The contact

THE CONTACT WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ISSUE - 654, 16 FEB. - 22 FEB. 2016 PH: (905) 671 - 4761

Pope John Paul II had ‘intense relationship’ with married woman, report says LONDON Pope John Paul II had a close relationship with a married woman which lasted over 30 years, according to letters which feature in a documentary being shown by the BBC on Monday.

While the documentary does not claim he broke his vow of celibacy with Polish-born philosopher and writer AnnaTeresa Tymieniecka, the tone of some of his letters to her points to intense feelings between them, the broadcaster says. The two spent camping and skiing holidays together and went on country walks. In one letter from September 1976, he calls her a “gift from God”.

“My dear Teresa,” he writes. “You write about being torn apart, but

I could find no answer to these words.” Also in September 1976, he writes: “Already last year I was looking for an answer to these words, ‘I belong to you’, and finally, before leaving Poland, I found a way a scapular.” A scapular is a piece of cloth worn as part of the habit of monastic orders and the then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla gave Tymieniecka his. “The dimension in which I accept and feel you everywhere in all kinds of situations, when you are close, and when you are far away,” he adds.

Edward Stourton, the senior BBC journalist who made the documentary, said more than 350 letters were found at the

National Library of Poland, the first dated in 1973 and the last a few months before his death in

2005. “I would say there were more than friends but less than lovers,” he said. “One of the

fascinating stories that comes out of these letters is of a struggle to contain what was certainly a very intense relationship which mixed emotions and philosophical ideas in proper Christian boundaries.”

A close associate of John Paul II said it was “possible” that a married woman had fallen in love with him before he became head of the Roman Catholic church.

“Women fall in love with priests all the time, and it’s always a big headache,” Father Adam Boniecki, editor in chief of the progressive Tygodnik Powszechny Catholic weekly, told AFP. Continued on Page 2

ISIS opens new ‘help desk’ for militants to evade tracking

Washington ISIS has reportedly opened a new technical “help desk” that instructs terrorists on how to evade electronic surveillance and prevent them from committing security mistakes

that could endanger their lives.

The Electronic Horizon Foundation (EHF) was launched on January 30 as a joint effort of several of the top ISIS cyber security experts, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) said in a new report.

While researchers have previously uncovered an ISIS “help desk” and 34-page manual that help extremists encrypt their communications, MEMRI said the EHF takes these services to a new level.

“Jihadis have long sought

technical information, which has been confined in the past to various password-protected jihadi forums,” The Hill quoted the MEMRI report as saying.

“However, the freedom and ease by which they can now obtain that information is alarming, especially when such information is shared over private and secure channels,” it said.

The EHF operates on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram but also maintains a Twitter account that disseminates information and directs followers to its secure Telegram channel, the report said. The group’s self-stated goal is clear, “Spreading

security and technical awareness among the monotheists.” According to an announcement celebrating the

EHF launch, ISIS has spent a year establishing the group with the goal Continued on Page 2

Paramjit Singh Pamma to be released soon!

LONDON Sikh organizations across the globe have welcomed the release of (Bhai) Paramjit Singh Pamma, who was arrested in December 2015 in Portugal by the Interpol. Francisca Van Dunem, the Minister of Justice in Portugal rejected the extradition request on the basis that Bhai Paramjit Singh had been granted asylum in the UK. Following rejection of the case, Bhai Paramjit Singh Pamma is expected to return to UK soon. “This decision is based on the fact that the Indian national qualification for refugee status given by the British authorities

in September 2000, when he was granted asylum in that country and issued a valid travel document until April 24, 2023, which enables the move by several EU countries, including Portugal, the Justice Ministry said in a statement issued by the Ministry of Justice, Portugal, stated. Several Sikh organizations led by the Sikhs for Justice and the Sikh Federation (UK) campaigned for Bhai Paramjit Singh Pamma. The Sikh Organization for Prisoner Welfare also ran a successful campaign to fundraiser for the legal expenses.

Continued on Page 2

Issue - 654 (2)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

ISIS opens new ‘help Paramjit Singh Pamma to be released... desk’ for militants...

Continued from Page 1 of “unifying the technical and security efforts, and uniting the ranks” of the jihadists.

It brings together several technical support entities, such as the InformationSecurity channel on Telegram and the “Islamic State Technician,” an ISIS security specialist thought to be behind a leading passwordprotected technical forum.

EHF has pledged to provide resources to help jihadists combat this surveillance. “It is time to face the electronic surveillance, educate the mujahideen about the dangers of the Internet, and support them with the tools, directives and security explanations to protect their electronic security, so that they don’t commit security mistakes that can lead to their bombardment and killing,” the announcement said.

Pope John Paul II had ‘intense relationship’ with...

Continued from Page 1 “If she was in love with (Karol) Wojtyla, she was most likely not alone,” said Boniecki, himself the author of a detailed account of the pontiff’s life.

Tymieniecka “translated Karol Wojtyla’s books into English, making his work known to US academics...

Continued from Page 1 Several UK MPs, particularly, John Spellar also played a prominent role. It is also important to mention the role played

by Kesri Lehar (UK) sevadars, who led peaceful protests despite harsh weather conditions. Kesri Lehar activists were able to build pressure due to the protests, which eventually led to a meeting with the Portuguese Ambassador in UK, which was the turning point in this campaign.

Sikh Federation (UK) posted – The Sikh Federation (UK) are delighted to announce the Paramjeet Singh

but her translations caused tension between the two,” Boniecki said. The BBC has only seen John Paul II’s letters, not Tymieniecka’s side of the correspondence.

She died in 2014. John Paul Beirut II was pope from 1978 to At least 23 civilians were 2005 and was made a saint killed when missiles hit by the Catholic Church after three hospitals and a his death. school in rebel-held Syrian

today received appointment orders as Sub-Inspectors of police.

Yashini, hailing from the city, and 21 other transgenders received the appointment orders from City Police Commisioner Smith Saran after

been working tirelessly on this case and supporting Pinky Kaur and the family said “I am so ecstatic that Portugal delivers justice for Paramjeet Singh and his family.

The Sikh community came together and have campaigned for human rights of not only Paramjeet Singh but for refugees who also face such atrocities.

Victory to the cause and those that stand up for human rights. I am elated by the news” This is very embarrassing and shameful for the Indian Authorities who played every card to have Paramjeet Singh extradited to India to face more

falsified charges, especially following Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the UK in November 2015, where he delivered a fictitious intelligence dossier to the UK government on alleged activities of UK Gurdwara, TV Channels and community including named individuals such as Paramjeet Singh. The Sikh Federation (UK) have been challenging India and the UK government on this such dossier, while others who met with Modi have remained quiet. This case is a landmark statement that Justice and Freedom cannot be bought or sold by the corrupt India state as easily as it once was.

