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THE CONTACT WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ISSUE - 656, 1 MARCH - 7 MARCH 2016 PH: (905) 671 - 4761

Sikh-American Soldier Files Lawsuit After Military Denies Religious Freedom!

WASHINGTON A federal lawsuit was filed earlier today against the United States Department of Defense on behalf of Captain Simratpal Singh, a decorated Sikh American soldier who was ordered to submit to nonstandard testing because of his religious beliefs. The lawsuit, which is the first of its kind on behalf of a Sikh officer, demands that the U.S. military accommodate his Sikh turban, unshorn hair and unshorn beard and abandon its unfair and discriminatory testing, which is scheduled for Tuesday, March 1. Once the testing is enjoined, Captain Singh seeks a further ruling directing the Army to make his religious accommodation permanent.

Only three Sikh Americans have been granted the opportunity to serve full time without removing their unshorn hair and turban since the restrictive ban was implemented in 1981. “I have so much pride in my Sikh Continued on Page 2

Arvind Kejriwal’s car attacked in poll-bound Punjab Chandigarh Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s convoy was attacked on LudhianaFerozepur road in Punjab. Kejriwal’s car windscreen shattered after being hit by a stone. He was sitting on the front seat of the car.

After the attack, Kejriwal tweeted, “My car attacked with sticks and stones in Ludhiana.

Front glass pane broken. Badals and Congress nervous? They can’t break my spirits.”

Kejriwal was in Ludhiana on the last day of his five-day tour of Punjab during which he visited

various cities including Jalandhar, Amritsar, Ferozepur, Sangrur and Bathinda to reach

out to people ahead of 2017 Assembly polls. He was scheduled to visit Ludhiana, Fatehgarh Sahib and Patiala before returning to Delhi today.

The AAP lashed out at the ruling

Akali Dal in Punjab over the attack. “In a well orchestrated attack the goons sent by Badals attacked Kejriwal’s car with stones & rods as police stood by. “The attackers came within an inch of grievously injuring Kejriwal. It was by only God’s grace that he escaped unhurt,” party leader Ashish Khetan tweeted.

The attackers came within an inch of grievously injuring Kejriwal. It was by only God’s grace that he escaped unhurt.

The AAP put out a photograph showing the shattered front glass pane.

Continued on Page 2

UK Sikh Receives Knighthood For Cancer Research LONDON Sir Harpal Singh Kumar, a Sikh from the UK, has been knighted for his cancer research. Despite having received such a high status, Singh chose to remain humble. He said that the knighthood has come as a surprise to him.

He chose to dedicate the honour to his team that worked hard on the research.

Harpal Singh is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Executive Board of Cancer Research UK. Singh gained a Masters in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cambridge and an MBA as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School.

He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of

Manchester and the University of Newcastle. The knighthood was bestowed upon him for his work in promoting research into the prevention, early diagnosis and

treatment of cancer. Cancer Research UK has been able to work on policy reforms on smoking and sun-beds, two common causes of cancer.

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Arvind Kejriwal’s car attacked...

Continued from Page 1 The Delhi Police on Friday had said that it has alerted Punjab over a life threat to Kejriwal, who is currently visiting Punjab. The AAP plans to contest elections to the 117-member Punjab assembly. Kejriwal has claimed the AAP is poised to sweep Punjab amid speculation that some leaders of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party may shift to the AAP. Possible role of the Punjab Government was alleged shortly after the attack on Arvind Kejriwal’s car in Ludhiana. Earlier, during of its ‘Sadhbhawana Rallies’, the Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal had advised the workers of the Akali Dal to give a fitting response to the growing popularity of AAP in Punjab.

“Do whatever it takes, but ensure that the topis (caps) do not remain on the heads of these AAP supporters,”

said Sukhbir Badal in one of his rallies carried out shortly after the Sarbat Khalsa.

Similarly, another Akali leader Gurbachan Babbehali had said, “whichever person speaks against the Akali Dal or BJP, what we should do is, hold these persons by their necks and teach them a lesson.”

These are not the only instances where Akali leaders have openly passed such statements on their rivals. However, today, shortly after the attack, Sukhbir Badal took a u-turn and promised to take a strict action against those behind the attack on Kejriwal. “We will ensure that the culprits are brought to justice. I have already asked the Ludhiana police to file a case and start inquiry,” said Sukhbir. He also asked upon the Director General of Police to ensure that Kejriwal is provided security for the rest of his tour.

Sikh-American Soldier....

Continued from Page 1 identity and service to my nation,” said Captain Singh in December after receiving his temporary accommodation. “To feel spiritually whole, while continuing my military career, has always been the dream.” Captain Singh was granted a temporary accommodation until March 31, 2016, to serve in the U.S. Army while maintaining his Sikh articles of faith.

On February 26, 2016, Captain Singh was ordered to report on March 1 for additional testing that no other soldier in the U.S. Army has been subject to as a precondition for remaining in the Army, including other soldiers permitted to maintain beards for medical reasons and the previouslyaccommodated Sikh soldiers. Captain Singh is more than willing to undergo the same safety testing as any other soldier, but he objects to being treated differently on account of his faith.

Captain Simratpal Singh enrolled in West Point in 2006, but was then forced to choose between his religion and career. After failed attempts to obtain an accommodation, Captain Singh succumbed to the pressure of conformity and cut his hair and shaved his

beard in an effort to fulfill his childhood dream of serving his country. He then went on to graduate from West Point with honors in 2010.

Nearly ten years later, after successfully completing the Army’s grueling Ranger School, earning a Bronze

articles of faith. This accommodation was extended until March 31, 2016.

“Captain Singh is being subject to discriminatory testing that isn’t required of any other soldiers, even those with medical or

Star for clearing roads in Afghanistan of explosive devices, and receiving numerous other military accolades in various positions, Captain Singh’s one regret was compromising his religion in order to serve his country. Captain Singh began maintaining his Sikh articles of faith and filed an accommodation request on October 21, 2015. On December 9, 2015, he was granted a temporary 30-day accommodation to serve while maintaining his Sikh

religious accommodations.

The Army cannot delay in providing him his statutory and constitutionally mandated right to an accommodation to serve as an observant Sikh in the Army,” said the Sikh Coalition’s Legal Director, Harsimran Kaur. The Sikh Coalition represents Captain Singh along with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery. The Sikh Coalition also represents the three previously

Climate info may be key weapon in fight against Zika spread BARCELONA In the Caribbean island state of Barbados, rainwater collection has been promoted as a way to boost scarce supplies of fresh water. But there’s a catch: environmental health officers then reported an increase in mosquitoes breeding in household water storage tanks.

In a country battling a high rate of dengue fever and some recently detected cases of Zika, controlling the population of the Aedes aegypti mosquito - which transmits both viruses to humans - is a high priority.

Diarmid CampbellLendrum, team leader for climate change and health with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, says there is a cheap and easy answer: covering rainwater tanks with mosquito nets.

But first the connection between climate and health issues must be made - and that doesn’t always happen. In Barbados, it did.

The country was one of seven to take part in the first global project on adapting

public health systems to climate change, launched by the WHO and the U.N. Development Programme in 2010.

Key aims of the work in Barbados were to improve water storage facilities to

eliminate mosquitoes, give technical advice on building and maintaining water tanks, and raise public awareness about safe ways to harvest rainwater. ‘It is about healthy urban planning - whereby your urban design, and your water and sanitation services all take into account the health risks and opportunities that arise,’ said Campbell-Lendrum.

Pressure to analyse the health impacts of climate

change and extreme weather - and to explore how efforts to deal with climate stresses could themselves shape health risks - is increasing as Zika gathers pace. WHO figures show that active

Zika outbreaks have been reported in around 40 countries or territories since the start of 2015, with three quarters of them in the Americas. In that region, the Aedes mosquito is found in all countries except Canada and continental Chile, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The Zika infection itself produces none or only mild

symptoms in many cases, but scientists are trying to establish whether it causes microcephaly in babies, a condition in which infants are born with unusually small heads and can suffer developmental problems.

Zika also has been associated with GuillainBarré syndrome, a rare disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks part of the nervous system.

There is no treatment or vaccine for Zika infection, and the WHO has said it will take at least 18 months to start large-scale clinical trials of preventative shots.

That means the focus for now is on understanding where and how the virus is likely to spread, eliminating mosquito breeding sites from water tanks to flower pots, gutters and used tyres - and taking precautions against mosquito bites.

Climate scientists have a role to play in the fight against Zika because mosquito-borne infections are strongly affected by weather and climate conditions, CampbellLendrum said.

accommodated Sikh clients with the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery.

“Captain Singh is a decorated war hero. The Army should be trying to get more soldiers like him, not banning them from serving or punishing them for their beliefs,” said Eric Baxter, Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “It’s time for the Pentagon to stop playing games and start doing the right thing – for Captain Singh, for Sikh Americans, and for all Americans.”

Last year, 27 retired U.S. Generals called on the U.S. Department of Defense to eliminate the ban on observant Sikhs. These generals join 105 Members of Congress,15 U.S. Senators, and 21 national interfaith and civil rights organizations, who have previously signed letters in support of American Sikhs’ right to serve. “For years we have worked to avoid litigation under the guiding belief that the U.S. military would finally do the right thing,” said Amandeep Sidhu, Partner at McDermott Will & Emery.

“The U.S. Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act make it clear that Captain Singh has the right to practice his faith in the military and we are confident that the court will agree.”

Prof. Bhullar’s bail plea maybe accepted after hearing of 23 year old case

AMRITSAR SAHIB On March 1, 2016, an Amritsar court will hear a 23-year-old case which has been reopened by the Punjab police against Prof.

Davinderpal Singh Bhullar.

The case belongs to Sadar (Batala) police station, which was registered under the TADA Act 23 years ago.

However, despite Prof.

Bhullar being incarcerated ever since his extradition from Germany, no hearing ever taken place in the case.

Prof. Davinderpal Singh Bhullar was transferred last year to Amritsar jail from Delhi’s Tihar Jail. He is suffering from mental illness and has many other medical complications.

His release became possible with the hunger protest by Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa after it was approved by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. As per the Sikh Relief organization, the court will hear Professor Bhullar’s bail plea on March 1 as well.

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Generational changes of behavior in Pakistan Mumtaz Qadri was executed by hanging in Pakistan on Monday, after having been convicted of murdering Salman Taseer, the liberal governor of Punjab province in Pakistan, on January 4, 2011. The execution has provoked widespread protests. Qadri was Taseer’s bodyguard.

To make sure he was dead, Qadri shot him in the chest 28 times. Qadri later said that he had shot Taseer because Taseer had opposed blasphemy laws in general, and for speaking out in favor of Asia Bibia, a Christian lady accused of blasphemy because she was Christian, and sentenced to death. After the murder, Qadri instantly became a national hero to many segments of Pakistan’s society.

The day after the governor’s death, Qadri went to court and dozens of lawyers greeted him with a hero’s welcome. They even showered him with rose petals and put a garland around his neck.

In 2011, 500 Pakistani religious scholars issued a statement praising Qadri for keeping alive a “tradition of 1,400 years

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in Islam” which requires the killing of anyone committing an act of blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed. Because of Qadri’s popularity after the murder, it had been feared that Qadri would never be punished for his crime, so Monday’s execution was something of a surprise.

There were protests and riots in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, although most rallies were dispersed peacefully.

Blasphemy laws are not unique to Pakistan. Blasphemy laws in Britain and Ireland were in effect into the 1900s, although they were rarely enforced. They were rarely enforced in Pakistan as well, until the 1980s, when something changed in public attitudes. Thousands of blasphemy cases have been heard since then.

Generational changes of behavior This kind of rapid massive popular change in attitude is of interest because it’s usually generational and often extremely destructive. In this case, popular opinion accepts the fact that someone can be put to death for merely accidentally saying the wrong thing and popular opinion can treat even a murderer as a hero. A comparable thing happened in America when the rising Generation-X generated the financial crisis by creating and selling billions of dollars in fraudulent subprime mortgage backed synthetic securities. Despite the fact that millions of people lost their homes and jobs, not a single person has been criminally prosecuted for these crimes.

More recent examples are the sudden popularity of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in their respective parties, although neither of these men has shown the slightest sign of knowing what’s going on in the world. Trump became popular with many young people when he referred to Mexicans as rapists and murderers, and Sanders became popular with young people when he started talking about giving everything away for free. All of these examples - treating the murder of Salman Taseer as a hero, defrauding the public and creating the financial crisis, the sudden popularity of Trump and Sanders - are the kinds of things that happen during a generational crisis era, when young people start looking for solutions the same way that they look for rock stars.

The survivors of a generational crisis war, like World War II, are well aware of what

the world is like.

There’s massive rape and slaughter, SUNNY BAINS there are millions of refugees, there’s massive starvation and growth of disease. These survivors, “The original reason for the estrangement the GI generation and the Silent was very simple - my father was in politics generation, vow to never let anything like in Pakistan, I was half Indian, and it would that happen again, and as long as they’re have been damaging for him to be in touch alive they protect the world from letting it with me. Later we had a very moving, very happen again. But today those important kind of - we sort of Reunited generations are almost gone, and the and, for many years, things were very protections are gone as well. Young good between us. And I would come and people are seeing the first signs of the go from Pakistan. And around the time of horrors of a crisis war - atrocities by the the London bombings, we started to have so-called Islamic State or Daesh, mass very different opinions about the way that kidnappings of girls by Boko Haram, Pakistan was going.” Taseer is referring selling the girls into slavery, millions of to the 2005 London subway bombings, refugees pouring into Europe, and a perpetrated by children of immigrants who continuing financial crisis. Young people, had received training over the internet by who have no idea why this is happening, al-Qaeda clerics in Pakistan.

are reacting by making mass irrational decisions. We’ve already seen one disaster from these kinds of decisions the financial crisis. As these mass irrational decisions continue, there will be even worse disasters, including a new world war.

Salman Taseer’s son describes what’s happened to Pakistan Mass irrational decisions, like applauding the mass use of blasphemy laws, has also caused disasters in Pakistan namely an unending series of bloody terrorist attacks, particularly against Shia Muslims. However, those weren’t the only targets. In December 2014, Pakistan suffered a horrific Taliban attack on a Peshawar army school, killing over 130 schoolchildren. This attack on an army school changed a lot of minds, and probably was the event that made it possible for Mumtaz Qadri finally to be executed on Monday. Aatish Taseer, the son of Salman Taseer, was interviewed on the BBC World Service on Monday.

He said that Qadri’s execution brought him relief but no joy. He described the tumultuous relationship he had with his father, and how it related to the country Pakistan as a whole:

“I began to travel for my first book, I really saw on the ground that the situation vis a vis Islam was going to get much worse in Pakistan. My father was a very fierce patriot and didn’t want to believe what I was saying to him. So this is what we fought over. We fought over his defense of Pakistan, and my feeling that an environment was building in that country that would be very very toxic. And I think that the Pakistan that I described in my book was ultimately the Pakistan that killed my father. ... I think that he came of age at the time of Bhutto, and of a kind of socialist movement, and he imagined he was protected - it was almost a kind of upper class feeling that he knew this country and nothing could touch him. And that if he could only speak to it in his own way, then he would be all right. And I don’t think that he recognized how much this country had changed.”

Taseer added that the fallout from the execution of Qadri is yet to come. “Well, don’t confuse what the government does with the actual mood on the ground. I don’t know if we’ve even seen the worst of the fallout. ... Is Pakistan a safe place? As the Pakistan’s High Commissioner said to me, it’s safe until it isn’t.”

UK report says leaving EU would cause decade of uncertainty A new report by British civil servants concludes that leaving the European Union would touch off a decade of uncertainty because of the complex process of agreeing to terms to leave.

The report released Monday said that millions would be affected as the U.K. takes a decade to extricate itself from the 28-nation bloc. First there would be the process of negotiating the exit, then future arrangements with the EU and ultimately trade deals outside of the bloc.

“In short, a vote to leave the EU would be the start, not the end, of a process,” the report said in bold letters in an executive summary. “It could lead to up to a decade or more of uncertainty.”

The report is important in that it reflects

the assessment of Britain’s apolitical and respected civil service. The view is intended to be impartial, though the report’s conclusions generally mirror the

concerns of Prime Minister David Cameron that an exit would put the country into unknown territory.

Exiting the EU involves taking the unprecedented step of invoking Article 50

of the Treaty on European Union. Though Greenland left an earlier, more limited version of the bloc in 1985, invoking Article 50 has not happened before.

Much debate has centered on what would actually happen should Britain vote to leave on June 23. Backers of the exit campaign have repeatedly argued that their opponents are scaremongering. London Mayor Boris Johnson, for example, used his column in the Daily Telegraph to warn of “questionable assertions” about the impact of a British EU exit – or Brexit – on the economy and national security.

“In every case the message is that Brexit is simply too scary; and the reality is that these threats are so wildly exaggerated as to be nonsense,” Johnson wrote.

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Haryana Police insists Murthal gangrapes didn’t happen, hearing adjourned

Sometimes, we have to keep going, even when a part of us suspects that perhaps we ought to stop. We lose faith in ourselves and in each other. We forget that some of the best and most rewarding personal gains come from persistence. We tell ourselves we don’t want to look silly. But how sad would we be if we later realize we have dropped out of a race, just moments before we could have passed the finishing line? Sometimes, it’s better to listen to your heart more than your head and trust what it is trying to tell you!

We all want someone to be there for us. We seek companionship. We want to be loved and to have someone to love. Is that too much to ask for? Well, some of it may be overrated. Poets, magazine articles, film directors and romantic novels, all place undue emphasis on the Holy Grail of an emotional ideal.

Often, though, all any of us truly need, is to be less of a victim of our own sense of need! In pushing aside an irrelevant aspiration, you find the freedom now to seek more genuine, lasting fulfilment.

Some people, it seems, are ‘takers’. No matter how much we try to give or share, they seemingly want more! How can they be so needy? How, more to the point, can we allow them to feel that it is fair to expect so much? Events in your personal life now revolve around a dilemma which is all about knowing where to draw a line. Only you know, in your own heart of hearts, where it is fair to make a firm distinction. Put aside a sense of guilt or insecurity and trust your deepest feelings.

Even if we share a deep desire to live in peace and harmony, will there not inevitably be differences about what kind of peace that is and how that harmony ought best be achieved? People don’t mean to fall out with one another or to say and do things that create a negative response. But we are all, to some extent, victims of unconscious urges and yearnings.

You won’t gain mastery over yourself or a situation, but you will gain an insight that does much to improve a key relationship.

We know how we want things to be. Our imaginations are precious to us. Even if it seems unlikely that we will ever live our dreams, those dreams are important to us. Yet, in our personal and emotional lives, we pay a price for clinging too tightly to a fantasy. Your reality now might not match an expectation of a perfect situation, but if you judge it without comparison and see it clearly, you may yet discover it can bring lasting fulfilment. Look at life now as it is and recognize how much you have to be glad of.

You may feel, in your personal life these days, as if you can’t do right for doing wrong. The more you try to make someone happy or to meet a need - or respond to the requirement of a sensitive situation, the more it seems as if plans unravel and problems emerge. This is no reflection on you personally. Nor is it really any other individual’s fault. A succession of challenges have conspired to test you repeatedly.

You have been doing the best you can and if you now stay calm through one more set of brief frustrations, many magical rewards will start to come your way.

The Haryana Police on Monday went into a denial mode as it filed its status report on the alleged rapes at Murthal in Sonipat district during the Jat agitation, saying no such incident took place.

The status report was filed before a division bench of justices SK Mittal and HS Sidhu. The status report filed by police denied the charges of molestation and gangrape during the intervening night of February 22/23 at Murthal in Sonipat district. The division bench adjourned the case to March 14.

The High Court had taken suo motu note of the matter after a report in a local daily on the alleged rapes. The bench had appointed senior advocate Anupam Gupta as amicus curiae to assist the court in this matter.

During the course of the hearing, ADGP Law and

Order Mohd Akil and Head of the three-member women police officers probing the allegations DIG Rajshree Singh were also

connection with a gangrape on the basis of a complaint filed by a Narelabased woman,” Haryana Police, DIG, Rajshree Singh had

present. Days after allegations of rape and molestation by Jat quota agitators near Haryana’s Murthal, a woman on Sunday came forward and registered a case of gangrape against seven persons, including her brother-in-law, in connection with the incident.

“An FIR has been lodged against seven people in

said. She said the victim had alleged she was raped on the intervening night of February 22-23 and the perpetrators included her brother-in-law.

The officer, who heads a three-member team of women police officers constituted by the Haryana government to go into alleged incidents of rape and molestation of several

women by Jat protesters, however, said a family dispute could be the reason behind the woman filing the complaint. The officer said the victim was not sure about the exact scene of the crime but claimed she was raped in a building near Murthal when she was on way to Narela in Delhi from Hardwar in a van.

Referring to the statement of three eyewitnesses - Om Singh, Zile Singh and Hari Krishna who’s named figured in a local daily report, on February 23, some reporters came to Sukhdev Dhaba and they told them that some passengers, including women, had come to the Dhaba and they had arranged tea and water for them and provided them cots at the dhaba. As per these statements, the news published in the newspaper was false and baseless, the report said.

3 Islamists sent to police custody over Hindu priest’s murder A Bangladeshi court has sent three members of a banned Islamist group to 18-day police custody in connection with the brutal killing of a head priest of a Hindu temple close to the Indian border last week.

With the arrest of the three members of the outlawed Jamaat’ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), including the mastermind of the assault, during raids in Panchagarh and Nilphamari districts on Friday, police claimed to have solved the murder case.

“We have been able to completely crack the case,” police’s deputy inspector general for the region Humayun Kabir told media, adding that the three di-

rectly carried out the murder of the priest.

The three JMB activists identified as Alamgir Hossain, 35, Harez Ali, 32 and Ramzan Ali, 22 were produced in a Panchagarh court under heavy security on Saturday and were remanded in 18-day police custody for questioning.

So far, six persons have

been arrested in connection with the killing. Three others who were arrested earlier were placed under 15day police custody for interrogation.

No lawyer appeared at the court to defend the three.

The chief priest of Hindu temple Sri Sri Shantu Santo Gaurio, 50-year-old Jagneshwar Roy, was killed

on February 21 in Sonapota village of northern Panchagarh district near the border with India, in a predawn attack by the assailants who also injured two Hindu devotees before fleeing on a motorbike.

The Islamic State had claimed the brutal killing of the priest. However, police dismissed the claim and said that JMB operatives committed the murder.

The priest’s murder was the first attack on a Hindu priest and the fifth assault on minority religious communities including Shia Muslims and liberal Sufi preachers in the past six months by suspected Islamists.

Only Musharraf be tried for treason: Pakistan Supreme Court Spelling further trouble for military ruler Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s Supreme Court today ruled that only he should be tried on the charge of treason for subverting the Constitution in 2007. The apex court accepted former chief justice Abdul Hameed Dogar’s appeal to exclude him from the investigation into the treason case launched against 72-year-old Musharraf in 2013 for imposing emergency in 2007 when he was

president. The threemember special court trying Musharraf on November 27, 2015 directed Federal Investigation Agency (FIA)

to re-investigate the case by including ex-prime minister Shaukat Aziz, former minister Zahid Hamid and ex-chief justice

Dogar. It removed the names of three other names from the list of accused. Dogar had challenged his inclusion in Islamabad High Court, which on December 12, 2015 rejected the plea. But he again challenged it in the Supreme Court which annulled a special court’s decision to include the new names in the trial. It said that the special court trying Musharraf had no jurisdiction to associate any individual with the high treason probe.

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As sea levels rise, economic damage piles up even faster OSLO As sea levels rise, threatening cities from New York to Shanghai, the economic damage will increase even faster, scientists said on Monday.

Extreme floods whipped up by storms will become ever more costly for cities as ocean levels edge up around the world’s coasts in coming decades, they wrote in a study that could help guide governments budgeting to protect everything from buildings and basements to metro systems. ‘The damage from sea level rise rises faster than sea level rise itself,’ co-author Juergen Kropp, part of a team at

the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Reuters of the findings. For the Danish capital Copenhagen, for instance, a moderate sea level rise of 11 cm (4 inches) by 2050 from 2010 levels would cause about a billion euros ($1.1 billion) a year in extra damage if no protective action is taken, the study estimated. But the costs would quadruple to 4 billion euros if the rate of sea level rise roughly doubles to 25 cm by 2050, in line with the worst scenarios projected by a U.N. sci-

German Chancellor Merkel calls mob that screamed at migrants ‘repulsive’ London German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday called the actions of protesters who shouted abuse at a bus full of migrants “repulsive” and “unjustifiable.”

