizen of the world and Africa, a vibrant hub of the global economy, still

remain out of UN Security Council,” Mukherjee said.

On increasing investments

by Indian companies in Ghana, the President said Indian business groups understand the potential and would be happy to invest if the right opportunities are given to them. “The people of India fondly remember Dr Kwame Nkrumah, a great son of Ghana and a visionary leader of panAfricanism. He embodied Africa’s dignity, and inspired the peoples and the governments of African countries to claim their rightful place in global affairs,” he said.

tions.” Vanessa plans to carry American, British and Pakistani flags to the top of the world as a sign of solidarity, integration, friendship and respect for one another, as she sees it, this is nothing more than a continuation of the strong and enduring relationship that Pakistan, the UK and the US share. “My climbing experience has taught me respect and appreciation for the resilient communities of Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan. I am committed to raising awareness of the rich historical, ecological and cultural heritage of the region with the American public.”

“Vanessa O’Brien is to be commended for her climbing achievements as well as her efforts to highlight those who call this extraordinarily beautiful region home,” APF Board of Directors chairman Riaz Siddiqi said. “The APF supports Vanessa’s effort to achieve new heights while strengthening ties between the United States and Pakistan. ”The plans are underway for the APF to organise a multi-city tour celebrating Vanessa O’Brien’s success in the fall.

closure of Dubai airport

DUBAI A rogue drone disrupted air traffic at Dubai International Airport for more than an hour on Saturday, said the operator of one of the world’s busiest aviation hubs.

“DXB airspace was closed due to unauthorised UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) activity for 69 minutes resulting in a number of diversions,” Dubai Airports said in a statement on its Twitter account, using its code. “Airspace reopened at 12:45 (0845 GMT)” on Saturday, it added.As a result, some flights were delayed for four hours and four flights were diverted, the 7Days newspaper reported. It was the second such incident in 18 months, according to media reports in the United Arab Emirates.

The use of drones is

banned within the boundary of the airport, with those found guilty of flying the pilotless aircraft there facing heavy fines.Situated on transcontinental air routes, Dubai is one of several Gulf-based airports to experience prodigious growth in recent years.

Around 100 airlines fly to more than 240 destinations from the hub, which is also home to carrier Emirates.

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14 June - 20 June 2016

The Conjuring 2 Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Frances O’Connor, Simon McBurney, Franka Potente Direction: James Wan Ratings: 4 Stars Rarely are sequels better than their predecessors.

When it comes to horror films, that is even rarer. But James Wan and his gang have delivered a really wellmade The Conjuring 2 that is consistently engaging,

laughs from the audience.

In another scene, one of the ghosts actually cracks a Knock Knock joke, before admitting, on camera, that his sole purpose of haunting the family is to hear them scream; nothing more, nothing less. Later, when the same ghost, in the body of a young girl is asked to clarify his reasons for being, he is too shy to speak with everyone looking at him, so he re-

definitely better than the first part, and this time, things are not just scary, but at times, funny as well.

That’s right. Of the many good things about The Conjuring 2, one is its sense of humour. In a very early scene in the movie, two girls (one of who is later haunted) are caught smoking a cigarette by their teacher who shoos them away, only to smoke it secretly, drawing huge

quests everyone to look away while he presents his case.

This time, paranormal experts Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively) travel to London to investigate poltergeist activity in the Hodgson household.

The change of scenery from a farmhouse in the middle of a sparse, isolated landscape in the first movie to a house in a

densely populated London borough is refreshing.

Consequently, there is a lot of media attention on the haunting as it becomes a more public affair, and all the noise and gossip surrounding the event adds a semblance of reality to the proceedings. In other words, you feel more invested. But the most interesting thing about The Conjuring 2 is that there are two ghosts haunting the characters this time.

One, the aforementioned ghost, is the spirit of an old, cranky man who refuses to leave the haunted house and shows up at inopportune moments behind children, shouting, “This is my house”, and scaring them.

He is more or less a troll in the scheme of things.

The other is a more sinister, cruel and crafty “inhuman” presence who looks like Marilyn Manson in nun’s clothes, with terrible dental hygiene. You wouldn’t want to mess with that.

There’s another character in the movie, tall and dressed in a pink suit and bowl hat, who shows up twice to scare the kids, and disappears without a trace; it’s not clear whether this

is a separate character.

Wan uses a lot of devices to drive home the point that yes, you are in “fish, chips, cup ‘o tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary f**king Poppins...London! “. The introduction to the London business begins with a montage of documentarylike clips featuring footage of the Sex Pistols, 1978 trade union riots, and of course, the Queen - all set to London Calling by The Clash.

The movie is peppered with 60s pop hits (I Started A Joke by Bee Gees, Bus Stop by The Hollies) and includes a beautiful montage that has Ed Warren playing Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling In Love With You on the guitar, to help the scared family relax, and this sequence is inter-cut with the Warrens’ colleagues investigating throughout the house.

The biggest asset of The Conjuring 2 is that it respects the craft of and displays quality writing, thanks to the tried-andtested horror film writing team of Wan and the Hayes brothers, who worked together on the first movie, along with screenwriter David Leslie Jones (writer of Orphan and The Walking Dead).

Contemporary mainstream Hollywood horror movies, such as they are, resort to

Do Lafzon Ki Kahani Cast: Randeep Hooda, Kajal Aggarwal, Mamik Singh, Yuri Suri Direction: Deepak Tijori Ratings: 2 Stars A heavily bruised and battered Randeep Hooda makes his way out of a dockyard. He mumbles something about something being safe on the phone. The call later, he is knocked over by a car. Do Lafzon Ki Kahani begins with a bang and the story moves to six months before this incident.

Sooraj (Hooda) is a man of few words. He does odd jobs in Kuala Lumpur to make ends meet. When an old night guard retires, Sooraj takes his place.

He’s in the middle of a particularly interesting fight on TV when a girl ambles in and starts chattering away.

Sooraj soon realises she

has mistaken him for ‘Osman Uncle’ and clears the confusion. Jenny (Kajal Aggarwal) is blind and a crappy Hindi soap Main Bindiya Teri Mathey Ki is to her is what oxygen is to normal human beings.

Soon, Sooraj and Jenny strike up a conversation and the inevitable happens.

There’s a history to Sooraj’s taciturnity. Sooraj, an MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighter, exited the ring three years ago. He now wants to get back to fighting to have a shot at a future with Jenny. But life is not a bed of roses.

Director Deepak Tijori and writer Girish Dhamija have tried to put together a tale of love, loss and redemption in Do Lafzon Ki Kahani. The product, however, is a half-baked story with half-decent performances by the lead actors.

It is largely because of the acting of the actors, Randeep Hooda more than Kajal Aggarwal, that you want to sit through this yawnfest of a film.

Randeep Hooda tries to step into the shoes of the grumpy Sooraj, but there is hardly anything even his acting can do after a point.

Hooda looks fabulous in his MMA fight and training sequences. He tries romancing Jenny awkwardly, and for a while, this unlikely couple keeps you hooked. However, soon the cracks in the film begin showing. Kajal Aggarwal is believable in the first few minutes. The affable Jenny soon turns into something else altogether, behaving like a human hosepipe for the entire second half of the film.

Deepak Tijori gives his Do Lafzon Ki Kahani the

tagline ‘Love never hurts...

It heals’, and it’s more than befitting. If it reminds you of a run-of-the-mill love story of the 90s, perfect.

That is exactly what this film is. Do Lafzon Ki Kahani makes use of every believable and unbelievable cliche in the history of bad love stories. From the brooding hero’s mysterious past to the unnecessarily chirpy and talkative heroine, from the goons to loss of love: you name it, you get it.

Mohana Krishna does a good enough job with the camera. The beautiful locales of Kuala Lumpur are pleasing to the eyes. The slickly choreographed MMA sequences deserve much praise.

Among the numerous songs in the film, Jeena Marna is a hummable track.

same old ‘gotcha’ scares and gimmicky CGI. Thankfully, The Conjuring 2 uses ‘gotcha’ scares in new, exciting ways (watch out for a scene in a flooded basement). Wan and cinematographer Don Burgess (Cast Away, The Polar Express), to their credit, reinvent ways to shoot and present standard horror movie scenes in a new way. At times, the camera floats over the characters, zoom in suddenly from a

distance and then drift away, creating an immersive feel, similar to sections from David Fincher’s Panic Room and Emmanuel Lubezki’s work.

From the perspective of craft, The Conjuring 2 is a good, well-written-and-directed, classic entertainer.

If you are looking for cheap thrills, you might want to skip this. But if you are in for a good movie-watching experience and wouldn’t mind a few chills, go for it.

Issue 671 (16)

14 June - 20 June 2016

I’m really fascinated with Audrey Hepburn says Ileana D’Cruz

Madhuri Dixit wants no reference to her in Sanjay Dutt biopic

I really don’t know.

When I went through the narration of ‘Rustom’, I didn’t know anything about the film.

I had no idea what to expect. I just walked in for the narration and it turned out to be set in the 1950s.

Actress Ileana D’Cruz, who will be seen donning a vintage look for the upcoming film ‘Rustom’, says she is fascinated with British star and icon Audrey Hepburn.

Asked who would she like to play from the previous era, Ileana told IANS: “I think more than anything, it would be so cool to do something Audrey Hepburn-ish or Grace Kelly. I am really fascinated with Audrey Hepburn. I think she was absolutely beautiful.” This will be the second time that Ileana will be sporting a vintage look. She had flaunted the look in the 2012 film “Barfi!”. What attracts her towards such looks?

“I really don’t know. When I went through the narration of ‘Rustom’, I didn’t know anything about the film. I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know about the genre of the film, or whatever it is about. I just walked in for the narration and it turned out to be set in the 1950s,” Ileana said.

The ‘Main Tera Hero’ star added that she “looked at a lot of actresses mainly for the look and feel for the film, and not for any other inspiration”.

Shraddha Kapoor to sing all her songs in ‘Rock On 2’

Shraddha Kapoor will be seen singing all her songs for her upcoming film Rock On 2. A source says, “Shraddha has agreed to

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sing all her songs in Rock On 2. However she was not too keen to lend her voice for herself on screen.

She likes singing ,as music runs in her family but she was skeptical of singing all songs. She was fine with singing a one or two numbers. But her co-star and one of the makers of the film Farhan Akhtar convinced her and told her that it would be necessary for her to sing as it will look real and authentic and she agreed.”

Late last year, it was reported that Rajkumar Hirani, who is directing Sanjay Dutt’s biopic, would axe all references to the actor’s alleged relationship with Madhuri Dixit. Now, we hear that the actress called up Sanjay recently to be sure that there is no mention of her in the film.

Says a source, “It has been a long time since Madhuri and Sanjay broke up and she, obviously, doesn’t want to revisit those times. So, she called him up to check that the bit about their relationship does not feature in the project.

Sanjay assured her that the makers have removed that portion already.”

The two starred in several

hit films such as Khalnayak (1993), Saajan (1991) and Sahibaan (1993) among many others. They were rumoured to be in a steady relationship until the actor was arrested and imprisoned for illegal possession of arms in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case. That was apparently when they decided to part ways.

Ranbir Kapoor has been signed to essay Sanjay’s role in the biopic and reportedly, the hunt for the two leading ladies, who will play the actor’s first wife, late actress Richa Sharma, and present wife Maanayata, is on. Sanjay and Madhuri remained unavailable for comment.

Amid ‘Udta Punjab’ row, CBFC clears Punjabi film on drugs issue In the wake of the ongoing controversy over certification of Bollywood film “Udta Punjab”, based on the menace of drugs in Punjab, the censor board has cleared Punjabi filmmaker Baljeet Singh’s upcoming film “Dhee Punjab Di” with a ‘U’ certificate. It examines the impact of female foeticide and Punjab drug epidemic. The makers of “Udta Punjab” have been at loggerheads with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) after it reportedly suggested 89 cuts to the film. Since then, many known celebrities from the entertainment industry have come out in strong support of the film while demanding the removal of CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani. Baljeet, who has

written, produced and directed “Dhee Punjab Di”, slated to release on August 19, says his film is

deserves a ‘U’ certificate as drugs is a pan-India issue today and it’s not just restricted to Punjab’.

not anti-Punjab community.

“CBFC has cleared my film with a ‘U’ certificate.

When I took my film to them for certification, they just asked me to cut one particular scene where a young boy snorts drug,” Baljeet told IANS. “They said that ‘Your film

These things are also happening in states like Haryana, Rajasthan and Maharashtra,” Baljeet said. “They said it won’t look good if a kid will see how a character in the film is snorting drugs. So I chopped that scene myself,” he added.

However, Baljeet feels an

“anti-Punjabi culture” film like “Udta Punjab” shouldn’t get any release date with specified cuts by the censor board as it shows the state in “negative limelight”.

“The bad language that Shahid Kapoor has used in the film, I can’t believe how the writer could have written them. Not only in Punjab, but this type of language is against our Indian culture,” Baljeet said.

“Nobody is speaking against ‘Udta Punjab’ from the industry because it is being backed by big production banners (Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji Motion Pictures and Anurag Kashyap’s Phantom Films). Everybody is scared that Ekta Kapoor will ruin their career if they will speak against her,” he added.

Issue 671 (17)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Brie Larson to star in Captain Marvel?

Oscar-winning actor Brie Larson is reportedly in “early talks” to play Captain Marvel, one of Marvel’s most popular female superheroes, in an upcoming standalone film.

It is unknown where negotiations stand, but sources claim that Larson is Marvel’s first choice, and that she is

Mel Gibson to make sequel to Passion of the Christ

The Passion of the Christ 2 is in the works as director Mel Gibson and writer Randall Wallace are teaming up for a follow-up to the 2004 Biblical blockbuster.

The new film will tell the story of the resurrection of Jesus.

Randall confirmed rumours that he has begun to write a script for the sequel as the project is becoming too difficult to keep under wraps. Gibson and him began to get serious about a sequel to The

Passion, while they’re working on Hacksaw Ridge, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Randall, who was a religion major at Duke University, says the resurrection was a specialty of his. “I always wanted to tell this story. The Passion is the beginning and there’s a lot more story to tell.” According to Randall, the demand in the Christian community influenced Gibson’s and his willingness to do another film.

leaning toward playing the role, reported variety.com.

No director is currently on board. Marvel, however, had always planned to have an actor lined up early, with the idea of possibly introducing her in one of its upcoming films before the Captain Marvel movie.

Writers Meg LeFauve and Nicole Perlman are currently penning the script, which follows Carol Danvers, an airforce pilot whose DNA is fused with that of an alien during an accident. The resulting alteration imbues her with the super powers of strength, energy project and flight. Kevin Feige is producing the film.

‘Game of Thrones’ actress Sahara Knite has double life working as adult film star

‘Game of Thrones’ actress Sahara Knite has described herself as an escort and pornstar. Knite, who was seen draping her curves over actor Jerome Flynn in the series is no stranger to nude scenes, reports mirror.co.uk. Her real name is Saeeda Vorajee and she is of Indian origin. She starred in the first two series of “Game of Thrones” as

Caitlyn Jenner planning surrogate child?

Reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner is reportedly planning to have a child through a surrogate. The ‘I Am Cait’ star is already a father to six children --

Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner, Brody Jenner, Casey Jenner, Brandon Jenner and Burt Jenner.

Caitlyn was thinking about adopting a baby last winter

but she has reportedly decided that surrogacy is the way to go, radaronline.com reports.

“Caitlyn wants another child desperately. She

Christina Grimmie, The Voice star, shot dead at 22 American singer Christina Grimmie, who participated in the sixth season of reality TV show The Voice, died after being shot in the head at a concert venue in Orlando. She was 22years-old. Orlando police department officials said during a news conference that Grimmie was shot at about 10.45 pm on Friday at The Plaza Live, where she had performed earlier, reported a website. The gunman reportedly shot at her and then killed himself after being tackled by the

singer- songwriter’s brother. Grimmie was taken to the hospital in critical condition and later died, said the police.

Police said the suspect “walked up and shot” Grimmie after the performance, while she was signing autographs. The unidentified suspect had two guns, but no motive has been established yet. An investigation is ongoing. Grimmie, who was from New Jersey, finished third during season six of The Voice in 2014. She had Adam Levine as her coach.