Bombs also hit another refugee shelter south of the town and a convoy of trucks, another resident said. “We have been

In a separate incident, missiles hit another hospital in the town of Marat Numan in Idlib province, in north western Syria, said the French president of the Doctors Without Borders/ Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) charity, which was supporting the hospital.

“There were at least seven deaths among the personnel and the patients, and at least eight MSF personnel have disappeared, and we don’t know if they are alive,” Mego Terzian told Reuters.

“The author of the strike is clearly ... either the government or Russia,” he said, adding that it was not

Rescue workers and rights groups say Russian bombing has killed scores of civilians at market places, hospitals, schools and residential areas in Syria. Western countries also say Russia has been attacking mostly Westernbacked insurgent groups.

But Moscow has said it is targeting “terrorist groups” and dismissed any suggestion it has killed civilians since beginning its air campaign in support of President Bashar alAssad’s forces in September.

The town of Azaz has been the scene of fierce fighting as Kurdish anti-

the first time MSF facilities in Syria had been attacked.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence across the country, said one male nurse was killed and five female nurses, a doctor and one male nurse are believed to be under the rubble in the MSF hospital. Also in Marat Numan, another strike hit the National Hospital on the north edge of town, killing two nurses, the Observatory said.

Residents in both towns blamed Russian strikes, saying the planes deployed were more numerous and the munitions more powerful than the Syrian military typically used.

government forces advance from the west. They have reached the edge of town, only a few kilometres away from the main Bab al Salam border crossing.

The Syrian army is advancing from the south.

Both the Kurds and the army want to wrest control of that stretch of border with Turkey from the insurgents that currently hold Azaz. Russian bombing raids on rebel fighters are helping the Syrian army to advance toward Aleppo, the country’s largest city and commercial centre before the conflict. If the army takes the city, it will by the Syrian government’s biggest victory of the war.

At least 23 dead as missiles hit three hospitals, school in Syrian towns

22 transgenders get SI appointment orders in Tamil Nadu Capping her legal battle, transgender K Prithika Yashini along with 21 other members of the community

Pamma has been released today by the Portugal Authorities and will very soon be back in the UK with his family. On behalf of Paramjeet SIngh and his family we would like to thanks all those who participated and supported in the political and legal campaign and pressure to secure Paramjeet Singh’s release and stop the illegal extradition to India. We are grateful that the Minister of Justice in Portugal has rejected the case and false claims, evidence and pressure by the India Government, despite all its efforts to defame the Sikh community and Paramjeet.

Cllr Preet Kaur Gill who has

undergoing medical checkup.

The candidates will undergo SI training in Chennai, police said. Yashini had moved the Madras High Court last year after her application for the post of SI was rejected by the Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board (TNUSRB).

The court in November last had directed the TNUSRB to appoint her as SI as she is entitled to get the job and also asked it to include transgenders as third category.

The court had appreciated the cause canvassed by Yashini.

towns on Monday, residents said, as Russian-backed Syrian troops intensified their push toward the rebel stronghold of Aleppo.

Fourteen people were killed in the town of Azaz near the Turkish border when missiles slammed into a school sheltering families fleeing the offensive and the children’s hospital, two residents and a medic said.

moving scores of screaming children from the hospital,” said medic Juma Rahal. At least two children were killed and scores of people injured, he said. Activists posted video online purporting to show the damaged hospital. Three crying babies lay in incubators in a ward littered with broken medical equipment. Reuters could not independently verify the video.

Chinese paper slams Modi government’s ‘paper growth’ A commentary in a Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper has slammed the Narendra Modi government’s economic policy as “a success today but a failure tomorrow”, rejecting the prospects of sustained Indian growth posing a challenge to China’s slowing down economy.

Describing India’s 7.4 per cent GDP growth rate as “paper growth”, the commentary said India’s growth rate surpassing China’s 6.9 per cent in 2015 was more a result of “manipulated economic data” rather than a reflection of a shift of global economic power from China to India.

The article was published

on Monday in the Global Times, a tabloid known for its hard-line views under the stable of the Communist Party’s official mouthpiece People’s Daily. The piece

China’s own experience, they warned that seeking investment-driven growth can be “a misfortune rather than a blessing”.

“Modi’s ‘recipe’ is nothing

was authored by Dai Yonghong, director of the Institute of South Asian Studies, Sichuan University, and Wang Jianping, a scholar at the same university. Pointing to

more than efforts to attract investment, with the heat of capital to push development in India.

Indeed, the power of capital can really create the myth of prosperity, but

it’s presumed that it can also create a bubble trap in which lies the greatest risks for the future development. A highly efficient Chinese government finds it difficult to deal with the troublesome middle income trap, so how can one expect Modi’s successors to drag the “burdensome democracy” of India to create miracles?”

The authors said the Modi government’s economic policy would not work in the long-term, saying he was “too persistent in pushing the image of a bustling and prosperous economy while remains blinded to the root of India’s ills”.

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16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Issue - 654 (4)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Mideast is heading for major wars!

Turkey’s military started shelling Kurdish YPG militia targets in northern Syria near the Turkish border on Saturday and continued it into the third day on Monday.

The shelling continued for two hours. The attacks were triggered by the YPG capture of Menagh, a former military air base near the town of Azaz. This is military escalation week following last week’s “peace agreement” between the US, Russia, and other international leaders. There has been an increasingly bitter disagreement between Turkey and the United States over the role of the YPG in Syria. The YPG has links to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in Turkey, a separatist group that has conducted numerous terrorist attacks in Turkey since 1984. The stated goal of the YPG is to fulfill the PKK’s separatist goals in Syria by creating a de facto Kurdish state from west Syria to east Syria and into Iraq, along Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

Turkey says that the YPG is also a

THE CONTACT STAFF: EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Sunny Bains Lt. Hon. President : Dr. (Prof.) Darshan Singh Executive Editor: Kanwaljit Kaur Bains EDITOR Vinny Bains

terrorist organization. The United States designates the PKK as a terrorist organization but says that the YPG is not.

Although the Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims, the Kurdish militias are politically on the far left and are allied with Russia and the Alawite/Shia government of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad. The US has supplied arms to the YPG in its fight against the so-called Islamic State or Daesh after ISIS brutally attacked the Kurds in northern Iraq last year. American support for the YPG in Syria has led to vitriolic attacks by Turkish leaders on America. Turkey has repeatedly warned that a Kurdish attempt to take control of the area on the Turkish border north of Aleppo, which would be a strategic victory in the YPG goal of a Kurdish state, would be entirely unacceptable to Turkey and would trigger a Turkish military response.