Video of about 100 people trying to block migrants from entering a shelter in the eastern village of

Clausnitz on February 18 prompted concern about growing extremism in Germany. The number of far-right attacks on migrants has increased significantly over the past year, as more than a million people came to Germany seeking asylum.

Merkel told public television ARD late Sunday that she sees a “polarization” in Germany society, but insisted that her decision in September to keep the country’s borders open to migrants had been right.

“I think we’re doing better than some people think, but we’ve got a way to go,” she said.

To those who have opposed her course, at time vehemently, Merkel said she was willing to listen. “They aren’t convinced yet but I think that I can convince them if the issue is resolved, but we need a certain amount of time for this.” Merkel said her government is working to solve the problems causing people to flee to Europe, but added that those coming to Germany have to abide by its laws, citing what she called the “devastating” incident in Cologne at New Year, when scores of women were robbed and sexually assaulted by men of mostly North African origin.

“Rules must be clear from the start,” she said.

entific panel, they wrote in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences. World sea levels are creeping higher, the U.N. panel says, partly be-

cause global warming is adding water to the oceans by melting glaciers from the Andes to the Alps and parts of vast ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica. The Potsdam scientists said that mathematical models they developed to estimate rising costs would work around the world. ‘You can apply it in Tokyo, New York or Mumbai,’ Kropp said.

The exact costs of sea level rise, which could in the worst case reach about a metre by 2100, are extremely uncertain. One study in 2014 estimated it could cost

anywhere from 0.3 percent to 9 percent of world gross domestic product a year by 2100. Jochen Hinkel of the Global Climate Forum in Berlin, the lead author of that study, said it illustrated vast risks but was based on the implausible assumption that governments would take no protective action. Building coastal barriers would be far cheaper, Hinkel said. ‘People have adapted to sea-level rise in the past and will do so in the future,’ he said, noting protective measures for cities such as Tokyo or Jakarta, which have been sinking relative to sea level because of local subsidence.

Canada fulfils promise to take 25,000 Syrian refugees MONTREAL Canada has met a self-imposed deadline to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees fleeing their country’s civil war, officials said, fulfilling a campaign promise by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“25000 reasons why Canadians should be proud today #WelcomeRefugees,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister John McCallum tweeted after a charter flight carrying refugees touched down in Montreal yesterday.

Trudeau had made a campaign pledge to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey before the end of 2015. But his Liberal government pushed the target back two months after taking office following elections in October.

Canada has chartered around a hundred flights from Lebanon and Jordan since Trudeau met the first arriving plane in December.

The government’s resettlement program will cover costs for more than half the refugees during their first year. Private groups or a combination of both will cover the rest, the country’s immigration

authorities said.

Syrian refugees will continue to arrive in Canada, albeit at a slower pace.

The country is set to take in some 12,000 more refugees by

nearly 70,000 Syrians living in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan about emigrating to Canada. Fewer than half said they were interested.

Europe’s migrant crisis became

the end of the year under a program run jointly with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the immigration authorities said.

Some 250 Canadian cities and towns have taken in refugees so far. The UNHCR has contacted

a political issue in Canada during last year’s election campaign.

Political parties competed over the number of refugees the country should accept after a photograph of the drowned Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi on a Turkish beach captured international attention.

report said, by the presence of sandbags on the road.

Google said it had now refined its self-driving algorithm.

“From now on, our cars will more deeply understand that buses (and other large vehicles) are less likely to yield to us than other types of vehicles, and we hope to handle situations like this more gracefully in the future.”

If the DMV considers the Google car to be at fault for the collision, it could be seen as a setback

for the company’s ambitious autonomous vehicle plans. The bus crash came just four days after a legal breakthrough for the self-driving project - the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Google it would likely give the self-driving computer the same legal treatment as a human driver. That decision would pave the way for self-driving cars without any typical controls, such as a steering wheel or pedals.

Google self-driving car hits a bus London It is not the first time one of Google’s famed self-driving cars has been involved in a crash, but it may be the first time it has caused one.

Google is to meet with California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to discuss the incident, and determine where the blame lies.

On 14 February the car, travelling at 2mph (3km/h), pulled out in front of a public bus going 15mph (24km/h). The human in the Google vehicle reported that he

assumed the bus would slow down to let the car out, and so he did not override the car’s selfdriving computer. The crash happened in Mountain View, near Google’s headquarters. In a statement, Google said: “We clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved, there wouldn’t have been a collision. “That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that.”

The company’s selfdriving cars have clocked up well over a million miles across various states in the US, and until now have only reported minor “fender benders” - the American slang for a small collision.

In all of those cases, other road users were to blame.

Google releases a monthly report detailing the testing of its self-driving technology.

Ahead of the February report’s publication, due Tuesday, a traffic incident filing was made public by the DMV. A Setback “The Google AV [autonomous vehicle] test driver saw the bus approaching in the left side mirror but believed the bus would stop or slow to allow the Google AV to continue,” the report read.

“Approximately three seconds later, as the Google AV was reentering the centre of the lane it made contact with the side of the bus. “The Google AV was operating in autonomous mode and travelling at less than two mph, and the bus was travelling at about 15mph at the time of contact.” The car’s movements were made more complex, the

Issue - 656 (7)

1 March - 7 March 2016

Ancient armored mammal from Argentina was armadillo WASHINGTON DNA coaxed out of a 12,000-year-old fossil from Argentina is providing unique insight into one of the strangest Ice Age

giants: a tank-like mammal the size of a small car with a bulbous bony shell and a spiky, club-shaped tail.

Scientists said on Monday their genetic research confirmed that the creature, named Doedicurus, was part of an extinct lineage of gigantic armadillos.

Doedicurus was a planteater that weighed about a ton and roamed the pampas and savannas of South America, vanishing about 10,000 years ago along with many other large Ice Age animals.

‘With a length of more than three meters (10 feet) from head to tail, it certainly looks like a small car, like a Mini or Fiat 500,’ evolutionary biologist Frederic Delsuc of France’s

Université de Montpellier, one of the researchers, said.

It was a member of a group called glyptodonts that shared the landscape with

giant ground sloths, sabertoothed cats and towering, flightless, carnivorous ‘terror birds.’ Some glyptodonts made it as far north as southern portions of the United States, from what is now Arizona through the Carolinas.

The researchers were able to place Doedicurus and the other glyptodonts into the armadillo family tree after studying small fragments of DNA extracted from bits of the creature’s carapace. They used a sophisticated technique to fish mitochondrial DNA out from a soup of environmental contaminants that had leached into the fossil over the eons. They determined the glyptodont lineage

originated about 35 million years ago. The oldest armadillo fossil, from Brazil, was around 58 million years old.

Asked what someone might think upon encountering Doedicurus, another of the researchers, evolutionary biologist Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University in Canada said, ‘That’s the biggest armadillo-looking creature I’ve ever seen, and it has a tail like an Ankylosaurus. Yikes!’

Doedicurus resembles the dinosaur Ankylosaurus, which also was heavily armored and wielded a club-like tail.

The researchers said the resemblance was an example of ‘convergent evolution’ in which disparate organisms independently evolve similar features to adapt to similar environments or ecological niches.

Scientists have debated whether humans contributed to the extinction of the glyptodonts. Poinar said he believed that humans played a role, saying most of the large mammals of that time were under pressure not only from climate change as Ice Age waned but also from human hunting. The research was published in the journal Current Biology.

German passport most powerful in world, Afghan least Kabul The Afghan passport has been identified as the least powerful in the world for the restrictions the countrymen face in terms of visa-free travel, an index by a London-based consulting firm showed on Friday.

The index found Germans held the most powerful passports in the world for third year in row in 2016, Tolo news reported on Friday.A number of the European nations and the US, Japan and Canada closely follow Germany as the top nations holding the most powerful passports in the world.

The countries listed below Afghanistan were South Sudan and Palestinian territories, according to the index -- South Sudan being the youngest sovereign state in the world and Palestinian territories less diplomatically recognised by countries in the West.

The index update by Henley & Partners attempts to quantify the power of passports based on the judgements in the world by the amount of visa-free travel they entitle their owner to.The update comes as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) imposed restrictions on Afghan nationals` visit who were heading towards Dubai for business and tourism.

The issue with the UAE emerged with the issuance of the new electronic Afghan passports amid concerns that the citizens of the

other countries misused the Afghan passports.However, the issue was later resolved as an agreement was reached between the two countries to improve the information quality of the newly issued e-passports.

Meanwhile, the demand by Afghans for passports has increased last year with the deteriorating security situation across the country, forcing many Afghans to travel abroad, specifically to the Western countries by risking their lives and travelling through dangerous routes.

Colombia sisters reunited 30 years after avalanche Bogota Two sisters in Colombia separated when they were children after an avalanche destroyed their town have been reunited 30 years later. Jaqueline and Lorena Sanchez were separated in 1985 when a volcano near their town of Armero, in Tolima Department, erupted. It triggered an avalanche which killed at least 20,000 people in the town. The two sisters were adopted by separate families and never knew each other’s fate. They spent years looking for each other. “It was beautiful and sad because it’s been 30 years since the tragedy happened that I’ve come to find out what happened to my sister,” Lorena Sanchez said. “So I have to catch up with 30 years of her life and she has to do the same with me.” The two sisters found each other after DNA tests, a social media campaign and with help from the Armando Armero foundation set up to help victims of the disaster in Armero in the department

of Tolima.

Jaqueline saw a video on social media of her sister

their parents. The Tolima volcano erupted on 13 November, 1985. As

Lorena making an appeal for information on surviving family members. “I’m excited, nervous, everything because suddenly, you don’t know if you are going to be rejected or something,” Jaqueline said.

“It’s something that you find within this: joy, I wonder if she will love me. It’s difficult.

It’s difficult to explain this moment.”

The foundation organised DNA tests for the women and a positive match was identified. Despite public appeals, the two women have not been able to find

pyroclastic flows erupted from the volcano’s crater, they melted the mountain’s glaciers, sending four enormous mud slides down its slopes.

They engulfed the town of Armero, killing more than 20,000 of its almost 29,000 inhabitants. It was the second most deadly volcanic disaster of the 20th century, surpassed only by the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelee in the Caribbean.

Armero was the fourth most deadly volcanic event recorded since the year 1500.

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1 March - 7 March 2016

Women face wage gap, questions on their capabilities retention begins when women reach mid-managerial levels.“The two real issues faced by women are poor perception of capabilities and wage gap – studies show that in the US, women still earn only 77 per cent of what men do for the same job,” Tata Communications Global Head Human Resources Aadesh

Some of the apparent challenges that women face in professional lives are similar to those faced by men, but the two real issues faced by the fairer sex are

questions on their capabilities and wage gap, e x p e r t s s a y. A t t h e e n t r y level, most organisations do well in hiring and training women but the struggle with

Goyal said.Often, as a result of this, the higher-up one is promoted, the number of women gets fewer, resulting in fewer role models and mentors for women leaders,

Smell may shape human memories Scents and smells can form the basis of some of the most significant memories humans form in their lives, a new study suggests.

The discovery may provide a means to detect early problems with memory formation and memory retrieval in the brain, researchers said.

An international team led by University of Queensland has boosted understanding of the smell-memory connection, showing that olfactory memory in honeybees regulates receptors in their antennae.

Bees’ antennae function like a human nose, said Queensland Brain Institute scientists Dr Judith Reinhard and Associate Professor Charles Claudianos.“French novelist

Marcel Proust in his novel Remembrance of Things Past (also known as In Search of Lost Time) described how his childhood memories started to flow when he tasted a madeleine cake dipped in linden tea, as he had been given as a child,” Reinhard said.

“Our team found that odour

memories trigger recall of associated events, and that long-term odour memory formation in the brain regulates the sense of smell in the ‘nose’ via regulating the receptor molecules,” Reinhard said.“Preferences for different foods and beverages are linked to our sense of smell, and our research shows that long-term scent memories modify how odours are perceived,” said Reinhard.“In a nutshell: our

smell experiences shape our preferences,” she added.

“The study demonstrates for the first time that the ability to smell different things is experience-dependent and modulated by scent conditioning,” said Reinhard.

Claudianos said the findings could help explain the wide variability of smell perception in humans and the neurological mechanism underlying the common phenomenon of “acquired taste”, where repeated sensory experience with a flavour or aroma leads to perceptual changes.

“This knowledge will provide an enormous insight for understanding food and aroma perception,” he said.

“The discovery may also provide a means to detect early problems with memory formation and memory retrieval in the brain,” said Claudianos. Individuals with neurodevelop-mental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia or neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease often have an altered sense of smell perception, researchers said.

The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Goyal added.Women face domestic commitments that make them leave when they are at mid-managerial levels.

According to the new insight paper by global workforce solution provider ManpowerGroup on how to get women leaders and retain them, gender parity in an organisation can maximise the human potential and drive better business results.

“Growing the pipeline of women in leadership roles is critical to succeeding in the Human Age,” ManpowerGroup Executive Vice President Global Strategy and Talent Mara Swan said, adding, women are being “funnelled” out of the leadership roles through ‘one-size-fits-all’

approaches.

“CEOs must adopt one-sizefits-one systems and reexamine their companies’ policies and cultures to drive this needed change across entire organisations,” Swan said. Over the past decade, however, the attitude towards women professionals has evolved.

Today, there are far more women at top positions in large global enterprises, experts said.

“With advancements in collaborative technologies and the consequent increase in flexibility, companies have become more open to the idea of introducing work from home, flexible working hours and leave policies for women employees,” Tata Communications’ Goyal said.

Eating restrictions can extend lifespan says Australian scientists

Australian scientists have claimed that eating sporadically, like animals in the wild, could make people healthier and live longer.According to researchers at University of New South Wales, hungry animals recycle nutrients stored in their cells which means they need less food to survive and also promote cell repair.In the wild, this recycling of nutrients allows animals to breed during hard times, promoting survival of the herd unlike animals in laboratory, a news agency reported.“Wild animals don’t often die of cancer and diseases of old age. They tend to die young as a result of environmental hazards and exposure to parasites,” said Margo Adler, lead author of a study published in the journal

BioEssays.“People might be able to reap some of the lifespan and anti-cancer benefits from dietary restriction or interventions that mimic its effects,” said Adler, evolutionary biologist at the University of New South Wales.She also endorsed the intermittent fasting concept as made popular by British doctor Michael Mosley’s 5:2 diet, a form of intermittent fasting that involves severe calorie restriction for two non-consecutive days a week and normaleating on the other five days.“The 5:2 diet is the most promising popular diet around.“Many of the popular diets are not based in science.

But researchers have found that fasting can have long-term benefits similar to dietary restriction,” Adler said.

New smartphone gaming app can reduce anxiety Playing a science-based smartphone gaming app for just 25 minutes can reduce anxiety in stressed individuals, scientists claim. US researchers found that “gamifying” a scientifically-supported intervention could offer measurable mental health and behavioural benefits for people with relatively high levels of anxiety.The mobile app game is based on an emerging cognitive treatment for anxiety called attention-bias modification training (ABMT). Essentially, this treatment involves training patients to ignore a threatening stimulus (such as an angry face) and to focus instead on a non-

threatening stimulus (such as a neutral or happy face).

This type of training has been shown to reduce anxiety and stress among people suffering from high anxiety, researchers said.In the study, about 75 participants – who all scored relatively high on an anxiety survey – were required to follow two characters around on the screen, tracing their paths as quickly and accurately as possible. After playing the game for either 25 or 45 minutes, the participants were asked to give a short speech to the researchers while being recorded on video – an especially stressful situation for these participants.

The videos showed that participants who played the ABMT-based version of the game showed less nervous behaviour and speech during their talk and

reported less negative feelings afterward than those in the placebo group.

“Even the ‘short dosage’ of the app – about 25 minutes – had potent effects on anxiety and stress measured in the lab,” said lead researcher Tracy Dennis of

Hunter College who co-authored the study with Laura O’Toole of The City University of New York.

“This is good news in terms of the potential to translate these technologies into mobile app format because use of apps tends to be brief and ‘on the go’,” Dennis said. The researchers are currently investigating whether even shorter stints of play – similar to how we normally play other smartphone games – would have the same anxietyreducing effect.

“We’re examining whether use of the app in brief 10-minute sessions over the course of a month successfully reduces stress and promotes positive

birth outcomes in moderately anxious pregnant women,” Dennis said. While it is unclear whether this app would produce mental health benefits in those with clinical0ly-diagnosed anxiety, it does present a compelling case for gamified ABMT acting as a “cognitive vaccine” against anxiety and stress.The researchers believe that apps could eventually be developed to assist in the treatment for other mental health disorders, such as depression or addiction. The study is published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Issue - 656 (9)

1 March - 7 March 2016

Sea level rising at Oldest Muslim burials fastest pace in 2,800 years found in France

Archeologists working in southern France have identified three graves that represent the oldest Muslim burials ever found in Europe, dating to the eighth century.

The skeletons at a medieval site at Nimes were found facing Mecca, and a genetic analysis showed their paternal lineage was North African, said the study in the journal PLOS ONE. Furthermore, radiocarbon dating shows the bones likely date from the 7th to 9th centuries, suggesting they came from the Muslim conquests of Europe during that period.

‘We believe that they were Berbers integrated into the Arab army during its rapid expansion through North Africa,’ said the study. The findings add a new dimension to knowledge of the era, which had been limited to history books and rare bits of archeological data. ‘We knew that

Muslims came to France in the eighth century but until now we did not have any material evidence of their passage,’ Yves Gleize, an anthropologist with the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) and lead author of the study, told AFP. The graves were first discovered in 2006 near a major roadway in Nimes as construction workers were digging an underground parking garage.

A careful analysis in the years since has shown that the men were all laid on their right sides, facing southeast in the direction of Mecca, according to traditional Muslim burial rites. One was in his 20s when he died, another in his 30s and the third was older than 50.

Their bones showed no sign of injury in combat.

The three graves were spaced 2.5 meters (yards) apart.

Another Muslim grave site has been found in Marseille, but it dates to the 13th century.

The world’s oceans are rising at a faster rate than any time in the past 2,800 years, and might even have fallen without the influence of human-driven climate change, researchers say.

Sea levels rose globally by about 5.5 inches (14 centimeters) from 1900 to 2000, said the study led

by Rutgers University, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the absence of global warming, the change in sea level would have been far less - ranging between a 1.2 inch (three centimeters) drop in the last century, to a rise of about 2.8 inches (seven centimeters). ‘The 20th century rise was extraordinary in the context of the last three millennia - and the rise over the last two decades has been even faster,’ said lead author Robert Kopp, an associate professor in Rutgers University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. The study also predicted that global sea level will rise by 1.7 to 4.3 feet (50 to 130 centimeters) in the 21st century if the world continues to rely heavily upon fossil fuels.

Even if fossil fuels were phased out, the seas would likely mount between 0.8 and two feet by century’s end, it said. Average global temperature today is about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (one degree Celsius) higher than it was in the late 19th century.

The Rutgers-led study - with coauthors from Harvard University, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany - was based on a database that included records from 24

Sikhs in US raise $400,000 to spread the awareness about the religion Sikhs in the US state of California have raised a record $ 400,000 for a national media campaign to generate awareness among Americans about their

AKPD, Barack Obama’s campaign media team, were unveiled, a statement said.

Last year, National Sikh Campaign had hired the services

religion in the backdrop of increasing hate crimes against the community.

This is the first time, Sikhs have raised this amount of money to spread the awareness about their faith in America. Previous record is of $ 90,000 in NSC’s Los Angeles Gala last year.

At a fund raising gala in San Francisco Bay Area, television advertisements created by

of AKPD and Hart Research Associates which is headed by Geoff Garin, Hillary Clinton’s former chief strategic advisor, to develop the messaging and framework of these advertisements.

“This is a historic moment in the history of the Sikh community in America. Never before have we had the opportunity to tell our story to our fellow Americans

around the country and that time has come now,” said Kaval Kaur, national charter member of NSC and host of the event.

Among the attendees were prominent Sikh entrepreneurs, leading Silicon Valley IT professionals, Medical doctors, owners of trucking companies and officials of all gurdwaras in the area.

“We, Sikhs, need to change the narrative and present the correct image of who we are, showcasing how we are totally integrated in the American society and not only as victims,” said Rajwant Singh, co-founder of National Sikh Campaign, who presented the overview of the campaign and appealed to the audience to donate for the cause.

There have been a number of incidents of attacks and discrimination against the community in the US. A 68-year-old Sikh man was stabbed to death in California’s Fresno city on January 1 while in December another elderly Sikh man was brutally assaulted by two persons in Fresno.

locations around the world, and 66 tide-gauge records from the last 300 years.

Scientists say the planet is

research domain Earth System Analysis. ‘The new sea-level data confirm once again just how unusual the age of modern

incredibly sensitive to small changes in temperature, with today’s average climate about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (one degree Celsius) warmer than it was in the 19th century.

‘During the past millennia sealevel has never risen nearly as fast as during the last century,’ said co-author Stefan Rahmstorf, co-Chair of the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research’s (PIK)

global warming due to our greenhouse gas emissions is and they demonstrate that one of the most dangerous impacts of global warming, rising seas, is well underway.’

A second report issued to Monday by Climate Central found that without the global warming, more than half of the 8,000 coastal nuisance floods seen in the United States since 1950 would not have occurred.

Johnson & Johnson to pay $72 mn for cancer death linked to talcum powder

A US jury has awarded $72 million in damages to the family of a woman who died of ovarian cancer, which she said was caused by prolonged use of health giant Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder and other talcum-based products.

The woman, Jackie Fox, died in 2015 aged 62.The award by a jury in Missouri state will get global attention as Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder and other talcum-based products, which the company insists are scientifically sound, are widely used the world over, including in India.The civil suit started by Fox, as part of a broader case involving 60 others in St Louis circuit court, was taken over and pursued by her son Marvin Salter, who told the Associated Press his mother used Johnson & Johnson baby powder for decades as a bathroom staple for female hygiene. “It just became second nature, like brushing your teeth.” The company, which is considering its next move, insisted its products are safe.

Spokesperson Carol Goodrich said, “The recent US verdict goes against decades of sound

science proving the safety of talc as a cosmetic ingredient in multiple products, and while we sympathise with the family of the plaintiff, we strongly disagree with the outcome.”Fox’s lawyer claimed doing the trial the company was aware of the possible risks of using products containing talcum for feminine hygienic use. AP reported that a 1997 internal memo from a company medical consultant said “anybody who denies” the risk of using hygienic talc and ovarian cancer is “denying the obvious in the face of all evidence to the contrary”.Talcum powder is made of talc, a mineral made up of magnesium, silicon and oxygen. In powder form, it absorbs moisture and helps cut down on friction, making it useful for keeping skin dry and helping to prevent rashes.

The American Cancer Society says concerns about a possible link between talcum powder and cancer have been focused on, one when those who are involved in talc mining are at risk and two, “whether women who apply talcum powder regularly in the genital area have an increased risk of ovarian cancer”.

Issue - 656 (10)

Punjabi Sikh parents seek a match for their Canadian born and raised, clean shaven son, 32 yrs. old, 6’-1" tall, handsome, Doctor MD, finished internal Medicine, residency and now doing followship (Specitization).

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1 March - 7 March 2016

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Please Call : 647-808-4856 ***656*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their son, 31 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, Canadian born, working as a R.N & Teacher. The girl should equally educated, beautiful, family oriented, atleast 5’-6” tall. Please send your bio-data & recent p i c t u r e : g0110sekhon@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-604-501-9234 Or 1-778317-1349 ***656*** Jat Sikh family seek a suitable match for their son, 34 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, Canadian born, computer programmer. The girl should be Canadian Immigrant/ Citizen, family oriented, student/ visititor visa can also be considered. Please send your biodata & recent picture: sarasingh151@gmail.com Or Call : 1-438-931-9227 ***656*** Jat Sikh family seeking a suitable match for their daughter, 34 yrs. old, 5’-5” tall, Dental Hygienist, Canadian Citizen, well versed both cultures. The boy should be professionally employed and with family values. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: jasleenbhullardutt@yahoo.ca Or Call : 1-604-722-5531 ***656*** Jat Sikh Gill parents seeking a suitable match for their daughter, 32 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, Canadian Citizen, Innocently divorced after a short marriage, working in a bank. The boy should be Canadian Citizen and professionally employed.

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Issue - 656 (11)

1 March - 7 March 2016

Trump again blames India for taking away American jobs Donald Trump, the controversial Republican presidential frontrunner, on Sunday once again blamed India for taking away jobs from Americans, pledging to bring them back if elected president even as the ‘Trump mania’ appeared to have picked up in the US ahead of “Super Tuesday” showdown.