Armeca and indulged in a lesbian sex scene.

Armeca is a prostitute working in a brothel in King’s Landing owned by Lord Petyr Baelish. She describes herself as “an Indian independent escort and elite courtesan based in Kent and London” on her official site. Her website offers a range of services, which are too explicit to list.

doesn’t want to completely freak out the whole family, but her own children are totally behind the idea.

She has her heart set on another child because she wants to be as actively involved in the pregnancy as possible from day one,” a source said. “She is suffering from the empty nest syndrome and she really wants to experience parenting from a mother’s perspective,” the insider added.

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14 June - 20 June 2016

Boys can now wear skirts as UK schools introduce gender neutral uniform policy As many as 80 schools in the UK have introduced "gender neutral" uniforms, allowing boys to wear skirts and girls to wear trousers if they prefer, as part of Britain's new governmentfunded drive for educational institutions to be more sensitive to "trans" children.

The schools have either dropped references to girls and boys in their dress codes or have rewritten their uniform policy to say that pupils as young as five can dress in the uniform in which they feel most comfortable.

SCHOOLS MORE SENSITIVE TO "TRANS" CHILDREN It is part of a new UK government-funded drive for schools to be more sensitive to "trans" children who are questioning their gender identity. Around 80 state-run schools have introduced the "gender neutral" uniform policies.

Diversity campaigners

have warned schools that current policies risk discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pupils (LGBT).

SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES THAT ALLOW GENDER NEUTRAL DRESSES Brighton College, a leading independent school, announced a transgenderfriendly uniform code earlier this year. Some Christian organisations in the country have raised concerns that introducing a choice of uniform could confuse young children and lead older pupils to

question their identities at a time when they need reassurance.

Allens Croft School in Birmingham is believed to be the first state primary to declare that it has a "gender neutral" uniform.

Under the rules, which are the same for both sexes, boys can wear a grey or black skirt or pinafore while girls can wear grey or black trousers.

"At Allens Croft, we aim to promote each child's right to express their gender and personality in whichever way feels right for them.

‘China’s nuclear arsenal is becoming bigger, more modern’ The number of nuclear weapons in the world is declining but China is increasing and modernising its arsenal, a new report by a Stockholm-based military think-tank said on Monday. The report estimates the number of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to be between 100 and 130.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its annual nuclear forces data that at the start of 2016, nine nuclear countries possessed approximately 4,120 operationally deployed nuclear weapons.

“The data shows that while the overall number of nuclear weapons in the world continues to decline, none of the nuclear weapon- possessing states are prepared to give up their nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future,” SIPRI said.

The report said the world’s nine nuclear-weapon states United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea together possess

“North Korea is estimated to have enough fissile material for approximately 10 nuclear warheads.

However, it is unclear whether North Korea has produced or deployed op-

approximately 15,395 nuclear weapons compared with 15,850 in early 2015.

India, SIPRI said, has between 100 and 120 nuclear weapons. “China appears to be gradually increasing its nuclear forces as it modernises the arsenal.

India and Pakistan are both expanding their nuclear weapon stockpiles and missile delivery capabilities,” the report said.

erational weapons.”

Shannon Kile of the SPRI said, “Despite the ongoing reduction in the number of weapons, the prospects for genuine progress towards nuclear disarmament remain gloomy. All the nuclear weapon- possessing states continue to prioritise nuclear deterrence as the cornerstone of their national security strategies.”

Issue 671 (19)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Son dies in father's hands, as he did not pay a bribe When Ganapathy took his 18year-old son Rajendra Prasad to the Government Hospital in Madurai, he was expecting to return home with his son hale and hearty. However, a few hours later, he was left clutching his son's dead body. All because he refused to bribe the hospital staff.

WHAT HAPPENED On May 2, Ganapathy's son Rajendra had a fit of convulsions and complained of difficulty in breathing. Ganapathy rushed him to the Government Hospital which handles 26.8 lakh patients in a year.

At the hospital, Rajendra was moved to the casualty ward around 10am where he received first-aid. After that Ganapathy and Rajendra had to wait for nearly 20 minutes to get his admission receipt to the emergency ward. That's where Ganapathy's ordeal began.

Soon after Ganapathy got his son's admission receipt, a worker demanded Rs 300 to push Rajendra's stretcher into the emergency ward.

Ganapathy refused to pay the amount thinking it would amount to a bribe. At that, the worker left the stretcher there and walked away with Rajendra's admission slip.

Not knowing what to do, Ganapathy moved his son to a bed closeby. A few minutes later, his son began bleeding from the mouth. Ganapathy trembled as his son went into uncontrollable seizures. When he asked the ward doctor to check on his son, the doctor refused to help as Ganapathy

did not have Rajendra's admission slip.

"When I approached the ward doctor to help my son who was spouting blood from his mouth, he said that it's only blood and asked me to wipe it myself," recalls Ganapathy.

Ganapathy pulled himself together and rushed to the police outpost and sought help

from a sub-inspector to locate the worker. Another worker named Pandi, who heard what had happened offered to help Ganapathy and went in search for the admission receipt. By the time he returned with the admission receipt, Rajendra Prasad was dead.

"I roamed the corridors blindly in search of that worker who had my son's admission slip.

I really did not have money and for that I lost my son", said Ganapathy.

Ganapathy's ordeal did not end there. Rajendra Prasad's body was moved to the morgue. After finishing the formalities, when Ganapathy went to the morgue to collect his son's body, the workers at the mortuary gate demanded Rs 100 for a gate pass which he paid reluctantly.

And then a woman employee wanted Rs 200 to bring the body out on a stretcher.

Ganapathy did not have that

much money and with tears in his eyes told her that he had only Rs 80. She grabbed it and brought the body out.

The last man to demand a bribe from Ganapathy was the ambulance driver who wanted Rs 500 to drive Rajendra Prasad's body to the cremation grounds.

HOSPITAL IN DENIAL Dr MR Vairamuthur Raju, the dean of Rajaji Government Hospital had later said that the worker who demanded Rs 300 as bribe was not part of the hospital staff. "If that's the case, how did he have access to a stretcher and how did the other workers knew him well?" asked Ganapathy.

Rajendra Prasad was the sole bread winner of the family. He was working in a DTP center and was all of 18-years-old when he died. "He was working hard and supported our family," said Ganapathy.

Dr Radhakrishnan, Health Secretary to Tamil Nadu Government said the accused Pal Pandi was a former employee of the hospital and was allegedly working as a broker. "We initiated a detailed enquiry into the matter and have asked the police to detain Pal Pandi who tried to act as a broker. Please remember the fact Tamil Nadu is the only state that the provides free treatment and when such matter comes to our attention, we take stringent action". But what about the present staffers who demanded bribe to release Rajendra Prasad's body?

Ganapathy has filed a petition with Chief Minister's cell and is waiting for delayed justice.

Harlequin baby dies two days after birth The Harlequin baby, who was put on oxygen this morning, lost the battle with life at the private run Lata Mangeshkar

and barely any skin, on Saturday. The infant was suffering from a rare congenital disorder called Harlequin Ich-

Medical College and Hospital on Monday evening.

A 23-year-old woman from Amravati in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra gave birth to the baby girl, weighing 1.8 kg with a severe congenital disorder

thyosis, in which the baby’s skin was covered with hardened, cracked skin and her internal organs were visible.

The father and her grandmother were shown the baby and doctors told them about

the disease. “The father of the baby, a poor farmer from Amravati, and her grandmother were shocked to see her. However, they have accepted the situation,” says Dr Kajal Mitra, the dean of the medical college and hospital.

The baby was not shown the mother till Sunday but only this afternoon by a group of doctors in presence of a psychiatric doctor. She broke down as soon as she saw her abnormal baby.

The baby had breathing problems since morning and was put on a ventilator. The mother was no a regular patient at the hospital and hence it missed detecting the disease. “Even otherwise skin disorders, especially Harlequin Ichthyosis, cannot be picked up on conventional ultrasonography,” pointed out Dr Mitra.

Love, sex aur dhokha TV actor booked for rape after refusing to marry model Wanting to make it big in the glitzy entertainment industry, Sneha (name changed) moved to Mumbai from Madhya Pradesh in 2011. After struggling for some time in the megacity, she got some small time modelling offers. She started working for an event management company as well. In 2013, Sneha met TV actor Arman Tahil at a temple. The two kept meeting each other in parties and soon "fell in love." For Sneha, Tahil meant the world but she had little inkling of his plans.

"HE RAPED ME ON THE PRETEXT OF MARRIAGE" In her complaint filed with the police, Sneha has claimed that Tahil raped him repeatedly on the pretext of marriage. The model told the police that Tahil told her that she loves only her and wanted to marry her. "In March 2013, he raped me. He told me that he would to his parents about our relationship but nothing happened," Sneha told the police.

"MOVED TO TAHIL'S HOUSE IN 2015" Sneha descbribed Tahil as a "sweet" person. The model said that Tahil persuaded her to move to his house in 2015 but after some days, Tahil's behaviour changed. He started demanding money from her claiming that his career was floundering. Sneha told the police she has given him lakhs till now.

Tahil started having fights with Sneha on regularly. She claimed

that he had relations with other women too. However, he kept on convincing her of marriage. "He raped me several times, and prom-

ised to marry me," she told the cops.

CASE FILED It was only on June 8 that Sneha approached the police when Tahil didn't return to the house. She contacted him but he refused to marry her. The model then lodged a case against him. The Versova Police has registered an FIR against Tahil and booke

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Issue 671 (20)

¶+( 7$/.(' $%287 .,//,1* $// 7+( 7,0(· Dead ISIS fanatic was a devout Muslim on his second marriage who talked about killing all the time and openly hated homosexuals

By MATT HUNTER and JESSICA CHIA Omar Mateen transformed from a friendly high school football player to a quiet father who carried out America’s deadliest mass shooting, leaving old friends and family members in shock.

Mateen, who worked as a security guard, walked into a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, with a handgun and AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, killing 50 people on Sunday before police stormed the club and fatally shot him.

A gay, high school classmate who knew Mateen before 2009 said the 29-year-old regularly interacted with him and his other gay co-workers and ‘treated us all like the individuals we were.’

But the terrorist’s father said his son had recently become infuriated at the sight of two men kissing, while others said he was an ‘agitated’ and ‘aggressive’ bodybuilder.

Mateen’s first wife claimed he was mentally ill and physically abusive, while a coworker said: ‘He talked about killing people all the time. I wasn’t shocked. I saw it coming.’

He had worked for G4S since 2007, the world’s largest security company, which provides guards for US nuclear facilities.

Mateen had a son with Noor Zahi Salman, and the two lived at the same St Lucie County address in 2012, according to records seen by DailyMail.com.

Salman was listed as his wife on a September 2013 mortgage filed in the county, according to Buzzfeed, after Mateen divorced his first wife, Sitora Yusufiy, in 2011.

But it is unclear whether Mateen and Salman are still together, since she has been living at a different address.

Born in New York to Afghan parents, Mateen and his family moved to Florida when he was a child.

He graduated from Martin County High

(21)

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A Turkish newspaper with links to the country’s President has published a homophobic headline calling those who died in the Orlando mass shooting ‘perverts’ and ‘deviants’.

Yeni Akit, a right-wing newspaper which has supported the likes of Al-Qaeda in the past, broke news of the attack with the headline: ‘Death toll rises to 50 in bar where perverted homosexuals go!’

The headline has caused a backlash online, where it has been suggested that the exclamation mark indicates that the paper is celebrating the attack, rather than condemning it.

Yeni Akit has long supported Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used to lead. The paper, whose name

means ‘New Agreement, is also known for having strong links to Erdogan, in a country where press freedom is being heavily restricted by his government.

According to Turkish think-tank the Hrant Dink Foundation, Yeni Akit is one of the

worst offenders when it comes to using hate speech against minorities, in particular the LGBT community, but also against Jews, Armenians and Christians.

In just four months in 2013, when the foundation competed its last survey, they found 175 articles where hate speech was directed at one of eight separate minority groups.

At least 50 people were killed and another 53 wounded at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in the early hours of Sunday when gunman Omar Mateen, 29, from Port St. Lucie, opened fire.

Mateen, whose parents are of Afghan descent, took another 30 people hostage while wearing what is believed to have been a suicide vest, but was shot before he could detonate it.

14 June - 20 June 2016

School in 2004 and ‘got really buff’ while he worked at the nutrition store GNC at a local mall, according to his classmate Samuel King, who was a year older.

King said: ‘What is shocking to me is that the majority of the staff at Ruby Tuesday’s when I worked there were gay.

‘He clearly was not anti-[gay], at least not back then. He did not show any hatred to any of us. He treated us all like the individuals we were. He always smiled and said hello.’

King, who characterized Mateen as friendly and talkative, said: ‘Something must have changed.’

Mateen went on to earn an associate’s degree in criminal justice from Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, and expressed interest in joining the police force.

Instead, he worked as a security officer, a fact that comforted other members of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce where he worshipped, Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the head of he mosque, said.

‘He hardly had any friends. He would come with his little son at night to pray and after he would leave.’

Rahman told the NY Times: ‘There is nothing that he is hearing from me to do killing, to do bloodshed, to do anything, because we never talk like that.’

The Islamic center also released a statement condemning the ‘monstrous’ attack that read: ‘The Muslim community of Fort Pierce joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence.’

The terrorist’s father Seddique Mir Mateen also denied that the attack had anything to do with religion, and said his son had become enraged after seeing two men kissing in Miami months before.

While the father said he was ‘in shock like the whole country,’ the terrorist’s former coworker, Daniel Gilroy, told the Times: ‘He talked about killing people all the time.’

Gilroy said he made several complaints to G4S, the company where they both worked, because Mateen frequently used racial, ethnic and sexual slurs and sent him a barrage of 20 to 30 text message a day.

‘He was always shaken, always agitated and always mad,’ Gilroy added.

Sitora Yusufiy, Omar Mateen’s first wife, described how he ‘seemed like a normal human being’ at first.

Following a brief romance after the two met online, the pair married in 2009 and moved into a two-bedroom home owned by Mateen’s family in Fort Pierce.

‘After a few months he started to beat me,’ she said. ‘He was mentally unstable… he was obviously disturbed. I know he had a history of [taking] steroids.

‘He was not a stable person. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.’

Yusufiy said that Mateen owned a gun during their marriage, was ‘short tempered’ and would express ‘hate towards things’.

She would not reveal if he had any homophobic views.

Her parents eventually intervened and the two separated, although their divorce wasn’t finalized until 2011.

After spending most of the day searching Omar Mateen’s Port St. Lucie home, cops and the FBI moved on to the custom-built four-bedroom home a couple of blocks of north on Bayshore Boulevard where his parents live.

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14 June - 20 June 2016

New Mexico man accused of fatally Patna police arrest 2 after Hindu shooting wife, four daughters woman complained of forced conversion to Islam by Facebook friend The Patna Police has arrested two men after a woman filed a complaint saying her husband and his family members allegedly forced her to adopt Islam and eat beef. She also accused them of blackmailing her after making a porn video of her.

The woman, who hails from Kolkata and was married to Asif from Phulwari Sharif in Patna, claimed that her husband's family forced her to live in a madarsa for a month to learn Islam, where she was forced to eat beef.

Rakhi (name changed) was bowled over by Asif Iqbal's looks when she first saw his photos on Facebook. Soon, phone numbers were exhanged and the two started talking to each other over phone for hours.

Soon, Asif started persuading Rakhi to come to Patna from Kolkata.

Initially, the girl refused but ultimately she gave in to the consistent demands.

Asif promised Rakhi to marry her. Soon, the girl was in Patna to meet her "love."

ASIF RAPED RAKHI IN PATNA HOTEL, MADE MMS Asif received Rakhi in Patna and made her to stay at a hotel in the Mithapur area. He offered her soft drink laced with sedatives. The accused raped her and made an

MMS of the act.

Asif started blackmailing Rakhi, who returned to Kolkata but could not gather the courage to report the matter either to the police or her family.

GIRL MADE TO ACCEPT ISLAM After a few days, Asif called Rakhi and promised to marry her and asked her to come to Patna again.