Earlier in the day, a Turkish military source said that “PYD/PKK” forces had shelled Turkish targets. US State Dept. spokesman John Kirby responded by saying that the US would continue full support of the YPG in Syria. There was no statement from the Russian officials regarding the attack on the Kurds, but it’s pretty certain that Russia will retaliate, possibly even bombing military targets on Turkish soil. This would be a major further escalation.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey plan joint ground troop incursion into Syria Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar have all announced that they would send troops to Syria to fight ISIS if appropriate. Saudi Arabia is sending 8 to 10 warplanes to Turkey’s Incirlik air base, saying that they will be used in crossborder attacks on ISIS in Syria. Everyone says that they’re only attacking ISIS, no matter who they’re attacking. Incirlik air

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base is already being used by the U.S.led coalition with Britain and France in cross-border attacks on ISIS. In addition, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are discussing plans for a joint operation to deploy ground troops into Syria to fight ISIS on the ground. The discussion of Saudi and Turkey ground troops in Syria has drawn sharp criticism from within Turkey itself.

As I’ve been writing for some time now, the Mideast is headed for a major war between Shias and Sunnis, between Arabs and Jews, and between different ethnic groups. Almost every day there’s a new event that moves the Mideast along that path. It may not be very long now.

The vitriolic hatred of Bashar al-Assad Some days ago I read a comment on an internet blog: “There are no Sunni ‘civilians in Syria.” Another commenter on the same site had referred to the Syrian opposition groups as “roaches.” This epithet sounded very familiar to me from having studied the 1994 Rwanda genocide. The Hutus were incited to slaughter the Tutsis with “You have to kill the Tutsis, they’re cockroaches.” So, when someone says that “there are no Sunni civilians,” then he means that all Sunnis are terrorists.

And when someone says that they’re “cockroaches,” he means that they have

to be exterminated.

What happened in SUNNY BAINS Rwanda in 1994 is almost impossible for an ordinary human to believe. Prior to the 1990s, right circumstances - particularly during Hutus and Tutsis had lived together, a generational crisis war, any human intermarried and had their children play being might act that way. I will write and with each other. When the 1994 genocide discuss about the subject of rape being occurred, a Hutu might pick up a used as a common act of revenge during machete, go to the Tutsi home next door a war at length in another article. We’ve or down the street, murder and seen other recent examples of this kind dismember the man and children, rape of behavior. Al-Qaeda and ISIS jihadists the wife and then murder and dismember have been torturing and killing people, her. Almost a million Tutsis were killed. especially Shia Muslims, in this way. In In her book, World on Fire, Yale law Burma (Myanmar), Buddhist death professor Amy Chua describes how, living squads have been torturing and in the Philippines, her Chinese ancestry massacring ethnic Rohingyas and other gave her family élite privileges not Muslims in the most brutal possible way. available to indigenous Filipinos. Her So now, let’s come back to Bashar alfamily was wealthy, with numerous Filipino Assad. It’s been obvious to me since 2011 servants who slept in the basement that al-Assad wanted to exterminate all

“sleeping on mats on a dirt floor, in a place that stank of sweat and urine, living on less than two dollars a day. When her chauffeur murdered her aunt, the police investigated and found the motive to be “Revenge.” Amy Chua says, “Each time I think of (the chauffer) Nilo Abique - he was close to six feet and my aunt was fourfeet-eleven-inches tall - I find myself welling up with a hatred and revulsion so intense it is actually consoling.”

Amy Chua described what happened in the 1990s in the Bosnian war: “My aunt’s killing was just a pinprick in a world more violent than most of us ever imagined.

In America we read about acts of mass slaughter and savagery; at first in faraway places, now coming closer and closer to home. We do not understand what connects these acts.

Nor do we understand the role we have played in bringing them about. In the Serbian concentration camps of the early 1990s, the women prisoners were raped over and over, many times a day, often with broken bottles, often together with their daughters. The men, if they were lucky, were beaten to death as their Serbian guards sang national anthems; if they were not so fortunate, they were castrated or, at gunpoint, forced to castrate their fellow prisoners, sometimes with their own teeth. In all, thousands were tortured and executed.”

Compared to this kind of hatred, the “hatred” that Americans talk about today is silly by comparison - someone who opposes gay marriage is guilty of “hatred” in the US. So you have to wonder what was going on in Rwanda and Bosnia. If you’re going to kill someone, then just kill them. What’s the point of having one of them castrate the other with his teeth?

Where does this level of irrational, psychopathic behavior come from? Well, it’s part of the human DNA. It’s not unique to any religion or ethnic group. Under the

Sunnis because of his level of vitriolic hatred of all Sunnis. This was obvious when he started responding to peaceful protests by massacring entire Sunni villages and when his warplanes were bombing school children as they slept in the dormitories. It was even more apparent in 2014 when 50,000 photos emerged of 11,000 men who had been tortured with electrocution, eye-gouging, strangulation, starvation, and beating prisoners on a massive “industrial strength” scale. They were similar to the images found in Nazi death camps after World War II (see pictures on this page).

As I’ve said in the past, Bashar al-Assad is the greatest genocidal monster in today’s world, comparable to Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin. For years, he’s been killing thousands of Syrian civilians every week with complete impunity, using Russiansupplied barrel bombs on civilian neighborhoods. And he’s used sarin chemical weapons on civilians. He uses the most gruesome forms of torture on a personal, individual scale, as well as on a mass scale. There is no mass weapon of destruction or any gruesome form of torture that he won’t use to satisfy his psychopathy. And he’s being supported in his genocide and psychopathy by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Iran’s supreme leader Seyed Ali Khamenei, who are guilty of supporting the same psychopath and genocide, making them war criminals.

Syria is in a generational awakening era, meaning that the Syrian civil war should have completely fizzled out long ago. In a sense it has because it’s less a civil war than a proxy war. But what’s kept is going is the intense, vitriolic hatred felt by one person, Bashar al-Assad, and by the willingness of his acolytes, Putin and Khamenei, to support him. And that’s how I knew that the peace process ‘proximity talks’ would never succeed, and how I know that there will not be a ceasefire in Syria, as long as Bashar al-Assad is in power and can count on the support of his acolytes and the war criminals Putin and Khamenei!