The 69-year-old real estate tycoon who became a politician only last summer has been drawing thousands of crowd across the country, hoped to “seal the deal”, coming Tuesday by winning Republican primary in all the 11 states.

Addressing a crowd of roughly 5,000 people, a big by US primary election standard -inside the hanger of a local airport here, Trump sold the dream of “making America great again” by promising to bring back jobs from countries like India, China, Japan and Mexico, building the wall

on US-Mexico border, “knocking the hell out ISIS”, and repealing and replacing Obama care.

Every promise of his drew a thunderous applause with people cheering “USA, USA” and “Trump, Trump”.

People lapped on to every word he said from the makeshift stage with his Trump plane in the background.

Trump had earlier added India to the list of countries that he believes is taking away jobs from the US. “What I did on June 16, we came out and we started talking about trade, how we’re being ripped off with China, ripped off with Japan, ripped off with Mexico at the border and then trade, ripped off by Vietnam, and by India, and by every country,” Trump had said.

Trump has been regularly singling out China, Japan and Mexico and occasionally Vietnam for taking away American jobs.

“They are taking our jobs.

China is taking our jobs.

Japan is taking our jobs.

India is taking our jobs. It is not going to happen anymore, folks!” Trump told to thunderous applause from the audience.

Rishu Patel, a Grade 7 student said, “(Trump) will make us safe”. Rishu and his father Jitu Patel were probably the only IndianAmericans at the rally.

Tennessee has around 25,000 Indian-Americans, majority of them living around Nashville and Memphis, which has one of the oldest Hindu temples built some 20 years ago.

Zuckerberg in Germany No place for hate speech on Facebook Mark Zuckerberg conceded Friday that Facebook didn’t do enough until recently to police hate speech on the social media site in Germany, but said that it has made progress and has heard

the message “loud and clear.”

German authorities, concerned about racist abuse being posted on Facebook and other social networks as the country deals with an influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants, have been pressing social media sites for months to crack down.

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg talked personally about the issue in September with Chancellor Angela Merkel, and met her chief of staff during a visit to Germany this week. The Merkel meeting “really highlighted how much more we needed to do in this country,” he said at a town hall event in Berlin.

“Hate speech has no place on Facebook and in our community,” he said. “Until recently in Germany I don’t

think we were doing a good enough job, and I think we will continue needing to do a better and better job.”

Zuckerberg pointed to efforts including funding a team to work with police to combat hate speech on Facebook. He said that learning more about German law has led the company to expand its view of “protected groups” there and “to now include hate speech against migrants as an important part of what we just now have no tolerance for.”

“There’s still work to do,” he said. “We want to do that, but I think we hear the message loud and clear and we’re committed to doing better.”

Zuckerberg offered praise for Germany’s approach to Europe’s migrant crisis.

Merkel so far has maintained an opendoor policy for refugees, seeking an elusive diplomatic solution to reduce an influx that has prompted an increasing number of countries to impose national restrictions.

“German leadership in the refugee crisis, I think, has been inspiring and is a model for the world,” he said.

“I hope that more countries follow Germany’s lead on this,” he added. “I hope the U.S. follows Germany’s lead on this.”

One of his die-hard supporters, Mark, who works in the IT sector was of the view that IndianAmericans are not taking away the jobs in his sector.

“They bring in quality and diversity,” he said, displaying a banner which read Trump supporters are silent majority.

In his 40-minutes speech, Trump reiterated his promise of building a wall along the US-Mexico border.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie who endorsed Trump yesterday also spoke at the rally. Trump

is a strong leader and is the best among others in the fray, Christie said.

Hundreds of people came to the Trump rally hours in advance. The venue was full hours before he arrived.

Latest polls indicate that Trump is leading in 10 of the 11 states, except for Texas where he is giving a tough fight to his main rival and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

“We might even win Texas,” Trump said, as he continued to lash out on Cruz and described him as a liar.

Man stabs 14 family members to death in Thane, commits suicide

A 35-year-old man allegedly killed 14 members of his family, including seven children, before committing suicide in the Kasarwadavli area of Maharashtra’s Thane, police said on Sunday.

The accused, identified as Hasnil Warekar, sedated his family members including his parents, wife and sisters and slit their throats with a big knife, Thane police public relations officer Gajanan Kabdule told reporters.

The bodies were recovered early on Sunday by police.

A woman who survived the incident was admitted at a private hospital.

The police are yet to ascertain the reason but reports said a property dispute was the reason behind the murders.

The bodies were sent to Thane Civil Hospital for postmortem, Kabdule said, adding that an investigation had begun.

Issue - 656 (12)

1 March - 7 March 2016

Australia becomes China’s land of milk, honey Sydney Asian consumers determined to improve their lifestyle are boosting the fortunes of Australian producers of premium baby milk formula, vitamins and honey, as the region's burgeoning middle class jumps on the health food bandwagon.

With their expanding wallets, middle class consumers are fuelling a sharp increase in sales of highquality products from Down Under, sending the

profits and share prices of health foods companies particularly producers of infant milk formula - into unprecedented territory.

They are led by Chinese consumers fearful of lax food safety standards at home, where cost-cutting by producers have resulted in deaths and health

scares.

"You've had almost three decades of incredible GDP growth (in China) and that has brought a huge amount of spending power to the Chinese consumer," IG Markets' analyst Angus Nicholson told AFP. "And given the fact that there has been some questions around - particularly food, health and medical products - in China, there has been an increase in demand for foreign, top quality brands."

The growth is being described as a shift from "mining to dining" as Australia transitions away from supplying China with key metals such as iron ore and coal towards feeding Asia's consumption boom.

While much of the focus has been on soft commodities like beef and dairy,

smaller Australian-listed firms that produce infant milk powder, vitamin supplements and honey are also benefiting from the increased appetite.

Supplements maker Blackmores last year had the Australian stock market's highest share price, jumping 534.03 percent to Aus$217.98.

Its net profit for the six months to end-December soared 160 percent compared to the previous period, driven by sales to Chinese consumers, which made up 40 percent of revenue.

Bellamy's Australia, whose organic baby milk powder is nicknamed "white gold", saw its share price leap more than 700 percent last year as its net profit spiked by 325 percent in the second half. Rival formula producer a2 Milk Company is also enjoying strong demand. A firm tapping into the growing Asian craze for honey is Australia's largest producer Capilano, which recorded a 52.9 percent surge in 2015 second half net profit.

Brands like Bellamy's and a2 are seen as trustworthy by the Chinese as they are sold in Australia's dominant supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths, Benjamin Sun of digital

Snake hunters bag 106 pythons in Florida Florida Snake hunters stalked the invasive Burmese python in the Florida Everglades this year, capturing 106 of the predators in the state-sponsored "Python Chal-

lenge," including one measuring 15 feet (4.6 meters), officials said on Saturday.

The challenge, which ran from Jan. 16 to Feb. 14, is similar to other hunts of problem species, such as Texas' campaign against feral hogs, which are blamed for agricultural damage, and Michigan's targeting of the invasive Asian carp fish.

It is unclear exactly how many Burmese pythons

are slithering around the Florida Everglades, since they are masters of stealth, but they number at least in the thousands, said Florida Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Carli Segelson.

Still, state officials are hopeful that hunts such as the one they sponsored can keep the snake in check. Florida is aiming to eradicate the species from the wild to protect native mammals, birds and reptiles in the Everglades.

The pythons, which are native to Asia, arrived in Florida as pets, and some of them escaped into the wild and quickly reproduced.

On Saturday, officials honored the Python

Challenge's top hunters, at a ceremony in Davie.

Bill Booth and his team won the grand prize of $5,000. They removed 33 snakes, including the 15-footer, which weighed in at 125 pounds (56.7 kg), wildlife officials said.

The state has trained participants in how to capture the snakes: Pin their heads to the ground with a hook, grab their bodies and bag them.

"We fought this thing for 20 minutes and I didn't think we were going to get it out of there," Booth, speaking at the ceremony, said of his team's largest snake. "But we had to get it out alive for the challenge and that's what we did."

All the snakes caught in the challenge were eventually killed, but in many areas state rules called for the snakes to be turned in live, Segelson said. The state's preferred method for killing the pythons is to drive a bolt into their brains.

The 106 pythons caught this year far surpasses the haul of 68 from a similar hunt Florida sponsored in 2013, Segelson said.

marketing consultancy ThinkChina said.

"What they are thinking is if the milk powder is being drunk by Australian babies, it should safe for Chinese babies," Sun told AFP. But the baby powders' popularity has overwhelmed the two supermarket giants, which have imposed two or four-tin limits for each purchase.

Even souvenir shops that usually stock stuffed toys and sheep skins now make room for formula, propolis and royal jelly supplements - honey products believed to boost health as well as manuka honey.

The empty racks are the result of a burgeoning grey market where purchasing agents known as "daigou" help Chinese customers

secure products in Australia and ship them to China, raking in a tidy profit in the process.

There are between 5,00010,000 daigou - who can range from entrepreneurs to international students in Australia, Sun estimated, adding they could make an average of Aus$100,000 (US$71,600) each year.

Albanian newsreaders adopt new ways to boost audience Tirana Faced with tough competition to win over audiences, an Albanian TV channel is taking a literal approach towards giving viewers the "naked" truth - by employing almost-topless newsreaders.

Wearing open jackets and nothing underneath, the young women reading the headlines on Zjarr TV are an unprecedented sight in the conservative Balkan country, where they first appeared on television and Internet screens last year.

The channel's owner says audiences haven't stopped growing since.

"In Albania, where the news is manipulated by political powers, the audience needed a medium that would present the information like it is - naked," Zjarr TV owner Ismet Drishti told AFP. For 24-year-old presenter Greta Hoxhaj, working in a state of near undress has proved to be a shortcut to glory. "I worked hard for five years in local television where I remained unnoticed," a cheerful and relaxed Hoxhaj told AFP in the studio, while her face was made up for the cameras. "I regret nothing - in the space of three months I became a star."

Every evening at 7.30 pm, Hoxhaj reads the news in a revealing and preferably pink jacket, but she was

quick to point out that she dresses like other women of her age in everyday life.

Her stripped down look "is only for television, for information," said the presenter, who also studies law and psychology when she's not in the studio.

Zjarr TV is not the only place where female anchors have gone bare - in Venezuela, for example, a presenter on a news website stripped naked last year to toast her country's success in the Copa America football

Hoxhaj's newfound fame has landed her a job offer in Sydney as a presenter for a soon-to-launch Australian TV channel - paying 3,000 euros ($3,280) a week, and requiring her to present the news topless.

"I have not decided yet, I'm still in discussions," said Hoxhaj.

Preceding her in the anchor job was Enki Bracaj, a 21-year-old student, whose bare bulletins went viral in the Balkans and made international headlines.

Officially she left because she was unhappy with her salary, but according to her colleagues, she managed to land a job as a model at a fashion magazine.

championships.

But in traditional Albania, home to a mostly Muslim population of about three million, the risque presenting style has caused a stir on Facebook and other social media sites.

But Hoxhaj said she was not affected by such reactions, insisting: "I had the courage to do what I do and now I'm a star."

Aside from social networks, Zjarr TV has incited little reaction from feminist groups or journalist associations in Albania.

"There is a diversity of choice and everyone is free to change channel," said Leonard Olli, a journalist and PR specialist in the capital Tirana.

Issue - 656 (13)

1 March - 7 March 2016

Asteroids are NOT the building blocks of planets - they were MADE by planets, claims study It has long been thought that asteroids formed from planetary embryos known as protoplanets that eventually combined and led to the formation of fully-fledged planets.But, now a study claims that asteroids are not building blocks at all - but rather they were made from the collisions of these protoplanets.If true, the research would mean that meteorites on Earth are not a glimpse into a time before Earth was formed, and are instead merely a byproduct of our own planet's formation.

The new theory centres around tiny, glassy, spherical grains known as chondrules. These were once molten droplets, and are now found scattered over asteroids.It had been thought that chondrules were the early kernels of terrestrial planets. As the solar system started to pull together four billion years ago, these droplets collided with dust and gas, creating the early protoplanets.These were objects larger than an asteroid, but smaller than our moon in size, and they ultimately formed the

terrestrial planets in the inner solar system today.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF SPACE ROCKS An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions in the early solar system. Most are

located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt.A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the solar system.A meteor is what we call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns up.This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small they are vapourised in the atmosphere.If any of this meteoroid makes it to Earth, it is called a meteorite. Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets.

Need to find your keys? Closing your eyes can help you remember, scientists say If you can’t remember your PIN number, try closing your eyes.Experiments show that recall is boosted when we shut out the outside world.

It is thought that blocking out distractions frees up the necessary brainpower to remember things.Psychologists from the University of Surrey put the theory to test by showing almost 200 men and women short films and asking them a series of questions about what they had seen.The first film clip was silent and showed an electrician stealing as he carried out jobs in a house.The volunteers then answered a series of questions about what they had seen – and half of them did this with their eyes closed.

Those whose eyes were open got just 48 per cent of the answers right on average – a score much lower than the 71 per cent achieved by those who had shut their eyes. Having built up a rapport with the questioner boosted scores further.The second film clip came from the BBC series Crimewatch and included sound as well as images.Closing eyes boosted recall of facts heard and seen.It

Is YOUR boss a messy eater? Power makes people develop bad table manners Power may corrupt but it can also makes people messy eaters, scientists have found.

They discovered that influential people quickly develop bad table manners, such as chewing with their mouths open and showering crumbs all over

themselves.Psychologists think that temporary changes to the frontal lobe in the brain may be to blame, which makes people more impulsive and self-centred.

Psychologist Dacher Keltner and his team at the University

of California, Berkeley, made the discovery when conducting an experiment that they refer to as the ‘cookie monster study,’ so called perhaps, because of the Sesame Street character’s vigorous way of eating biscuits.

In it, they divided volunteers into

groups of three and arbitrarily appointed one of them as leader.

They then gave the trio a boring task – devising some university policies – before bringing out a surprise plate of chocolate chip cookies. In a video explaining

the experiment, Dr Keltner explained: ‘Everybody takes one cookie, but all groups always leave one cookie on the plate, because they don’t want to be that person that takes the last cookie.’They discovered that half of the time, the leaders reached out to take the final cookie, perhaps showing they have become more selfish while in power. Dr Keltner said that one of his graduate students noticed that appointed leaders in the experiments often had bad table manners.

‘Our high-power person is more likely to eat with their mouth open, lips smacking, crumbs literally like falling onto their sweater. It’s ridiculous,’ he said.He explained that ‘when you powerful, you kind of lose touch with other people. You stop attending carefully to what other people think.’This is because when people are given power, they share some traits with sociopaths.

Hormones can trick brain into telling body to burn more fat Washington A new research has revealed that the action of two naturally occurring hormones can trick brain into telling body to burn more fat.Monash University researchers unravelled a molecular mechanism that depends on the combined action of two hormones - leptin, an appetite suppressant generated in fat cells, and insulin, produced in the pancreas in response to rising levels of glucose in the blood.The research shows that the two hormones act in concert on a group of neurons in

the brain to stimulate the burning of body fat via the nervous system.

Lead researcher Tony Tiganis said

discovering the combined action of these two hormones makes could assist in the shedding of excess fat, adding that these hormones give the brain a

comprehensive picture of the fatness of the body and because leptin is produced by fat cells, it measures the level of existing fat reserves, whereas insulin provides a measure of future fat reserves because glucose levels rise when people eat.The research team discovered leptin and insulin interact with proopiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons in the brain's hypothalamus, causing them to send signals through the nervous system promoting the conversion of white fat into brown fat.

had been argued that the technique improves memory by allowing people to build a detailed mental image of the thing they are trying to recall.

The finding that the trick also

His study, published in the journal Legal and Criminological Psychology, suggests that police will glean even more information if they build up a rapport with the interviewee. Dr

made it easier to remember auditory information shows this is not the only explanation.

Researcher Robert Nash said it is likely that those who shut their eyes also benefit from blocking out distractions. He said that police forces have long been aware of the benefits of asking eyewitnesses to shut their eyes during interviews.

Nash believes that a simple closing of the eyes will also be of benefit in everyday situations, such as recalling pin numbers and remembering shopping lists.

And while his experiment involved quizzing people shortly after they’d watched a film, other studies suggest that closing eyes can boost recall of events that date back several years.

What a cheek! X-ray footage shows a hamster stuffing its face pouches with nuts

Hamsters can carry almost half their body weight in their cheeks, and now this impressive feat has been caught on camera in an unprecedented way.

Using X-rays, researchers from the BBC filmed a Syrian hamster in cage storing nuts and pieces of fruit in its cheeks.

And when filmed from above, the X-ray footage revealed that the cheeks expand as far back as the animal’s hip bones. The footage will appear on the BBC’s ‘Pets - Wild at Heart’ series, which airs in the UK on BBC One on Wednesday 21 January. The show explores the ‘wide side of playful pets’, and also reveals why hamsters love to run on a wheel, how dogs pick up the rules of the pack, and how kittens learn to be solitary hunters. In addition to the X-ray footage, other shots include plunge-diving dogs and a cat outwitted by his prey.

The latest science also reveals why budgies talk, how a cat scales a vertical wall with the help of a special claw, and the

real meaning behind a rabbit's hop.‘Our pets are also given a chance to explore their wild side as we join the free-roaming pet dogs of Cusco Peru, pet rabbits living in a natural warren and the wild-living inhabitants of Cat Island, Japan,’ explained the BBC. ‘A range of innovative techniques such as moving X-rays, thermal imagery, minicam-carrying dogs and revelatory slow-motion photography shows why our pets play and how their true wild nature is just a whisker away.’There are five popular species of hamster, including Syrian, Campbell, Chinese, Roborovski and Winter White.

As well as using the pouches to store food, the hamsters use them to transport their pups and these pouches can stretch to double the width of the animal’s head. This is used to protect the pup from predators, for example.

But, hamsters have been known to cause suffocation when the infants are kept in the cheeks too long.

Issue - 656 (14)

1 March - 7 March 2016

Odisha professer arrested for sexual harassment of Dalit student Police arrested a professor of a government-run medical college in Odisha for alleged sexual harassment and intimidation of a post-

and Section 3 of ST and SC (Prevention of Atrocities) Act,” said Arun Swain, Mangalabag police station in-charge Arun Swain.

graduate Dalit student, officials said on Saturday.

Laxmidhar Das, head of the anaesthesia department of the SCB Medical College and Hospital, was arrested on Friday following a complaint from the firstyear post-graduate student a day earlier.“Dr Das has been booked under sections 354, 354A and 354B of Indian Penal Code (all related to outraging modesty of women, demanding sexual favour)

Das refuted the allegation saying he was framed by vested interests.

Hundreds of students of the medical college held a protest rally on Saturday inside the campus demanding ouster and strong action against the professor.The Dalit student, who hails from Puducherry, is said to be the daughter of a former minister allied to the DMK. She had taken admission in the post-graduate course for anaesthesia in

34 US lawmakers express concerns over violence against minorities, write to Modi

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 34 US lawmakers have expressed “grave concerns” over “increasing intolerance and violence” against members of minority communities in India.

“Our strong support of this partnership (India-US partnership) encourages us to relay our grave concerns about the increasing intolerance and violence members of India’s religious minority communities experience,” said the lawmakers in a letter sent Friday.

“We urge your government to take immediate steps to ensure that the fundamental rights of religious minorities are protected and that the perpetrators of violence are held to account.”

The letter released by The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, a bipartisan caucus of the House of Representatives, was signed by eight senators and 26 members of the House, from both parties.

It refers to a June 2014 ban on “non-Hindu religious propaganda, prayers, and

speeches” in their communities imposed by 50 village councils in Bastar, Chattisgarh, which it says has effectively “criminalized the practice of Christianity for an estimated 300 Christian families in the region”.

The letter then said the “nearly country-wide beef ban is increasing tensions and encouraging vigilante violence against the Indian Muslim community”. And mentioned killings of Mohammed Hasmat Ali in Manipur and Mohammed Saif in Uttar Pradesh.

It went on to cite the death of two Sikh men in October during protests over the desecration of the religion’s holy book, Sri Guru Granth Sahib.

Applauding the prime minister’s February 2014 statement that the government was committed to “ensure that there is complete freedom of faith... and not allow any religious group, belonging to the majority or the minority, to incite hatred against others,” the lawmakers said, “We urge you to turn these words into action.”

the medical college.

She said in her complaint that Das had made advances and sexually harassing her for the last six months. He allegedly asked her to accompany him for dinner and conferences outside the state. On two occasions, he called her to his room and tried to establish physical contact, she alleged.Prior to lodging a complaint with the police, the student had complained to the principal and superintendent of the college against the professor. The college authorities have initiated a probe by a five-member internal committee.

Police recorded the statement of the student and took possession of a pen drive purportedly containing recorded conversations between Dr Das and the girl on different occasions. The police also talked to several other students, teachers and interrogated Dr Das before arresting him.

This guy turns beggar for an hour; calculates an earning of 30,000rs. a month

In a fascinating social experiment undertaken by YouTubers IndiViral, a man dressed up as a beggar for 1 hour to calculate how much beggars make. The volunteer was dressed in torn clothes, made up to look shabby (including a sprinkle of authentic dirt in the hair), fitted with a hidden camera and made to walk the streets begging.

Interestingly, the ‘beggarboy’ earned Rs 200 in just 1 hour; so a rough calculation of 5 hours of work would produce Rs 1,000, which amounts to a sizeable Rs 30,000 a month — much to the amusement of the beggarboy actor, who claimed to earn just half the sum from his job at a BPO. Though, as fantastical as this simple math social experiment seems (yes, Madhur Bhandarkar’s Traffic Signal does give an idea of the nexus that comes into play; or the legacy left by old beggar woman in Kamal Hassan’s Pushpak may corroborate), but to conclude that a beggar earns Rs 30,000 a month might be going a bit too far.

Male smokers in India cross 100 million, second only to China More men are smoking in India than ever before, with the number rising by more than a third from 79 million in 1998 to 108 million in 2015, report researchers in the journal BMJ Global Health.

Smoking rates haven’t increased for women, though, with 11 million women smoking in India in 2015, the study found.

Only China has more adult smokers 300 million than India, where more than one in four adults also uses smokeless and chewing tobacco.

Tobaccocontrol measures, such as banning smoking in public places, haven’t helped much. They led to a fall in smoking prevalence from 27% in 1998 to 24% in 2010 among men aged 15-69 years, but the modest gains were offset by rising population and incomes. “During this period, India added about 1.7 million male smokers each year, with roughly an equal number smoking cigarettes and bidis,” said the study’s co-author Dr Prakash C Gupta, director, Healis-Sekhsaria Institute of Public Health, Mumbai.

The study found that 61

million Indian adult men smoked cigarettes (40 million exclusively) and 69 million smoked bidis (48 million exclusively).

Tobacco use, including smoking, accounts for

10% of all deaths in India.

“In 2010, tobacco use caused about one million deaths in India, with about 70% of these deaths killing people in their prime, between ages 30 and 69,” said co-author Dr Prabhat Jha, professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

Smoking causes about 30% of all cancer deaths (including 90% of lung cancer deaths), 17% of heart disease deaths, and at least 80% of deaths from bronchitis and emphysema.

But cessation is

uncommon in India. Last year, in the 45-59 age group, there were roughly four current smokers for every person who quit. In comparison, in the US and countries where cessation support is available, there are more quitters than current smokers.

“Raising tax on tobacco is the single most effective intervention to lower smoking rates, increase cessation and deter future smokers,” said Dr Jha. The Tobacco Institute of India disagrees: “As a result of discriminatory taxation, the share of legal cigarettes in total tobacco consumption declined from 21% in 1981-82 to 11%, but overall tobacco consumption increased 38% during this period.”

For the BMJ Public Health study, researchers used data from three nationally representative surveys Special Fertility and Mortality Survey (1998), Sample Registration Survey - Baseline data (2004) and Global Adult Tobacco Survey (2010) covering about 14 million people from 2.5 million households, and made forward projections to 2015.

Issue 656 (15)

1 March - 7 March 2016

Manish Paul’s film is desperately low on laughs Director: Abhishek Sharma Cast: Manish Paul, Pradhuman Singh, Sikandar Kher, Piyush Mishra, Sugandha Garg, Mia Uyeda Rating: 1 Star In 2010, Abhishek Sharma, making his directorial debut, regaled audiences with a nifty idea. A Pakistani journalist (Ali Zafar) chances upon a man (Pradhuman Singh) who looks a lot like Osama Bin Laden. He hopes to get his ticket to US by making a tape in which he gets the ignorant man to play the terrorist. The US wants this Osama. Six years later, Sharma still hasn’t gotten over Laden. But he isn’t second time lucky for Tere Bin Laden: Dead or Alive is a classic example of stretching a familiar joke

Sharma, the co-writer and director, starts off in a strange, meta fashion as he revisits the making of the original. There’s Sharma (Manish Paul) who has escaped the life of a halwai to pursue his dream of being a filmmaker. After initial struggle, he makes his first film, Tere Bin Laden, with the financial help of the Shetty Sisters who make a wordless cameo with their pug. Is this art imitating life? Whatever it is, it is so far a bore.