She was sexually assaulted yet again. Rakhi pleaded the guy to marry her but he refused. How-

ever, after a few days, Asif took her to meet his parents. Asif's parents asked Rakhi to accept Islam. They took her to a madarsa for conversion. Despite her accepting Islam, they continued to torture her.

Rakhi was too trumatised to repor her story. She called her mother to Patna from Kolkata. She went to meet Asif's parents but they abused her and kicked her out.

A New Mexico man is accused of fatally shooting his wife and four daughters in their family home and then fleeing in his car, authorities said Sunday.

Juan David VillegasHernandez remained at large a day after the five victims were found dead, Roswell police said.

A relative who went to check on the family late Saturday discovered the bodies, police spokesman Todd Wildermuth said. Officers responded and found all five had suffered gunshot wounds.

A medical examiner will

conduct autopsies to confirm the victims’ identities and cause of death.

But police believe they are Villegas-Hernandez’s wife and the couple’s children, Wildermuth said. Investigators say the suspect and his 34year-old wife share four daughters ages 14, 11, 7 and 3.

The shooting likely occurred earlier in the day, Wildermuth said.

Villegas-Hernandez may be driving a red, fourdoor Ford pickup with New Mexico license plate KJS479.

Issue 671 (23)

14 June - 20 June 2016

China’s ‘Silicon Valley’ fears soaring property prices will hurt tech boom China A housing boom in China’s wannabe “Silicon Valley” of Shenzhen risks undermining the city’s tech boom as young professionals consider moving out to avoid the highest residential prices in the country.

In the space of four decades, Shenzhen has transformed itself from a fishing village into a manufacturing centre and now a tech hub - attracting top firms and young talent in sectors including technology, advertising and design.

But a property frenzy, which has driven prices up by 580% in the past 10 years, is beginning to weigh on the city’s competitiveness, tech firms, professionals, industry groups and officials say, just as it strives to develop new economic drivers and pull away from oldeconomy manufacturing.

The tech hub has drawn some of China’s top names including internet giant Tencent and

telecoms firm Huawei, plus emerging new leaders such as DJI, the world’s biggest commercial drone maker, and gene mapping company BGI.

tor that Chinese media reports showcase as a shining example of China’s move up the value chain.

“For people of my age group, Shenzhen’s high

cussing more and more whether to leave, and to consider what other cities we might go to,” he said.

The Shenzhen city government, which has tightened

If these firms and those that are part of the techhub’s ecosystem of startups struggle to attract talent because of high housing costs, they could start to doubt if Shenzhen is the right location for their operations.

That could stunt the development of a high-tech sec-

property prices are causing a lot of pressure,” said Chen Zhitao, a 25-year-old marketing officer for Chinese online retail giant JD.com. To save on rent, he shares a tiny flat with two others where one has to sleep on a couch each night.

“Now my friends are dis-

housing regulations to take the heat out of the price rally, and its Science and Technology Innovation Commission did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

China’s most expensive city While commercial rents are stable, residential

Malaysia’s Hindu couple-owned Sharia-compliant airline shut down

Kuala Lumpur Malaysia’s Rayani Air, the country’s first Shariacompliant airline owned by an ethnic Indian Hindu couple, was shut down on Monday, months after it was suspended for failing to adhere to aviation rules.

The Malaysian Aviation Commission (MAVCOM) revoked Rayani Air’s Air Service Licence (ASL) after finding that the airline had breached the conditions of its licence.

It said the airline also lacked the financial and management capacity to continue operating as a commercial airline.

“As a consequence, Rayani Air can no longer operate as a commercial airline with effect from today,” it said.

The airline was founded

by Ravi Alagendrran and his wife Karthiyani Govindan and started operations in December last

year. They used parts of their first names for the airline’s name.

On May 25, MAVCOM had issued a show-cause letter to Rayani Air after it had completed its evaluation of the airlines commercial standing and capabilities to determine whether it could continue as an ASL holder.

MAVCOM required the airline to submit its representation in writing within 14 days before the commission decides on whether Rayani Air should be allowed to continue to hold the ASL or whether it should be revoked, or suspended.

Rayani Air submitted its representation in writing to MAVCOM on the last day of the stipulated time.

“After reviewing Rayani Air’s written representation, MAVCOM has decided to revoke the ASL as the representations made

by Rayani Air are not sat-

isfactory responses to the show cause letter dated May 25, 2016,” it said.

The commission also said the airline was still liable to refund its customers.

Customers who have purchased tickets with Rayani Air but were not fly may lodge a complaint with the company and seek a refund.

In the event consumers are not able to obtain their refunds, they can file a civil suit for those refunds.

Alternatively, affected consumers may lodge a formal complaint with the Commission, who can hear and determine the complaint, with a view of protecting legitimate consumer interests.

The Commission may apply for its decision to be registered as a judgement of the Malaysian High Court.

prices have soared as available building land within the city shrank.

In the year to April, prices rose almost 63% - the biggest rise in China - data shows. Average residential property prices in Shenzhen in May were 40% higher than Beijing and 30% above Shanghai, according to data provider China Real Estate Index System (CREIS).

A 90-square metre apartment (970 sq ft) near the city centre, or in the tech district of Nanshan, costs around 6 million yuan or $915,000.

The price rises have been matched by a sharp increase in borrowing. Outstanding mortgages rose 40% to 742 billion yuan in 2015 and new mortgages jumped more than 200 % to 340 billion yuan.

Blue-chip firms headquartered in Shenzhen acknowledge the boom is a concern.

Internet giant Tencent expanded its housing subsidy programme in May to

include rent relief of up to 15,000 yuan a year, a source at the firm said. It also provides interest free loans of up to 500,000 yuan ($76,214.86).

“The company has been very proactive with their (housing) policies. It’s very obvious,” said a Tencent employee who only gave his surname Chen.

“They can’t not offer these if they want to retain and attract employees ... high property prices are a big concern for them.”

Other major firms such as ZTE Corp, Huawei Technologies, DJI Holdings and the Qianhai Free Trade Zone authority told Reuters they own apartments and dormitories that they rent to staff at below-market rates.

Ren Zhengfei, founder and head of Shenzhen-based Huawei, expressed concern in an interview with China’s state-run Xinhua news agency about the impact of rising property prices on business development on the mainland.

Sikh-Americans fear backlash after Orlando massacre Washington Sikh-Americans, who have faced hate crimes after every major terror attack, are fearing a backlash following the Orlando gay club shooting even as the Obama administration has assured them of their safety.

In a bid to allay growing concerns within the community, the White House sent one of its top official to a gurdwara in the suburb of Washington DC on Sunday to meet members of the Sikh community and local leadership to assure them about their safety and interest.

“We know, this is a time when some in the community fear unease,” Cecilia Munoz, Director of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House, told PTI after her interaction with the Sikh community at the oldest gurdwara of Maryland -- Guru Nanak Foundation of America. She also attended ‘sangat’ with its members.

“I shared the work that the federal government is doing to make sure that every child is safe and secure, every person is feeling safe and secure in the places of worship and the places where they work and the places where they study,” Munoz said, adding that there was no need to be fearful.

Her visit to the gurdwara

was planned a few days ago but her presence was very timely in terms of the new wave of fear that has gripped the community because of the Orlando in-

Paramvir Singh Soni, chairperson of the Guru Nanank Foundation of America, acknowledged that there is a sense of fear in the community and said the Sikh-

cident -- the deadliest mass shooting in America’s history.

Omar Mateen, an Afghanorigin gunman who carried an assault rifle and a pistol into the gay club in Orlando and killed 50 people while injuring 53 others, was later shot dead by the police.

“This is a country of great diversity. We cherish that diversity. We celebrate it.

We feel great gratitude to the Sikh community for the many many contributions to the United States,” Munoz said.

“It is fundamental to our democracy that people have freedom of worship, but also have freedom from fear,” she said, adding that the Obama Administration has taken steps to address these challenges.

Americans are touched by the steps being taken by US President Barack Obama in this regard.

“We are still looking for stronger actions against hate crimes. I think there we need to do some more work, but we are making progress,” he said.

Singh said the community wants to have the next president as one who can address its challenge.

“Someone who is more open to the Sikh community, somebody who is more engaged,” he said.

Dr Rajwant Singh, Washington-based chairman of the Sikh Council on Religion and Education, said the Sikh community, is very concerned about the possible backlash from the Orlando killings.

Issue 671 (24)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Your focus shifts to career goals and ambitions.

As Mercury enters Capricorn on Tuesday it brings an opportunity to network with the right people, get advice, update your resume, and prepare for interviews. You may grumble that you have to jump through hoops to get a job or impress a boss or superior. For now, though, find other ways to express your individuality.

You may be eager to expand your options through traditional means, such as a class or work experience. As this week’s blend of energies focuses on Capricorn, perhaps you’ll decide that you want more out of life. This dynamic setup encourages you to go for it. And there’s more! A spicy link suggests a romantic liaison could get more passionate.

Go with your intuition early on and don’t second-guess yourself. You got it right. A friend or partner wants to have some fun and you’re their preferred companion. If it's a festive get-together, make the most of it. The focus then shifts to finances and resources. You’d be wise to compare prices before making up your mind about a purchase, especially if it’s a big-ticket item.

The continued presence of Mars in your zone of shared finances could encourage revisions in your investment strategy. This might involve working on home improvements or purchasing items that will gain in value. However, partnership issues also come to the fore with a chance to catch up and discuss plans.

If you need help, don’t be too proud to ask.

Partnership interests are highlighted, and joining forces might be the way for you to accomplish more. You may be sharing exciting and fun times with a romantic tie. The focus gradually shifts to work and lifestyle issues. You may have to ignore a co-worker who seems jealous of your achievements.

Mars in Aquarius could be making you impatient, meaning you’ll be dissatisfied with your progress. You like to do a good job, so it helps to be patient and take things in stride.

As the focus shifts to your leisure and pleasure sector, you may start something creative and decide to take up a new hobby.

Romance may beckon with a strong attraction showing up on Saturday.

Sometimes romance can be heavenly, and this could be one of those weeks! If single, someone could catch your eye. If in a relationship, your partner may have plans that add a delightful quality to the coming days. You’ll soon need to focus on getting things sorted at home in preparation for the holiday week. Make lists and get into action, but allow time to pamper yourself, too.

You could go out with the intention of buying gifts for those closest to you and end up buying something awesome for yourself instead.

If you’re shopping for presents, have a goal and set limits to save time and money.

As the focus shifts to Capricorn you may feel motivated to attend a class, lecture, or seminar that has the potential to help you achieve a goal.

Don’t take on more than you can handle or promise more than you can deliver early on. If you have a lot to accomplish, be realistic. As Mercury and the Sun ease into Capricorn you’ll find it easier to set limits and be practical, especially where finances are concerned. The weekend could bring a desire to splurge that requires careful handling.

You’ll be busy, so take time to rest and relax.

Watch your dreams, too, as one of them could have special guidance for you. Mercury shifts into your sign on Tuesday, encouraging you to research ideas and share. It’s time to take your personal plans seriously.

Watch a desire to splurge on Saturday.

You seem to be full of energy and ready to party early in the week. However, the focus gradually shifts to your spiritual sector, encouraging you to kick back and relax. If you’ve been socializing, you may feel like taking a break anyway. This doesn’t mean you’ll stop altogether, just that it’s time to slow down, review your priorities, and catch up with yourself.

You’ve been busy pushing ahead with goals and plans, but once Mercury enters Capricorn on Tuesday it’s time to enjoy festive get-togethers and kisses under the mistletoe. The focus then shifts to having fun, mingling, and generally enjoying life. You’ll be motivated to network with a view toward enhancing your business prospects.

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14 June - 20 June 2016

Technology Twitter locks some accounts following leaks Micro-blogging website Twitter responded to news that surfaced on Thursday indicating that over 32 million Twitter passwords may have been compromised by locking accounts that demand extra protection and requiring a password reset. Twitter also specified that it is “confident the information was not obtained from a hack of Twitter’s servers”, technology website The Verge re-

ported on Friday.

It’s not clear how many ac-

counts Twitter chose to lock, but the company

Hackers sell stolen Twitter account credentials As many as 32 million Twitter account credentials lifted by hackers from web browser programs were put up for online sale, says

a report.

Twitter was adamant that its computer systems had not been broken into by hackers, and that it was

not the source of any account information being hawked on the Internet.

“We are confident that these usernames and cre-

dentials were not obtained by a Twitter data breach -our systems have not been breached,” a Twitter spokesperson said yester-

Microsoft to buy Linkedin for $26.2b in cash

Huge news today in the world of M&A in enterprise and social networking services: Microsoft has announced that it is acquiring LinkedIn, the social network for professionals with some 433 million users, for $26.2 billion, or $196 per share, in cash.

The transaction has already been approved by

both boards, but it must still get regulatory and other approvals. If for some reason the deal does not go through, LinkedIn will have to pay Microsoft a $725 million termination fee, according to Microsoft’s SEC filing detailing the merger.

The $196/share offer is a big hike on its closing price from Friday, $131.08.

day. “In fact, we’ve been working to help keep accounts protected by checking our data against what’s been shared from recent other password leaks,” the spokesperson said.

According to LeakedSource.Com, tens of millions of Twitter credentials are being traded on the “dark web,” a section of the Internet accessed by special software.

The data set reportedly contained more than 32 million Twitter records that could include information such as usernames, passwords, or email addresses.

told the Wall Street Journal the number was in the millions, and that those affected will have already received an e-mail explaining the situation, the report noted. The news of leaked passwords was first provided by Leaked Source, a site with a search engine of leaked login credentials and said that the cache of Twitter data contains 32,888,300 records, including e-mail addresses, usernames and passwords.

LeakedSource noted that “the user credentials were collected by malware infecting browsers like Firefox or Chrome rather than stolen directly from Twitter”.

Apple takes a new leap, forms power company to sell solar energy!

Yes, you heard that right!

After conquering the world of technology, Apple is all set to venture in power sector.

The technology giant has recently formed an energy subsidiary, ‘Apple Energy LLC’, headquartered in Cupertino, according to The Verge reports.

As per the request filled with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the brand new company will sell power in whole sale markets across the United States. In its Environmental Responsibility Report,

2016 Apple revealed that its has plans for 521 megawatts of solar energy globally. The company itself

is using green energy in most of its Apple stores and corporate offices. The tech giant claims that the company generates enough electricity to fulfill 93% of its energy usage worldwide.

Facebook forces users to download its photo-sharing Moment app After Messenger, Facebook is now pushing users to download yet another of its app named Moment app.

For this move, the social media giant is sending out warnings to its users that their synced photos will be deleted after July 7, if they don’t install the app, according to Tech Crunch reports. Facebook launched the optional photo-sharing feature in 2012 that automatically upload all photos captured from your phone

to a private album.

Launched in 2015, Mo-

form. It scans your photos, organizes them by events

ments app offers a more private way to share your photos on the social plat-

and also provides an easy means to share them directly with your friends.

Yahoo to shut its old Messenger App American multinational technology company Yahoo Inc. has announced the shutting down of its chat service Yahoo Messenger from August five this year.

However, the company has asked all its users to move to the new version of the Messenger, introduced last year.

“In December of 2015, we announced a brand new Yahoo Messenger for mobile, the Web and in Yahoo Mail on the desktop, built on a new modern platform.

This complete revamp brings users an incredibly fast, beautiful and smart way to send – and unsend – messages, photos and animated GIFs in 1:1 and group conversations,” Ya-

hoo chief architect Amotz Maimon said while explaining the company’s move.

“While today we provide basic interoperation between the legacy product

and the new Messenger, we encourage all of our users to complete their transition to the new Yahoo Messenger as we will no longer support the legacy platform as of August 5,

2016.

We intend to continue our focused efforts on the new Messenger, with a goal of delivering the best experience to our users,” Maimon added.