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This is a leap year and in the olden days, when the world was a much more stupid, sexist, place, it was held that only once every four years, when February got an extra day, was it appropriate for a woman to propose marriage to a man. Happily, we have all moved a long way on from such ridiculous inhibitions and prohibitions. Or, er, have we? Are there other moves or gestures that someone, in your world, now feels they dare not make for fear of being badly judged? Encourage a little courage! !!!

All relationships involve a power struggle. The balance of that power never stays the same. Even if it swings so far to one extreme that nobody can even imagine it swinging back again, all we need to do is wait. Time is a miracle worker. Patience is the translator that helps us to understand what time is saying. Sincerity is the only currency that time can be bribed with. Where a change is long overdue in your personal life, an event can soon set a slow but wonderful process in motion. !!!

Should we wait patiently to see how the world intends to reward us? Or should we stride out boldly and start shaking the tree of potential reward until the fruit falls at our feet? Some recommend a more passive approach. ‘Agitate that tree too vigorously,’ they warn, ‘and you risk an unripe fruit, falling hard on your head!’ They prefer to sit beneath the branches until nature takes its course.

There is often much to be said for such a philosophy, but not so much to be said for it in your life! !!!

People aren’t always as nice to each other as we wish they were. They may mean well, but then they find themselves unable to forget some past conflict and cannot move on from old stresses and strains. Thus, the old stresses and strains become new stresses and strains! And so it goes on until, or unless, a brave choice is made to seek healing and resolution rather than exacerbate old tension.

The sky insists you can work just such a miracle, in your personal or emotional life. !!!

Other people can make such a difference to our lives. When we feel things are good between us and them, our hearts well up with happiness, our minds over-brim with confidence and we naturally gravitate towards beneficial opportunities. Yet, when there is tension, the reverse is true. The moral of that then is to work even harder at healing wounds, moving on from past conflicts, letting go, forgiving and forgetting. Those policies will prove your keys to every kind of success. !!!

We can’t change each other, and we won’t ever find romantic joy by wishing that we could. We can, though, change ourselves - though this takes a lot of patience and often requires the support of someone special, kind and close. If, in a gesture of affection and sincerity, we attempt to alter an aspect of our own persona or to change our behavior in order to meet someone else’s need, we are hardly being foolish. That’s an act of wisdom, likely to produce only the most delightful reward in time.

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Syria says proposed ceasefire ‘difficult’

DAMASCUS Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad poured cold water on an internationally backed plan for a ceasefire to begin later this week, saying it would be “difficult” to implement.

His comments were the first from the embattled leader on the plan put forward by world leaders in Munich on last Friday for a so-called “cessation of hostilities” to begin within a week. “They are saying they want a ceasefire in a week. Who is capable of gathering all the conditions and requirements in a week?

No one,” Assad said in televised remarks in Damascus on Sunday.

“Who will talk to the terrorists? If a terrorist group refuses the ceasefire,

World powers last week called for immediate humanitarian access throughout Syria and a ceasefire to begin within a week, which would not include al-Qaida affiliate Al-

who will hold them to account? Practically, talking (about a ceasefire) is difficult,” he said, according to a transcript of his comments published by state news agency SANA.

Nusra Front or the Islamic State (IS) group.

But the details of just how the plan would be implemented remain to be worked out, with a UN panel co-chaired by the US and

Russia tasked with the job.

Assad said a ceasefire could not mean “that everyone stops using their weapons. This is the narrow sense,” he said. “A ceasefire must mean stopping terrorists from strengthening their positions. Moving weapons, equipment, terrorists or strengthening positions must all be forbidden,” he added.

The international plan is intended to bolster the chances for new peace talks, which began at the end of January but collapsed before getting off the ground amid mutual suspicion and opposition calls for the implementation of UN resolutions on protection of civilians and the lifting of sieges. As the talks opened, the regime

launched a major operation in northern Aleppo province, backed by Russian forces, drawing the ire of the opposition and its backers including Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The two countries have talked recently about the possibility of dispatching ground forces into Syria to fight IS, and Assad warned that any such intervention into his country would have “global, not just local, repercussions”. The UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura arrived in Damascus late yesterday on a surprise visit to discuss the ceasefire plan and efforts to renew peace talks later this month. He is due to meet Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem for talks today, a government source told AFP.

Indian envoy in Islamabad says foreign secretary-level talks still on

ISLAMABAD he said, and ruled Indian high out India’s commissioner to interference in the Pakistan, Gautam affairs of Pakistan Bambawale, on and Afghanistan, Monday said that saying both the meeting countries are between the independent and foreign secretaries sovereign states. of India and Bambawale avoidPakistan was not ed comment on conditional on the recent investigations into statement of the Pathankot Pakistani high airbase attack. commissioner to The remark by the India, Abdul Basit, envoy comes even calling for a as India’s top speedy resolution political leadership of the stand-off remains convinced between the two that Pakistan has countries at the Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar meeting with his counterpart not done enough in Siachen Glacier, Aizaz Chaudhary.

Pathankot investithe world’s highest gations for New Delhi to go Lahore. He said both learnt to have said that battlefield. The assault on ahead with the FS-level countries are in constant economic cooperation the Pathankot airbase on talks. contact to finalize dates of between the neighbours January, which came after The Indian political foreign secretary-level talks would help them come an unscheduled visit of leadership believes that its in the near future. “I cannot closer.

“Trade and Indian Prime Minister decision to back out of the give any specific date for economic interdependence Narendra Modi to Lahore to talks in January was FS-level talks, but it will should be developed meet his Pakistani vindicated by 26/11 take place as soon as the between both sides. It will counterpart, mired efforts to accused David Coleman situation becomes reduce the danger of revive talks between the two Headley’s testimony, as favourable. The national confrontation,” Bambawale countries. India stated that also former Pakistan security advisors and was quoted in reports. it was the handiwork of president Pervez foreign secretaries from Bambawale further said JeM, a Pakistan-based Musharraf’s admission that both countries are in that the immigration banned militant the ISI is involved in training constant contact,” process between India and organization led by Jaish-e-Mohammed and Bambawale was quoted as Pakistan needed to be Maulana Masood Azhar, Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists. having said by Pakistan eased. “Easy travel of and handed over actionable Bambawale was speaking media. citizens from both countries evidence to Pakistan to at a gathering in a hotel in The envoy, moreover, is would help in building trust,” prove its claim.

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16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

DNA rice breakthrough raises ‘green revolution’ hopes LOS BANOS Rice-growing techniques learned through thousands of years of trial and error are about to be turbocharged with DNA technology in a breakthrough hailed by scientists as a potential second “green revolution”.