Having hit the jackpot with the first film, Sharma looks to cash in by repeating the same formula but it almost gets derailed after Laden is killed in 2011. Ali Zafar has gotten too big for his boots and is dropped from the project. (We think he got lucky.) Pradhuman Singh isn’t, for he reprises his

too long. The sequel to satire, which again mocks US, is less clever.

role as a fool- Osama lookalike who here is a struggling folk singer. Tere

Bin Laden: Dead or Alive takes the comedy of errors route, only this time around it fails to tickle the funny bone.

In Sharma’s cinematic world, Laden is a sought after figure even after death because President Obama can’t get him out of his head. He dispatches an agent, David (Sikander Kher speaking in Southern drawl), and his pretty assistant to get video proof. So David pretends to be a NRI Punjabi producer who wants to

work with Paddi, the lookalike, so that the events leading to Osama’s death are captured. Meanwhile Sharma and Paddi think they have landed themselves a Hollywood project. “Somewhere” a bunch of militants (led by Piyush Mishra) believe the Al Qaeda leader is alive. Sugandha Garg and others are somehow dragged into this. The ensemble of fools tries hard but it’s no fun.

Trouble with part two is that Obama is no Bush

who was the butt of jokes in the first. All we get here is an actor who pulls off the accent. Kher is made to do what Robert Downey Jr and Tom Cruise did in Tropic Thunder - paint his face and then don a fat suit - but it is just over the top drivel. Meanwhile Paul, who looks like he is walked straight from the sets of his ill-fated debut Mickey Virus, is only memorable for his poor imitation of a classic Mehmood riff on making a film. One party wants to

make a tape to prove Osama is alive, the other to show he is dead. It sounds great only on paper for the execution is sloppy and the writing lacks wit.

The quirky gets ridiculous rather than amusing. The film within a film format doesn’t pay humorous dividends. A few bright ideas such as terrorists playing landmine jump, bomb relay and enjoying a retrospective of Osama films draw a chuckle. But that’s as close to a laugh you will get in this comedy.

his silences, his eyes, his measured movements deftly convey the character’s pathos, his yearning for solitude, his

mounting troubles and fears. It’s that rare, restrained performance that Bajpayee will be remembered for.

Manoj Bajpayee is the heartbeat of this poignant film Director: Hansal Mehta Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Raj Kummar Rao, Ashish Vidyarthi Rating: 3 Stars It has been three years since Hansal Mehta im-

past, his religious identity and his passionate pursuit of justice for the falsely accused that made him a target. Like 2013 film, this time too Mehta is concerned with a real-life char-

pressed with his powerful portrait of human rights lawyer Shahid Azmi. With Shahid it was his difficult

acter that is marginalised by the society. With Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras (Manoj Bajpayee), a

Marathi professor of Aligarh Muslim University, it is his sexual identity that sees him ostracised by the society. Siras was dragged into news in 2010 when University staffers barged into his house with cameras late at night and found him with his lover. In a meticulously choreographed opening sequence shot beautifully by Satya Rai Nagpaul, based on the aforementioned episode, Aligarh invites muchneeded discourse on the blatant invasion of privacy and highlights the trauma inflicted on Siras. Beaten up, suspended from his job and evicted from his University accommodation, Siras is alienated and lost.

Unlike Shahid, he is older and quieter. He doesn’t want to come out of the closet. He doesn’t want to be a crusader. He wants to return to his past which was quiet and perfect. His present though is loud and tense. What makes Aligarh a must-watch is that in Siras audiences are treated to a character who breaks all the Bollywood stereotypes of being gay.

He isn’t the lecherous sort dressed in garish outfits, but a dignified, educated man. He is a recluse who is brought alive beautifully

by Bajpayee. Siras is a far cry from the colourful characters that made Bajpayee a household name.

Bajpayee’s soft delivery,

Issue 656 (16)

1 March - 7 March 2016

Kareena Kapoor to play a doctor in Udta Punjab Ever since Kareena Kapoor Khan has agreed to work with exboyfriend Shahid Kapoor, the gossip mills are abuzz with the news around Vikramaditya Motwane’s film Udta Punjab. In this film, Kareena Kapoor will don the simple look of a doctor.

The 35-year-old actor also said that her role in Udta Punjab is on the lines of a Samaritan, but the setting of the movie is dark. “I play a doctor in the film. It’s (the role) very simple and nice, good Samaritan kind of a thing. But the whole atmosphere of the film is so nice and dark that the role is very different,” Kareena told PTI. Kareena had played the role of a doctor in her earlier films Kyon Ki and 3 Idiots. The Jab we Met actor is currently busy with the shooting of her upcoming film Ki and Ka. She also talked about how will Udta Punjab be different from her upcoming release Ki and Ka.

Amy Jackson, the jetsetter

The Bajrangi Bhaijaan actor added, “Udta Punjab will be totally different from Ki and Ka because this film is lot more fun, quirky and entertaining. Udta Punjab will be dark, gritty, edgy kind of a film.”

Apart from Kareena and Shahid, the film also stars Alia Bhatt and Diljit Dosanjh in the lead roles. The film revolves around the issue of drug abuse in the state of Punjab. Directed by Abhishek Chaubey, Udta Punjab is scheduled to release in June 2016.

Lata Mangeshkar to honour Ranveer Singh “Bajirao Mastani” actor Ranveer Singh will be honoured with Dinanath Mangeshkar Award in

April, says melody queen Lata Mangeshkar.

The Mangeshkar clan led by Lata honours artistes to commemorate their father Pandit Dinanath Mangeshkar’s

death anniversary every year.

This year, the award will be bestowed upon Ranveer at a function to be held in Pune on April 24.

“Ranveer is a very good actor and seems to be a very positive human being. He spreads happiness wherever he goes. We are happy to give this annual award, named after our father, to Ranveer,” Lata Mangeshkar said in a statement.

The ‘Singh Is Bliing’ actress has been logging airmiles. She flew into Mumbai from hometown London for a scriptreading session of Sohail Khan’s next with co-star Nawazuddin Siddiqui.

She then took off for

I’m still a work in progress says Parineeti Chopra She makes no bones about admitting that she is a more confident person following her weight loss, but actress Parineeti Chopra, who believes being a celebrity puts her in a privileged position, says she still has a long way to go to be as fit as she wants to be. Parineeti, who was last seen on the big screen in 2014 in “Kill Dil”, was on the chubbier side when she entered Bollywood with “Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl” in 2011. But her transformation towards the end of last year left her critics tight-lipped.

Does she feel more confident?

“Yes, for sure! I do feel more comfortable in different clothes. I used to be conscious about how I am looking because I wasn’t confident about my body... But I do feel more confident as compared to earlier,” Parineeti told IANS

in an interview over phone from Mumbai. But the 27year-old actress was quick to add that she is “still a work in progress” as it “will still take a couple of months to completely get into the shape” that she wants. She has realised that being fitter helps in showbiz. The “Ishaqzaade” and “Daawat-e-Ishq” star said: “I think being your slimmest and fittest -- whatever your body type may allow -- is important because it helps you to do a variety of things on screen... I think if you are not your fittest self, then it limits you in the characters you play.” However, being a celebrity, didn’t she get affected by or feel stifled by brickbats and criticism that came

her way even before and after her weight loss? Parineeti said: “Not at all. I think we are in a great position, where anything that we do reaches out globally and people all over the world get to see it, comment on it and give their opinion on it.

Bangkok for a brand endorsement shoot for three days. Back in Mumbai, she did a magazine shoot and then upped again for a brand shoot in Dubai. It has been jet, set and go for Amy.

Issue 656 (17)

Nicki Minaj shows off derriere in raunchy photographs

Rapper Nicki Minaj flaunted her famous buttocks in raunchy photographs which she posted on Instagram.

Minaj’s first image saw her posing with her back to the camera, showing off her buttocks as she stood with one hand on her hip, reports dailystar.co.uk. The ‘Starships’ donned a cropped leather bralet, teamed with a fitted leather jacket and a fringed skirt which failed to hide anything.

1 March - 7 March 2016

Ariana Grande likes embarrassing Ed Sheeran Singer Ariana Grande likes to embarrass her friend and singer Ed Sheeran because “it is so easy”.

“I can be known to have quite an inappropriate sense of humour. And Ed Sheeran is so British and embarrasses easily. It’s so easy to make him blush.

People often think I’m totally censored, so I love to catch them off guard,” Grande told LOOK magazine, reports femalefirst.co.uk. She had teamed up with former boyfriend singer Nathan Sykes for the song “Over and over again” but says it wasn’t awkward getting into the recording studio with him. “We’re friends and I’m so happy with how the song turned out,” she said. And now the 22-year-old is hoping to collaborate with more British stars.

“I really love Adele. Jessie J is my girl - collaborating with her was super-cool. She brings such a different vibe. I was buzzing off her energy. Ed is obviously a legend. The Brits know how to do it - just more proper and washed down with a

B-Town applauds Leonardo Kate Winslet added Indian jewels in her Oscars look DiCaprio’s Oscar win Bollywood celebrities like Anil Kapoor, Anupam Kher and Farhan Akhtar have congratulated Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio, who has broken the jinx and “finally” won an Oscar for Actor in a Leading Role at the 88th Academy Awards for his role in survival drama film “The Revenant”.

After being nominated four times for his acting earlier, DiCaprio won an Oscar for portraying a fur trapper named Hugh Glass in the Alejandro G. Inarritu directed film. This year, he was nominated alongside Bryan Cranston (“Trumbo”), Michael Fassbender (“Steve Jobs”), Eddie Redmayne (“The Danish Girl”) and Matt Damon (“The Martian”). Wishing the actor over his splendid win, many Bollywood celebrities took to Twitter on

Monday to share their feelings about DiCaprio.

Here’s what the celebrities have written:

all that can be said about Leonardo DiCaprio’s winning is, finally!

Anil Kapoor: Much awaited and very well deserved! Congratulations on the Oscar Leonardo DiCaprio! ‘The Revenant’.

Farhan Akhtar: Really happy for team ‘Spotlight’. Loved that film. And

Anupam Kher: Congratulations Leonardo DiCaprio for winning the Best Actor Award. The world can sleep peacefully today.

Inspirational journey Oscars.

Actress Kate Winslet stepped onto the red carpet at the 88th Academy Awards wearing NIRAV MODI jewels, an Indian luxury brand with a global presence.

As a Best Supporting Actress nominee for her work in “Steve Jobs”, Winslet chose the “Luminance Bracelet” and matching “Luminance Earrings” with the two carat “Pear Celestial Ring” for the event that is taking place at the Dolby Theatre, here on Sunday.

The pieces, encrusted with almost a 100 carats of precious white diamonds, added glamour to her Ralph Lauren dress, said a statement.

“NIRAV MODI jewels express superior craftsmanship and innovation; whether it be unique diamond cuts or delicate mechanisms that allow jewels to move and adapt with the wearer. The feminine modern designs are among my very favorite,” said the actress. More than 100 years of family diamantaire legacy inspired designer Nirav Modi found his epony-

mous brand with a passion for creating timeless diamond jewellery that celebrates a woman’s beauty. The NIRAV

MODI boutiques are currently located in New York, Hong Kong, New Delhi and Mumbai, with an opening in London set for 2016.

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1 March - 7 March 2016

Major Jurassic fossil site discovered in Argentina Buenos Aires Paleontologists in Argentina have announced the discovery of a major Jurassic-era fossil site four years after it was first discovered.

contains the same amount and diversity of Jurassic fossils," said geologist Juan Garcia Massini of the Regional Center for Scientific Research and Technology Transfer (CRILAR).

The site, which spans 23,000 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) in Patagonia, southern Argentina, came to light this week with the publication of a report in the journal Ameghiniana.

"No other place in the world

The fossils - between 140 and 160 million years old lie on the surface because they were recently exposed by erosion, said Garcia Massini, who leads the research team investigating the site.

"You can see the land-

scape as it appeared in the Jurassic - how thermal waters, lakes and streams as well as plants and other parts of the ecosystem were distributed," he said.

The fossils were preserved almost immediately, in less than a day in some cases.

"You can see how fungi, cyanobacteria and worms moved when they were alive," Garcia Massini said of the site that lies along the Deseado Massif mountain range.

Ignacio Escapa of the Egidio Feruglio Paleontology Museum said the researchers had found "a wide range of micro and macro-organisms." The fossils are so well preserved, that researchers say each rock extracted from the site could possibly open the door to a new discovery.

Pakistani book claims PM Nawaz Sharif ‘took money’ from Bin Laden Karachi A new book has claimed that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif received money from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The book “Khalid Khawaja: Shaheed-i-Aman”, authored by Shamama Khalid, the wife of former Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) operative Khalid Khawaja, claimed that Sharif received money from Bin Laden to contest elections against the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Dawn online reported on Monday.

“Chief of Pakistan Muslim LeagueNawaz (PML-N) Nawaz Sharif received funding from Osama bin Laden, founder of Al-Qaeda, to contest elections against Benazir Bhutto-led PPP after the end of the Zia regime,” the book said.

Sharif’s pledge of introduc-

ing an Islamic system attracted Khalid Khawaja, an ISI officer, and Bin Laden.

Hamid Gul, which also claims that Khawaja was very close to Sharif for

But even though the al Qaeda head honcho funded Sharif heavily, the latter backtracked from all his promises after coming to power, it claimed.

The book also carries a note from former ISI director general, retired Lt. Gen.

some time.

It says that Abdullah Azzam, founding member of al Qaeda, introduced Khawaja to Bin Laden. Azzam, who is also known as the ‘father of global jihad’, was a Palestinian Sunni.

Issue 656 (19)

1 March - 7 March 2016

Bangladesh’s ‘Tree Man’ may Xinjiang to use singing and dancing in terror fight need dozen more operations Dhaka A Bangladeshi father dubbed "Tree Man" for massive barklike warts on his hands and feet may need a dozen more operations to remove the

ago. "We removed some small warts from his palm. We also did dressing of his fingers, which were operated on last week. He's now better," Sen told AFP. But Bajandar

growths, a hospital director said Sunday.

A team of doctors operated on Saturday on Abul Bajandar's right hand to remove some of the smaller growths, his second such operation, said Dhaka Medical College Hospital facility director Samanta Lal Sen. The 26-year-old was admitted to hospital last month to finally shed some of the growths weighing at least five kilograms (11 pounds) that first began appearing 10 years

would need up to 15 operations in total to rid his body of the growths, which may take six months to one year, Sen said.

Bajandar, from the southern district of Khulna, was diagnosed with epidermodysplasia verruciformis, an extremely rare genetic condition dubbed "tree-man disease" that causes the growths.

He has become a celebrity, with people travelling to Khulna over the years to see him and hundreds visiting him

in hospital. Bajandar said he was determined to continue with the treatment no matter how long it took. "The first operation has given me hope," he told AFP by phone from hospital. "I don't want to return to my village without clearing my hands and feet. I want to get back to my old life," the father-of-one said.

Bajandar was given the all-clear for surgery after tests confirmed the warts were not cancerous. He opted to have the surgery now after the Bangladesh government decided to pay the bill.

Bajandar initially thought the warts were harmless but slowly as the growths covered his hands and feet, he was forced to quit working as a bicycle rickshaw puller.

Sen said only three known cases of epidermodysplasia verruciformis existed in the world.

An Indonesian villager with massive warts all over his body underwent a string of operations in 2008 to remove them.

Legendary steam train ‘Flying Scotsman’ returns NEW YORK The Flying Scotsman, a 93year-old steam locomotive and jewel of British industrial heritage, set off from London on Thursday on its first official journey since a painstaking restoration.

The train streamed through the

‘I think the steam trains have got this bit of extraordinary character to them,’ said Paul Jubb, a 58-year-old fan from Birmingham who was among the 300 donors and enthusiasts aboard locomotive 60103. Jubb said he had ‘very fond memories’ of steam

English countryside on its inaugural journey to York billowing white smoke as passengers enjoyed a champagne breakfast in old-fashioned carriages with wooden compartments. Train enthusiasts lined the track in some areas and at one point near the town of St Neots in Cambridgeshire the locomotive was forced to come to a sudden stop because of dozens of people on the line.

trains form his childhood, adding: ‘I never imagined one moment that nearly half a century later I’d be lucky enough to get to go on this famous train!’ Sitting on plush velvety seats behind white tablecloths, passengers tucked into their porridge, sipped tea and quaffed champagne. Staff were dressed in green uniforms - the same colours of the former national railway agency in which the locomo-

tive has been painted. The 97tonne engine pulled out of King’s Cross Station at 0740 GMT to applause from a crowd of enthusiasts who had come to witness its rebirth after a restoration that has lasted a decade. The Flying Scotsman was bound for York, a historic city some 280 kilometres (175 miles) north of London, where it will stay in the city’s National Railway Museum until the beginning of March. The train will then spend the coming months on tourist trips and featuring in exhibitions. Restoring the famous engine cost around £4.2 million (5.3 million euros, $5.8 million). Thursday was the locomotive’s first official outing since it returned to the rails last January in Bury, northwest England, for a series of tests. ‘It’s a historic day,’ said Paul Kirkman, director of the National Railway Museum. ‘This celebratory journey marks a new stage in this steam icon’s long and colourful history, and is a tribute to all the people who have worked so hard to make this happen, from those that have worked on the restoration itself to the public that donated to our appeal to bring this legend back to life.’

BEIJING China’s violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang will use entertainment to fight terrorism, holding cultural activities - which typically involve singing and dancing - to spread its law-enforcement mes-

year, to help improve the region’s peace and stability. These activities will ‘mobilise the masses from all ethnicities to proactively and actively participate in the anti-terrorism struggle’, the paper said. While law enforcers and lawyers would

sage, state media said on Thursday. Hundreds of people have been killed over the past few years in resource-rich Xinjiang, strategically located on the borders of central Asia, in violence between the Muslim Uighur people who call the region home and ethnic majority Han Chinese. The government has blamed the unrest on Islamist militants, though rights groups and exiles say anger at Chinese controls on the religion and culture of the Uighurs is more to blame for the unrest. China denies any repression in Xinjiang. The official Xinjiang Daily said the government would begin a new round of public education activities to spread knowledge about China’s new counter-terrorism law, passed last

hold public talks, there will also be a ‘leading role for culture’, it added.

‘Hold many cultural propaganda activities that delight the masses, and let them be educated through entertainment,’ the paper said, citing instructions from the government. It did not give details, but typically such events involve song and dance routines and comedic skits. Generally these days they happen in more remote parts of the country rather than China’s increasingly sophisticated large cities. The government will also use mass and social media to ‘strengthen public opinion’ work and ‘create a good atmosphere’ for Xinjiang’s lasting social stability, the paper added.

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Months after stating that a blanket ban on porn sites wa

FIND WAYS TO BLOCK PORN SITES

by Harish V Nair Seven months after stating that a blanket ban on porn sites was not possible, the Supreme Court on Friday took a big U-turn. It asked the Centre to find out “ways and means” to block “blue films” on the Internet, saying obscenity which was a crime under the Indian law “cannot be allowed to be perpetuated”.

Significantly, the court is also exploring the possibility of banning watching of pornographic material in any form at public places and also sought the view of the Centre if it can be made a crime.

Despite stiff objection from the Centre which said it only favoured banning child pornography sites and not “going beyond” considering a citizen’s right to privacy and also because it did not want to be seen “moral policing”, the court directed the Centre to “develop a mechanism” for blocking all porn sites with the help of IT experts and service providers.

Videos A bench headed by justice Dipak Misra was hearing a PIL filed by Indore-based lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani, demanding complete ban on porn websites on the ground that crime against women and children is “majorly influenced” by such videos.

“Obscenity is recognised by the law.

Pornography can be obscene. Obscenity has been linked to misogynism, perversion, sadism, and voyeurism. These are acts depicted in pornography which have a direct nexus with obscenity as crime under Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code. Somebody doing it for gain cannot be entertained╦other countries have not accepted defeat on this account. Look at UK,” observed the bench.

Significantly, the judges also said the right to free speech, thought and expression is not “absolute” and does not extend to viewing or compelling to watch porn in a public place.

“The government has an obligation to block such sites. You tap the knowledge of IT and scientific experts. Also take the assistance of National Commission for Women. Some mechanism has to be developed”, the bench told Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, who represented the Centre, as she said blocking all sites “cannot be done and was not our job”.

Impossible Observing that blocking was a “difficult but not an impossible task”, Justice Misra pointed out how successfully the government had on its orders stopped Google, Yahoo and Microsoft from advertising kits for foetal gender determination and displaying addresses of foreign clinics that provide

assistance in the act which is an offence in India. The Centre has a difficult task at hand as in August last year it was forced to revoke its order blocking 857 porn websites after facing flak from the social media and votaries of right to privacy. On a separate plea filed by Supreme Court Women’s Association (SCWLA) for complete blocking of pornography sites and making viewing of pornographic material in public an offence, the bench asked the ASG to take instructions.

SCWLA said the situation is so alarming that even school students -

both boys and girls - now have access to porn clips through the crew of their school buses and cabs. “Due to easy access to porn, even bus drivers and conductors of school buses, cabs and taxis have porn clippings/videos on their mobile phones. As these are publicly shared without compunction, even the children would be

exposed to this, critically affecting their emotional and psychological well being. It is a serious matter of concern and such type of behaviour cannot be tolerated. It has become very common these days for drivers, conductors/cleaners to take advantage of innocent children, induce them to watch porn on their mobiles and indulge in molestation

and sodomisation of the child,” said the petition filed by the association’s secretary Prerna Kumari, and argued by senior lawyer Mahalakshmi Pavani. Reacting to it, the bench said: “We note the anguish as children need to be protected from this kind of moral assault and it has the potential to bring them physical disaster.”

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1 March - 7 March 2016

as not possible, SC asks Centre to explore ways to block a

Experts say Government crack down on sex sites will just ‘increase curiosity’

Pornography laws in other countries

By HARISH V. NAIR and JAVED ANWER As the Narendra Modi Government’s decision to block nearly 900 porn sites raised the hackles of the votaries of right to privacy, the increasing feeling even among cyber experts is that it will be a “failed attempt” and only act as a catalyst for surge in viewing.

While there is a debate on whether the ban is correct or not, when it comes to the technology part of the question, the Government is just wasting its time, say the experts.

Porn is fairly easily and widely available on the web and clamping down on it is near impossible, unless the Government is willing to spend crores every year just to keep an updated web content filtering system in place.

Cyber law expert Pavan Duggal said: “By using proxy servers you can access blocked sites of all websites located outside India.

“Blocking orders act as a catalyst for increasing traffic… you are increasing peoples’ curiosity and it will not be a successful initiative.”

The Government’s order to telecom operators and internet service providers came in as a surprise as just a month ago Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu had flatly refused to block the sites citing the very right to privacy and person.

“Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court. Somebody can come to the court and say ‘Look, I am an adult and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room? It is a violation of Article 21 (right to personal liberty) of the Constitution.’

“Yes the issue is serious and some steps need to be taken… the Centre has to take a stand... let us see what stand the Centre will take”, Justice Dattu had said on July 5.

The Information Technology Act does not make it illegal to view adult porn, but watching child pornography is an offence under Section 67B of IT Act, added in 2008.

Duggal said: “Right to privacy is integral to fundamental right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.

“SC has also upheld it several times including in this case. It includes access to any adult content by adult persons that is why Parliament also opted not to make any law criminalising watching porn. You should realise that the country’s Chief Justice also upheld the crucial right.”

Of course, publishing and transmitting an obscene act is an offence under Section 67

of the Information Technology Act. ‘Failed experiment’ According to experts, blocking of porn websites will be a failed experiment because it is impossible to block all servers.

No Government generally bans porn sites as they are the biggest driver of e-commerce intervention.

It is a good intention but the Government should not bite more than they can chew.

The US and China tried to fight porn and

saw its results and then they only limited themselves to child pornography.

India needs to learn and adopt a pragmatic approach. If they better go after the paedophiles, then the chances of success is more higher, they said.

Lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani, on whose petition before the Supreme Court the whole ban came about, had argued that crime against women and children which is “majorly influenced” by such porn videos is on the rise. The Centre’s order on Sunday was apparently in accordance with the earlier observation of the court that such erotic content needs to be blocked.