Issue 671 (26)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Bees chase car for over 24hrs to rescue their queen London In an incredible ordeal, a 65-year-old grandmother was followed by a huge swarm of bees for more than 24 hours while driving her car home from a nature reserve in the UK,

attempting to rescue their queen. Carol Howarth was amazed when a swarm of over 20,000 bees flew down onto her vehicle, covering the back end of the car. The unusual incident happened shortly after she had

parked her car in the town centre of Haverfordwest, West Wales, before going shopping at lunchtime last Sunday. A team of three beekeepers, a national park ranger and

members of the public helped to capture and contain the swarm inside a cardboard box. Howarth told the Telegraph that she had “never seen anything like it.”

Pembrokeshire Coast National Park ranger Tom

Moses raised the alarm when he spotted the swarm on the car. Concerned that the insects might be destroyed with pesticide, Moses contacted two members of Pembrokeshire Beekeep-

ers’ Association, who came to help capture the swarm. “As I drove past I noticed this big brown splodge on the back of a car. “I had seen swarms before settle on things like this but never one as large as this,” Moses said. Af-

ter returning to her car, Howarth drove home believing the problem had been resolved, only to discover on Monday morning that the swarm had followed her and were again covering the car. She was then forced to contact the beekeepers, who finally managed to remove the swarm for good.

“One theory was that the queen was trapped in my car and the swarm were following,” Howarth said.

“But they couldn’t find the queen anywhere so I’ve no idea if that was right. Apparently bees can swarm at this time of the year and it is a very strong instinct for them to follow the queen,” she said. “I still don’t really understand why because they couldn’t see the queen anywhere.

Perhaps they just like the heat of my car,” Howarth added. Moses said members of colonies often follow their queen bee if she moves hives. And queens moves hives if the hives are disturbed say, by humans. Or by the arrival of another queen bee.

70% pro-Palestinian content removed from Facebook, Twitter: Israel

London Following the Israeli government’s demands, nearly 70% of pro-Palestinian content has been removed from social networking site Facebook and micro-blogging website Twitter, media reports said on Monday.

“We succeeded to achieve our goals as around 70% of our demands were fulfilled,” Israeli minister of justice Ayelet Shaked told Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, TeleSUR TV reported.

The decision was taken as “there is a direct relationship” between internet incitement and violence in Israel. “We succeeded to

delete incitement contents calling for death and violence across the internet,” the minister added.

“It is not uncommon for Israel to use social media and freedom of expression as a means of controlling viewpoints from being expressed globally,” the Palestine Chronicle wrote.

Facebook and Twitter have put in a number of mechanisms to report offensive content on the websites.

According to Facebook, any profile, page or group related to a terrorist organisation is shut down and any content celebrating terrorism is removed as part of the social netwoking sites’s policy.

Issue - 671 (27)

14 June - 20 June 2016

US Senator asks for federal investigation into companies allegedly ‘misusing’ tourist visas Citing examples of various foreign companies, including at least one from India, a top American Senator has sought federal investigation into the alleged misuse of tourist visa to bring in foreign workers into the US.

“Given the problem such fraud and abuse in the B visa programme poses for American workers as well as the foreign workers who are mistreated and underpaid, I request that the departments respond to the concerns,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley asked in a letter to the US Attorney General Loretta E

Lynch.

In the letter which was also sent to the secretaries of the D e pa r t m e n ts o f Sta t e , Homeland Security and Labour, the Senator sought more information on the types of visas granted to the workers.

He asked about a practice by the State Department that allows B visa holders to work in the US as if they had been granted H-1B skilled labour visas, and is seeking the legal justification for such a practice.

B visa holders are not granted the same worker protections that are required of companies employing H-1B visa holders.

‘Sobbing’ Obama marks daughters high school graduation

“The manner in which the B visa programme is being used and the absence of real oversight and enforcement is a shame. Despite a long and undeniable history of abuse of the programme to bring foreign workers into the United States under cover as ‘business visitors,’ regulations and field governance governing the programme have not been updated in years,” Grassley said in the letter.

In his letter, Grassley said that in October 2013, the Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, and United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas entered into a settlement agreement with Infosys, as part of which the US government alleged that Infosys knowingly and unlawfully used B-1 visa holders to perform skilled labour in order to fill positions in the US for employment that would otherwise be performed

by American citizens or require legitimate H-1B visa holders, for the purposes of increasing profits, minimising costs of securing visas, increasing flexibility of employee movement, obtaining an unfair advantage over competitors, and avoiding tax liabilities.

Lost when 18-month-old, abducted son meets mother after 21 years

A California mother was reunited Thursday with her abducted son, laying eyes on him and wrapping her arms around him for the first time in 21 years.Maria Mancia had been left with just a single photo of her son since his father took him in 1995. The boy she last saw when he was just 18 months old is now a man.

Steve Hernandez, 22, was found living in Puebla, Mexico, and on Thursday morning was brought to the US to meet his mother for an emotional reunion.

“Now this anguish I’ve carried is gone now that I have my son back,” Mancia told KABC-TV. “I spent 21 years looking for him not knowing anything.”

The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Child Abduction Unit had been looking for Hernandez through the years, searching for him in several states. Investigators then received a strong tip in February that he was in Mexico. The father, Valentin Hernandez, is missing and believed to be dead, authorities said.

Investigator Karen Cragg, who led

the search, said they had to approach Steve Hernandez delicately.“We used a ruse to contact him. We told him we were investigating his father and we needed his DNA to help locate his father,” Cragg told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“We didn’t want to scare him off.

We weren’t sure what the circumstances were down there.

We had to tread very carefully.”

The two parents and their toddler boy had been living in Rancho Cucamonga, California, in 1995.

The parents were having relationship struggles. Mancia came home from work one day to find both the elder Hernandez and their son missing.

The father had even taken all of their photos of the boy, including an ultrasound. Mancia had to write to a relative to get a picture.

“That became the only photograph she had of Steve for the last 21 years,” Cragg said.

She immediately reported the boy missing and the investigation had been active ever since, first with the Sheriff’s Department, then with DA’s investigators.

Paintings of Pakistani artist printed on mugs of Bangkok coffee brand

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama made the short but sentimental drive across Washington on Friday to attend his oldest daughter’s high school graduation. Obama has joked that Malia’s graduation was the one event where he could not give an address. “Malia’s school asked if I wanted to speak at commencement and I said no,” Obama said in Detroit earlier this

Impotence?

416-992-5489

year. “I’m going to be wearing dark glasses... and I’m going to cry.” True to his promise, Obama was photographed by guests at Sidwell Friends School wearing dark glasses. He was accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama, Malia and his youngest daughter Sasha. Malia was 10 years old when Obama entered office, almost eight years ago. She is expected to attend Harvard in 2017, after a gap year. Obama earlier this year told television host Ellen DeGeneres of his sorrow at thinking that she would soon fly the nest. He said he would be “sobbing” at the graduation.

“She’s one of my best friends.

And it’s going to be hard for me not to have her around all the time. But she’s ready to go. You can tell. She’s just a really smart, capable person and she’s ready to make her own way.”

LAHORE Images of two paintings of world famous Pakistani artist Jimmy Engineer have been printed on the mugs of famous Black Canyon coffee house of Bangkok. Paintings titled “Floating Square in Pink” and “Coffee Beans in the Galaxy” have been printed on the coffee mugs which the management presents to the visiting distinguished guests with the description that these have exclusively been created by international fame Pakistani artist Jimmy Engineer for Black Canyon Coffee House. Jimmy Engineer was presented with the two mugs printed with his imaginative paintings by the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Black Canyon Mr Pravit Chitnarapong when he visited the coffee house in Bangkok recently, according to a message received here from Thai capital. Jimmy Engineer while thanking for the beautiful prestigious presentation said that he regards this as a great honour for himself and his motherland Pakistan that images of his two paintings have been printed on coffee mugs in a foreign country Thailand. He reiterated that he will continue to promote soft, positive, moderate and forward looking image of Pakistan and its peace-

loving people through his art and inter-action with the people in foreign countries as long as he is breathing because he regards himself as servant of Pakistan.

Jimmy Engineer had created 14

yon founder was full of appreciation of for the artistic talent and paintings of the visiting Pakistani artist. The abstract paintings created with coffee beans were initially displayed at the Queen

imaginative paintings using 10 kilogram of coffee beans as integral part early 2014 at the invitation of Mr Pravit Chitnarapong who had earlier seen the creative art of the visiting Pakistani artist who visited Bangkok, Thailand, for the first time couple of months back. The artist had created these unique sort of paintings using coffee beans within matter of few days in Bangkok. The Black Can-

Siriket National Convention Centre and later put on permanent display on the walls of the Black Canyon Coffee restaurant at the Convention Centre. Jimmy Engineer had donated his creative imaginative art work to world famous Black Canyon Coffee and Mr Pravit had greatly admired him for his generosity in making such wonderful, beautiful and impressive donation.

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14 June - 20 June 2016

Google co-founder fuels flying car labs SAN FRANCISCO Google co-founder Larry Page has secretly poured more than $100 million into building flying cars, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Page has backed Zee.Aero while striving to keep his involvement hidden, according

to the report that cited unnamed sources described as having intimate knowledge of the flying car startup launched in 2010.

“Based in the heart of Silicon Valley, Zee is developing a revolutionary new form of transportation,” the startup said on its website, which invited people with engineering skills to

apply for jobs. Zee is “working at the intersection of aerodynamics, advanced manufacturing, and electric propulsion,” it said. As part of a bid for secrecy, Zee.Aero employees referred to Page as “GUS,” a play on “Guy UpStairs” since, for a time, the

Google co-founder had a private hideaway on the second floor of their facility, according to Bloomberg.

It said Zee.Aero has nearly 150 employees and expanded operations to an airport hangar a little more than an hour’s drive from Alphabet-owned Google’s headquarters in the California

city of Mountain View.

Page has spent more than $100 million on Zee.Aero, according to Bloomberg. It also reported that Page was backing a second flying car startup, Kitty Hawk, that began operating last year not far from Zee.Aero and is taking a different design approach. Neither Zee.Aero nor Alphabet responded to AFP requests for comment. Page is pursuing a flying car dream on his own, not as part of Alphabet’s investments in “moonshots” such as self-driving cars, Bloomberg said. Google announced plans last month to open a Detroit-area technology center for its self-driving car program.The new center in Novi, Michigan, will house engineers and others testing vehicles provided by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, according to an Alphabet statement. Google added 100 new 2017 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid vehicles to its fleet of self-driving vehicles in a major expansion earlier in May. The collaboration with Fiat Chrysler marked the first time the California-based Internet giant has worked directly with an automaker to build self-driving vehicles.

Man dressed as Apple employee steals 19 iPhones from New York store

WASHINGTON A man dressed as an Apple employee managed to steal 19 iPhones from the company’s store in SoHo in New York, reports dnainfo. According to the site, the suspect wore a blue T-shirt similar to the ones worn by store employees, with the Apple logo on it. The incident happened last week, when the man walked away with 19 iPhones worth $16,130 (Rs 10,77281 approx) from an unlocked drawer in the store. It is, however, unclear which models were stolen. Also, Apple has not issued an official statement on the incident. Gizmodo says this is not the first time, something like this has happened. Three people warded off with 67 iPhones form the Cupertino giants’ Upper West

Side store earlier this year. But what is making it really easy for people to walk out of an Apple store with iPhones can partially be because of a redesigned uniform for its store employees, which was introduced in 2015.

Apple moved to blue t-shirts for its employees in 2015, in different styles and smaller Apple logo.

This helps people blend in with the store employees easier. This, however isn’t the sole reason, as New York Post points out the Upper West Side store is used to train employees, and is a smaller location. “The crooks may have targeted the shop because it’s a training location, where “nobody would question” an unfamiliar worker in blue,” says the New York Post.

Hillary trolls Trump on Twitter:’Delete your account’ Private lunch with Warren Buffet goes

to highest bidder for $3.45 million

WASHINGTON “Delete your account.” Hillary Clinton’s snarky tweet Thursday to her White House rival Donald Trump was among the funniest of the campaign. Almost as funny as it was awkward. The message by the 68-year-old former secretary of state - actually written by a young staffer, a Clinton aide told AFP - was in response to the latest broadside by Trump, who had commented on how “Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary” on Thursday.

“He wants four more years of Obama - but nobody else does!” the presumptive Republican nominee added. When Clinton trolled back, social media exploded. Within two hours her message was retweeted 200,000 times, making it “the most retweeted tweet of the campaign!”

according to Clinton’s social media director Alex Wall. With “Delete your account,” Clinton, who has struggled to connect with young voters, embraced the quickwitted dry humor of America’s millennials. But it also triggered ferocious comebacks from her critics over use of a private email account while she served as America’s top diplomat - a scandal she has been unable to shake.

Republicans including Trump have savaged her for her judgment, saying she put US national security at risk, and have accused her of deleting key emails that she did not want Americans to see. “@HillaryClinton, If anyone knows how to use a delete key, it’s you,” the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, wrote in a stinging tweet of his own.

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Omaha For the second time, an anonymous bidder has agreed to pay more than $3.4 million for a private lunch with billionaire Warren Buffett, with the auction proceeds going to a San Francisco homeless charity.

The bid of $3,456,789 from Friday night’s winner ties the record highest from 2012, when a bidder also paid $3,456,789 to become the most expensive individual charity item ever sold on eBay. The weeklong eBay auction to raise money for the Glide Foundation began Sunday and wrapped up Friday night. By midmorning Friday, the bidding reached more than $2.6 million, nearly $300,000 higher than last year’s winning bid by Beijingbased Dalian Zeus Entertainment Co. Six of the past eight winners paid more than $2 million to dine with Buffett, the investor who leads the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. Buffett has raised more than $20 million for Glide.

The lunch auctions began after Buffett’s first wife, Susie, showed him the charity, where she had been volunteering. Susie Buffett died in 2004, but the connection between Warren Buffett and Glide’s founders has endured.

Buffett has praised the foundation’s approach in providing meals, health care, job training, rehabilitation and housing support to the poor and homeless.

“I am proud to be part of

something that has directly benefited so many people in need,” Buffett said ahead of the auction. “Glide is a bridge for

donates at least $10,000 to Glide each year to host the lunch. But when the winner wants to remain anonymous, the

thousands of people on the brink of despair, helping them achieve dignity and opportunity by providing them with basic services.”

After the auction, the Rev. Cecil Williams, one of Glide’s cofounders, said: “We are astonished by the results of this year’s auction and send heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Buffett for his deep investment in unconditional love and community.”

Buffett has said he gets a wide range of questions at the lunches that usually run for several hours.

The only limit on lunch conversation is what Buffett might invest in next, but any other topic is open.

The winners of the lunch auction typically dine with Buffett at Smith and Wollensky steak house in New York City, which

lunch happens elsewhere.

Buffett’s company owns more than 90 subsidiaries including insurance, furniture, railroad, jewelry and candy companies, restaurants and natural gas and corporate jet firms, and has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co., IBM and Wells Fargo & Co.

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Issue - 671 (29)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Video game industry shoots for momentum at E3 show SAN FRANCISCO Virtual reality, streaming play and titles tailored for smartphones are expected to generate buzz at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) video game extravaganza kicking off in Los Angeles. While blockbuster games being readied for console play will once again be stars at

the show, the industry and its premier annual trade event are adapting to lifestyles that have evolved beyond lone play on consoles. “Evolution is going to be one of the big themes at E3 this year,” said Scott Steinberg, a trend expert for consulting firm TechSavvy Global ahead of the show which officially opens Tuesday. “Gaming is really becoming a shared experience; a spectator event.” Amazonowned Twitch, a popular online platform for watching video game play as spectator sport, will be live streaming E3 happenings again this year as part of a partnership with event organizers at the Entertainment Software Association. Alphabet-owned video sharing platform YouTube meanwhile will be streaming E3 coverage online at gaming.youtube.com/e3. “For more than a few gamers, E3 is

the must-see gaming event of the year, an annual moment that defines the industry (and our collective wallets) for the coming 12 months,” YouTube said in a release. Facebook, Yahoo, and Xbox have also gotten into the game when it comes to play, or chatter about it, being broadcast online as spectator sport. Still,

industry heavyweights are not giving up consoles which have long ruled the lucrative sector. “I think you are going to see a number of major players make some surprise announcements, and hardware makers try to sustain momentum,” Steinberg said. Sony heads into E3 as a market leader, having sold more than 40 million PlayStation 4 consoles since they launched in late 2013.