Over the next few years farmers are expected to have new genome sequencing technology at their disposal, helping to offset a myriad of problems that threaten to curtail production of the grain that feeds half of humanity.

Drawing on a massive bank of varieties stored in the Philippines and stateof-the-art Chinese technology, scientists recently completed the DNA sequencing of more than 3,000 of the world’s most significant types of rice.

With the huge pool of data unlocked, rice breeders will soon be able to produce higheryielding varieties much more quickly and under increasingly stressful conditions, scientists involved with the project told AFP. Other potential new varieties being dreamt about are ones that are resistant to certain pests and diseases, or types that pack more nutrients and vitamins.

“This will be a big help to strengthen food security for rice eaters,” said Kenneth McNally, an American biochemist at the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Since rice was first domesticated

molecular genetics promise to fast-track the process, eliminating much of the mystery, scientists involved in the project told AFP. Better rice varieties can now be expected to be developed and

thousands of years ago, farmers have improved yields through various planting techniques. For the past century breeders have isolated traits, such as high yields and disease resistance, then developed them through cross breeding. However, they did not know which genes controlled which traits, leaving much of the effort to lengthy guesswork.

The latest breakthroughs in

passed on to farmers’ hands in less than three years, compared with 12 without the guidance of DNA sequencing. Genome sequencing involves decoding DNA, the hereditary material of all living cells and organisms. The process roughly compares with solving a giant jigsaw puzzle made up of billions of microscopic pieces.

A multinational team undertook the four-year project with the DNA

decoding primarily in China by BGI, the world’s biggest genome sequencing firm.

Leaf tissue from the samples, drawn mostly from IRRI’s gene bank of 127,000 varieties were ground by McNally’s team at its laboratory in Los Banos, near Manila’s southern outskirts, before being shipped for sequencing.

A non-profit research outfit founded in 1960, IRRI works with governments to develop advanced varieties of the grain.

Farmers and breeders will need the new DNA tools, which scientists take pains to say is not genetic modification, because of the increasingly stressful conditions for rice growing expected in the 21st Century. While there will be many more millions to feed, there is expected to be less land available for planting as farms are converted for urban development, destroyed by rising sea levels or converted to other crops.

Rice-paddy destroying floods, drought and storms are also expected to worsen with climate change. Meanwhile, pests and diseases that evolve to resist herbicides and pesticides will be more difficult to kill.

And fresh water, vital for growing rice, is expected to become an increasingly scarce commodity in many parts of the world.

As scientists develop the tools necessary to harness the full advantages of the rice genome database, the hope is that new varieties can be developed to combat all those problems.

“Essentially, you will be able to design what properties you want in rice, in terms of the drought resistance, resistance to diseases, high yields, and others,” said Russian bioanalytics expert and IRRI team member Nickolai Alexandrov. Scientists behind the project hope it will lead to a second “green revolution”.

The first began in the 1960s as the development of higheryielding varieties of wheat and rice was credited with preventing massive global food shortages around the world. That giant leap to producing more food involved the cross-breeding of unrelated varieties to produce new ones that grew faster and produced higher yields, mainly by being able to respond better to fertiliser. But the massive gains of the earlier efforts, which earnt US geneticist Norman Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, have since reached a plateau.

Dutch open first ‘poop Drought may affect 49m in Africa bank’ to treat gut diseases THE HAGUE After blood and sperm banks, Dutch researchers have now opened the country’s first “poop bank” in a rare and cutting-edge branch of medicine to treat people with chronic gut infections.

“Our poop bank will help give doctors and hospitals access to transplants of fecal matter,” Ed Kuijper, professor of microbiology at Leiden University, told AFP. The Netherlands Donor Feces Bank (NDFB) will collect, store and distribute the stools necessary to help with such transplants. Often this is the “only solution for people suffering from chronic intestinal infections, and in particular ‘Clostridium difficile (CD)’,” a bacteria which can develop in patients particularly after lengthy and heavy courses of antibiotics, Kuijper said. “Certain antibiotics destroy intestinal flora which

allows bacteria to develop and spread,” he explained.

“Transplants of fecal matter allow healthy bacteria to be put back into the body, which then spread in the intestines and recreate healthy flora in the gut.”

There are about 3,000 people diagnosed with CD annually in the Netherlands, and about five percent of cases become chronic. About three to four transplants of fecal material are carried out in the country every month.

In some cases, such infections can be fatal after triggering severe diarrhoea, inflammation of the colon and even intestinal perforations.

Donors must be “in good health, neither too overweight or too skinny and must have good intestinal flora,” said Kuijper.

Unlike in the United States, where the first two poop banks were opened last year, donors are not paid. Donations are collected at home, and the donor remains anonymous.

The donated stools are taken to the bank in western city of Leiden and then transformed into a product which can be transplanted either through a nasal endoscopy or implanted directly via a colonoscopy.

It is hoped the “poop bank” will also aid research into other illnesses and may be adapted for other conditions such as the debilitating Crohn’s disease.

“Stool donations are not as accepted yet as blood donations,” Kuipjer acknowledged.

HARARE As many as 49 million people in southern Africa could be affected by a drought that has been worsened by the most severe and longest El Nino weather pattern in 35 years, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Monday.

The WFP, which has already said 14 million people face hunger in the region, said the El Nino conditions had caused the lowest recorded rainfall between October and December since 1981. The forecast for January to March indicated a high probability of below-normal rainfall in southern Africa, which would result in one of the worst droughts on record, it added.

“It is estimated that 40 million rural people and 9 million poor urban people who live in droughtaffected areas could be exposed,” the WFP said in its latest report.

The drought has hit much of the region, including the maize belt

in South Africa, the continent’s most advanced economy and the top producer of the staple grain.

In Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, planting delayed by two months or more has

production in Zimbabwe had fallen by half compared to last year and maize was 53 percent more expensive. Zimbabwe last week said it needed nearly $1.6 billion in aid to help pay for grain

severely impacted maize yields.

Malawi is experiencing its first maize deficit in a decade, pushing the price 73 percent higher than the December 2015 average. In Mozambique, prices were 50 percent higher than last year. The WFP said food

and other food after the drought.

El Nino events typically bring drier conditions to southern Africa and wetter ones to East Africa.

The dry, hot conditions are expected to persist until the start of the southern hemisphere autumn in April or May.