Vaswani’s lawyer Raj Panjwani reacted to the ban by saying: “It is a welcome step.

The Government should continue to ban websites”.

But cyber experts reiterated that banning the porn sites is an absolutely useless exercise. Most of these websites are used to host or serve adult content but some, like 9Gag TV, are just plain humour and meme sites which often share innocuous jokes with the users.

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1 March - 7 March 2016

Ten children stabbed outside school gate in southern China

A knife-wielding attacker stabbed ten school children in southern China on Monday, severely injuring two, before killing himself, state media reported, the latest in a series of school attacks in the country. The attacker stabbed six boys and four girls outside the gate of an elementary school in the city of Haikou, on the southern island province of Hainan, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reported on its

microblog. The children were taken to hospital, with two being treated for serious injuries that were not life threatening, CCTV said. Police were investigating what they described as a “vicious criminal case brought on by extreme actions”, the brief report said. Violent crime is rare in China compared with many other countries, but there have been a series of knife and axe attacks in recent years, many targeting children.

The world’s oldest cat is 121 and an avid user of social media!

The world’s oldest cat doesn’t let being nearly 121 years old get in the way of keeping his fans up to date with his exploits via social media.

At 26 years and 205 days old - nearly 121 in cat years - mature moggy Corduroy has racked up thousands of followers on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

Fans log on daily to catch up with the latest adventures of the pensioner pussy, who holds the prestigious Guinness World Records title for oldest living cat and is still in remarkable good health.

His owner Ashley Reed Okura, 34, said: “I set up Corduroy’s Instagram on August 13 last year - the same day Guinness World Records graciously announced his claim to the record of oldest living cat. He also has Snapchat and Facebook and the reaction has been really positive. I do my best to update his followers and respond to messages and special requests.”

Corduroy lives with entrepreneur Ashley and her 37year-old husband Aaron

Masuru Okura, a ranch restaurant owner, in Sisters, Oregon.

Ashley chose the half Main Coon moggy, who was born on August 1, 1989, from a litter to be her pet during a visit to a neighbouring town as a

nia. When she died in June last year, he was awarded the honour again and, aside from eating a special lowprotein diet to protect his kidneys, the senior feline does not act his age.

Ashley, who hopes to have children next year to pro-

six-year-old. At the same time her brother Ryan, then five, picked out a kitten he called Batman who lived to the ripe old age of 19. Corduroy, who has more than 2,500 Instagram followers, first took the Guinness World Records title in June 2014 before it was stolen by Tiffany Two, an older cat from Califor-

vide Corduroy with human siblings, said she believes the secret to her pet’s longevity is the time he spends outdoors - although she has begun to now supervise him on walks because of eagles and coyote.

She said: “Corduroy certainly does not act his age - he still jumps onto counters and jumps

down.”Every night, he glides up our flight of stairs and jumps onto our bed and sleeps with us before waking us up every morning around 5am. I strongly believe the key to his longevity is the fact we did not declaw him and allowed him to go outside.”

He was able to defend himself and exercise his body and mind by hunting. Corduroy still catches critters but is not as good as he once was, thankfully.

Ashley said Corduroy has a mellow personality and loves to groom himself, be petted and cuddled, take catnaps in the sun and play with catnip-filled mice and a pheasant feather.

She believes he knows he is special because he enjoys the attention he gets from friends and family, and is patient with young visitors. Ashley added: “It is an honour to have Corduroy in our life, I honestly don’t remember much of my life without him. He is a wonderful companion and I hope to give him a happy and healthy life for many more years.

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Indian-American Kesha Ram running for lieutenant governor in Vermont Washington Watching the young African-American senator speak, Kesha Ram thought to herself that if there was a place for someone like him in politics, maybe there is place for someone like her.

That was 2006. Senator Barack Obama was stumping for Bernie Sanders, who was then running for Senate, and Ram, a young college student in Vermont, had just introduced them at an election rally.

“That was the first time I had heard an American story like mine,” Ram said.

“About having a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas and I have a father from India and a mother from Illinois.”

She added, “And I thought if there was a place for

someone like him in politics, maybe there is a place for some like me.”

And there was indeed.

Inspired by that encounter, Ram, a great-great granddaughter of Ganga Ram, the civil engineer who designed and built landmark institutions in colonial India and after whom Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital is named, plunged into politics. She interned on Capitol Hill the next sum-

America’s passion for guns intact as shooting toll rises WASHINGTON A rifle as new state symbol. A bill that lets young children use handguns under supervision. As mass

shootings shatter lives, the fascination with firearms among many Americans shows little sign of fading.

Over the past week, two gunmen killed at least nine people in unrelated rampages in Michigan and Kansas.

Add to that the death in Indiana of a father who was accidentally shot by his six-year-old son who found a loaded revolver lying around and pulled the trigger.

President Barack Obama who offers his condolences to families of loved ones lost after each mass shooting has decried the “routine” nature of reporting about and responding to such tragedies.

But faced with a Republican-controlled Congress unwilling to move forward on the matter, Obama who made fighting gun violence his chief resolution for 2016 is left with his wheels spinning.

In January, he shed tears as he announced limited measures to tackle the

rampant violence that kills around 30,000 Americans each year and called on citizens to punish lawmakers who oppose more meaningful reforms.

In the speech, Obama formally unveiled a handful of executive measures that will make it harder to buy and sell weapons, but which he admitted would not stop the scourge of mass shootings.

And in a country where there are more guns than people, and with Republicans vying to take back the White House in November, it remains to be seen, what if anything will change.

Senators in Tennessee in a near unanimous vote designated a rifle that is said to be capable of destroying commercial aircraft as an official state symbol.

The .50-caliber Barrett, manufactured in the southern state, joins a range of other Tennessee state symbols. These include the mockingbird as “official state bird” and the raccoon as “official wild animal.”

“These ‘anti-materiel’ sniping rifles can strike accurately from a distance of more than a mile” (1.6 kilometres), the Violence Policy Centre, a non-profit organisation that advocates for gun control said.

mer, ran for the student body at her university and, at the age of 21, was elected to the state legislature in Vermont.

Now 29, she is running for Lieutenant Governor. Ram belongs to a new generation of IndianAmericans, mostly those born here, who are actively seeking public office wherever they can city councils, state legislatures and US Congress.

They include Ami Bera, a California Democrat who is currently the only Indian American in the House of Representatives. He is only the third Indian American to be a member of the house and is running for a third term.

Also in this group is Nikki Haley, the Republican governor of South Caro-

lina who is often mentioned as a possible vicepresidential pick because of a recent surge in popularity.

Then there are those running for their first chance on the national stage Kamala Harris for the Senate and Raja Krishnamoorthi, Ro Khanna and Kumar Barve for the House.

Ram could be on her way too, according to polls.

When she first ran for office in 2008, she was called a “kitten with lipstick”, but now, as The Deerfield Valley New said in a recent article, “They don’t underestimate her anymore.” Her father Mukul Ram came to the US for higher studies in the late 1960s engineering like his great-grandfather at the University of California, Los Angeles, and stayed on.

Chris Gayle gifts his bat to ‘legend’ Amitabh Bachchan Mumbai Megastar Amitabh Bachchan was stumped when he was presented an autographed bat by cricketer Chris Gayle. He says he is in awe of the reach of Indian cinema and that finding a fan in the West Indian cricket star came as a “revelation” to him.

The 73-yearold took to various social media platforms to express his happiness over getting the token of love from the international batting sensation.

He tweeted: “Mr. Chris Gayle... What an honour...

I never knew you would know me... So humbled.

We are all great fans of yours! I mean Chris Gayle, a fan of Hindi movies and presents me a golden bat

autographed? I mean this is revelation”.

Gayle, who plays in the Indian Premier League as well, proclaimed himself to be a big fan of the Bollywood ‘Shahenshah’, who has regaled film buffs

for over four decades.

“Proud to gift my Spartan bat to a legend @srbachchan, love his movies and his style, legend.

Thanks @spartancricket,” Gayle tweeted.

After Big B thanked him, Gayle posted: “See you soon in India.”

German woman accuses Indian taxi driver of rape London A 19-year-old German woman has accused an Indian auto-rickshaw driver of raping her in the capital New Delhi late last year, police said on Saturday.

The woman, who approached police earlier this week, said that she was raped by the driver after leaving her hotel and getting lost in the city’s busy commercial district on December 14.

“We registered a case of rape and launched our investigation after the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) approached us with the woman’s complaint,” a senior Delhi police officer told AFP. “So far, the complainant hasn’t been able to clearly

recall some key details about the entire incident but we are making all efforts to help her with it and take our investigation for-

was scared, but later filed a complaint via email to the group.

“We first received her email complaint on February 5

ward,” the officer added.

The victim told DCW that she didn’t approach authorities immediately after the incident because she

but since she wasn’t in Delhi at the time we couldn’t take it forward to the police at the time,” Swati Maliwal, DCW chair-

man, told AFP. Maliwal said that the autorickshaw driver “assaulted and raped her in the dark” after she walked out of her hotel at night and got lost.

“She was finally helped by a man who was returning from work and saw her on the roadside. She didn’t tell him anything and he dropped her at her hotel,” Maliwal added.

The fatal gang rape of a young student on a bus in Delhi in 2012 led to an outpouring of anger over frightening levels of violence against women.

It also led to major reform of India’s rape laws including speeding up of trials and hiking penalties for offenders, but high numbers of assaults persist.

Pak hangs man who killed governor over call to reform blasphemy law Islamabad Pakistan on Monday executed a man who killed the governor of Punjab province over his call to reform the country’s strict blasphemy laws that carry a death sentence for insulting Islam, police said.

Protests broke out within hours by supporters of the killer, who consider him a hero who defended the faith, broadcaster Geo TV reported.

Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab province, shot him dead in the capital, Islamabad, in 2011. “Qadri was hanged at around 4:30 am,” senior

police officer Rizwan Omar Gondal told Reuters by telephone. The execution took place at the Adiala jail in the city of Rawalpindi outside Islamabad.

Taseer had championed the cause of a Christian woman sentenced to death in a blasphemy case that

arose out of a personal dispute. Taseer had said the law was being misused and should be reformed.

Late in 2011, an anti-terrorism court handed down a double death sentence to Qadri for murder and terrorism. The sentence was appealed and upheld by

the Supreme Court late last year.

More than 100 people are charged with blasphemy each year in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, many of them Christians and other minorities.

Conviction of blasphemy carries a death sentence, although no one has yet been hanged for the charge.

Controversy over the law has exposed the growing gap between religious conservatives and liberals in Pakistan, with hard-line religious leaders considering Taseer a blasphemer himself for even criticising the law.

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Monday could be an especially fortunate time for you, particularly if you’ve been working hard and are hoping to see your efforts rewarded. Stay alert - this is the time when opportunities can appear out of the blue. Even so, make the time on Tuesday to read through important documents to avoid mistakes.

Good news can make all the difference to your family situation, particularly if you’ve been waiting on a decision or information. It seems you have reason to celebrate! There’s also a powerful focus on communication, encouraging you to be compassionate and forgiving regarding past hurts. This isn’t a time to hold grudges.

Monday’s positive transit can coincide with an unexpected encounter that could have soul-mate potential. It’s also possible you’ll be inspired by this person to collaborate on a special project, one that’s deeply meaningful to you. Personal desires are also emphasized and might be the reason you’re tempted to go bargain hunting this week.

A dynamic transit could coincide with a windfall, the chance of a new job, or an opportunity that’s too good to pass up.

Whatever experience comes your way, you’ll feel all the richer because of it.

Get ready as Mars hikes into your sign midweek, giving you additional vitality and courage. Even so, it helps to respect different opinions.

An idea or inspiration could spur you to action, and it might result in a plan that brings you satisfaction and fulfillment. Be sure to listen to your intuition on Monday, as it may be crucial in bringing a special opportunity your way. Meanwhile, it helps to take care of matters close to your heart, particularly if a situation needs a sensitive touch to resolve.

An intuitive hunch could lead you to just the bargain you’ve been hoping for. Pay attention if you feel you should visit a certain shop or online site or even call a friend. The item you’re pining for could soon be yours. There’s also a lively social scene showing up, particularly from midweek, when friends rally round and invitations become more plentiful.

The start of the week has excellent potential and may involve a stroke of good fortune. A meeting could put you in touch with information or opportunities that make quite a difference in your life. Plus, a desire to forge ahead can see you pushing past doubts and fears to achieve a personal goal or career plan. Don’t wait until you’re in the right mood.

Progress at work could be the result of an upbeat transit that enhances your chance of success. If the offer of a job or contract comes up and it’s something you desire - grab it right away. This is one chance that won’t last long. Later, travel plans could be on the agenda and you may be drawn to places that have a certain mystique about them.

Information or fresh perspectives could inspire you to take a new path. Whether this is the result of reading a book or hearing a talk, you may discover new tools with which to shape your destiny.

The focus shifts to your zone of shared finances midweek, stirring things up and encouraging you to take action to resolve any money difficulties.

There’s the chance of a windfall, small raise, or other money coming your way early in the week. What’s more, it could be unexpected and so a bit of a surprise.

It’s also possible that you’ll hear positive news about a loan or other credit. The focus swings to relationships and interactions as Mars moves into Cancer for the next six weeks or so.

Friends seem to be very supportive of you, so much so that the early part of the week could bring a pleasant surprise your way. Perhaps someone will make an offer that you can’t refuse - and that you’re unlikely to receive again. Even so, be on the alert, as surprises can show up out of the blue. Health and lifestyle matters gain in importance, too.

Finances get a boost early on.

I t ’s p o s s i b l e you’ll get a windfall or raise out of the blue. A lucrative deal or contract could also show up, and you’ll be eager to accept. There’s more good news, too, as Mars moves into your romance and pleasure sector to enhance your chances of finding that special date.

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Technology Facebook inserts ‘social’ in its virtual reality dreams In its bid to further explore immersive new virtual reality (VR) experiences that will help people connect and share, Facebook has

created a social VR team focused entirely on exploring the future of social interaction in VR. This team will explore how people can connect and share using today’s VR technology, as well as long-term possibilites as VR evolves into an increasingly important computing platform.

The team members will work closely with US-

based virtual reality technology company Oculus and other teams at Facebook to build the foundation for tomorrow’s so-

cial VR experiences on all platforms.

“We have already helped people connect in a wide variety of ways on mobile devices - ranging from Facebook and Instagram to Messenger and WhatsApp - and now we want to apply that same approach to the new medium of VR,” the social networking giant said in a blog post.

“In the future, VR will enable even more types of connection - like the ability for friends who live in different parts of the world

to spend time together and feel like they’re really there with each other,” it added.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks that “VR is the next platform.”

“Pretty soon we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the powet to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re right there’,” said Zuckerberg while speaking at the “Samsung MWC 2016”

event in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday.

Although the work in VR is still in an early stage and there are a lot of hardware and software challenges that Facebook still needs to solve.

“But we’re encouraged by our progress to date and we’re excited to continue building VR technology that gives people new ways to connect and share,” the company said. Addressing a gathering at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco recently, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said that turning virtual reality into a business is part of the firm’s 10-year plan rather than an immediate action item. Echoing her comments, Facebook’s chief financial officer David Wehner said there is much that can be “accomplished with virtual reality” but it is still “very early days”.

“It will take time to develop the ecosystem,” Wehner added.

Google Maps allows pit stops in navigation mode

Internet giant Google on Monday announced a new add-on feature on Google Maps for Android to help people stay on track while making stops for gas, coffee, food or anything else that breaks their journey.

The new update allows users to search for and add an extra stop to their route, without having to exit navigation mode in Google Maps, a company statement said.

“Google Maps has enabled travellers to navigate with greater ease, safety and convenience for years

now. This new update will ensure that they can make a sudden or anticipated pitstop and detours without having to exit navigation mode,” said Suren Ruhela, director of Google Maps, in a statement.

“They can also add these to their routes for subsequent use if required, thereby easing the navigation process and also saving time,” Ruhela added.

Google Maps will also show the users how long a stop will add to their trip while keeping them on their route.

Global Internet access Facebook top choice for app advertising reaches 3.2 billion in 2015

A new study has revealed that nearly 3.2 million of people worldwide were connected to the Internet by the end of 2015, up from 3 billion a year ago.

According to the ‘State of Connectivity 2015’ report, which is a Facebook-sponsored study, some 200 million people gained Internet access in 2015, due to “more affordable data and rising global incomes.”

Facebook’s second an-

nual “State of Connectivity” report, released late Sunday, also revealed that globally, 4.1 billion people were still not Internet users as of 2015.

“The developed world is largely online, but the developing world is a long way behind,” the report said.”

“Urban areas are connected, many rural areas are not. The less money you have, the less likely you are to be online. In

many countries, women use the Internet far less than men. And even if the entire world lived within range of the necessary infrastructure, nearly a billion people remain illiterate or otherwise unable to benefit from online content,” the report added.

The report said improving access is a major challenge that will require the cooperation of many stakeholders through innovation and investment.

The social networking giant Facebook is the undisputed leader in mobile advertising and the top marketing option for app developers, a new report has revealed.

AppsFlyer an Israel-based mobile marketing analytics and attribution platform -tracked 2.5 billion app installs from October 2015 to January 2016.

It found that Facebook led app installs across metrics including geographic region, app user retention and gaming versus non-gaming apps, marketingdive.com reported.

“A consistent placing in the global top five media sources for retention, coupled with its unrivaled scale, place the social giant number one in the power rankings for every category and region

among platforms included in the study,” the report declared. According to another study done by eMarketer - a US-based digital marketing, media and commerce research company -- mobile app install ads were expected to

of mobile and brand partnerships at apps data and analytics company IronSource, said that the app-install ecosystem is responsible for growing that space for Facebook, Google and every other company and gaming

reach $3 billion last year, accounting for more than 10 percent of mobile ad budgets with an 80 percent year-over-year increase in spending.

Last year, Chris Cunningham, global head

companies and lifestyle apps are driving mobile budgets. Mobile accounts for 80 percent of the social network’s advertising revenue per its latest earnings report, up from 69 percent year-over-year.

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Police arrest ‘voodoo’ couple who Woman who has cried tears made of performed bizarre love ritual in stone for seven years baffles doctors cemetery with ‘bones from corpse’ London A woman and her boyfriend have been arrested after allegedly performing a bizarre voodoo love ceremony with the bones of a corpse. The 37-year-old and her new man, 34, were found in a cemetery at dawn where they were said

to be carrying out a macabre ritual to banish all trace of the woman’s former lover. Shocked officers found two effigies tied together by a rope, chickpeas, corn and noodles, two plastic cups with rum inside and a halfburned candle.

The pair have been charged with an offence of criminal damage and “lack of re-

spect” for the dead after conducting the ceremony which involved raiding human bones from one of the graves. Shocked officers found two effigies tied together by a rope, chickpeas, corn and noodles, two plastic cups with rum inside and a half-

burned candle. The strange collection of items were strewn outside a vault which had been broken open and the remains of a corpse removed. Maintenance staff at the cemetery in Alicante, Spain, made the shock discovery when they came into work the next morning and called in the police to investigate the scene of desecration.

Police suspected straight away that it had been some sort of ritual and arrested the couple a few days later.

The man is alleged to have told them it was a ceremony he performed with his new girlfriend to rid her of the memories of her former husband.

He was said to be a follower of “Santeria”, an AfroCaribbean religion based on Yoruba beliefs and traditions that draws on Roman Catholic elements.

The couple have since been released by the police on bail pending a court appearance. This was the third time in a week that police were called to the cemetery, which is the biggest in Alicante.Just a few days before, the same maintenance crew discovered a bag containing human bones and voodoo dolls. And earlier, a skull was found in one of the cemetery niches with a candle and the remains of a body buried in 1992.Officers believe these incidents were either a prank or linked to Satanism.

China A Chinese woman has been mysteriously producing stone tears for seven years and has turned to the media for help because doctors won’t take her seriously.

Ding Aihua noticed a pain in her eyes about seven years ago and her husband, Liang Xinchun, was shocked discover a stone under her eyelid.

She has been producing them ever since.Liang claims that no doctors have been able to explain the bizarre phenomena, and says that every time he goes to hospital, they treat him as if he and his

The hard, silvery white stones are difficult to remove. He said he needed to use a wire to ease them out, and claims to have gathered 10 of the small stones produced in his

wife are crazy.

After it was removed, she was okay for a while but then he had found another stone.

wife’s eye socket.

Liang, who is a farmer in Lufang village in Heze city in East China’s Shandong Province, said that despite

going all over the country looking for treatment, doctors usually refuse to accept that he and his wife are telling the truth.

He said: “They treat us as if we are mental cases.”

After the latest stone, instead of going to medics her husband turned to the media, and he showed one of the stones in his wife’s eye socket to convince them of the problem.

He said: “It is incredibly painful this problem with her eyes, her health is perfectly normal.”

Journalists who then accompanied the couple to hospital admitted they were baffled as to what the possible explanation might be, and the report has now gone viral in China.

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China suspends over 580 social media Chinese school gives pork as scholarship prize accounts for spreading rumours

Beijing Chinese authorities have suspended more than 580 social media accounts for spreading rumours, confusing people or going against the constitution, the media reported on Saturday.

A statement issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) on Friday said the

suspended accounts include those of “celebrities” of popular microblog Weibo who had thousands of followers. It accused them of “ignoring their social responsibilities, abusing their influence, staining the honor of the state and disrupting social order.”

The statement does not specify what kind of comments the

China pastor who resisted cross removals jailed for corruption

Beijing A Christian pastor in China who refused to remove a cross from his church’s roof has been jailed for 14 years for corruption and inciting people to disturb social order, reports say.Chinese media said Bao Guohua had been found guilty of embezzling money from his congregation in Zhejiang province.His wife, Xing Wenxiang. received 12 years for the same offences. The couple’s supporters say the case is linked to a government crackdown on Christian activity in Zhejiang.Planning officials there have removed more than 1,000 crosses from churches over the past two years.

Bao Guohua was one of the very few government-approved pastors to resist the removals.

Earlier this month, authorities in

Zhejiang said another prominent pastor, Gu Yuese, was being investigated for corruption.

Christian activists said the inquiry was also linked to Mr Gu’s open opposition to the crackdown on Christian activity. The Zhejiang Daily newspaper reported that Bao had been fined more than $15,000 (£10,800) and the court had also ordered another $92,000 confiscated. The authorities have justified the tearing down of crosses by saying they break planning rules. But many believe officials want to limit Christianity across the south-eastern province, where the religion has a strong following. Zhejiang is home to many churches, particularly in the city of Wenzhou.Bao and his wife were detained last August and charged with embezzlement shortly afterwards.

users had published or who was affected, EFE news reported.

CAC said it had also ordered other websites to remove more than 2,000 rumours affecting people`s daily lives, transportation, food security and public policies.

The statement comes amid efforts by China to tighten internet censorship.

From March, it will begin controlling the content published by foreign companies online.

These companies cannot directly publish their “creative content” on the web, including games, animation, comics, audio or video recordings, without the prior approval of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. China, which has a tight censorship system known as the “Great Firewall”, has increasingly clamped down on the internet since President Xi Jinping came to power three years ago.

Beijing Authorities of a middle school in China`s Zhejiang province gave students pork as a scholarship prize, a media report said on Saturday. Shiqiaotou Middle School in Wenling city awarded 45 “excellent students” with “scholarships” during a new school term ceremony. The first prize winners each received 2.5 kg of pork, while second prize winners got 1.5 kg, Xinhua news agency reported. It is the third year that the school has distributed pork scholarships, according to Wu

Guanghui, the school head master. “We usually give out the meat before Chinese Lunar New Year, but this year we delayed it as the school closed much earlier than normal because of the weather,” Wu said. According to Yang, a teacher at the school, 84 kg of pork was distributed.“Our first prize scholarship is 50 yuan ($7), but we changed to pork of the same value,” Wu said, adding “Just imagine an entire family can sit together and eat the meat won by their children, they must be proud.”

EU, Brazil agree to cooperate on ultra-fast 5G BARCELONA The European Union and Brazil signed an agreement Tuesday to cooperate on developing ultra-fast 5G mobile networks, aimed at massively speeding up Internet connections on either side of the Atlantic. The agreement signed in Barcelona

by EU Digital Commissioner Guenther Oettinger and Brazilian Communications Minister Andre Figueiredo sets out goals on common 5G standards and research as well as timeframes for introducing the new technology. ‘Neither Europe, nor Brazil can afford to lag behind in the digital era. With today’s agreement we have notably committed to cooperating on the take-up of 5G in so-called vertical industries such as transport or energy,’ Oettinger said in a statement after the signing at the Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest mobile fair.