While Microsoft has not released current sales figures for its Xbox One console that debuted in the market at nearly the same time, industry estimates are that they are roughly half those of PS4. “It is encouraging to see such a healthy install base of the Xbox One and PS4, which currently have 43 percent higher cumulative unit sales than their predecessors at the same point

in their life-cycles,” said NPD Group analyst Liam Callahan.

Microsoft is expected to unveil an updated console at E3, perhaps a slimmed-down Xbox One at a lower price to tempt buyers. The Financial Times on Friday reported that Sony is working on a PS4 model offering ultra-high definition graphics and computing power that can handle virtual reality experiences but will not unveil it at E3. Given that PS4 and Xbox One are in their third year on the market, and the Nintendo Wii U is in its fourth year, console makers should be out to fuel interest with big new games and enhanced features, according to analysts. Virtual reality games will be spotlighted at E3, where demonstrations of content for Facebook-owned Oculus Rift headgear are once again expected to draw crowds.

In the wings may be expanded collaboration between Xbox and Oculus on virtual reality. Sony is expected to show off what its coming PlayStation VR gear can do, and hopes are that the company will provide details regarding price and release date.

HTC will have “demo bays” where people can try games tailored for its Vive virtual reality gear. Mobile games promised to ramp their presence at E3, with an army of small studios promising to show off creations tailored for play on tablets or smartphones.

Meanwhile, major console game publishers including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts have put out word they will sit out the E3 show floor this year. Nintendo will once again forgo a live E3 press event and, instead stream an online presentation focused on a new “Legend of Zelda” game for its Wii U console that has failed to gain traction i the market since its release in late 2012.

Indian-origin teen held for plotting murder of New York cops New York An Indian-origin teen has been charged with illegally purchasing a gun with a fake ID and allegedly plotting the murder of New York police officers, authorities have said.Ranbir Singh Shergill, 18, was arrested this weekend and has been ordered held. An undated note was found on Shergill’s phone that appeared to be a plan to kill cops, a report in the New York Daily News said.The incident within days of Indian-origin doctoral student Mainak Sarkar shooting dead his 39-year-old professor at UCLA and estranged wife Ashley Has before turning the gun on himself.

Shergill allegedly also threatened to kill members of his family last month with a gun he kept at the family’s Queens neighbourhood home. FBI special agent Nicholas Olivero said in the report that a box containing a handgun, seven magazines, and 118 rounds of ammunition was found in

Shergill’s bedroom. Shergill admitted he had travelled to Ohio to buy the gun for $500 from a private owner, showed the seller a fake ID he had obtained on the internet and bought the ammunition in Pennsylvania.

According to a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court, the phone note read, “Do it during a

snowstorm, use the snow to mask your presence. Go from dunkin donuts on van wyck (Expressway) after shooting and killing officers...And one will be male other female. Then try to kill other NYPD (New York police department) officers change clothes and go back to the crime scene or make false call.”

Blue diamond sells for $25m in New York

NEW YORK A blue diamond from the South African mine famous for contributing to the British Crown Jewels sold for more than $25 million in New York on Thursday, Christie’s said. The auction house said the Cullinan Dream was the largest Fancy Intense Blue type diamond to go under the hammer and was snapped up by an absentee bidder for $25.4 million, including premiums. Christie’s said it is the biggest of four blue diamonds cut from a 122.52 carat rough discovered in 2014 at the Cullinan mine northeast of Pretoria where the biggest ever rough diamond was unearthed a century ago.

The mine yielded the 530.20 Cullinan I, which is the largest polished white diamond in existence and part of the Crown

Jewels housed at the Tower of London.Thursday’s sale comes weeks after a dazzling blue diamond once owned by Britain’s late mining magnate Philip Oppenheimer fetched a record $57.5 million in Geneva.

Jewel auctions have seen a surging value of precious stones, as the world’s ultra-rich invest in hard assets as a safeguard against stock market volatility.

The Cullinan mine is where a 3,106-carat diamond was discovered in 1905. It was presented to the British monarch King Edward VII and cut up, resulting in gems forming part of the British crown jewels.

They include the Cullinan I in the Queen’s Sceptre and the Cullinan II, which is in the crown that the British monarch wears to the opening of parliament.

Gawker files for bankruptcy after sex tape case, finds buyer

New York Gawker Media on Friday filed for bankruptcy, seeking to sidestep a shutdown from a $140 million judgment for releasing a Hulk Hogan sex tape in a lawsuit bankrolled by a Silicon Valley billionaire.

Following the bankruptcy filing, the embattled US media group said it had reached a deal to sell its media brands to publishing group Ziff Davis.

The moves come with Gawker under fire for its no-holds-barred approach to celebrity coverage, but with questions also raised about whether powerful interests can use their resources to silence media for unfavourable coverage.

The filing in New York follows the whopping jury award earlier this year for releasing a tape of pro wrestler Hogan having sex with a friend’s wife.

The case drew heightened attention when Silicon Valley titan Peter Thiel acknowledged that he had helped fund the

litigation and others against Gawker, with whom he has feuded for years since it “outed” him as a homosexual.

The filing in federal bankruptcy court in New York lists assets in a range of $50 million to $100 million, and liabilities between $100 million and $500 million.It seeks protection of its assets under Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code.The Gawker statement offered no financial details but said the media assets would be sold “free and clear of legal liabilities and maximize value for all stakeholders.”

It said the sale will be conducted through a bankruptcy court supervised auction, in which other bidders may also participate.

Ziff-Davis known for its PC Magazine among others, is part of the j2 Global digital media group. The deal calls for acquisition of the website Gawker as well as other brands including Gizmodo, Deadspin and Lifehacker.

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14 June - 20 June 2016

Lenovo looks beyond computers with slick new phones SAN FRANCISCO Chinese computer titan Lenovo showcased a series of new smartphones Thursday, including a keenly-awaited Tango handset and new Moto Z models that can be transformed into video projectors or powerful speakers.

A market-ready PHAB2 Pro

smartphone imbued with Googlecreated Tango augmented reality technology was given star treatment at a Lenovo Tech World gathering in San Francisco.

PHAB2 can sense and map its surroundings, enabling holograms to be overlaid on real world settings for anything from game play to figuring out which size sofa would fit in a room. The big-screen gadget will be available globally in September for $499.”It is a pretty incredible piece of technology for, really, a great price,” said Tango engineering director Johnny Lee.In what Lenovo chief executive Yang Yuanqing billed as perhaps the most important announcement at the event, Lenovo also unveiled new Moto Z smartphones that can be customized with “mods” specialized pieces of hardware that snap into place magnetically to give handsets added capabilities.For example, one mod let a Moto Z project video on walls or ceilings at sizes as large as a 70-inch television screen.

Another mod turned Moto Z handsets into powerful speakers.

“This phone can transform itself,” said Hollywood star and Lenovo spokesman Ashton Kutcher.

“This is actually a full-blown game-changer.”

Lenovo also launched a smartphone mod program for developers, enticing them with a million-dollar prize for a mod that best integrates handsets with services hosted in the Internet cloud.Moto Z will be available in

the United States in coming months through carrier Verizon, with models debuting globally later in the year, according to Lenovo. Pricing was not disclosed.Moto Z is made by Motorola, which Lenovo bought from Google in early 2014 in a deal valued at $2.91 billion.

The acquisition was part of a strategy by Lenovo to look beyond personal computers, where it is a market powerhouse, to a future of nearly everything being smart and connected to the Internet, according to Yang. “Devices will become entry points for diverse content and services,” he said.

Lenovo’s core business will remain personal computers, but it wants to use its expertise to combine hardware and cloud capabilities to help devices “listen, see, sense and understand the world,” according to Yang.

Lenovo’s innovative offerings showed that the company is committed to smartphones even though it only broke into the market with the purchase of Motorola, according to Gartner principal research analyst Mikako Kitagawa.

Gartner ranked Lenovo as the

seventh biggest player in the smartphone market last quarter.

“They are really catching up as a late-comer to the market, but they are already successful,” Kitagawa said. “I am pretty happy about the innovations I saw today.”

Lenovo innovations included a smartphone with a shatterproof screen, which Kutcher demonstrated by dropping a handset from high above the stage. “Customers drop phones a lot,” Lenovo chief technology officer Peter Hortensius said during the demonstration. “This gave us an idea. What about a screen that won’t break?”

Hortensius also provided a peek at work Lenovo is doing on smartphones and tablets that can bend.YouTube star Meghan McCarthy wrapped a prototype smartphone around one wrist like a bracelet and folded a tablet in half while watching a cat video.

“This isn’t a product yet, but it is a sign of things to come,” Hortensius told the audience.

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Indian among Time magazine’s ‘10 millennials changing the world’

New York A 30-year old Indian entrepreneur has been named by Time magazine to its 2016 list of “10 millennials who are changing the world” for building a phone which can help people to interact and access critical services by communicating in their native languages.Umesh Sachdev has been named by Time to its 2016 list of “10 millennials who are changing the world” for his work on “building a phone that can understand almost any language”. Sachdev, along with his college friend Ravi Saraogi, founded Uniphore Software Systems.The Chennai-based startup produces software allows people to interact with their phones and access services such as online banking by communicating in their native languages, Time said in its profile on Sachdev.Uniphore’s products, which include a virtual assistant that is able to process more than 25 global languages and 150 dialects, are being used by over five million people, mostly in India.“Phones can help increase financial inclusion or help a farmer get weather information,” Sachdev

said in the Time profile.

“But you need a way for people to interact with the technology out there,” he said.

Time said through the software, Sachdev is building bridges and helping “hundreds of millions of people cross the divide between the digital and the real world by harnessing the power of speech.

It said Sachdev found solution to a problem that phones didn’t carry the language of villagers in rural India.The list also includes Simone Biles, an Olympic gymnast who overcame a drugaddicted mother and cave explorer Francesco Sauro, 31, who has become one of the most renowned explorers of his generation after he located caves with vivid violet lakes and minerals crystalised in the shape of eggs hidden within the Auyan-tepui tabletop mountain in the rainforests of Venezuela.

Syrian refugee Firas Alshater, 25 is helping Germans accept refugees, “one smile at a time” with his viral videos on YouTube that invite Germans to take a closer look before passing judgment on the new arrivals, Time said.

Kapurthala woman booked for getting visa to US in 2008 on fake divorce order Kapurthala Eight years after she had flown to the USA on fake divorce order, a Kapurthala woman has been booked on the complaint of US embassy. The woman had shown fake divorce order allegedly issued by Kapurthala

sessions court in 2007 to the US embassy to get visa and gain entry into the country in 2008.

The woman, Jaspal Kaur, a

office in Delhi. After conducting an inquiry into the complaint, a case under sections 417, 465, 468 and 120-B of the IPC was

resident of Dhilwan in Kapurthala district, allegedly submitted the forged divorce order of the court of District and Sessions Judge, Kapurthala, to the US embassy in New Delhi on the basis of which she was issued a visa.

She went to the USA without informing her husband who was in the UK and when he came back in 2012, he found that his wife was not there. Years later, he came to know that she had already flown to the USA by showing herself as a divorcee.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Kapurthala SSP Rajinder Singh confirmed that they had received a complaint by the US embassy

registered against Jaspal Kaur at the Dhilwan police station.

It is learnt that Jaspal got married to Jeet Singh of Dhaliwal Bate village in 1999. Jeet Singh went to Germany in 2003. From there he entered the UK illegally.

After spending some time there, he was caught and deported back to India in 2012. “When he returned home, he found that his wife was not there and after a frantic search for a couple of years, he came to know later that she had shown her fake divorce to the US embassy and then got the visa and went there in 2008,” said Dhilwan SHO Jarnail Singh.

Why Bill Gates is donating chickens in Africa New York Bill Gates is launching his latest scheme to help sub-Saharan Africans living in extreme poverty: he’s giving them chickens.

Gates will donate 100,000 birds vaccinated against common diseases under a programme he said would boost incomes because chickens are inexpensive to care for, a good investment and help provide nutrition for children.

Gates said a farmer starting with five hens could earn $1,000 a year, compared with the extreme poverty line of $700 a year.

Eventually Gates wants to help 30 percent of rural African families raise chickens, up from 5 percent now. Gates’ wife Melinda, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said breeding chickens can also empower women by giving them a source of income, which they

are more likely than men to spend on education and healthcare. Some critics said the programme was a publicity stunt and wouldn’t solve the underlying problems of poverty in Africa.

Nigerian satirist and author Elnathan John wrote on Twitter.

Gates acknowledged that some might scoff at the plan, but insisted that he believes it will have an impact. “It sounds

funny,” Gates wrote on the project’s website. “But I mean it when I say that I am excited about chickens.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest private charities in the world, has invested heavily in Africa, tackling a wide range of issues in healthcare, education, women’s rights and poverty alleviation.

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First element discovered in Asia named ‘nihonium’, after Japan

TOKYO Japanese scientists behind the discovery of element 113, the first atomic element found in Asia - indeed, the first found outside Europe or the United States have dubbed it “nihonium” after the Japanese-language name for their country.“I believe the fact that we, in Japan, found one of only 118 known atomic elements gives this discovery great meaning,” said Kosuke Morita, a university professor who led the discovery team from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science.

“Another important meaning is that until now, all the elements in the periodic table have been discovered in Europe and the United States,” he told a news conference on Thursday. “There has not been a single atomic element found in Asia, Oceania

or Africa.” Element 113 was first found in 2004, and the number refers to its atomic number, or the number of protons in the nucleus of the atom. It does not exist naturally and has had to be synthesized. Though the element was publicly recognised by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in December 2015, the name was not announced by IUPAC until Wednesday. It will become permanent after a five-month public review. If approved, it will join other newly announced elements: moscovium for element 116, tennessine for element 117 and oganesson for element 118. It will also not be the only element to be named after a country, having been proceeded by polonium and francium after the places they were discovered.

Likely ancestor of mystery ‘hobbit’ found PARIS Half-sized humans who lived 700,000 years ago were almost certainly the ancestors of enigmatic “hobbits” whose fossils were found on the same Indonesian isle in 2003, scientists stunned by their own discovery reported Wednesday.Two studies, published in Nature, fill a huge gap in our understanding of these diminutive people, whose tortuous evolutionary saga hit a dead-end some 50,000 years ago.A modest haul of teeth and bones from an adult and two children has bolstered the theory that the hobbits, known to scientists as Homo floresiensis, arrived on Flores island as a different, larger species of hominin, or early man, probably about a million years ago. And then, something very strange happened.These upright, toolwielding humans shrank, generation after generation, until they were barely half their original weight and height.

The process, called “island dwarfism,” was well known in animals, with some species shrinking as much as six fold in adapting to an environment with fewer resources.Indeed, Flores was also home to a miniature race of elephant-like creatures possibly hunted to extinction by the mini-men - called Stegodons.

This is the first hard evidence of humans becoming smaller after being marooned on a spit of land transformed into an island by

‘Hacker map’ reveals countries most at risk of cyberattacks London Despite the ever-growing threat of cyberattacks, many countries continue to rely on insecure internet services, a new study

has revealed.

Security firm Rapid7 scanned the internet to determine the overall exposure of individual nations around the world, visualising the findings in a ‘heat map.’

Belgium tops the list as the country with the highest exposure risk, followed by Tajikstan, Samoa, Australia, and China. Pakistan is at 45th position, that means it is a less exposed country. On the National Exposure Index, the

United States sits in the 14th spot, with the United Kingdom behind it at number 23.

The researchers used a tool called Project Sonar to conduct

‘full-sweeps of the internet,’ allowing them to scan every public-facing IP address in just hours, according to The Guardian. Then, they plotted the data on a ‘heat map,’ with each colour-coded pixel representing 254 IP addresses.

‘We like to think of it as a proper map of the internet,’ the researchers note. ‘The black areas mean we received no signal at all, the darker blue areas mean we picked up a few

nodes and the yellow areas means we picked up many or most nodes,’ they explained.

Then, they created another map to show how this data corresponds with different locations around the world.

‘Since we geolocated these IPv4 addresses, that means countries can be plotted with their borders on this map, just like a regular map.’ The researchers have ranked the top 50 countries to show where they fall on the Exposure Index. Those in red are the most vulnerable, while the countries listed in green are considered to be ‘less exposed.’