Sea Shepherd struggling to find Japan whaling fleet SYDNEY Environmental activist group Sea Shepherd admitted Monday it was struggling to find Japanese whaling vessels in the vast Southern Ocean and urged the Australian government to help. Its flagship Steve Irwin left Western Australia for the remote area on January 18 to chase and disrupt

the annual hunt, which resumed in December after a one-year

pause despite a worldwide moratorium and widespread condemnation. After a decade of harassment by Sea Shepherd, Japan was forced to abandon its 2014-15 hunt after the International Court of Justice said the expedition was a commercial activity masquerading as research.

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16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

War-scarred ruins of Syria’s Homs inspire artists Devastated by 20 months of combat between regime forces and rebel fighters, the haunting ruins of the Old City of Homs now serve as inspiration for some

the government imposed a siege on the area, and fighting wrought massive destruction, grinding buildings into scarred concrete shells and wiping

Syrian artists. In summer 2014, director Joud Said decided to set his film ‘It’s Raining in Homs’ in the ruins, just three months after the last rebels left the area under a truce deal following a lengthy siege.

‘We were preparing a film about three people in the siege, and we planned to film it on a set,’ he told AFP. ‘But when the agreement (with the rebels) happened, we moved everything to Homs, with the real backdrop and real tragedy,’ said the 35year-old director.

Homs in central Syria was nicknamed the ‘capital of the revolution’ by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, and saw massive demonstrations against his rule after the uprising began in March 2011. When the uprising transformed into a war after a government crackdown, the army seized virtually all of Homs except its Old City, which remained a rebel bastion from December 2012 until May 2014. During that period,

away signs of life. Said’s film is set in the last three months of the siege. It tells the story of a woman and her sister who enter the Old City during an evacuation of civilians, and stay there with the help of a priest to search for their brother.

‘The ruins are one of the characters in the film because they show what human beings are capable of in terms of material destruction and massacres, not only against other human beings but also our culture, our heritage,’ said the filmmaker. Said - who won the best Arab film award at the 2015 edition of the Cairo International Film Festival - spent 100 days with his crew filming in the ruins, with only soldiers for company.

‘These ruins tell the story of people’s memories. The presence of those who disappeared can still be felt on the balconies, through the windows and even through the curtains,’ he said. ‘We don’t know what they have become,

In five years of civil war, 400,000 Syrians have been killed and another 70,000 have perished due to a lack of basics such as clean water and

wants President Bashar al-Assad to go. But Russia and Iran are propping up Assad and oppose the opponents of Assad who are being supported by the West its Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia.

About 400,000 of the deaths were directly due to violence, while 70,000 died because they didn’t have proper healthcare, medicine, clean water or housing.

It said 1.9 million people had been wounded. Life expectancy has dropped from 70 in 2010 to 55.4 in 2015. Overall economic losses are estimated at $255 billion, the Guardian said.

4,70,000 killed in five years of Syrian civil war: The Guardian

healthcare, the Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.

With those injured in the confict, that amounts to more 11 per cent of the population, it said, citing the Syrian Centre for Policy Research.

A US-led coalition is trying to destroy Islamic State militants in Syria and

refugees, perhaps dead.’

Syria’s army has been accused of most of the destruction of Homs, in a bid to root out the rebels who were entrenched inside. But Said is not interested in apportioning blame.

‘We, the Syrians, are all guilty, all responsible for our own misfortunes,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter who did what, where and how.

It’s up to us to find the ways to heal both the wounds on our souls and our stones.’ More than 260,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict, which has also displaced more than half the country’s population.

Other artists too have turned to the ruins for their work, including painter Yara Issa, 26, a Homs native. Originally from Bab Sebaa, a district of the Old City, Issa was forced to move to Damascus after her house was destroyed.

‘All my paintings are inspired by the war,’ she told AFP. ‘People killed, explosions, shelling... I use cold colours that suggest sadness,’ she said of her abstract works. ‘Syrian artists paint so that people won’t forget the consequences of the war, so they remember the past,’ she added.

Photographer Jaafar Merhi chose destroyed buildings and rubble as a backdrop for wedding pictures, that show young couples standing in deserted, bombed-out streets. ‘The first time I suggested photographing a couple here they were take aback.

When I explain to them that I want to show love exists despite the ruins, some accept, and others don’t.’ he said.

A fierce supporter of the Syrian government, the 22year-old blames ‘terrorists’ for the devastation and says the army did its duty in retaking the area by force.

Merhi has photographed three weddings in the ruins, most recently that of 18year-old bride Rana and her 27-year-old groom Hassan Youssef, a soldier.

In one of the shots the couple - Rana in a white dresss and Youssef in military fatigues - are seen locked in an embrace on the upper floor of a pockmarked building shorn of its facade and windows.

‘I agreed to have my photos taken in this devastated area because one day I will show them to my children to explain that despite all this sadness, life goes on,’ said Rana.

A $334 million dream: Replica of Titanic to set sail in 2018

Titanic will sail again.

The “unsinkable ship”, as it was referred to by its makers, sank during its maiden voyage in 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic.

More than a century later, a fully-functional replica of the gigantic vessel will set sail in 2018, according to a media report.Built at a cost of 300 million pounds by an Australian billionaire Clive Palmer and his company Blue Star Line, Titanic II is 270 metres long, 53 metres high and weighs 40,000 tonnes. Unlike the original, the new ship will be four metres wider to meet 21st century safety regulations and have enough lifeboats, along with marine

evacuation systems besides a boat deck housing replicas of the original lifeboats.Titanic II’s maiden voyage will not be from Southampton to New York, like the original ship, but from Jiangsu in eastern China to Dubai.“The new Titanic will of course have modern evacuation procedures, satellite controls, digital navigation and radar systems and all those things you’d expect on a 21st century ship,” said James McDonald, marketing director of Blue Star Line. “It is people looking to use the opportunity of the trademark and licensing potential of the project... We own the Titanic II name and

trademark and people are lining up to be part of it,” McDonald was quoted as saying by ‘Independent’.

The updated version, physically identical to its predecessor except for small changes made to satisfy modern safety requirements, will offer first, second and third class tickets.It will have nine floors to accommodate 2,400 passengers and 900 crew members, besides a swimming pool, Turkish baths and gyms.The original Titanic, the ‘ship of dreams’ sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic - killing more than 1,500 passengers and crew.