In a joint statement, Brazil and the European Commission said communications infrastructure was ‘the backbone of the future digital economy and society,

creating more and better jobs, and contributing to a sustainable economic growth’ in both the Brazilian and EU economies.

Lightning fast 5G networks are seen as central to the development of the Internet of Things, a growing array of intelligent web-enabled objects used in everyday life.

By delivering data at much faster speeds 5G networks could enable services such as driverless cars and remote surgery - whereby a surgeon performs an operation remotely

with the aid of a robot - and allow customers to experience video and virtual reality with greater ease.

The International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency which works on interconnection among global carriers, said its member countries had approved a plan detailing how to harmonise standards for 5G, with the rollout expected for 2020. Besides Brazil, the EU has also signed agreements on 5G cooperation with China, Japan and South Korea.

Abducted guide dog returned with apology note Beijing A guide dog, whose apparent abduction sparked an outcry in China, has been returned to its handler with an apology note, state media report. Qiaoqiao, was reportedly taken by a group of men on Monday, while being taken on a walk outside of Beijing. The story of her abduction and her blind owner Tian Fengbo’s ensuing grief led to outrage among Chinese netizens. She was found on Tuesday with a letter in a plastic bag on her collar reading: “We were wrong. we beg pardon”.Mr Tian

said he could “barely eat or sleep” after Qiaoqiao, a seven-year-old Labrador, went missing. “Qiaoqiao always accompanied me. She was like a friend to me. Now I feel like I’ve lost a close friend,” Mr Tian told local media after she went missing.He added that the dog had been living in his care for five years and has since become part of his family.

Residents in the area where the dog was taken told local media that there have been a series of recent dog thefts.The motive of Qiaoqiao’s kidnappers remains unclear but it is

common in China for pets to be abducted from the streets or even in the comfort of their homes, by dog thieves and sold to meat markets. The incident began trending on China’s popular micro-blogging site Weibo after news of the incident emerged, with calls for harsher punishment for Chinese dog thieves. “What kind of monster must you be to slaughter a blind man’s dog,” remarked one angry netizen.“Is this the kind of nation China aspires to be? Dogs are man’s best friend, not food,” said another.

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Internet by light promises to leave Wi-Fi eating dust Thought-controlled prosthetic BARCELONA Connecting your smartphone to the web with just a lamp - that is the promise of Li-Fi, featuring Internet access 100 times faster

than Wi-Fi with revolutionary wireless technology. French start-up Oledcomm demonstrated the technology at the Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest mobile fair, in Barcelona. As soon as a smartphone was placed under an office lamp, it started playing a video. The big advantage of LiFi, short for ‘light fidelity’, is its lightning speed. Laboratory tests have shown theoretical speeds of over 200 Gbps - fast enough to ‘download the equivalent of 23 DVDs in one second’, the founder and head of Oledcomm, Suat Topsu, told AFP. ‘Li-Fi allows speeds that are 100 times faster than Wi-Fi’ which uses radio waves to transmit data, he added. The technology uses the frequencies generated by LED bulbs - which flicker on and off imperceptibly thousands of times a second - to beam information through the air, leading it to be dubbed the

‘digital equivalent of Morse Code’.

It started making its way out of laboratories in 2015 to be tested in everyday settings in France,

a Li-Fi pioneer, such as a museums and shopping malls.

It has also seen test runs in Belgium, Estonia and India.

Dutch medical equipment and lighting group Philips is reportedly interested in the technology and Apple may integrate it in its next smartphone, the iPhone7, due out at the end of the year, according to tech media. With analysts predicting the number of objects that are connected to the Internet soaring to 50 million by 2020 and the spectrum for radio waves used by Wi-Fi in short supply, Li-Fi offers a viable alternative, according to its promoters.

‘We are going to connect our coffee machine, our washing machine, our tooth brush. But you can’t have more than ten objects connected in Bluetooth or Wi-Fi without interference,’ said Topsu.

Deepak Solanki, the founder and chief executive of Estonian

Racehorse Rebel Rover survives two-hour, 11km swim in Brisbane

firm Velmenni which tested Li-fi in an industrial space last year, told AFP he expected that ‘two years down the line the technology can be commercialised and people can see its use at different levels.’

Analysts said it was still hard to say if Li-Fi will become the new Wi-Fi. ‘It is still a laboratory technology,’ said Frederic Sarrat, an analyst and consultancy firm PwC. Much will depend on how Wi-Fi evolves in the coming years, said Gartner chief analyst Jim Tully.

‘Wi-Fi has shown a capability to continuously increase its communication speed with each successive generation of the technology,’ he told AFP. Li-fi has its drawbacks - it only works if a smartphone or other device is placed directly in the light and it cannot travel through walls. This restricts its use to smaller spaces, but Tully said this could limit the risk of data theft. ‘Unlike Wi-Fi, Li-Fi can potentially be directed and beamed at a particular user in order to enhance the privacy of transmissions,’ he said.

Backers of Li-Fi say it would also be ideal in places where WiFi is restricted to some areas such as schools and hospitals.

‘Li-fi has a place in hospitals because it does not create interference with medical materials,’ said Joel Denimal, head of French lighting manufacturer Coolight. In supermarkets it could be used to give information about a product, or in museums about a painting, by using lamps placed nearby.

It could also be useful on aircraft, in underground garages and any place where lack of Internet connection is an issue. But LiFi also requires that devices be equipped with additional technology such as a card reader, or dongle, to function.

This gives it a ‘cost disadvantage’, said Tully.

limbs possibly within reach

SYDNEY Thought-controlled prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs and computers may be available within a decade, say Australian scientists who are planning to conduct human trials next year on a high-tech implant that can pick up and transmit signals from the brain. Animals have already been tested with the device, called a stentrode, which is the size of a matchstick and planted inside a blood vessel near the brain. It uses a web of small electrodes to pick up neuron signals from the brain and converts them into electrical commands that may one day, the scientists hope, allow paralyzed patients to control a bionic limb or wheelchair.‘The big breakthrough is that we now have a minimally invasive braincomputer interface device which is potentially practical for longterm use,’ said Terry O’Brien, head of medicine at the Department of Medicine and Neurology at the University of Melbourne. The current method for accessing brain signals requires complex open-brain surgery and becomes less effective over several months, which means it is rarely applied, he said. The stentrode is less invasive because it can be inserted through a vein in a patient’s neck and placed in a blood vessel near the brain. The

animal trial was on the functionality of the stentrode to pick up neuro signals, not the converting of the electronic signals into movement of bionic limbs, which is established technology. Dr Ganesh Naik, from the University of Technology Sydney, who is not involved in the project, said animal trials did not always translate into successful human trials. ‘If it functions as it should at the (human) trial, it will be a massive breakthrough,’ said Ganesh. Other potential uses for the stentrode include monitoring the brain signals of people with epilepsy to detect an oncoming seizure. If successful, the device could also allow a patient to communicate through a computer, said Professor Clive May from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, who is working on the project.

‘People would need to be trained in how to think the right thoughts to make it work, like learning to play music. You need to learn it, but once you do, it becomes natural,’ May said. The device was developed by Melbourne University, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. The project is funded by both the Australian government and the U.S military, which sees potential benefits for paraplegic veterans.

Vienna ranked world’s nicest city & Baghdad worst

London A racehorse has survived a twohour swim, covering 11km, after being scared during a training run on a beach in Brisbane, Australia. Rebel Rover was being trained in chest-high water at Sandgate beach when he unseated his rider and headed deeper. The five-year-old gelding was picked up by the Brisbane Water Police and a marine rescue unit.“He was in about four metres of water and he was swimming quite freely,” said Volunteer Marine Rescue’s Glen Philip.Rebel Rover, with a track record of misdemeanours, has only recently made a comeback

after being banned for misbehaving in the stalls.

Trainer Brad Smith told ABC News that horses could swim, but did not normally do so very much.“Any other horse, 20 minutes would probably see them out, but this horse - he must have a pretty amazing lung capacity,” he said.“The vet looked at him yesterday and again this morning and he’s pretty well amazed with how he’s coped with it all.Brisbane’s Courier Mail reports he still had enough energy to head butt one of his support team, knocking them unconscious and putting them in hospital.

VIENNA Vienna, Austria’s grand capital on the Danube river, offers the highest quality of life of all cities in the world, while the Iraqi capital Baghdad, once more took its place at the bottom of a liveability list compiled by consulting firm Mercer.

The survey of 230 cities helps companies and organisations determine compensation and hardship allowances for international staff. It uses dozens of criteria such as political stability, health care, education, crime, recreation and transport.

Global centres London, Paris, Tokyo and New York City did not even make the top 30, lagging behind most big German, Scandinavian and Australian cities. Vienna’s 1.7 million inhabitants benefit from the city’s cafe culture and museums, theatres and operas. Rents and

public transport costs in the city whose architecture is marked by its past as the centre of the Habsburg empire are cheap compared with other western capitals. Switzerland’s Zurich, New Zealand’s Auckland, Germany’s Munich and Canada’s Vancouver followed Vienna - which reached the best position for the seventh time in a row - in the top five of most pleasant cities to live in. The best African entry on the list was

South Africa’s Durban at 85.

Baghdad was again ranked lowest in the world. Waves of sectarian violence have swept through the city since the American-led invasion in 2003.

Damascus, five year’s into Syria’s bloody war, ranked six places above Baghdad, with Bangui in the Central African Republic, war-torn Yemen’s capital Sanaa, Haiti’s Port-auPrince, Sudan’s Khartoum and Chad’s N’Djamena in between.

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Space mining race heats up LONDON Space mining, extracting resources from near-earth asteroids, is “not science fiction any more”. With these words, spoken by Jean-Jacques Dordain, the former director general of the European Space Agency, Luxembourg announced its entry into the space-mining race.

Dordain was appearing alongside Etienne Schneider, Luxembourg’s economy minister, as he unveiled the country’s bid to be a pioneer in a whole new resources sector, one with quite literally infinite potential. That the small Duchy of Luxembourg should be challenging the current dominant player in space exploration, the US, might initially appear surprising.

But in truth it is only building on its historical role in pioneering satellite technology. In 1985 it sponsored SES, which is now the world’s largest commercial satellite operator. And while asteroid mining really does

sound like science fiction, much of the groundwork has already been laid.

Private operators such as Planetary Resources Inc. (PRI) and Deep Space Industries are getting in on the action, chasing the promise by US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson that, “the first trillionaire, in the world, is going to be the person who first mines asteroids”. (Interview at the 2014 South-by-Southwest festival).

PRI is, ambitiously maybe, aiming to be commissioning mines within five years. (“Courage or Capital; the final obstacles for sustainable asteroid mining” - Accenture) Indeed, a greater challenge to space mining than the technology might be the absence of any legal framework.

In layman’s terms, the question is, whose asteroid is it anyway?

Quite evidently given bombedout prices, the last thing most mining companies want right now is more minerals, let alone stuff that has been sourced from

Canadian banned from owning turtles after smuggling 38 in pants

TORONTO A Canadian man who smuggled 38 turtles in his pants has been given probation, a fine and has been banned from owning such reptiles for 10 years. According to Canada’s environment department, Dong Yan of Windsor, Ontario, had tried to bring the reptiles from the United States into the southern part of the province.

“The turtles were contained in plastic bags and taped to Mr. Yan’s legs,” Environment and Climate Change Canada said in a statement on Thursday. Yan

was convicted on Feb. 17 after he was caught during an inspection in 2014 when he tried to enter Canada through the Niagara border crossing, the department said. Yan’s probation is for two years, and his fine was C$3,500 ($2,600).

He was also sentenced to 50 hours of community service and must notify the environment department of international travel.

Yan was also ordered to write a letter about his experience “for publication as the department sees fit.”

space. They can rest assured that asteroids are not going to add to an existing glut of industrial raw materials such as iron ore any time soon.

NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission to the Bennu asteroid, scheduled for launch later this year, will cost $800 million and bring back a maximum two kilogrammes of sample. On that economics no-one is going to be flooding an already flooded iron ore market any time soon.

Rather, the short-term prize of asteroid mining is to extract resources that will then be used to manufacture in space itself more space platforms, spacecraft and satellites.

Metals such as iron, cobalt and nickel are abundant in asteroids and critical components for space vehicles. Platinum group metals, also abundant, can be used for internal circuitry and electronics. But the real holy grail will be the frozen ice on many asteroids, which can generate both hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for...well that’s

pretty obvious, isn’t it?

The biggest component of operating in space is that of launching rockets from Earth, around $100,000 per kg of material, according to NASA. “Mining these materials from asteroids will therefore spawn an entirely new industry in space mission services by replacing Earth-sourced materials with those from space and dramatically reducing commercial space-development costs,” according to Accenture.

If anything, asteroid mining might be a net positive for Earthbound miners and equipment suppliers. Again to quote Accenture, “both traditional mining and asteroid mining are intently focused on autonomous operational capabilities in very harsh environments”. Think Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton’s experience in autonomous excavators and transport systems already deployed for iron ore mining in Australia’s Pilbara.

Man with world’s largest feet receives welcome gift CARACAS Finding comfortable shoes can be a challenge even for those with average-shaped feet. But it’s virtually impossible for the Venezuelan man who holds the record for the world’s largest feet. So it is hard to overstate just how welcome the gift was Jeison Rodriguez received on Wednesday: four pairs of size26 shoes. The donation from Georg Wessels - a German shoemaker who specializes in making irregular-sized shoes included boots, sneakers, clogs and sandals.

‘I’ve been making shoes for the world’s tallest people for almost 40 years and I do it for free,’ Wessels said in a telephone interview. The businessman says he has donated some 500 pairs of shoes. ‘I never stop to think how much these shoes cost because they’re gifts,’ he said.The Guinness Book of

World Records recognized Rodriguez, 20, as having the world’s largest feet in 2014. His right foot measures 15.8 inches (40.1 centimeters) and his left 15.6 inches.

Although Rodriguez and Wessels do not speak a common language, they have kept in touch since

the German first gave him three pairs of shoes three years ago.

‘Jeison was so very pleased. It was incredible,’ said Wessels, who was contacted at the time by relatives of Rodriguez living in Germany. Rodriguez is also Venezuela’s tallest man at 7 feet three inches (2.21 meters).

Japan population shrinks by one million Tokyo New census figures in Japan show the population has shrunk by nearly one million in the past five years, in the first decline registered since 1920.As of October last year the country has 127.1 million people, 0.7 percent fewer than in the last census.

Demographers have long predicted a drop, citing Japan’s falling birth rate and a lack of immigration.

The rapidly ageing population has contributed to a stagnating economy and worries of increasing health costs.

Japan now has 947,000 fewer people than when the last

census was conducted in 2010, figures released by the internal affairs ministry show. Only eight prefectures, including the capital Tokyo, saw a population increase, national broadcaster NHK. reported. The remaining 39 all saw declines, including Fukushima which saw the largest drop of 115,000 people.

Fukushima, site of the doomed nuclear power station, was hit especially badly by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Japan has seen population growth for much of the past century, but this has been slowing rapidly in recent decades. The last census showed the population had

completely stopped growing.

Friday’s numbers mark the first time a decline has been recorded in the census, which has been taken every five years since 1920.

Researchers are predicting a sharp drop-off in the working population and a simultaneous rise in the number of elderly in coming decades.

According to government projections, by 2060 about 40 percent of its citizens will be sixty-five or older, and the general population will be onethird smaller than it is now.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made it a priority to boost the birthrate from 1.4 children to 1.8

children per woman, including improving childcare and tax incentives.

Advanced

economies usually require a rate of at least 2.1 for a stable population.

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Canadian court stops extradition of honour killing accused to India Toronto A Canadian court has stopped the extradition of a woman and his brother to India to face trial for the honour killing of her daughter over concerns that they may not get justice in the country.

Malkit Sidhu and brother Surjit Badesha, accused in the slaying of Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, have been granted a judicial review by the British Columbia Appeal Court of the extradition order on grounds that they may not receive a fair trial in India, CBC news reported.In its judgment released on Friday, the court said that, in the light of India’s human rights record, it was not reasonable to accept India’s assurances over the future health and safety of the accused.

Canadian-born Jaswinder Sidhu was found dead, her throat slit, in Punjab in 2000. She was 25.Her mother Malkit, 65, and uncle Surjit, 70, were arrested in 2012, suspected of a so-called “honour killing”.

They are accused of killing Jaswinder after she married

Mithu Sidhu, a rickshaw driver she had met in India a few years earlier. Her family did not approve of the match.

Jaswinder and her husband were attacked as they rode a scooter in a village near Sangrur, Punjab, in June 2000.

Her husband was severely beaten and left for dead while she was kidnapped and later killed. Her body was left in a canal.

Investigations in India confirmed

Hong Kong leader swarmed by angry emojis HONG KONG Hong Kong’s beleaguered leader is nearly 100 times more unpopular than US presidential hopeful Donald Trump, according to Facebook’s new “angry-face” button that allows to voice their displeasure on the social network.

Chief executive Leung Chunying received nearly 133,000 angry emojis on his Facebook profile picture by Saturday, three days after a raft of new emojis were introduced by the social network. Trump’s picture, however, only garnered 1,400 angry faces.

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s Facebook profile picture earned around 40 angry faces, while US President Barack Obama’s avatar received just 27. Earlier this week, Facebook also introduced “sad”, “wow” and “haha” emojis to compliment its “like” button.

Facebook posts on Leung’s page, where public viewers cannot leave a comment, also attracted thousands of angry emojis. The unpopular leader,

that the murder was an honour killing plotted by Jaswinder’s

mother Malkit and her uncle Surjit while the duo were in Canada.

Former justice minister Peter MacKay ordered their surrender to face charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, conditional on assurances from India that they would not face the death penalty, that their health and safety would be protected in custody, and they would get consular access.

In January 2015, MacKay wrote to the accused’s counsel, saying he had received assurances from India, and that he considered them satisfactory.

Toronto Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau has carved out a niche for himself as one of the most vivacious and open-minded leaders in the world. The newly elected leader recently announced he will be participating in a gay pride march on July 3. On the heels of this announcement comes another instance of the PM’s vibrant personality. Trudeau wore a pink shirt over his dress shirt and tie to rally against bullying on the occasion of Canada’s Pink Shirt Day. Pink Shirt Day is an international anti-bullying campaign observed across Canada every February 24. It also raises funds for supporting children’s mental health. Justin has actively

voiced his opinion on the prejudices surrounding the issue of mental illness. He has also spoken out about his mother’s struggle with depression. In the video, Trudeau explains that the Pink Shirt Campaign started after a child named Nova Scotia was threatened and called gay for wearing a pink shirt. The incident sparked outrage across Canada and it soon turned into a large scale anti-bullying movement.

The campaign which was held on Wednesday witnessed people from all walks of life who showed solidarity by wearing a pink shirt.

Navdeep Bains, Canada’s minister of innovation added his own touch by wearing a pink turban in support of the antibullying campaign.

EU exit risks British science

who was often caricatured as a vampire by protestors during pro-democracy rallies in 2014, is seen by many as out of touch with the city’s residents. Locals in the southern Chinese city are also discontent over soaring property prices and lagging wages, which has taken a further toll on the government’s popularity. Street battles with police earlier this month in the commercial district of Mong Kok left more than 100 injured following an attempted crackdown on hawkers in the area. In December, Leung said his Facebook page was hacked after reports said scantily-clad women had appeared on his friends list.

Singapore introduces daily cleaning duties for students Singapore city Students in Singapore will soon have to keep their schools spick and span with daily cleaning duties, it’s reported. The Ministry of Education says it wants to foster a sense of responsibility in young people by getting them involved in looking after their own schools. Pupils will be required to clean up spaces including classrooms, corridors and canteens, but the toilets will still be left to professional cleaners, Singapore’s The Independent

Justin Trudeau donning a pink shirt holds immense significance

newspaper reports. Schools will be allowed to decide for themselves exactly when the duties can be slotted into the school day, either before or after lessons, or during break times.

The new policy will apply to students from primary age, and will be implemented across the country by the end of 2016, The Straits Times website says. One mother tells the site that she supports the move because it encourages children to get into good habits from a young age.

London Prof Sir Paul Nurse has said that UK research would suffer if the country were to leave the EU. A British exit would make it harder to get funding for science and sell “future generations short”, the Nobel Prize winner added.

But a group of scientists arguing to leave the EU counters that UK research would not be adversely affected. They say British institutions would receive similar amounts of European funding as they do now. A national referendum on the UK’s participation in the European Union is set for 23 June.

Prof Nurse, who is director of The Francis Crick Institute and the former president of the Royal Society, believes those who campaign for a “Brexit” are jeopardising “the long-term future of the UK for short-term political advantage”. “We need a vision for our future that is ambitious and not to run away and bury our heads in the sand, and we can best do this by staying in the EU. We should not be side-tracked by short-term political opportunism.”

Prof Nurse was speaking at a news briefing about the impact of a withdrawal on UK science.

He was joined by other research leaders who also want Britain to remain inside the EU. “Being in the EU gives us access to ideas, people and to investment in science,” Prof Nurse said.

“That, combined with mobility (of EU scientists), gives us increased collaboration, increased transfer of people, ideas and science - all of which history has shown us drives science.” Prof Nurse added that as part of the EU, the UK has

arguing the case for a British exit is unfashionable in research circles, and individuals who do so, especially if they are junior, find themselves “belittled” by their superiors. “Many of the more junior people, post docs, are

influence in directing research among nations that collectively have become a “powerhouse” of science on a par with the US and China.

“We are standing up against what is a very large body of people who feel that if we leave the EU it will be a disaster for funding and collaboration - and we completely refute that,” he said. “The bottom line is that we put far more into Europe than we get out.

Any difference we can more than easily make up with the money we would save.”

Prof Dalgleish’s organisation claims to have 150 members who are involved in science. He is the organisation’s only spokesman, he says, because

beginning to ask questions to people like me who are (senior enough to be) able to express these views.”

Prof Dalgleish says that arguments in favour of the UK remaining are motivated by the “narrow self-interest” of large scientific institutions and universities that receive millions of pounds of funding from the European Union. But he says that 13 countries outside the European Union successfully apply for and receive EU funds. He also argues that some of the largest and most successful European collaborations the UK has, such as Cern and the European Space Agency, are not run by the EU.

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Islamic State, al Qaeda using Facebook to buy weapons

The terror groups active in Syria are using social media platforms like Facebook to buy and sell heavy weapons, guns and ammunition, according to UK media reports.

Islamic State (IS) and al Qaeda could also use Facebook to buy an anti-aircraft rocket launcher capable of blowing a passenger jet out of the sky, ‘Daily Mirror’ reported on Thursday.

It is being sold for 67,000 dollar on the page called ‘The First Weapons Market in Idlib (Syria) Countryside’.

Although the sellers are Syrian rebels, the nature of the conflict in the war zone means the weapon could easily fall into IS hands, the newspaper said.

One post on the page shows an AGS-17 Soviet-Era grenade launcher available for 3,800 dollar. One of the messages reads: “Quick friends, I need a gun with a silencer.” The page also hosts an advert for a TOW missile launcher, which the

seller claims comes from “The US Pentagon”.

TOW missiles have been controversially supplied by the CIA to selected rebel groups in Syria and Iraq since the civil war erupted in 2011.

Youssef Yassim, an IS supporter from Idlib, is seen posing with an IS flag in his profile and is using the Facebook page to buy a “thermal camera” – used for hunting at night. The ‘Mirror’ has reported this page to Facebook and contacted them for a comment. The news emerged as hackers aligned with IS threatened Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a new video, railing against the social media companies war on its propaganda. The 25-minute film, uncovered by deep web company Vocativ, displays images of Zuckerberg and Dorsey with bullet holes over their faces.

Personal data is being collected and transmitted insecurely by thousands of apps using code from the Chinese net giant Baidu, say security researchers. Millions of Chinese people are believed to have been affected by the data leaks, said security experts at the University of Toronto. The data reveals where people are, search terms, sites visited and the ID numbers of devices they own.

Baidu said it had tackled the problems with the insecure computer code. The code is found in a software development kit that can be used to create apps for Android phones and programs for Windows. Baidu itself used it to make web browsers for Android and Windows and many other firms have used the kit too.

Apps and browsers made using the Baidu kit have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times, said researchers at Toronto’s Citizen Lab in the report. As part of a long-running research project, the Lab has focussed on privacy

and personal data use in China.

Last year the team found shortcomings in the Alibaba browser. The latest report found several security and privacy shortcomings in the Baidu code. Some data, including GPS coordinates and search terms, is sent in plain text. In

ISIS makes life threats to Twitter, Facebook heads The dreaded Islamic State miltant group has made life threats to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a new video which shows their photos riddled with digitally added bullet holes, mocking the social media websites attempts to block terrorist content from their platforms.