According to the authors, the findings illustrate a ‘fundamental failure in modern internet engineering,’ as compulsory encryption is not a default feature. Despite warnings from cybersecurity firms around the world, they explain that security concerns largely remain secondary. ‘This state of affairs cannot last for much longer without dire consequences for the world’s largest economies,’ the authors wrote. ‘It is difficult to imagine a future where healthy, robust economies make less use of the internet, rather than more. Since the internet became standardized in 1982, they explain, nearly half of the world’s population now uses it regularly.

rising seas.“The hobbit was real,” said Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at the Research Centre of Human Evolution at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, and lead author of one

single land mass - was found on the island of Java in the late 19th century.

Similarities in the teeth point to this as the most likely parent of the Flores humans, Brumm said.

of the studies. “It was an ancient human species that is separate to ours and that no longer exists on the planet today.”The new fossils were unearthed in central Flores in 2014, about 100 kilometres (70 miles) from the 2003 discovery of the hobbit remains.The find provided partial answers to key questions: from which species did H. floresiensis evolve, and how long did it take to shrink? Two plausible evolutionary scenarios remain regarding their origins, said Brumm. “The first is that the ‘hobbits’ represent a kind of dwarfed Homo erectus from Java,” he told AFP. Homo erectus, up to 1.8 metres (six feet) tall and weighing up to 70 kilogrammes (154 pounds), is thought to have been the first human species to venture out of Africa. A specimen dated to about 1.2 million years ago - when much of the Indonesian archipelago was a

“The alternative theory is that these creatures descend from an earlier radiation of more archaic, small-boned hominins from Africa.”One theory that can now be set aside, the researchers said, is that Flores’ hobbits were actually modern humans diminished by disease or genetic disorders.“This find quashes once and for all any doubters that believe Homo floresiensis was merely a sick Homo sapiens,” said Gert van der Bergh, leader of the excavation and a professor at the University of Wollongong’s Centre for Archaeological Science.Most surprising was that the recently exhumed specimens were no larger than those still living on the island more than 600,000 years later.

“I was stunned when I first saw these new fossils,” said co-author Yousuke Kaifu, a scientist at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.

Protesters file a huge petition against China dog meat festival

London Animal rights activists calling for an end to the slaughter and eating of dogs at a Chinese festival delivered a petition with 11 million signatures to authorities in Beijing on Friday. The two dozen activists were accompanied by dogs and unveiled banners with pictures of the animals above the message “I’m not your dinner” as they presented the petition at the representative office of Yulin city, where the festival is held.

The annual festival, which is set to begin on June 21, sees residents of the southern city consume dog meat with thousands of dogs expected to be slaughtered. Supporters of the

festival say dog meat is good for your health at the hottest time of the year and eating the animals is no different from consuming any other meat.

But pictures of caged or slaughtered dogs posted online have outraged many people, with domestic and international organisations behind the petition calling for the festival to be stopped. The campaign against the festival has received celebrity backing from British comedian Ricky Gervais and US actor Ian Somerhalder. In 2014, the Yulin government distanced itself from the festival, saying it was staged by private business people and did not have official backing.

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14 June - 20 June 2016

Sikh real-estate developer shot dead in Canada

Toronto A 56-year-old prominent Sikh real estate developer was shot dead in broad daylight in Canada’s Richmond city in what authorities are describing as a “brazen” target killing.Amarjit Singh Sandhu was shot in the parking lot of a shopping centre in Richmond, British Columbia, as shoppers and restaurant diners witnessed the shooting.Sandhu died in hospital after Saturday’s broad daylight shooting that left his truck riddled with bullets.Royal Canadian Mounted Police were called to the spot and found the man suffering from gunshot wounds.

They reported several bullet holes in the driver’s side door of the black pickup truck.

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No one else was injured in the incident.

It was a targeted attack, the police said in a statement.

The police released a vague description of a man wanted in connection with the murder of Sandhu. The suspect is described as a non-white male in his early to mid 20s.

Sandhu was listed as president of Sandhill Developments Ltd. He and the company are named in more than 80 civil lawsuits in British Columbia dating back to the 1990s.In a recent case, Sandhu took the Khalsa Diwan Society to court. His actions led to an election being called for leaders at the Ross Street gurdwara in Vancouver, scheduled for September.

An official with the party opposed to changes Sandhu was seeking at the temple believes the shooting was unrelated.

“To my knowledge just for the sake of an election nobody would take such a big risk,” Ranjit Hayer of the Khalsa Diwan Society was quoted as saying.

People at the gurdwara registering to vote in the election said Sandhu was at the gurdwara before he went to Richmond and was gunned down.

Sheep invade Spanish city after shepherd falls asleep

MADRID Hundreds of sheep ran loose through the northeastern Spanish city of Huesca after their shepherd fell asleep and had to be rounded up by police, local police have said.Police were alerted to the presence of a flock of around 1,000 sheep making its way through the centre of Huesca just after 4 am (0200 GMT) on Tuesday by several phone calls from local residents, a local police spokesman said.“The shepherd had fallen asleep and did not realise the sheep had escaped

their pen,” he said.Two police cars were dispatched to the scene and it took five officers and the shepherd 30-45 minutes to round up all the sheep and return them to their pen.Local police uploaded a video on their official Facebook page which has gone viral of a police car with its lights on pulling up in front of the flock of runaway sheep.Huesca, the capital of a province with the same name located just south of the Pyrenees mountain on the French border, has a population of 53,000 people.

Gangster shot dead in Canada, son of Punjabi NRI wanted in Bhola drug racket Chandigarh A Punjabi-origin gangster in Toronto, Canada, was gunned down in broad daylight in Toronto on Tuesday afternoon, and has since been identified as Sukhvir Singh Deo, 34. While Sukhvir lived in Metro Vancouver and was aligned with the Independent Soldiers gang that indulged in illicit drug trade too, his father, Parminder Singh Deo ‘Pindi’, is wanted in Punjab in a drug case.

The police were still to formally release the name, but local daily Vancouver Sun confirmed his identity with his family and with police in British Columbia province. Several members of the Deo family, including Sukhvir, were well-known to police in Metro Vancouver. His brother Harjit Singh Deo was convicted in 2007 for a 2005 kidnapping for ransom in which the victim was held inside the Deo family home in New Westminster, reported Global News.

Sukhvir was better known as a Wolf Pack gang alliance member since moving to Ontario in 2013.

Police said the Wolf Pack has both national and international connections, media outlets reported. A gang war had ensued ever since a Wolf Pack member was killed and two wounded in 2011 in a shooting attributed to the Dhak-Duhre group, which also has Punjabis among the top brass.

Sukhvir’s father who has not visited India since 2011 and has a red Corner notice against him by the Interpol travelled from Vancouver to Toronto on Tuesday night.

Was named in rival Punjabi

limelight when Jagdish Bhola, alleged kingpin of the multicrore drug racket busted in Punjab, told the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in 2014 that Pindi and two other nonresident Indians (NRIs),

gangster’s murder Sukhvir Deo’s name had surfaced in connection with the May 2012 murder of the rival gang member Gurbinder (Bin) Toor, another gangster of Punjabi origin. However, no charges have been laid in the murder, reported The Sun. Deo’s uncle Sohan told The Sun that his nephew had a big trucking company in Ontario.

Sukhvir was successful enough to sit courtside at major sporting events; and he had a fleet of luxury vehicles, including the white Range Rover in which he was killed. He was facing drug and proceeds-of-crime charges in Ontario.

As for his father, he came to

Satpreet Singh ‘Satta’ and Amarinder Singh ‘Laddi’, were involved too and had links with politicians.

Pindi, who as per investigations visited India last in 2011, is facing many cases registered

by Punjab Police and the ED, his name is on the wanted list of Interpol. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) issued a red corner notice against him upon a submission by the state police in September 2015.

Pindi, Satta and Laddi allegedly used to buy the chemical pseudoephedrine from an Amritsar-based factory owner in order to produce drugs and sell them in Canada too.

Amid rising deaths by opioids, US, Mexico and Canada to reveal combat plan Mexico Mexico, the United States and Canada will unveil a plan to combat increased opium poppy cultivation and heroin use across North America at a summit later this month, a senior Mexican official said on Thursday. Leaders of the three nations are due to meet in Ottowa on June 29, amid growing concern about the rising North American death toll from opioids such as heroin and fentanyl, and a surge in poppy cultivation in Mexico by violent drug gangs. In a phone call last month, U.S. President Barack Obama and his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto agreed to intensify the fight against heroin production, and government officials say the problem has been under discussion for months. Paulo Carreno, Mexican deputy foreign minister in charge of North America, said in an interview that Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was also committed to the plan due to be launched at the so-called Three Amigos summit later this month.

“This isn’t just about destroying (plantations), it’s about finding solutions for people forced to cultivate poppies, and there will be an important announcement in this context at the summit on a new cooperation plan between

the three countries to deal with problems that obviously concerns us all,” he said.

Carreno declined to offer details but said additional resources

to the United States, rose from 10,500 hectares to 28,000 hectares, according to figures published by the White House.

At the same time, fatal heroin

would devoted to all parts of the problem. “To combating it, to eradicating it, but also to reducing demand significantly and addressing the social aspect,” he said. Pena Nieto took office in December 2012 pledging to bring Mexico’s drug cartels to heel, but sickening gang violence has been a blight on his administration and cultivation of opium poppies used to make heroin has surged.

Between 2012 and 2015, the area under poppy cultivation in Mexico, which officials say is the most important supplier of heroin

overdoses in the United States have risen steeply, with some 10,574 deaths reported in 2014, a rise of 26 percent from the previous year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure is six times higher than the total in 2001, the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse says. “Right now there’s a lot of concern here in the United States because we are suffering from a major, major heroin epidemic,” said Mike Vigil, a former head of global operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

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Mexican engineer extracts 11 of a family shot dead in central Mexico gas from urine to heat shower MEXICO CITY Mexican engineer Gabriel LunaSandoval was urinating one day when he realized that the yellow

liquid could be of “vital” use elsewhere. Nine years later, he invented a machine that he said can transform urine into a biogas to serve as a household heater to take hot showers or cook. But the 41-year-old researcher from the University of Sonora State, in northern Mexico, is also shooting for the stars with his invention. Luna-Sandoval has extracted oxygen from urine, and he said that astronauts could take a small device in space to create O2 with their own bodily fluid in case of emergencies.

He’s not just - to say it cleanly urinating in the wind. The idea has been taken seriously by the Mexican Space Agency, which told AFP in a statement that it is a “great innovation” with “high viability to be considered in space technology and for space walks.” But the first application for his invention would be more

terrestrial.

Instead of using liquefied petroleum gas, which is widespread in Mexican homes

but contributes to climate change, people could have a special container to transform their urine into a biogas.

The mechanical engineer created a clear acrylic container, which looks like a square vase, in which urine is poured.

His prototype, which measures about 20-square-centimeters, has stainless steel electrodes to send electricity into it in order to separate oxygen and hydrogen, with the latter becoming a biogas.The container would be connected to a home’s pipes through which the biogas would travel to heat the water in the kitchen and bathrooms.

Families wouldn’t have to worry about their food or showers having the stench of urine: The biogas has no smell.

A tight seal also ensures that the smell of urine doesn’t escape the container, though cleaning it

would entail having to withstand the smell.

When nature calls, a man could fill the container by using a special urinal with a tube linked to the machine, Luna-Sandoval said. It would be more complicated for a woman, who would have to urinate into a container and then pour the content into the cube.

Luna-Sandoval recalled the day he got the idea, when he realized that the “vital liquid” could be used for science.

At the time, he thought about colleagues who were doing urine therapy, the practice of drinking one’s own urine in the belief that it can cure ailments. “Between jokes, they told me that it’s salty,” he said, and that made him realize that urine was an electrolyte. “How much urine goes to waste?” he wondered.

An adult produces 1.4 liters of urine per day, or 25,550 liters in the span of 50 years.

His invention requires just 13 to 21 milliliters of urine for a 15minute hot shower, he said.

Cooking beans for one hour demands only 70 to 130 milliliters of the golden liquid.

The container, which is patented, can be filled with an adult’s urine in the morning.He’s looking at other uses. The hydrogen that is created in the container could be used for engines with internal combustion and he will test it on small electricity generators.

Tehuacan Eleven members of a family were found shot to death in central Mexico, and investigators say a rapist who impregnated one of the victims was probably responsible for the killings.

The attacks that took place on Thursday night targeted a couple, their children and other relatives in the remote hamlet of San Jose el Mirador in the Puebla state municipality of Coxcatlan.

Coxcatlan Mayor Vicente Lopez de la Vega said the dead include five women, four men and two girls. Two other children were wounded and were being treated at a hospital in Tehuacan, the nearest city.

The Puebla state prosecutor’s office said five witnesses survived and were under government protection. They told authorities the attackers arrived at the remote mountain village by foot, opened fire and left.

The office said two suspected

attackers had been identified, but had fled into the mountains of neighboring Oaxaca state.

The office said that one of the dead women had been raped and had a child by one of the attackers.

“Personal conflicts are the main line of investigation,” the office said. Officials had previously raised the possibility the killings had religious overtones, because residents of the largely evangelical hamlet had previously had disputes with Catholics in a nearby community. But that now appears not to have played a role.

The bodies of the victims were taken to the city of Tehuacan for autopsies.

The area has not been particularly hard hit by the drug violence raging in much of Mexico, but drug cultivation and land disputes are not uncommon.

Britain’s queen wows in green at 90th birthday parade Emotional groom

can’t stop sobbing

London This is the heartwarming moment a man breaks down as he sees his bride walking down the aisle.

Groom Gabriel Deku, from London, was overcome with emotion as he saw his wife-to-be Annabella walking towards him at their lavish ceremony at St Martin In The Fields church at Trafalgar Square. Cameras captured the moment his beautiful bride made her way to the altar in a poignant video - but the minute Gabriel caught a glimpse of her tears started flowing. The congregation broke into loud cheers when they

saw the 25-year-old’s reaction, while his best man, Tolu Ige, encouraged him to hold it together. Gripping his friend by the shoulder, Tolu, who first introduced the couple four years ago, urged: ‘Come on, stand up, stand up. This is your moment, man. You look at her. ‘You look at her now, you look at her man.

You look at her. You stand up and you look at your wife.’ Evidently struggling to stem the tears, Gabriel, who met his wife in a Ted Baker store in 2012, wiped his eye while his friend said: ‘You look her in the eye.’

LONDON Queen Elizabeth II marked her official 90th birthday Saturday by taking the salute at a special military parade in London where her vivid green outfit caused a sensation.After Trooping the Colour, members of the royal family appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to watch a military flypast, including Prince William and Kate with their children George and Charlotte.

Prince George, who is nearly three, waved at the planes as they flew by, while one-year-old Princess Charlotte, who was carried by Kate, blocked her ears. The parade featured almost 1,500 uniformed officers and their men as well as more than 300 horses.But it was the queen’s unusually bold dress and hat combination in a green so bright as to be almost fluorescent which caught the eye of many.

On Twitter, some compared it to the colour of Kermit the Frog from Jim Henson’s TV comedy “The Muppet Show”.The queen favours bright colours for public appearances so she can be easily seen by crowds, though they are normally in more muted shades.On Saturday, she was accompanied by her husband

Prince Philip, who wore a ceremonial red military uniform

known as the Patron’s Lunch will be held on The Mall outside

and bearskin hat. Thousands of people flocked to see the spectacle.The queen celebrates two birthdays as part of a royal tradition which dates back over 250 years.The actual date of her birth is April 21, 1926. But her official birthday is also marked in Britain on a Saturday in June with Trooping the Colour. The birthday parade features the Household Division of the British Army — seven regiments traditionally seen as the monarch’s official guards. On Sunday, a giant street party

Buckingham Palace to mark the queen’s official birthday.

The celebrations started on Friday with a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country has frosty relations with Britain, sent a message of congratulations to the queen.The Kremlin said Putin “noted the rich history of relations between the two countries and expressed confidence in the further development of constructive cooperation”.