Issue - 654 (8)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

‘Iron Boy’ saves Sydney as Downey Jr tweets support

Red carpet for Sisi’s convoy criticised in Egypt Cairo The use of a red carpet for the motorcade of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has provoked criticism in Egypt.Cars carrying Mr Sisi and other officials drove down the red carpet on Saturday as they were visiting projects in 6 October City, a suburb of Cairo. Several commentators questioned the apparent extravagance, just as the president was making a speech about the need to cut government subsidies. The military said the carpet was meant to give joy to the Egyptian people. Criticism of Mr Sisi, a former military chief who led the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi in 2013, is rare in mainstream Egyptian media. But media personalities and activists mocked the fact that pictures of the presidential motorcade driving down a road covered in red carpet were broadcast shortly before Mr Sisi gave a speech in which he warned the state could not continue subsidising water and

electricity bills for low-income families.Youssef al-Husseini, a presenter on the private ON TV, asked: ‘How could you reach such a level of hypocrisy by rolling out red carpets on the streets for the president’s motorcade? Could we not have spent the money on buying duvets for people freezing in the cold?’ Haytham Muhammadayn, a member of the Revolutionary Socialist movement, posted a screengrab on Facebook with the comment: ‘Sisi is trampling on the people’s money.’

However, the deputy head of the military’s moral affairs department, Brig Ihab alQahwaji, stressed that the carpet was only made of light cloth and had been used for more than three years. ‘The carpet is not expensive, and it was used before and will be used in other coming ceremonies,’ he told CBC TV on Sunday. ‘We want to give the impression that Egypt is moving in the right direction, and we want to present a bit of joy to our people,’ he added.

Russian court throws out lawsuit against Putin Moscow A Russian court has thrown out a lawsuit against President Vladimir Putin filed by top opposition leader Alexei Navalny over alleged graft, saying the Kremlin chief was effectively untouchable.On Thursday anticorruption crusader Navalny announced he had filed a lawsuit against Putin, accusing him of ordering huge loans to a firm owned by the president`s son-inlaw.“In accordance with article 91 of the Russian constitution the President of the Russian Federation enjoys immunity,” said a decision by judge Tatyana Molitvina at Moscow`s Tverskoi district court, state news agency RIA Novosti reported on Friday.

Citing public records and statements, Navalny said that 33-year-old Kirill Shamalov who is believed to be Putin`s son-inlaw came to own a stake in petrochemical company Sibur shortly before Putin allegedly ordered that it be provided with $1.75 billion in cheap financing from Russia`s national welfare

fund.Navalny said the court did not want to accept the case to avoid what would become hugely sensitive hearings.He vowed to press ahead with his efforts, however.“The truth is on our side,” he wrote on his blog. “Any normal person (even if he`s a Putin

supporter) would agree that there`s a conflict of interests here.”Critics have accused Putin of using his 15 years in power to muzzle free media and strip courts and other institutions of independence while letting his friends and acquaintances enrich themselves.Kirill Shamalov is the son of Nikolai Shamalov, a shareholder of the Rossiya bank which is blacklisted and identified by the US Treasury as “the personal bank” for senior officials owned by “members of Putin`s inner circle.”

SYDNEY A seriously ill Australian boy was Thursday granted his wish to become a superhero like Iron Man, with police staging an elaborate event on the Sydney Opera House steps as Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr tweeted his support.

Nine-year-old Domenic Pace, who has battled cystic fibrosis throughout his life, has long idolised Marvel superhero Iron Man and expressed his wish to be “Iron Boy”, with the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted his dream to fight crime in Australia’s biggest city.In scenes reminiscent of Batkid - a five-year-old boy recovering from cancer who in 2013 became the diminutive version of the crime-fighter Batman in San Francisco Sydneysiders turned out to watch Pace save the day on the harbour in a spectacle that took almost a year to organise.

“Sent a very special boy on a top secret mission today. Go get ‘em, Domenic! #IronBoyAU @MakeAWishAust,” American actor Robert Downey Jr, who plays Iron Man in the Marvel films, tweeted Thursday. New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew

Scipione told Pace, who was playing in a Sydney park when he was flown by helicopter to police headquarters for the surprise mission, that authorities needed his help. “Make-A-Wish

Rhodes as he told reporters he was “ready to get down to business”.

The schoolboy was then whisked off in an inflatable boat to Clark Island in Sydney

reporter Hope Joy has been kidnapped. Officers have confirmed that Clark Island has been overtaken by Ultron’s henchmen and Hope Joy is being held captive,” Scipione said in a video recording. “If I could make one wish, it would be for you to help us, Iron Boy.” Pace was fitted with a specially made Iron Boy suit and his 12-year-old brother Joseph played the role of Iron Man sidekick Colonel James

Harbour, where he freed the fictional reporter before engaging in a fight with villainous robot Ultron on the steps of the iconic Opera House. “Go Dom!,” Australian thespian Liam Hemsworth, the younger brother of Hollywood star Chris Hemsworth who plays Thor in the same series of movies, tweeted as #IronBoyAU became the top-trending hashtag on Twitter in Australia.

Australian scientists offer new hope for paraplegics SYDNEY Australian researchers have created a ‘bionic spinal cord’ they said Tuesday could give paralysed people hope of walking again through the power of thought, without resorting to open brain surgery.

The system would use a device the size of a paperclip implanted in a blood vessel next to the brain. The stentbased electrode would record the brain activity needed for movement and this would be translated into commands to control wheelchairs, exoskeletons, prosthetic limbs or computers.

‘We have been able to create the world’s only minimally invasive device that is implanted into a blood vessel in the brain via a simple day procedure, avoiding the need for high risk open brain surgery,’ researcher Thomas Oxley said. Oxley, a neurologist at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and research fellow at The Florey Institute of Neurosciences and the University of Melbourne, described the device, or stentrode, as revolutionary.

‘Our vision, through this device, is to return function and mobility to patients with complete paralysis by recording brain

activity and converting the acquired signals into electrical commands, which in turn would lead to movement of the limbs through a mobility assist device

like an exoskeleton,’ he said in a statement.

‘In essence this a bionic spinal cord.’ The research, which will see the first in-human trial at The Royal Melbourne Hospital in 2017, was published Tuesday in Nature Biotechnology. It shows the device could record highquality signals emitted from the brain’s motor cortex, without the need for open brain surgery, based on research using sheep.

Brain-machine interface is one of the main areas of research in paralysis treatment. In 2014, scientists in the United States said they had demonstrated how a monkey could use only its thoughts, transferred by electrodes via a computer, to manipulate the arm of a fully-

sedated fellow primate. Two years earlier, a collaboration between researchers in the United States and the German Aerospace Centre enabled a paralysed woman to lift a drink to her lips with a thoughtcontrolled robotic arm.

Speaking to AFP, Oxley said that all the other brainmachine interface technologies had involved inserting an electrode directly into the brain. He said the aim was for the new device to work much like a cardiac pacemaker, which is typically inserted without openheart surgery.