In the 25-minute video, the IS claim they are fighting back against efforts by the social media giants to wipe their platforms of accounts promoting terrorism.

The video includes a direct threat to the tech entrepreneurs, branding them allies of the American “Crusader government”.

Pictures of Zuckerberg and Dorsey can be seen being blasted with a hail of bullets in the amateur footage which emerged.

The video, titled “Flames of the Supporters” and released by a group calling themselves “the sons of the Caliphate army”, ends with a direct threat to the two men, The Sun reported.

A slide toward the end of the video reads, in English: “To Mark and Jack, founders of Twitter and Facebook and to their Crusader government. You announce daily that you suspended many of our accounts and to you we say: is that all you can do? you are not in our league. If you close one account we will take 10 in return and soon your

names will be erased after we delete you (sic) sites, #Sons_Caliphate_Army”.

In a separate slide, they also claim to have hacked more than 10,000 Facebook accounts, 150

have “become an official target to ISIS soldiers and supporters.”

Twitter seems to have only stepped up its efforts to wipe ISIS off its platform since then.

A few weeks ago, the company

Facebook groups, and more than 5,000 Twitter accounts.

Two scholars who track ISIS activity online confirmed that the video was posted to multiple ISIS forums, including some on the social media platform.

ISIS and related terrorist groups have targeted Dorsey at least twice in the past year. A group of self-identified ISIS supporters threatened the Twitter founder and CEO in March of 2015 for closing hundreds of their social media accounts.

In its threat, the group claimed that Dorsey and his company started a “war” against the Islamic State, and that the “necks” of Twitter employees

announced it had suspended more than 125,000 accounts for threatening or supporting terrorist acts over the past several months.

Twitter also said it has grown its team that looks into reports of terror activity on its network.

Zuckerberg reiterated his stance and Facebook?s policy on helping to fight terrorism online.

A Facebook spokeswoman did not immediately respond to request for comment on this week?s threat.

A Twitter spokesman reiterated the company’s policy and progress on suspending accounts that promote terrorism or any violent threat.

‘ISIS beheaded Baidu apps found to be leaking personal data 12 in Libyan city’

addition, the protections added to other forms of information, such as unique device IDs, could easily be broken.

Poor protection of apps made with the kit also made users “susceptible” to fake updates that could give an attacker access to a phone or a Windows computer. “The transmission of personal data without properly implemented encryption can expose a user’s

data to surveillance,” said the authors in their report.

Worryingly, they added, users would have no warning that the data was being transmitted or gathered.

“The leakage of such user data is particularly problematic for individuals who use these applications and their devices to engage in politically sensitive comm-unications,” said the report. “It’s either shoddy design or it’s surveillance by design,” Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, told Reuters.

Citizen Lab said that Baidu had fixed some of the bugs in the code since it had first been told about them in November last year.

However, it added, the poor encryption scheme was still being used on sensitive data.

Baidu said it was collecting the data about users for commercial purposes. Occasionally, it said, it shared the data with partners.

It added that the information was not handed over wholesale to the Chinese authorities. It said it “only provides what data is lawfully requested by duly constituted law enforcement agencies”.

Islamic State affiliates in Libya briefly took over the security headquarters in the western city of Sabratha, killing and beheading 12 security officers before being driven out early Wednesday, two city security officials said.

The incident highlighted the enduring presence and unpredictable striking power of the local ISIS militants in this strategic city which serves as a hub for migrants heading to Europe. Taher al-Ghar-abili, head of Sabratha Military Council, said that the gunmen “exploited a security vacuum” by deploying in the city centre as the military was occupied conducting raids elsewhere.

A second security official said that the militants used the headless bodies of the officers

they killed to block the roads leading to the security headquarters — which they occupied for about three hours.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press, said the total number of officers killed in the occupation and ensuing clashes reached 19.

Meanwhile, a top Obama administration official says the ISIS group’s ranks of foreign fighters have dropped to about 25,000 from a peak of 35,000.

Brett McGurk is the US special envoy for the global coalition to counter ISIS. He says fighters from 120 countries have joined the group. He says the extremist group is under pressure and has cut fighters’ salaries by about half.

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Isis commander ‘killed by ‘It was really a hard life’, Says a Swedish Teenager Rescued from Islamic States captured Iraqi woman’ forced to act as a sex slave

An Iraqi woman has reportedly killed an Isis commander after he forced her to become a sex slave for his fighters.

The Isis commander, only referred to by his nom de guerre Abu Anas, was allegedly murdered by an unidentified Iraqi woman on 5 September in Mosul, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) spokesperson Saeed Mamouzini told alSumari TV. According to Mr Mamouzini, the woman had been captured by the Isis commander and coerced into marrying several of the man’s fighters three months ago.The claims follow documented examples of Isis also known as the Islamic State - systematically abusing women

and girls within their captured territory. A Human Rights Watch report earlier this year interviewed Yazidi survivors. The women described the rape and torture meted out by their captors, justified by a narrow interpretation of the Koran. It preceded a New York Times piece also interviewing sex slave survivors, which demonstrated how Isis “enshrined a theology of rape”. The use of women may be part of a larger propaganda programme. The information about these women - and their treatment - is carefully released to appeal to both Western fighters and those from the Middle East, an Oxford University study recently suggested.

US says Islamic State foreign fighter ranks drop to 25,000 A top Obama administration official says the Islamic State group’s ranks of foreign fighters have dropped to about 25,000 from a peak of 35,000.Brett McGurk is the US special envoy for the global coalition to counter IS.He says fighters from 120 countries have joined the group.McGurk is touting progress in the US-led effort to defeat IS.He says the extremist group is under pressure and has cut fighters’ salaries by about half.McGurk says President Barack Obama

will get an update on diplomatic and political efforts Thursday at the State Department.The

meeting comes after the US and Russia announced a cease-fire agreement for Syria to take effect later this week.

A Swedish teenager has rescued from the Islamic State militants in Iraq described that ‘It was really a hard life’ under IS. She said she was deluded by her boyfriend.She said she met her boyfriend in mid-2014 after dropping out of school in Sweden. She said that in her first interview after Kurdish Special Forces saved her in Northern Iraq.The 16-year-old girl said, “First we were good but then he started to look at ISIS videos and speak about them and stuff like that. Then he said he wanted to go to ISIS and I said OK, no problem, because I didn’t know what ISIS means, what Islam is nothing.”The couple left for Syria in May 2015. From Sweden they used a bus and train across the Europe until they reached the Turkish border province of Gaziantep, from which they crossed into Syria.

From they were escorted by the

Islamic States Militants in bus with other men and women to the city of Mosul. They provided them a house their without water and electricity.She was rescued on February 17 and now in Iraq’s

Security services hundreds of men and women from Europe have gone to join the Islamic State since June 2014.

Earlier this month, a mother has sentenced six years in prison

Kurdistan region. The teenager will be handed to the Swedish authorities. She said, “I didn’t have any money either it was a really hard life. When I had a phone I started to contact my mum and I said ‘I want to go home’.” According to the

by a British Court for taking her 14-month-old son to join the Islamic State.

The teenager said comparing her living in Sweden with her time under IS: “In Sweden we have everything, and when I was there, we didn’t have anything.”

Pak military provides weapons, training to ISIS in Afghanistan Pakistan’s military provides weapons and training to ISIS militants in Afghanistan and instructs them to kill the “infidel” Afghan forces, according to a 10-member faction of the group who laid down their arms today.The group also said that Pakistani military provides light and heavy weapons to ISIS fighters in Afghanistan.

“Pakistani military gave us weapons and used to tell us that Afghan forces are infidels and you must kill them,” Zaitoon, a former ISIS fighter who laid down his arms and joined the peace talks, was quoted as saying by the TOLO news. Arabistan, Zaitoon’s cofighter, said: “I was tasked to fight in Nazian district [in Nangarhar]. We used to present our daily report to Punjabis and

Pakistanis and they encouraged us to fight the Afghan

said Chairman of Nangarhar Provincial Council Malik Nazir.

government.”The 10-member group has joined the peace process due to efforts by the High Peace Council office in the province and also with the help of the Afghan security forces,

“There were 24 men in two groups - the first group was 14 Taliban fighters and the second group included 10 Daesh fighters who for the first time joined the peace process,” Nazir added.

7 Indian cos emerge as leading source of IED explosives to IS Indian firms have emerged as a leading, but unintentional, source of components used by the Islamic State terror group to fabricate improvised explosive devices (IEDs), according to a new report.

The report names seven companies from India as the source of detonating cords and detonators, only the second largest supplier by country of origin after Turkey, with 11.

But the report was unequivocally clear that these supplies were not intended for IS, and were not delivered directly to the terrorist group or to its known fronts or allies.

Conflict Armament Research (CAR), which studies weapons-specific issues in conflict areas, published the report after a 20-month

investigation funded by the European Union.

CAR studied more than 700 IED components seized from IS forces by the Iraqis, Kurds and Syrians during major battles in their respective areas, such as Mosul and Kobane.

The report identified by name 51 companies from 20 countries that included, other than Turkey and India, the US, Switzerland, China, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Iraq and Lebanon.

About Indian comapnies, the report said: “Seven Indian companies manufactured most of the detonators, detonating cord, and safety fuses documented by CAR’s field investigation teams. Under Indian law, transfer of this material requires a licence.

“All components documented by CAR were legally exported under

government-issued licences from India to entities in Lebanon

re-transferred components produced in Brazil, China, India,

and Turkey.” The companies, identified by the report, are not being named here because they did not do business with the IS directly, intentionally or knowingly. CAR identified eight Turkish companies that “have

the Netherlands, Romania, and the Russian Federation”.

But, the report said, they are not known to export goods to either Syria or Iraq, large parts of which are under the military and administrative control of the IS.

CAR said evidence gathered by it suggested “IS forces, or intermediaries acting on their behalf, acquired the components in Turkey and subsequently transferred them to Iraq and Syria”.

Detonating cords from Indian companies were seized from IS forces, or found left behind by them, in the battles of Kobane in Syria and on the Makhmour front line in Iraq.

Detonators from India, plain and electrical, were found at Kobane in Syria and Kirkuk and Erbil in Iraq. According to the product label, some were made in 2012.

CAR also found mobile phones used by the IS in remotecontrolled IEDs were made by a well known global brand, including by its manufacturing unit in India.

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US launches aggressive cyberwar on Islamic State The attacks come after months of pressure from U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter, who has been frustrated with the belief that the Pentagon was losing the war in the cyber domain.

The U.S. military has launched a newly aggressive campaign of cyberattacks against Islamic State militants, targeting the group’s abilities to use social media and the Internet to recruit fighters and inspire followers, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

The surge of computer-based military operations by U.S. Cyber Command began shortly after U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter prodded commanders at Fort Meade, Maryland, in January 2016 to ramp up the fight against the Islamic State group on the cyber front.

U.S. officials confirmed that operations launched out of Fort Meade have focussed on disrupting the group’s online activities. The officials said the effort is getting under way as operators try a range of attacks to see what works and what doesn’t. They declined to discuss details, other than to say that the attacks include efforts to prevent the group from distributing propaganda, videos, or other types of recruiting and messaging on social media sites such as Twitter, and across the Internet in general.

Other attacks could include

attempts to stop insurgents from conducting financial or logistical transactions online.

Several U.S. officials spoke about the cyber campaign on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss it publicly. Much of the effort is classified.

Mr. Carter mentioned the operations briefly on Thursday, telling a House Appropriations subcommittee only that Cyber Command is beginning to conduct operations against the Islamic State group. He declined to say more in a public setting.

The more aggressive attacks come after months of pressure from Mr. Carter, who has been frustrated with the belief that the Pentagon and particularly Cyber Command was losing the war in the cyber domain.

In late 2015, Mr. Carter met with commanders, telling them they had 30 days to bring him options for how the military could use its cyberwarfare capabilities against the group’s deadly insurgency across Iraq and Syria, and spreading to Libya and Afghanistan. Officials said he told commanders that beefing up cyberwarfare against Islamic State was a test for them, and that they should have both the capability and the will to wage the online war.

But the military cyber fight is limited by concerns within the intelligence agencies that blocking the group’s Internet

access could hurt intelligence gathering.

Officials said Mr. Carter told commanders that he wanted creative options that would allow the U.S. to impact Islamic State without diminishing the indications or warnings intelligence officers can glean about what the group is doing.

On January 27, 2016, Mr. Carter and Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went to Fort Meade for an update.

Officials familiar with Mr. Carter’s meetings said the Secretary was frustrated that as Cyber Command has grown and developed over the past several years, it was still focused on the cyberthreats from nations, such

as Iran, Russia and China, rather than building a force to block the communications and propaganda campaigns of Internet-savvy insurgents.

“He was right to say they could be more forward leaning about what they could possibly do against ISIS,” said James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “You could disrupt their support networks, their business networks and their propaganda and recruitment networks.”

U.S. officials have long been stymied by militants’ ability to use the Internet as a vehicle for inspiring so-called lone wolf attackers in Western nations, radicalised after reading

propaganda easily available online.“Why should they be able to communicate? Why should they be using the Internet?” Mr. Carter said during testimony before the defence appropriations subcommittee.

“The Internet shouldn’t be used for that purpose.”

The U.S. has also struggled to defeat high-tech encryption techniques used by Islamic State and other groups to communicate. Experts have been working to find ways to defeat those programmes.

Cyber Command is relatively new. Created in 2009, it did not begin operating until October 2010.

Early on, its key focus was on defending military networks, which are probed and attacked millions of times a day. But defence leaders also argued at length over the emerging issues surrounding cyberwarfare and how it should be incorporated.

The Pentagon is building 133 cyber teams by 2018, including 27 that are designed for combat and will work with regional commands to support fighting operations. There will be 68 teams assigned to defend Defence Department networks and systems, 13 that would respond to major cyberattacks against the U.S., and 25 support teams.

How a brutal metal tool used to punish Top ISIS leaders arrested on chief women shows Isis’s worrying new barbarity Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi orders

The Islamic State has arrested several of its senior leaders in Iraq for “treason” on the orders of the terror group’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to a media report.

A terrorist dubbed “the masked gunman” arrested dozens of prominent ISIS leaders for committing treason, Iraqi News reported citing media officials of the Iraqi Ministry of Defence.

The officials were quoted as saying, “A terrorist called ‘the masked gunman’ arrested dozens of ISIS senior leaders by orders of the criminal alBaghdadi on charges of treason.”

“The arrest operations led to noticeable collapse in the ISIS ranks,” the officials were quoted as saying by a statement.

The Islamic State is known for brutally punishing fighters and leaders who go against the terror group’s top brass or try to

flee the war zone. In 2015, 13 top ISIS leaders, including five highranking military commanders, were reportedly executed on Baghdadi’s orders after a failed coup attempt to topple him.

In January, ISIS reportedly beheaded over 20 of its fighters in full public view for trying to flee a war zone in Iraq’s Mosul city, sending out a chilling warning to others in the terror group against desertion.

Earlier in January, it was reported that ISIS militants who lost Ramadi to Iraqi forces were burned alive in full public view by their own men after they fled to the group’s stronghold of Mosul.

In December, the extremist group had beheaded 10 militant fighters “convicted of high treason” for evacuating their post at the battlefront without the group’s permission.

People in Mosul call it “the Biter” or “Clipper” - a metal instrument newly introduced by Isis officials to punish women whose clothes they claim do not completely conceal their body. A former school director, who fled from the city earlier this month, describes the tool as causing agonising pain by clipping off pieces of flesh.

Fatima, a 22-year-old house-wife who does not want to give her full name, said she had finally escaped from Mosul after several failed attempts because her children were starving and Isis had become more violent and sadistic compared with a year ago, especially towards women.

“The Biter has become a nightmare for us,” Fatima said after reaching safety in Mabrouka Camp for displaced people near Ras al-Ayn in Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria. “My sister was punished so harshly last month because she had forgotten her gloves and left them at home.”

Isis insists that women be fully veiled, wear loose or baggy trousers, socks and gloves, and be accompanied by a male relative whenever they step outside their homes.

Fatima said that a month after the use of this metal tool to punish her sister “the bruises and scars are still visible on her

arm.” She quoted her sister as saying that “the biting punishment is more painful than labour pains.” Other witnesses describe the Biter as operating

like an animal trap, or a metal jaw with teeth that cut into the flesh. A Yazidi woman who was kept as a sex slave for three months by Isis has described the moment her family was massacred.

It is difficult and dangerous to escape from Mosul, which Isis has held since capturing it from the Iraqi army in June 2014. But people from the city, who have had themselves smuggled across the border to Syria and then to Kurdish-controlled territory known as Rojava in the past two months, all confirm that living conditions have deteriorated sharply. There are serious shortages of almost everything including food, fuel, water and electricity.

Isis was violent from the start of its rule 20 months ago, but public whippings and executions have become far more common in recent months. Mosul residents say that Saudi and Libyan volunteers, who have joined Isis, are the most likely to impose penalties for minor infringements of regulations in the self-declared caliphate.

It is as if Isis fighters and officials are compensating for setbacks in the war by showing that they still have power over the population under their control.

Ibraham, a 26-year-old pharmacist who left Mosul on 16 January, said that there is little food and only a limited supply of medicine left in the city. “My pharmacy became half empty,” he said.

Pharmaceutical factories around Mosul have stopped production and there are fewer medicines being imported from Syria. Simple painkillers like Panadol that cost $1 (70p) for a bottle last year now cost $8, according to Ibrahim.

There is a shortage of food and what is available is very c o s t l y. T h e “ c a l i p h a t e ” i s increasingly cut off from supplies from Turkey and the rest of Syria. It also has less money to spend because of air attacks on its exports of crude oil, combined with the fall in the price of oil.

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‘Ireland attracts a lot of Indians as it has clean image’ With a population of more than 6 million, Ireland has seen an economic growth of more than 6 per cent during the last few years.

While the Island nation sees more than 7 million tourists from all across the world annually, Ireland also has presence of more

than 25,000 Indians and 2,000 students from India study there.

With expertise in technology, pharmaceuticals and aviation, Ireland is looking towards cooperating with India in these sectors. In an exclusive chat with Chandigarh Newsline, Brian McElduff, Ireland’s ambassador to India, who was in Chandigarh, talks about Ireland expertise, historical links with India, corporation with Punjab and Chandigarh.

A lot of tourists visit Great Britain and Europe. Talking about tourism, what can Ireland offer to Indian tourists?

It is doing very well. From a fairly low base, Ireland attracts a lot of Indians because it has very clean image. Many Indians like to visit the UK and we want them to travel little further to Ireland.

We are very close and it is a one-hour flight from London to

Dublin. Now you only need one visa as we now have a joint visa programme with UK for one year.

And we have Euro which is cheaper. Apart from Dublin, which has lots of pubs and restaurants and ancient attractions, we have got a beautiful coastline and a lot of outdoor activities.

Apart from Dublin, cities like Limirick, which is also famous for poetry, sees a lot of visitors.

People come for activities like hunting and fishing and we have got a lot of castles in which tourists can stay as well. We also have one castle that was owned

by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Ballynahinch castle. The TV series, Game of Thrones, was shot in Northern Ireland and it also brings a lot of people to the country.

Apart from tourism, how does Ireland see India as a partner?

I believe we have a lot to offer culturally to India. We have historic links with India for a long time. We founded a lot of schools in India and a lot of Irish teaches work in India. I am very pleased that Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Ireland last September. One of the first countries in Europe to host him was Ireland.

We have attracted a lot of investments. We have more than 25,000 Indians in Ireland and 2,000 students from India. They are coming to study our high-tech economy and environment. We are smaller if we talk about consuls. We are based in Delhi and we have got honorary consul in Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Kolkata.

Talking about Punjab and Chandigarh, what are Ireland’s plans for the region and which areas do you like to focus upon with this region?

We have not had a huge amount of cooperation with Punjab and Chandigarh. We do have presence here in terms of schools with strong Irish connections.

UK’s student visa plan creating rod for own back says Indian bizman London Karan Bilimoria, who arrived as a student from India in the 1980s, went on to establish a successful beer brand and now sits in the House of Lords, has criticised the David Cameron government’s student visa policy that, he believes, is “creating a rod for their

own back”.

One of the key speakers in a debate on student immigration, Bilimoria demanded that the government remove students from immigration figures as in the US, Canada and Australia since most of them leave after their studies.

Excluding students from overall immigration statistics has been a major demand by the higher education sector. Cameron and chancellor George Osborne are said to be open to the idea, but reportedly face opposition from Home secretary Theresa May. There has been a major fall in the number of Indian students coming to UK universities in re-

cent years. Closing the poststudy work visa in 2012 was “hugely damaging”, Bilimoria said. The Cameron government has been at pains to attract India students, saying there is no cap on the numbers.

He said: “Suu Kyi, Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu and Mahatma

Gandhi all studied at UK universities...(Yet) the government continue to classify international students as immigrants when calculating the net immigration figures, as well as having a target to reduce net immigration to fewer than 100,000”.

“Then, hypocritically, the government say that there are no limits to international students. Logically, there is no way the government will meet their targets unless they reduce international student numbers…The government are unnecessarily creating a rod for their own back”, he added.

Several members of the House

of Lords pressed the government to exclude students from immigration figures, but did not get any assurance, partly because figures suggested that a large number of students did not return to their home countries after their courses.

But not as an engineer. He discovered a talent in himself for cooking while still a student at UCLA, honed it by reading up books on Indian cuisine, and went into the restaurant business.

He eventually landed up running a pub, which has become a useful election prop for Ram. She likes to say at campaign events that she was “raised by an Indian immigrant father and Jewish-American mother at an Irish pub”.

That suits her vision for the job she is running for, lieutenant governor. “I see the position as a connector-in-chief,” she said, who as her campaign website added will “bring together Vermonters from all corners of the state to solve our greatest challenges”. Ram’s agenda includes investing in early learning, affordable higher education (as does Sanders’, whose fan she has been for long), affordable homeownership and “affordable, quality broadband internet access”.

She is locked in a three-way race for the Democratic party nomination, which is currently looking good for her.

We are interested in cooperating in same things as India is interested in like high-tech economy, pharmaceuticals, engineering, clean energy and aviation services. These are our strengths and apart from these, we have expertise in fields like equestrerian and golf. Many Indians come to Ireland for trade of good horses. We are very good in agriculture and farming products. We can provide cooperation in these fields. We are here for trade and cultural things and extending support in sports like equestrian and golf.

Talking of political visits and consuls in India, what are Ireland’s plans for India and how do you see India in terms of business opportunities and other areas?

India is doing well and Ireland is also doing well. In the last decade or so, we had a very strong Asiaspecific strategy. But most of that

focus was on China. But we are hoping to balance it by focusing on India. We wish to increase our presence in India, especially in Mumbai, as it is the trade centre.

We might be small but we have a very active group here. The St Patrick’s day is coming and we had monuments like Eiffel tower and others lighted in green. We had such things done with the Gateway of India earlier and we hope to do the same in future. We have famous golfer Padraig Harrington playing in March in Delhi. Everybody in Ireland is fascinated by India’s history and I am hopeful that we would have increasing number of high-level political visits. It is all so because India is doing well. We are here to do trade with India and tourism also forms a part of it. India is a very important growth partner for us.

We had general elections earlier this week and we have a very big community of Indians in Ireland.

Majority of Asians use smartphone as communication tool New Delhi A study highlighting the role of smartphones in people’s lives in Asia has found that 60 percent people use them to primarily communicate with one another, 24 percent consider them as companions, while the age group of 20 and under use their devices for music and entertainment the most.

The survey, conducted by leading Chinese language internet search provider Baidu, also showed that almost 50 percent of Asians get worried when their smartphones run out of battery, which is quite high compared to people from other demographics.

According to Baidu’s “Global Smartphone Usage and Trends2015” survey report, 36 percent people across the world update their smartphones once a year.

“If we compare results from different regions we see that three out of 10 people in Asia update their smartphones once a year which is consistent amongst all the age groups but again the age group of 20 to 29 leads it with 38 percent,” it said.

So far as charging frequency is concerned, almost half the user base of smartphones in the world charge their devices just once in a day, according to the survey. But it also found that 35 percent people charge their smartphones multiple times a

day, “which speaks about the heavy usage of battery due to the apps on their smartphones”.

Nearly 40 percent of all users surveyed installed between 2150 apps on their phone. However, Asians tend to keep their apps below 20, Baidu reported.

Battery-related overheating issues were particularly found prominent among users in Asia.