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Pharaohs’ shadow an omen in Egypt gold search EASTERN DESERT Egypt-Careering around Egypt’s rocky Eastern Desert, Alexander Nubia CEO Mark Campbell peers from his jeep and sees hills so rich with gold they could lure billions in investments and jumpstart the ailing economy. His company just has to find it.

Egypt’s gold mining industry has for years been long on potential and short on investment - the result of a jarring mismatch between spectacular geology and an unattractive commercial framework for mining.

Despite a history of gold mining that stretches back to the pharaohs, the industry is largely dormant. With just a single goldproducing mine, Centamin’s Sukari, the sector contributes a fraction of one percent to gross domestic product (GDP). But last year, Egypt’s government said it wanted mining to contribute upwards of 5 percent to GDP within 10 years.

This month it will launch its first bid round for new mining concessions since 2009, when a global gold-mining boom brought a handful of first-time investors to Egypt, despite what many of them say were poor commercial terms. Most of these investors left after the 2011 uprising, driven away by rising political turmoil and falling global gold prices.

Now, armed with a 2014 mining

law that helps streamline investment, Egypt wants to lure them back. If successful, the industry could create jobs and attract foreign currency to an economy that is in dire need of both. Paul Jones, CEO of Nuinsco, a Canadian explorer that left in 2011, likens Egypt’s mineral-rich Nubian shield rock formation that straddles the Red Sea to the Canadian shield of a century ago, before it “developed the northern part of Quebec and Ontario with tens of millions of ounces of gold, and billions of pounds of copper, zinc, and lead.”

Leonard Karr, a geologist with Vancouver-based Alexander Nubia, says the ancient continental crust upon which the company’s two concessions sit is chock full of potentially recoverable mineral wealth.

“There are hundreds of good plays,” he said. That the allure of Egypt’s geology has yet to spur a gold rush is down to regulation, investors and analysts say.

Despite the mineral-rich concessions on offer and the 2014 law, they predict a tepid response to this month’s tender. Rather than levy a modest royalty on mineral production and collect tax - a system that helped Peru and Mexico launch their mining sectors - Egypt offers investors a production-sharing agreement similar to its oil and gas deals.

N Korean anti-tobacco push up in smoke as Kim keeps puffing

Seoul A North Korean anti-smoking campaign has apparently failed to persuade young leader Kim Jong-Un to quit, despite his late father’s warning that “a cigarette is like a gun aiming at your heart”.

During a public campaign to lower the country’s high rate of smoking, Kim was seen without a cigarette for more than 80 days, sparking speculation that he may have kicked the habit.

But a photo in the country’s top newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, last week of Kim smiling and holding a burning cigarette while visiting a children’s camp in Pyongyang seems to have

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dampened such expectations.

There have been plenty of photos of Kim lighting up in the past.

He smoked when he inspected a ballistic missile plant, visited construction sites, toured a hospital and attended various sports competitions and art performances. He puffed away on an underground train and even in front of his pregnant wife.

The state media have been hailing Pyongyang’s “hectic” anti-smoking campaign, which has been staged nationwide over the past month.

Korean Central TV recently aired a documentary series focusing on health risks of smoking, with one female interviewee saying: “People who smoke first thing in the morning are disgusting and harmful to others”.

Kim’s father Kim Jong-Il and grandfather Kim Il-Sung were also heavy smokers. Both died of heart attacks.

“A cigarette is like a gun aimed at your heart,” Kim Jong-Il said in early 2000, when he appeared to have kicked the habit.

But he relapsed in 2008 and died three years later.

Mining companies say the model does not fit their work. Unlike companies drilling wells, their capital costs can stretch for decades as they build out mines requiring hundreds of millions of dollars in investment.

They say production sharing, on top of a royalty payment, makes Egypt a prohibitively expensive play.“Production sharing works for the oil and gas industry, however it does not work anywhere in the world for mining,” said Centamin chairman Josef El-Raghy.“As such, companies will not come and invest in Egypt despite the hugely prospective mineral resource area.”

For Abdelaal Attia, an adviser to the Egyptian Mineral Resource

Authority (EMRA), Egypt’s commercial terms reflect the lower risk of exploration in a country where ancient mines populate the desert, indicating known areas of mineralisation.“You will not go to an area and start from scratch ... you know you have gold there. It’s just about how much,” said Attia.“The tax and royalty system can be applied in countries that don’t have any information about their lands ... but EMRA has a century of work, reports, and maps.”EMRA has yet to announce the commercial terms for this month’s bid round, but Attia says it will likely stick to the production-sharing model and offer five to seven

concessions.Yousef Husseini, an analyst with EFG Hermes, said the data available is not enough to lure investors on the current terms.“It’s clear there is a lot of potential but investors want a more definitive answer. They want to know where minerals are and how much is present,” he said.Alexander Nubia, just one of three active explorers in Egypt, is nonetheless bullish. Campbell says a prospect his firm began exploring in 2011 will likely yield a commercially viable discovery next year. He plans to begin building Egypt’s second mine there by 2019.For Alexander Nubia, an exploration junior that takes on a multitude of high risk bets in hopes of occasionally striking it big, Egypt’s mining history makes it a sound wager.The work of past miners dots the hilly expanse of the company’s concession - a crumbling Roman fort and an abandoned 20th century British mine are not far from its own drill holes.Campbell says these relics are cost-saving guides to future discoveries, while new technology allows modern miners to drill deeper and extract lower grade minerals than their predecessors.“There’s about 6,000 years of mining history here and a large part of it was gold ...

It offers almost a roadmap to the opportunities,” said Campbell.

Singapore A mobile app exploring Sikhs’ history in Singapore has been launched here, according to media reports.

Partially funded by the National Heritage Board, the Sikh Heritage Trail app was developed

by Ishvinder Singh, a 29-year-old project engineer in an aerospace company, and was launched yesterday, The Sunday Times reported.

Available both on the Android Google play store and the Apple app store, the SGD 20,000-app covers a trail of Sikh imprisoned in 1850 in Singapore, then a penal colony of British Empire.

The late Maharaj Singh is revered for his bravery and for planning a revolt with his followers against the British Raj in Punjab. Bhai Maharaj Singh, Sikh martyr, was jailed in 1850 at the nowdefunct Outram Prison. He died here in 1856. His unmarked tomb in the forested grounds, where Singapore General Hospital is today, was relocated to the Silat Road Sikh Temple (Gurdwara) in 1966. Among other trails, the app has the Sepoy Lines area around Outram Road and Cantonment Road where the sepoys, or Indian soldiers in the British Raj, built their barracks. The app trail through Bukit Brown Cemetery and its surrounding cemeteries, home to 30 pairs of Sikh guard statues, is also featured in the

app. Other sites featured include the Upper Barracks and Lower Barracks on Pearl’s Hill, which were built in 1934 for the Sikh Contingent of the Straits Settlement Police to live in.

Ishvinder Singh and his team of

together the app.

Their research involved site visits, conducting interviews with heads of Sikh temples here, and browsing materials from the National Archives of Singapore as well as overseas libraries.

two full-time app developers Chris Cai, 29, and Melody Ho, 24, as well as head researcher Vithya Subramaniam, 27, a South Asian studies graduate student at Columbia University, spent about three years putting

“We didn’t want to only talk about prominent Sikhs… we wanted also to share about the lives of everyday Sikh families, as well as their interactions with historic sites here,” Singh told The Sunday Times.

Mobile app on Sikh Heritage launched in Singapore

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14 June - 20 June 2016

Anil Kumble in the race Yuzvendra Chahal stars as India thump Zimbabwe to clinch ODI series for India cricket coach A clinical India clinched the three-match One-Day International (ODI) series against Zimbabwe, pulling off another fine all-round show to crush the minnows by eight wickets for

an unassailable 2-0 lead in Harare on Monday. It was a dominant performance yet again from the new-look Indian side whose bowlers first skittled the hosts for a lowly 126 in 34.3 overs and the batsmen hardly broke a sweat to get past the target in only 26.5 overs. If India manage a ‘whitewash’ by winning the third ODI on Wednesday,

then it would be a hat-trick of series wins for the Indian teams, maintaining a clean slate in the African nation after their victories in 2013 and 2015.

If young leg-spinner

Yuzvendra Chahal (3/25) broke the backbone of the Zimbabwe middle-order, it was Ambati Rayudu who hit 41 off 44 balls to finish the game with a flourish.

With the target hardly posing any challenge, last match’s centurion KL Rahul (33) added 58 runs in company of Karun Nair (39 off 68 balls) for the opening stand. The

Love to get more aggression like you says Saina Nehwal to Virat Kohli

Rayudu-Nair pair added 67 runs for the second wicket.

Nair, on his part, got the much-needed confidence with some runs under his belt but the manner in which he played was more

about self preservation on a slightly tricky track.

When Nair was finally gone trying to sweep a straight delivery from Sikandar Raza, India needed only two runs which Manish Pandey completed with a boundary off the first ball that he faced. But it was Rayudu, who hit a flurry of boundaries seven in all to finish the match with 23.1 overs to spare.

With ball darting around a bit, the Indian batsmen were cautious and Nair for one was lucky to get a reprieve when he edged one off Tendai Chatara, only to find that the bowler had

overstepped. He celebrated his charmed life with a down the ground hit off the very next ball. air also drove and pulled Chatara for a couple of boundaries to settle down into a good rhythm.

Chatara was also handed some rough treatment from Rahul who got a couple of boundaries with a cover drive and a cut shot. He also got a couple of boundaries off seamer Taurai Muzarabani. Rahul looked solid for at least another half-century but he dragged one from Chamu Chibhabha onto his stumps. He had four boundaries in his 50-ball knock. Rayudu, who was unusually subdued during his half-century in the first game, started with a couple of boundaries off Chatara followed by a couple of fours each off Elton Chigumbura and Chibhabha. When Rayudu came into bat, Nair was on 22, but was on even keel with his junior partner by the time they reached the mid-30s score.

In the end, it was another lopsided contest that went India’s way with skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni not needing to even wear his leg guards for the second time in a row.

The search for India’s cricket coach has taken an interesting turn as it has been reliably learnt that Anil Kumble has applied for the post. Incidentally, the BCCI’s press release on Sunday merely stated that there are 57 applicants, including overseas candidates, but did not mention any names. When compared to other former India players, at least the ones who admitted to the media that they have applied for the post, Kumble towers over the rest in terms of cricketing stature. India’s greatest match-winning bowler with 956 international wickets (619 in Tests and 337 in ODIs) and one who also led India ably, Kumble is understood to have submitted his candidature well before the June 10 deadline.

One of the BCCI’s stipulations for the top slot is that the candidate “should have successfully coached a cricket team of any of the

member countries of the ICC, at the first class or at the International level.” In terms of coaching, Kumble has mentored IPL teams Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians.

Currently, Sanjay Bangar is the interim coach for the Indian team that is playing in Zimbabwe. The BCCI needs to pick a coach ahead of India’s next month’s tour of the West Indies, where Virat Kohli’s men will play four Tests. Subsequently, India has an exhaustive homeseason, featuring 13 Tests, with the visitors being New Zealand, England, Bangladesh and Australia.

The BCCI’s latest press release mentioned that the “scrutiny of the applications received is now being carried out by the office of the honorary secretary (Ajay Shirke) of the BCCI. After this initial scrutiny, the list of candidates who meet the criteria will be processed for further consideration.”

Indian men 4x400m relay better 18-year-old National record Indian badminton player Saina Nehwal clinched the Australian Open Super Series title in Sydney on Sunday. Pundits and sports personalities from all over the country heaped praise on the 26-year old’s

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achievement.

Virat Kohli too took to social media to congratulate the Hyderabad girl for the win. Kohli wrote on his twitter page: “Congratulations @NSaina So happy for you. Onwards and Upwards always #ProudIndian.” In reply , Saina wrote: “I would love to get more aggression like u for winning more matches I m trying hard for that Thank u so much.”

She notched up the win in final against Sun Yu of China. She will now carry India’s hopes at the Rio Games, to be held in August.

The Indian mens 4x400m relay team created a new National record, clocking 3:02.17 sec at the International Sprint and Relay Teams Cup in Erzurum on Sunday.

They bettered the previous record of 3:02.62 s set at the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok.

Meanwhile, the Indian womens 4x400m relay team, who are the reigning Asian Games champion and record-holder, clocked 3:30.16sec and jumped to world No 12 in the rankings,

to emerge as strong contenders for a qualification berth for the 2016 Olympic Games. Earlier, the Indian team management de-

cided to field two teams each in both the relay events for more options.

The mens second team (B team) clocked 3:06.61 s

while the womens second team (B team) finished with a timing of 3:34.45s.

While the mens relay team is currently placed No 17, the coaches are of the view that the team is capable of reaching the top-12 rankings with a couple of more races. As per the IAAF regulations, only the top-16 teams as per qualification norms and word rankings under a stipulated period, will be eligible for participation in the relay events at the Rio Olympic Games.

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14 June - 20 June 2016

Spread of human disease from animals mapped London Scientists say they have developed a better way to predict how animal diseases can spill over into humans. Their model for Lassa fever, which is spread by rats, predicts that there will be twice as many human cases of the disease in Africa by 2070. The method can be applied to other disease threats such as Ebola and Zika, they say. Like the Ebola virus, the Lassa virus causes haemorrhagic fever and can be fatal.

Lassa fever virus currently affects between 100,000 and one million people a year in western sub-Saharan Africa.

A rat found in parts of the continent can pass the virus to people. Scientists led by Prof Kate Jones of the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research at UCL looked at about 400 known outbreaks of Lassa fever between 1967 and 2012. Lassa virus is carried by the Mastomys rat, which is found in parts of

Africa. The virus is passed to people through direct contact with infected rats by catching and preparing them for food, or by food or household items contaminated with rat droppings or urine.

The virus can also be transmitted through con-

tact with body fluids of an infected person. Around 80% of people with Lassa virus have no symptoms or have symptoms that mimic other illnesses, such as malaria. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches, ab-

dominal pains, sore throat and facial swelling. They developed a model to calculate how often people are likely to come into contact with disease-carrying animals and the risk of the virus spilling over. It shows more areas of West Africa are at risk from Lassa fe-

ver spill-over events than previously thought.

“Our model suggests that in future, it is likely to become a greater burden on local communities spreading to more areas with approximately twice as many spill-over events predicted by 2070,” Dr Jones and

colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the Zoological Society London report in the journal, Methods in Ecology and Evolution. The method takes into account environmental change and the way human populations are expected to grow. The projected increase in cases is largely due to climate change, with the rat that passes it to people (M. natalensis) thriving in hot and wet conditions, they say.

Meanwhile, growth in human populations in certain areas will mean more people coming into contact with the rodent. “This model is a major improvement in our understanding of the spread of diseases from animals to people,” explained Prof Jones.

“We hope it can be used to help communities prepare and respond to disease outbreaks, as well as to make decisions about environmental change factors that may be within their control.”

Father drops son on red-hot coal during Indian ritual

JALANDHAR A six-year-old Indian boy was rushed to hospital with serious burn injuries after his father dropped him on hot coals during a Hindu ritual, a doctor said Monday. The father was walking barefoot with his son Kartik in his arms on the red-hot embers when he lost his balance and fell during the ritual on Sunday, an AFP photographer at the scene said. Bystanders rushed to the rescue and took Kartik to hospital after other family members refused to accompany him, saying they had faith in God to heal him. “The boy was admitted last (Sunday) night in the emergency ward. He has burn injuries on his limbs and on one side of his trunk,” doctor Jangpreet

Singh told AFP. “The father has also sustained about 15 percent burns. I think it will take at least five to seven days for their wounds to heal. ” In one of the pictures Kartik, wearing marigold garlands and a white vest, can be seen screaming in pain as those around him try to pull him out. Around 600 devotees had gathered in Jalandhar city in northern Punjab state for a festival in honour of the goddess Maa Maariamma. Devotees must fast for seven days before walking on the burning coals in the ancient Hindu practice aimed at appeasing the deity.

Three years ago a mother carrying her daughter slipped and fell on the hot surface, also during the Jalandhar ritual.

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14 June - 20 June 2016

Health Easy tips and hacks to deal with mood swings!