“Overall, the most common problem faced across the globe due to excessive smartphone usage is the ‘phone overheats’ issue which is a whopping 44 percent, ‘trash size’ and ‘slow online’ speed come second and third in the list with 38 percent and 32 percent respectively,” the survey said.

It was also found that Asians are more dependent on their smartphones than the users in the West.

Forty-seven percent of North American users waited for their phones to run out completely.

But users in Asia preferred to use a power bank or a batterysaving app when running out of power.

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We want to play India in the final again, says Shoaib Malik

Pakistan’s experienced allrounder Shoaib Malik has said that he and his teammates are keen to set up a rematch with India in the final of the Asia Cup tournament in Bangladesh.

Malik told the Pakistani media in Mirpur that they had lost to India in the group match on Saturday since the team had failed to adapt to the conditions at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium.

“I think we failed to read the pitch and conditions properly against India and instead of adapting ourselves we committed hari

kari by trying to play overly attacking shots,” he said.

The former Pakistan captain said everyone in the team was disappointed by the defeat but were now also more intent on winning matches to qualify for the final.

“We want to play India in the final again and we know we can do well against them. It is all a matter of just adapting to the different conditions here,” Malik added. He said that all the seniors in the side realised how important it was for them to fire on all cylinders now in the Asia Cup.

Cong asks BCCI to shift Indo-Pak match from Dharamsala Himachal Pradesh Congress today asked the BCCI to either cancel the proposed India-Pakistan T-20 World Cup match slated for March 19 at Dharamsala or shift the venue.

The executive of the Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee also criticised the Secretary of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and BJP MP Anurag Thakur for the decision to hold the match in Dharamsala.

“BCCI should either cancel or shift the match to other state to honour the sentiments of families of martyrs,” HPCC president Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said.

Sukkhu also demanded that 50 per cent income from eight other matches to be played at the same venue be disbursed among the kins of those who laid down their lives in successive wars against Pakistan or during anti-

Azhar says Pakistan’s fast bowling attack ‘best’ in the world Pakistan’s new bowling coach Azhar Mahmood believes Pakistan team’s fast bowling attack is the best in the world at present, saying the pace trio of

Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Irfan and Wahab Riaz is outstanding.

Azhar who has replaced bowling coach Mushtaq Ahmed (who has been rested for Asia Cup and World Twenty20 due to fatigue) said that Amir, Irfan and Wahab are among the best fast bowling attacks in the world at present.

We have one of the best bowling sides in the world and Amir is a

proven match-winner and then you add a seven footer Irfan who has an advantage of height, the pace battery of the side looks really exciting. Not to forget we

have Wahab Riaz as well,” Azhar was quoted as saying by indiatoday.intoday.in.

He said Pakistan have Amir’s variety, Irfan’s height and Riaz’s pace which makes for a threatening pace attack.

The inclusion of Mohammad Sami only adds to the variety of the attack who can bowl at 145 kmph, he said. For Azhar a phone call from former team-

mate and current Pakistan head coach Waqar Younis was motivation enough to take up the assignment.

“I got a call from Waqar a week ago when I was playing Pakistan’s domestic T20 league. He asked me if I was interested in this role and I said yes in the blink of an eye. I had other commitments after the World T20 so this role suited me perfectly,” he said. “These guys have been working hard for the last two years with Waqar. My job is to only pass on my knowledge and skills and give them more confidence when it comes to executing bowling plans. I am enjoying each moment of mine with the Pakistan team and hopefully I can pass on my experience to the younger lot in the line up,” he said. “I have played around the world and have enough experience under my belt to help them with little things. I would be more than happy to help them get better in their skill not just from the bowling perspective but batting and fielding as well,” Azhar added.

terror operations.

He said Kangra is home to a large number of soldiers, including Kargil War heroes like Captain Vikram Batra and Captain Saurabh Kalia and a war memorial is located close to

don it in the wake of the attack

by Pakistani terrorists on Pathankot Airbase in which two jawans from the state were killed.

President of the League Vijay singh Mankotia, in his letter to the PM said since the people are

Dharamsala stadium.

“Our party is not against holding other World Cup matches but only opposing the one against Pakistan as it would hurt the sentiments of the people, especially the families of martyrs,” he said.

Sukhu also asked the BJP MP Anurag Thakur to make his stand clear on the issue as “he had earlier conducted a march from Kolkata to Lal Chowk in Kashmir to hoist national flag”.

He said that party vice president Rahul Gandhi would visit the state in April during which he would address major rallies and meetings in all four parliamentary constituencies.

Meanwhile, the Himachal Pradesh Ex-servicemen league, which has been opposing the match, has now shot off a letter to Prime minister Narendra Modi to prevail upon the BCCI to aban-

still mourning the deaths of their brave soldiers, they would not “relish” the slogans of ‘Pakistan Zindabad’by Pakistani supporters during the match.

“When the Indo-Pak talks can be cancelled after the terror attack, why not the cricket match,” Mankotia said, adding that over 1-lakh ex-servicemen would launch an agitation to prevent the Pakistani team from entering Dharamsala.

Mankotia said close on the heels of the Pathankot attack, two more Himachali jawans were killed during an encounter in Pulwama.

Notably, Former Chief Minister and BJP MP Shanta Kumar and former BJP MLA Rakesh Pathania have also opposed the match. Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh has said he would apprise the Prime Minister about sentiments of the people.

BCCI media manager cleared of conflict charge The BCCI ombudsman Justice AP Shah has dismissed allegations of conflict of interest against the board’s media manager Nishant Arora. Shah said the charges against Arora, leveled by freelance journalist Neeraj Gunde, “cannot be an issue of consideration.”

Gunde had written to Shah last month alleging that Arora and his wife were involved in a commercial venture called Final Score that has on its clients list senior Indian cricketers Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh, as well as the the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Assocation, where BCCI secretary Anuraj

Thakur is the president. Shah, however, said that Gunde’s application had been “disposed of”.

An email sent to PTI from the Ombudsman’s office stated that “Mr Arora’s wife does not hold any directorial post at Final Score.”

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Drunk monkey brandishing huge knife terrorises bar in booze-fuelled rampage Brazil Customers at a bar were given an almighty fright when a drunk monkey snatched a kitchen knife and started chasing them after downing leftover rum.

The little capuchin - a breed known for their temper - apparently turned aggressive after helping itself to dregs of rum in the bar. Picking up the footlong blade, the animal reportedly set about terrorising punters at the bar in Paraiba, Brazil.

However, according to reports, it only went after the men in the pub, leaving the women to drink in relative

peace. It is said to have left the area shortly after.

The owner of the bar called firefighters, who after some

searching and manouvering were able to find and capture the capuchin. Lieutenant Colonel Saul Laurentino, fire chief, said: “It was a bar staff oversight that ended with the monkey drinking some rum and taking the knife. According to news reports, firefighters released the animal into a nature reserve, after the incident earlier this month. But it had to be captured again after terrorising residents.

Farmer uses sex doll scarecrow to scare away vermin China A farmer keeps pests away using a scarecrow made from an inflatable sex doll.

The muddy sex doll also wears a yellow safety helmet and has reportedly been effective at scaring off birds – as well as people.

The stark-naked blow-up doll is thought to have belonged to a worker at a construction site near the field in Chengdu, capital of China’s south-western

Sichuan Province. It was then found by a local

rapeseed farmer, who stood it up in the patch of

greenery in order to ward off crows and other unwanted pests. The yellow helmet, which also belonged to the construction worker, was placed on the blow-up doll’s head in order to cover its jet-black hair and to add more realism to the unorthodox scarecrow. Rapeseed, which is consumed in China as a vegetable, is also used around the world to make cooking oil.

Farmer knocked over and kicked in the head by one of his own cows

London A farmer was flown to hospital by air ambulance after he was knocked over and kicked in the head by a cow. The man in his 50s suffered head, back, neck and chest injuries at around 11.30am on Sunday at a property in Cockfield near Bishop Auckland, County Durham. The Great North Air Ambulance was called to the scene and flew him to the James Cook University Hospital , Middlesbrough, in 14 minutes. A spokesman sad the farmer “had been knocked over and kicked in the head by cattle”. He was in a stable condition

in hospital having suffered what air ambulance service said were severe or serious injuries. Cows have been responsible for a number of deaths of walkers and farmers in recent years. In 2015 an inquest heard how Shropshire farmer Keith Preece was loading cattle on to a trailer at his farm when three of the herd got ‘spooked’ by sunshine and ran towards him. One of the cows kicked him in the neck and tore his main artery. The grandfather died in hospital two days later.

It is thought that around one person a year on average is killed by cattle in Britain, with many more injured.

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1 March - 7 March 2016

Health Bored of drinking tea?

Now, chew it and feel refreshed!

‘Chai’, the quintessential part of our daily life, is now getting “popular” in chewable form and has been also found to “lessen” the effects of nicotine among smokers.

In some parts of Germany, people chew white tea leaves, which is a phenomena very similar to chewing ‘paan masala’ in India, to invigorate themselves, an Ooty-based Doddabetta Tea Factory and Tea Museum’s General Man-

just like pan masala, for refreshment,” said Varadaraj, whose factory exports White Tea in parts of the European country.

White Tea variety is more costly in the tea industry.

The leaves are handplucked and sun-dried before being exported.

Unlike other varieties, white leaves remain unprocessed, which is why, they have high quantity of anti-oxidants and even considered better than

ager L Varadaraj told PTI. “It was really quite interesting to know that people there (in Germany) use White Tea (silver tips tea),

green tea in terms of health benefits, he said.

White tea is made out of the buds of tea and not from leaves. “The consumers

put it in mouth and chew it. It is also found to reduce the toxicity of nicotine among smokers,” he said.

On the art of bringing new blends for tea connoisseurs, he said a tea-taster has to identify the mistakes in its manufacturing, rectify it and give the best blend according to the requirement in the market.

“The most interesting and intriguing aspect of tea tasting is infusion - which should be always bright coppery or greenish yellow, the cup which is used for tea tasting should be bright, and especially for CTC (crush, tear and curl) teas. It should have good depth and after infusion, the edges of the cup should be yellowish.

“While sipping, the tea should have both heaviness and briskness. When added with milk, the tea should look bright. Mellowness is the important aspect in tea tasting,” he said. Master tea-taster Sanjay Kapur, the owner of

tea brand ‘Sancha’, said an experienced tea-taster will curate blends keeping in mind the sensibilities of his customers.

“From time-to-time, a blender will introduce new aromas and flavours to his customers to keep the excitement going. Likes and dislikes are always evolving,” he said.

The curator deals with the palate and aroma of his creations. The ingredients used determine the end product. The taster creates blends with ingredients which must appeal to the audience which it is being created for, he said.

The two aspects in common are taste and flavour which even tea-tasters and blenders need to keep foremost in mind, said Kapur,

who has been in tea industry for over 40 years.

Varadaraj said, “We in India prefer strong type of teas and that is the reason we always use dust teas, whereas people abroad prefer mild and good flavoured teas and that is why they always use leaf teas.”

“Of late people’s preferences have changed from normal CTC dust tea to green tea, since it has lot of antioxidants and people have become health conscious,” he said.

When asked about the fun of pursuing the art form of tea-tasting, Kapur, who launched a unique blend of floral Darjeeling tea and a select strong full-bodied Assam tea at the recent Kala Ghoda Arts Festival

in Mumbai, said, “Our primary role is to search for exotic flavours in natural tea found in so many varied producing areas and gardens.”

He said as the terrain and weather changes, the flavour of tea also changes.

For example, original teas plucked and manufactured in Nilgiri are distinctly different from those produced in Darjeeling or Kangra.

The art of tea-tasting can only be learnt by working at grassroot levels, he said adding that in-house they taste over 1,000 samples each week which come from various places.

“In India, we have now started to enjoy exotic fruits and vegetables and cuisines with varied flavours.

Here is why you shouldn’t eat Six ways to lose weight raw veggies, drink cold water! without dieting!

This might sound strange, but anybody suffering from irritable bowel syndrome or other digestive problems

Benefits of eating cooked food: It is believed that cooking actually makes food easier

should avoid eating raw vegetables. Because hard raw food can hamper the digestion.

Unscrupulously, many people think that a raw diet can help them lose weight faster and food nutrients are at its best when eaten naturally without having them cooked.

to digest.

Cooking softens foods such as meat, cellulose fiber, thereby allowing to digest food without having to spend huge amount of energy.

One study suggested that cooking veggies in water such as steaming, boiling better preserves antioxi-

dants, particularly carotenoid in carrots, zucchini and broccoli, than frying, though boiling was deemed the best. Cooking also kills bacteria found on some foods, thus making them safe to consume.

Benefits of warm water: As for beverages, drink warm water or at room temperature instead of going for chilled beverages of all kinds, including ice-cold lemonade. Drinking warm water helps speed up in the breakdown process, especially during meals.

It enhances digestion and improves bowel movements and constipation.

It also helps improve blood circulation and lowers the risk of various health complications by removing toxins and fats deposited in your body.

Lose weight without dieting– sounds easy, yet unreliable right? But, it actually can, perhaps, all you need to do in order to achieve this goal is making small changes to your everyday life.

Try these small steps to drop those excess kilos without giving up your favourite foodsGo for smaller dishes: Most people eat more when served larger portions, so pick smaller dishes while eating meals.

Drink up: Drink plenty of water – at least 8-10 glasses a day. This will not only help you stay hydrated, but will help you feel full.

Studies suggest that drinking water before meals can make you feel fuller, which can help shed pounds, as well.

Eat slow: Study shows that people can reduce their calorie consumption by eating more slowly, giving their brain time to think how full

breakfast typically consume about 100 fewer calories during the course of the day and weigh less than those who skip breakfast.

they feel. Eat mindfully and savour each bite that you take without distracting your mind.

Healthy and better breakfast: Studies have shown that people who eat a healthy

Get adequate rest: Poor sleep can result in weight gain. Research shows that poor sleep revs up your appetite, making you to eat more. Aim to get 7-8 hours of sleep every night.

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1 March - 7 March 2016

Go ‘desi’; use ghee to get rid of hair problems!

Tired of trying to control those unmanageable and unruly hair? Good healthy hair in these times of air pollution is hard to come by and with global warming doing its stuff, the scorching heat doesn’t exactly help matters.

Be it girls or boys, that mane sure is a thing of pride. But, people put their hair through so much – styling, curling, straightening, colouring, etc. - it’s evident that this will take its toll.

Even with all the pampering and caring you do for your hair, don’t forget that many hair products are home to chemicals, which can have adverse effects in the long run.

This may have put you in a dilemma, but, were you

aware that your kitchen has that one ingredient that can help you get rid of half of your hair problems?

That magic secret ingredient is Ghee! No, this is not about eating it, in fact, this is about applying it on your hair. You may not have seen or heard many people use this method, but it’s super effective!

Want to know how it will help your hair? Read on!

1. Conditioning: Desi ghee is the perfect conditioner for your unmanageable mane. Not only does it make your hair shiny, but it also makes them softer and luscious. Simply mix two tablespoons of ghee and one tablespoon of olive oil.

Apply it directly on the hair and leave it on for 20 min-

utes. Rinse it off with a mild shampoo.

2. Removes split ends: Do your split ends frustrate you no end? If you’ve tried everything from trimming to texturizing to oiling and nothing in the world seems to work, then ghee can be your saviour. Ghee has the power to not only remove your split ends, but also prevent them! All you have to do is take three tablespoons of ghee and apply it evenly on the split ends.

Let it stay for 15 minutes and then comb the hair gently. Later, wash your hair with a mild shampoo and lukewarm water.

3. Hair growth: Is this the answer to your prayers or what? Yes, you read this right! Ghee does promote hair growth, albeit

with a little help from other kitchen ingredients. Once you apply ghee on the hair, you’ll need to wash it off with either amla or onion juice. Wash your hair normally the next day. This method is ideal to be used at night before bed. Do this at least twice a month.

4. Dandruff woes: If you have dry hair and dry scalp, then you probably suffer from dandruff issues too. Although, this is something that most people complain about during winter season, ghee is your best friend during these times. All you have

to do is massage your scalp with a mixture of lukewarm ghee and almond oil. Leave it on for 15 minutes and wash your hair with rose water to remove the oil from the tresses. Try this twice a month to get rid of dandruff.

Top five healthy ‘fatty foods’ for a flat tummy!

Did you know: Never store

these foods in refrigerator!

Usually, we store almost all fruit and vegetables in the refrigerator, which actually is a huge blunder.

Because not all foods are meant to be refrigerated. In fact, refrigeration can actually cause certain foods to spoil faster.

Here are 5 foods that you should never store in the

refrigerator: Bananas – Once refrigerated, bananas may never be able to resume the ripening process even if returned to room temperature.

Tomatoes – While most of us store tomatoes in the refrigerator, the fridge is not the ideal place for storing

them. They lose their flavor when refrigerated.

Apples – Just like tomatoes, apples lose their texture and flavor when refrigerated. If you want to enjoy apples cold, just put them in the fridge about 30 minutes before eating.

Onions – Storing onions in the refrigerator can spoil them due to lack of air cir-

culation. Also, avoid storing onions near potatoes, which gives off moisture and gas causing them to spoil faster. Instead, keep onions in a clean, dry and well-ventilated place.

Avocados – As in the case of bananas, refrigeration disrupts an avocado’s ripening process.

Often we consider a diet based entirely on fruit and vegetables is the key to weight loss, demonizing fats all the while.

The fact is that a moderate-fat diet actually can help produce better weight loss results in the long-run!

Fats, on the other hand, are crucial in the regulation of your overall hormonal balance, including many fat-burning hormones.

Replace highcarb items in your diet with these fatburning foods that come from the healthy oils found in plant sources and get that flat belly: Almonds and other nuts: Almonds and nuts such as pecans, walnuts and cashews slim your tummy by keeping you feel full for a longer periods. They also help in building muscle while reducing cravings.

However, skip salted nuts as too much sodium can raise your blood pressure.

Seeds: Seeds such as sunflower seeds and flaxseeds are ‘ good fats’ that play a vital role in everyone’s diet as well as help in weight loss.

Packed with dietary fiber,

Whole eggs: The yolk is the most nutritious part of egg loaded with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. The protein and fat in the egg help with satiety and weight loss.

sunflower seeds could fill you up for longer and keep cravings at bay, while easing digestion at the same time. They are also rich in antioxidant vitamin E, which is essential for skin health.

Flaxseed contains high amount of vitamin B, omega-3-fatty acids and fiber which help you feel full and keep you from being hungry for longer periods of time. They are also low in carbohydrates

So, despite its high fat content, whole eggs won’t make you gain weight as long as you control overall calories.

Also, whole eggs are not bad for your heart. In fact, consuming whole eggs actually helps improve your good HDL cholesterol to bad LDL cholesterol ratio.

Fatty fish: Fatty fish such as mackerel, tuna, salmon, and trout contain high amount of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D which are helpful in battling belly fat.

Olive oil: Olive is one of those good fats that helps you burn fat and lowers your bad LDL cholesterol due to its monounsaturated fats content in it. Olive oil is also rich in antioxidants.

Other plant-based liquid oils that are high in monounsaturated fats are - canola oil, peanut oil, safflower oil and sesame oil. Foods like avocados, peanut butter are also rich in monounsaturated fats.

Are your lungs ageing faster than it should?

Mothers who smoke, respiratory infections and the date you were born all contribute to determine how fast your lungs are ageing, says a new study.

The research revealed three factors that influence ageing of the lungs: Firstly, having a mother who smoked when she was pregnant with you will affect your lungs in a negative way; secondly, if your birth happened to be dur-

ing the harsh winter season.

And thirdly, if you experienced a severe respiratory infection at a very young age, the study said.

People who have been exposed to these factors have a faster decline in lung function, which practically means a faster ageing process.

However, this only becomes apparent if they

themselves start smoking or if other risk factors have

been a part of their early life, explained the re-

searchers.

“It is logical that early life development also affects the systems that maintain our body and repair damage. If so, this could explain why some people do not tolerate exposure to certain toxics in later life. And that is actually what we found,” said Cecilie Svanes, professor at the University of Bergen (UiB) in Norway.

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1 March - 7 March 2016

Turkey Casserole

Three Cheese Manicotti Ingredients: 1 (8 ounce) package manicotti shells 4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided 2 cups ricotta cheese 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1 egg 2 tablespoons dried basil 2 (26 ounce) jars pasta sauce Directions: Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add manicotti and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.

In a bowl, mix 3 cups mozzarella cheese, ricotta cheese, 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, garlic, egg, and basil. Stuff cooked manicotti with the mixture.

Spread about 2 cups pasta sauce over the bottom of the prepared baking dish.

Arrange stuffed manicotti in the dish, and cover with remaining sauce. Sprinkle with remaining mozzarella cheese.

Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven.

Sprinkle with remaining Parmesan, and continue baking 10 minutes, until mozzarella is melted and bubbly.

ing sheet, and repeat with the remaining shrimp.

Bake the shrimp until they are bright pink on the outside and the meat is no longer transparent in the center and the coconut is browned, 15 to 20 minutes, flipping the shrimp halfway through.

Ingredients: 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 (3 pound) roasting chicken, deboned and cut into bite size pieces 2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 onion, chopped, 1 large potato, diced 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon ground coriander seed 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup water, 3/4 cup unsalted naturalstyle peanut butter, 1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed Directions: In a large skillet with a tight-fitting lid, heat oil over medium high heat. Add chicken, and brown quickly. Remove

chicken from pan. Reduce heat to medium low, and add garlic, onion and potato to the pan; saute for 2 to 3 minutes.

Season with cumin, coriander, black pepper, red pepper and salt. Do not let garlic brown.

Mix in water and browned chicken, and any accumulated juices. Place lid on skillet and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10 to 15 minutes.

Remove lid, and stir in the peanut butter and garbanzo beans. Make sure the peanut butter is blended in. Replace lid to simmer for 10 more minutes, or until chicken is cooked through and potatoes are tender. Remove from heat, adjust seasoning, and serve.

Asian Beef Skewers

Awesome Baked Sea Scallops Ingredients 16 sea scallops, rinsed and drained 5 tablespoons butter, melted 5 cloves garlic, minced 2 shallots, chopped 3 pinches ground nutmeg salt and pepper to taste 1 cup bread crumbs 4 tablespoons olive oil 1/4 cup chopped parsley lemon wedges for garnish (optional) Directions: Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

Place scallops, melted butter, garlic, and shallots in a bowl. Season with nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Stir gently to combine. Transfer to a casserole dish.

In a separate bowl, combine bread

baking dish, then layer the turkey mixture over the noodles. Then layer the sour cream mixture over the turkey, and top with cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 20 to 35 minutes, or until cheese is melted and bubbly.

African Chicken Stew

Baked Coconut Shrimp Ingredients: 1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined 1/3 cup cornstarch 1 teaspoon salt 3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper 2 cups flaked sweetened coconut 3 egg whites, beaten until foamy Directions: Preheat an oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Lightly coat a baking sheet with cooking spray.

Rinse and dry shrimp with paper towels.

Mix cornstarch, salt, and cayenne pepper in a shallow bow; pour coconut flakes in a separate shallow bowl. Working with one shrimp at a time, dredge it in the cornstarch mixture, then dip it in the egg white, and roll it in the coconut, making sure to coat the shrimp well. Place on the prepared bak-

Ingredients: 1 pound ground turkey 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce 1 teaspoon white sugar 1 (8 ounce) container sour cream 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese 1 (12 ounce) package uncooked egg noodles 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, saute the ground turkey for 5 to 10 minutes, or until browned. Drain the turkey, stir in the tomato sauce and sugar, and set aside. In a medium bowl, combine the sour cream and cream cheese. Mix well and set aside.

Cook noodles according to package directions. Place them into a 9x13-inch

crumbs and olive oil. Sprinkle on top of scallops.

Bake in preheated oven until crumbs are brown and scallops are done, about 11 to 14 minutes. Top with parsley, and serve with lemon wedges on the side.

Ingredients: 3 tablespoons hoisin sauce 3 tablespoons sherry 1/4 cup soy sauce 1 teaspoon barbeque sauce 2 green onions, chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger root 1 1/2 pounds flank steak skewers Directions: In a small bowl, mix together hoisin sauce, sherry, soy sauce, barbeque sauce, green onions, garlic, and ginger.

Cut flank steak across grain on a diagonal into 1/4 inch slices. Place slices in a 1 gallon resealable plastic

bag. Pour hoisin sauce mixture over slices, and mix well. Refrigerate 2 hours, or overnight.

Preheat an outdoor grill for high heat. Discard marinade, and thread steak on skewers.

Oil the grill grate. Grill skewers 3 minutes per side, or to desired doneness.

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1 March - 7 March 2016