Most of us, if not all, have experienced mixed feelings of happiness and sadness, occuring in a span of few seconds - mood swings!

Mood swings occur when you can go from happy to extremely sad in a moment without any reason or anything that triggers it. It can happen any time at any place. Most of us encounter mood swings in response to the events that happen in our lives, however, many people have a tendency to experience them more than others, which becomes problematic.

The causes of mood swings are unknown, but it is believed that your hormones and neurotransmit-

ters are to blame. Other factors that may trigger mood swings include diseases/disorders which interfere with nervous system function, stress and anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, lack of sleep, unhealthy diet or lifestyle, drug abuse.

Unfortunately, there’s no such easy pill or magic trick that can cure the oscillation of feelings. However, here are a few lifestyle tips and hacks you can try to manage or deal with mood swings: • Avoid or limit alcohol and caffeine intake as they can interfere with your sleep, thereby influencing your mood.

• Get enough sleep, at

least 7-8 hours while maintaining a regular bed time and wake time each day.

• Exercise regularly. When you exercise, your body releases chemicals endorphins, designed to reduce stress and enhance pleasure.

• Eat a healthy, balanced diet - at least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables each day, complex carbs with a protein at each meal.

• Avoid overgeneralizing negative outcomes as it may lead you into a bad mood.

• If you feel that you’re upset suddenly, promptly stop what you’re doing and try to gather your thoughts and understand why you

are unhappy and whether you should be upset or not.

• If you sense you’re about to have a mood swing, try to control it by finding a calming routine. You’ll have to experiment and find out

what works best for you – going for a walk to clear your thoughts or sitting down with a warm cup of herbal tea, listening to a music, etc,.

• You’re in a bad mood and

if you can’t get out of it, talk to a trusted friend about it. You’ll feel better and much relieved as if you’ve taken your anger and frustration off your chest.

Walnuts may reduce If the honey you consume is pure, Here’s how! risk of colon cancer Walnuts are considered good for health as it helps in healthy ageing and also improves the blood cholesterol levels and maintains good gut health.

Health Centre in the US says,’Our results show for the first time that walnut consumption may reduce colon tumour development.’

A new study has found that daily consumption of 28 grams of walnuts may change gut bacteria in a way that reduces the risk of developing colon cancer.

One of the researchers, Daniel Rosenberg of University of Connecticut

Researchers found out that mice that ate seventen per cent of their total calories as walnuts developed fewer colon cancers.

The effect was most pronounced in male mice, which had 2.3 times fewer tumours when fed walnuts as part of a western diet.

That is equivalent to a human eating about an ounce of walnuts (28.3 grams) a day, the study said.

“There is accumulating evidence that eating walnuts may offer a variety of benefits related to health issues like cancer. This study shows that walnuts may also act as a probiotic to make the colon healthy,

which in turn offers protection against colon tumours,” Rosenberg noted.

The findings were reported in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

Walnuts are packed with compounds known to be important nutritionally.

They have the most polyunsaturated fatty acids of all the commonly eaten tree nuts, as well as the highest ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids, and high levels of a form of Vitamin E with anti-cancer properties.

But walnuts are not merely the sum of their chemical parts, and it may be as a whole food that they pack the most significant anticancer punch against colon cancer, the third most common cancer in the world.

To figure out why walnuts were beneficial, the team took fecal samples from the mice and analysed the communities of bacteria living in their digestive tracts.

They found that walnut consumption tended to push the gut microbiome toward an ecology that was potentially protective against cancer.

Not sure, whether or not the honey you got from the supermarket is pure? Unfortunately, adulteration of pure honey with synthetic honey has become more prevalent nowadays.

As per a report from Times of India, recently tests conducted at the regional analytical laboratory in Kakkanad in Kerala showed that the product available in the market had colouring agents and additives.

Food safety officials found the presence of four colouring additives -tartrazine, sunset yellow, carmozine and ponceau 4R - in the sample that were collected from different shops in the city.

The adulteration was found in ATK Food Product with its address in Manickamanga lam in Kalady, although officials believe the address is wrong.

The tests were conducted following complaints regarding the widespread use of colouring additives in honey.

While the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) allows synthetic colours up to 100 PPM (parts per million) in

a single of combination of products such as bread, chocolates and biscuits, adding colouring additives to honey is prohibited, as per the Food Safety and Standards (Prohibition and Restriction on Sales)

minutes, whereas it remains for a little longer in fake honey due to presence of sugar.

Smell Pure honey will posses a mild smell or the actual scent of the flowers from

Regulation 2011. Here are some properties that will help you distinguish pure honey and adulterated honey: Stickiness Your honey is pure if not sticky when rubbed between fingers.

Thickness Pure honey is fairly thick and takes time to move from one side of the jar to the other, whereas fake honey is light and runny.

Taste The taste of pure honey goes away in a matter of

where the nectar is collected. However, a fake honey will have none or sour smell.

Dissolving method Pure honey doesn’t get dissolved in water, but settled as a solid body at the bottom of the glass. Whereas fake honey stays mixed up and gets dissolved in water right away.

Heating Pure honey gets caramelized quickly and doesn’t form foam, whereas fake honey becomes bubbly and never caramelizes.

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14 June - 20 June 2016

New patch for diabetics may make painful jabs history While syringes, pens, pumps and jet injectors have given diabetics options for their insulin delivery for many years now, a new device called OneTouch Via could change the game. People with type 1 and type 2 diabetes who used the new OneTouch Via mealtime, on-demand insulin delivery system reported they missed fewer doses and felt less stress about dosing compared to multiple daily injections, according to research presented by Calibra Medical, Inc., one of the Johnson & Johnson

Diabetes Care Companies, at the annual American Diabetes Association (ADA) conference. Results of the Market Acceptance Evaluation (MAE) study also demonstrated that physicians were more likely to recommend the innovative insulin delivery device to patients who are not at A1C goals or who are new to rapid-acting insulin (RAI) therapy.

The new OneTouch Via is a wearable, on-demand insulin delivery system in development that allows

patients to discreetly deliver rapid-acting, or bolus, insulin at mealtimes by simply pressing two buttons on the device, accessible even through clothing.

The thin, water-resistant patch can be worn continuously for up to three days, providing injectionfree delivery of insulin when needed. “People with dia-

betes can often feel embarrassment or discomfort when they need to inject insulin at mealtimes or when snacking. In a social situation, they may choose to miss a dose so they don’t have to take themselves out of the moment, but avoiding needed insulin doses may lead to serious health complications over time,” said Dr. Brian Levy. Levy added, “Because patients in the study were empowered to dose discreetly with the OneTouch Via, they felt

encouraged to dose more often - and ultimately, they reported missing fewer doses and better adherence to their treatment regimen.” The healthcare professionals who assisted with the study noted that they preferred the OneTouch Via over both insulin pens and syringes (75 percent and 100 percent, respectively) and would be likely to recommend it to their patients. The doctors also reported that they would start patients on mealtime insulin earlier because of the ease of use of the OneTouch Via patch.

Prolonged repetitive manual Persistent headache? Know the work puts you at arthritis risk symptoms of brain tumour!

A new study has found that prolonged repetitive physical workload can increase the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Although work-related physical activity over many

included in the Swedish Epidemiological Investigation of Rheumatoid Arthritis (EIRA).

To investigate whether some people are more susceptible than others, the

years is known to cause many cases of osteoarthritis (OA) in selected joints, this is the first study to show a link between physical workload and RA. To examine whether physical workload is a possible risk factor for RA, information on different types of self-reported exposure was analysed from a population of 3,680 RA patients and 5,935 matched controls

risk was compared in subjects with and without a specific genotype (HLADRB1), and an analysis was performed in relation to the presence/absence of ACPA (anti-citrullinated protein antibodies) among RA patients.

“We found that some types of physical workload increased the odds of developing RA more than others,” said Miss Pingling

Zeng of the Institute of Environmental Medicine.

“There also appeared to be a significant interaction between genetic makeup, in terms of HLA-DRB1 genes, and the risk of ACPA-positive RA from specific types of physical workload.”

The estimated odds ratio of developing RA in exposed vs. unexposed subjects was greater than or equal to 1.5, with several repetitive types of manual work that would be common, for example, in the building trade: exposure to repeated vibration (1.5), carrying or lifting weights greater than 10kg (1.5), bending/ turning (1.6), and working with hands either below knee level (1.7), or above shoulder level (1.8).

“These new insights into the cause of RA may hopefully lead to effective strategies to prevent the development of RA, particularly in those RA patients with a susceptible genotype,” Miss Zeng concluded.

Almost everyone gets headaches. Whether it’s around your eyes or across your head, headaches can be annnoying and debilitating.

And headache is one of the most common symptoms experienced by people with brain tumours, although there are many causes and types of headaches.

If you have this persistent headache, make sure that it’s not a brain tumour. A brain tumor is a mass or growth of abnormal cells in the brain.

People with a brain tumour may experience the following signs and symptoms: • Headaches - which may be severe and worsen with activity, in the early morning or that gradually become frequent • Seizures (fits) • Persistent nausea, vomiting and drowsiness • Fatigue • Mental or behavioural changes, such as memory problems or changes in personality • Hearing problems

Is your town home to Zika? Map reveals details Zika has been taking its toll is expected to on the U.S. since 2015 and now, a team of researchers has mapped the mosquitoes that transmit Zika and Dengue by the county. The mosquitoes known as Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus transmit arboviruses that are increasing threats to human health in the Americas, particularly dengue, chikungunya and Zika viruses. Therefore, accurate and up-to-date information for the geographical ranges of these mosquitoes have been urgently needed to guide surveillance and enhance control capacity for these

mosquitoes.

The article features maps of counties in the United States where these mos-

quitoes have been recorded, based on records

from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ArboNET database, VectorMap, the published

literature, a survey of mosquito control agencies,

university researchers and state and local health departments.

Between January 1995 and March 2016, 183 counties from 26 states and the District of Columbia reported the occurrence of Aedes aegypti, and 1,241 counties from 40 states and the District of Columbia reported the occurrence of Aedes albopictus.

“Our findings underscore the need for systematic surveillance of Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus in the United States and delineate areas with risk for the transmission of these introduced arboviruses,” the authors wrote.

• Vision problems • Speech difficulties • Loss of balance

you have persistent symptoms of a brain tumour. Although brain tumours tend

• Progressive weakness or paralysis on one side of the body You should see a doctor if

to be more common in older adults, it can affect people of any age, including children.

Some reasons to eat more garlic everyday!

Sharp, pungent, stinky are some of the characteristics of garlic. But, whether you love it or can’t stand it, this bulb has a wealth of health and medicinal properties. Garlic or allium sativum is a species in the onion genus, Allium. With a history of human use of over 7,000 years, garlic has been used both for food flavoring and traditional medicine.

Here are some health benefits of garlic that are supported and proven by research studies.

• Garlic reduces your risk of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and stroke. It lowers total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, particularly in adults who have high cholesterol.

Garlic has been shown to affect arteriosclerosis, triglycerides, blood pressure, platelet aggregation, and plasma viscosity. Studies

have linked garlic use with a decreased risk of heart problems in general.

• The active compounds (allicin) in garlic can lower blood pressure in people with high blood pressure or hypertension, which is a major factor for cardiovascular diseases.

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Issue 671 (39)

14 June - 20 June 2016

Chicken Diane Style

Seared Scallops with Tropical Salsa Ingredients: 1/2 cup diced fresh pineapple 1/2 cup diced fresh mango 1/2 cup peeled and diced cucumber 1/2 cup diced red bell pepper 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro 4 teaspoons fresh lime juice 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced salt and pepper to taste 1 pound sea scallops, rinsed and drained Directions: Combine the pineapple, mango, cucumber, bell pepper, bell pepper, cilantro, lime juice and jalapeno. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and set aside.

Heat a large, nonstick fry pan over medium-high heat. Coat the pan with cooking spray. Season the scallops

with salt and pepper. Add half of the scallops to the pan; sear until golden brown on both sides, about 2 minutes per side.

Transfer the scallops to a warmed plate; set aside. Repeat with the remaining scallops.

Divide the scallops among four warmed plates. Spoon the salsa over the scallops, and serve immediately.

Ingredients: 2 small onions, chopped 1 pound fresh mushrooms 8 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper 1/2 teaspoon paprika 2 teaspoons chopped fresh chives teaspoons dried parsley 1/2 cup chicken broth 1/4 cup brandy 2 tablespoons prepared Dijon-style mustard Directions: Saute onions and mushrooms in a large skillet over medium heat. Remove onion/mushroom mixture from skillet and

bell pepper, mushrooms, roasted garlic and tomato. Sprinkle with rosemary and oregano, then drizzle with olive oil. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes.

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain. Toss with Parmesan cheese, tapenade and roasted vegetables.

Ingredients: 1 1/2 pounds pork chops garlic powder to taste salt and pepper to taste 1 onion, chopped 1 large head cabbage, cut into squares 1 pound large egg noodles 1 tablespoon butter Directions: Sprinkle pork chops with garlic powder, salt and pepper and place in a large greased sauce pan or deep skillet with chopped onion and fry until very brown and well cooked. It is ok if they stick a little, as the drippings are essential in this dish. When done, remove chops and set aside.

Add a little water to the saucepan or skillet and mix up the drippings a bit. Place cabbage into the pot, and allow to cook down completely.

In a separate large saucepan, boil the egg

Roasted Veggie Pasta Ingredients: 1/4 pound fresh asparagus 2 red bell pepper, sliced 1/4 pound crimini mushrooms, sliced 10 cloves roasted garlic, chopped 1/2 tomato, quartered 1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary 1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano 2 tablespoons olive oil 8 ounces dry fettuccini noodles 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese 2 tablespoons tapenade Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Prepare asparagus by trimming woody base and cutting diagonally into 4 inch pieces.

In a roasting pan, combine asparagus,

HalusHki

Zesty Southern Pasta and Bean Salad Ingredients: 2 cups small seashell pasta 1/3 cup Italian-style salad dressing salt to taste 1 (15 ounce) can pinto beans 1 (15 ounce) can black beans 1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained, 3 tomatoes, chopped 1 1/2 tablespoons ground cumin 1/2 tablespoon chili powder 1/2 teaspoon onion powder 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 1/4 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes (optional) salt and pepper to taste Directions: Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain and

reserve; add chicken breasts to skillet.

Saute for 4 minutes, then turn over and add mushroom mixture on top. In a small bowl mix salt, pepper, paprika, chives and parsley together then sprinkle mixture over chicken. In a medium bowl combine the broth, brandy and mustard and blend together. Pour over chicken, reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes or until chicken is cooked through (no longer pink inside).

noodles in water until cooked. Drain noodles and mix in butter.

Cut up the pork chops to bite size pieces and set aside. When the cabbage has cooked down, add pork and cooked noodles and mix completely.

White Chili

rinse pasta in cold water. Place in a large mixing bowl and add dressing and salt; mix well. Combine pinto beans and black beans in a colander; rinse with cold water and add to pasta. Add corn, tomatoes, cumin, chili powder, onion powder, garlic powder, dried red pepper flakes and salt and pepper to taste; toss lightly. Chill salad in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Ingredients: 1 tablespoon olive oil 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cubed coarsely ground black pepper to taste 1 large onion, chopped 6 cloves garlic, minced 3 green chile peppers, seeded and minced, 1 green bell pepper, chopped 1 red bell pepper, chopped 1 (8 ounce) package mushrooms, sliced, 3 (15 ounce) cans pinto beans 4 green onions, chopped 1 bunch fresh parsley, chopped 2 cup white wine 2 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth 2 cubes chicken bouillon 1 teaspoon dried rosemary 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1 tablespoon dried oregano

1 1/2 tablespoons ground cumin 2 bay leaves Directions: In a large pot over medium-high heat, cook chicken in olive oil with black pepper until brown. Stir in onion, garlic and chiles and cook until onion begins to soften. Stir in bell peppers, mushrooms, beans, green onions and parsley. Pour in wine and chicken broth. Season with bouillon, rosemary, thyme, oregano and cumin. Place bay leaves in pot, cover, reduce heat and simmer 90 minutes.

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14 June - 20 June 2016