‘The cardiac pacemaker is essentially the classic bionic device - it goes inside a vein, it sits next to the heart and it works for a lifetime,’ Oxley said.

‘And we are essentially trying to do the exact same thing for the brain. Go up a vein, leave it there, and have a lifetime of recordings coming out of it.’ It is hoped that the research, which involved 39 scientists from the Royal Melbourne Hospital, the University of Melbourne and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, could also be used to treat epilepsy, depression and Parkinsons.

Issue - 654 (9)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Britain’s Independent newspaper set to close in March

Britain’s Independent newspaper will publish its last print edition next month as it makes a “historic transition” to digital-only format, its owner said on Friday.

ESI Media said The Independent’s final paper edition will appear on March 26. Sister paper the Independent on Sunday will end with the March 20 issue.

Owner Evgeny Lebedev said the Independent brand will continue online.

“We faced a choice: manage the continued decline of print, or convert the digital foundation we’ve built into a sustainable, profitable future,” he said in an email to staff.

Lebedev said there would be staff layoffs, but it was not

immediately clear how many.

Another of the company’s papers, the commuter-focused daily newspaper i, has been sold to regional newspaper publisher Johnston Press for 24 million pounds ($35 million).

The Independent was founded in 1986, and has employed high-profile journalists including Robert Fisk, Will Self and Helen Fielding, creator of “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Like other papers The Independent has seen its print circulation plummet with the rise of digital media. It now distributes fewer than 60,000 copies a day, down from a high of more than 400,000. Lebedev’s ESI Media also owns London’s Evening Standard newspaper, distributed free on weekdays.

Russia is ready to discuss possible ceasefire in Syria Russia is ready to discuss a possible ceasefire in Syria, Russian news agencies reported on Thursday citing Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov.“We are ready to discuss

the modalities of a ceasefire in Syria,” TASS cited Gatilov as saying. “This is what will be talked about in Munich”.Gatilov also said that peace talks could resume before Feb. 25, Interfax reported.

Major powers agree to plan for ‘cessation of hostilities’ in Syria Major powers agreed on Friday to a cessation of hostilities in Syria set to begin in a week and to provide rapid humanitarian access to besieged Syrian towns, but failed to secure a complete ceasefire or an end to Russian bombing.

Following a marathon meeting in Munich aimed at resurrecting peace talks that collapsed last week, the powers, including the United States, Russia and more than a dozen other nations, reaffirmed their commitment to a political transition when conditions on the ground improved.At a news conference, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged the Munich meeting produced commitments on paper only.

“What we need to see in the next few days are actions on the ground, in the field,” he said, adding that “without a political transition, it is not possible to achieve peace.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the news conference that Russia would not stop air attacks in Syria, saying the cessation of hostilities did not apply to Islamic State and al Nusrah, which is affiliated with al Qaeda. Islamic State militants control large parts of Syria and Iraq “Our airspace forces will continue working against these organizations,” he said.

The United States and European allies say few Russian strikes have targeted those groups, with the vast majority hitting Westernbacked opposition groups seeking to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad government.

Lavrov said peace talks should resume in Geneva as soon as

Canadian man missing for 30 years found after he remembers his name A differently-abled Canadian man who disappeared 30 years ago and was feared dead is set for an emotional reunion with his family after he suddenly

remembered his name, according to media reports.

Edgar Latulip, whose mental age was that of a child, was 21 when he walked out of a special home in Kitchener, Ontario in 1986, CBC News and other Canadian media reported on Wednesday.

Latulip, who had previously attempted suicide and was on medication, was never heard from again and his mother feared he might have been murdered.

That was until a man with a different identity living 120 kilometers (75 miles) away told his social worker last month that he thought his real name could be Edgar Latulip, after he had several flashbacks.

A DNA test subsequently

confirmed that the man was indeed Latulip.His mother Silvia Wilson, who later moved to Ottawa, described her surprise when she received the news by telephone last week from a police detective.“I don’t know what to think. I was just kind of blown away,” Wilson, 76, told The Record, describing her son as a troubled boy.“I want to talk to him and help him out any way I can.

I just want to see him.”The North American Missing Persons Network described Latulip as having the mental capacity of a 12-year-old.Niagara Regional Police Constable Philip Gavin told the Toronto Star and CBC that Latulip suffered a head injury after a fall around the time he went missing, impairing his memory so badly that he could not remember who he was, so he created a new identity.“I’ve been a police officer for 18 years and this is something I’ve seen on TV but never been a part of,” Gavin told the Star.“Absolutely, this is quite a rare one.”It was not immediately clear when the reunion would take place.

possible and that all Syrian opposition groups should participate. He added that halting hostilities would be a difficult task.

But British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said ending fighting could only succeed if

opposition forces. The latest advance over the past two weeks has seen government forces and allies rout rebels and come close to encircling Aleppo, a divided city half held by rebels for years.

The first peace talks in two years between belligerents in Syria fell

Russia stopped air strikes supporting Syrian government forces’ advance against the opposition.Diplomats cautioned that Russia had until now not demonstrated any interest in seeing Assad replaced and was pushing for a military victory.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday raised the spectre of an interminable conflict or even a world war if powers failed to negotiate an end to five years of fighting in Syria, which has killed 250,000 people, caused a refugee crisis and empowered Islamic State militants.

OPPOSITION GROUP CAUTIOUS Syria’s main opposition group welcomed the plan by the world powers on Friday.

It cautioned, however, that the agreement must prove to be effective before it joins political talks with government representatives in Geneva.

Russia’s intervention on the battlefield on behalf of Assad since last October has swung the momentum in the fight between the government and

apart last week before they began in the face of the advance

by Assad’s forces.

A senior French diplomat said: “The Russians said they will continue bombing the terrorists.

They are taking a political risk because they are accepting a negotiation in which they are committing to a cessation of hostilities. If in a week there is no change because of their bombing, then they will bear the responsibility.”

Washington is leading its own air campaign against Islamic State militants in eastern Syria and northern Iraq, but has resisted calls to intervene in the main battlefields of Syria’s civil war in the west of the country, where the government is mostly fighting against other insurgent groups.

The communique of the plan reached in Munich said the powers had established a ceasefire task force, under the auspices of the United Nations, co-chaired by Russia and the United States, and including members having government and opposition groups.

Nude painting case: Facebook can be tried in France, rules Paris court A French court ruled on Friday that a case against Facebook over a painting of a nude woman can be tried in France, rejecting Facebook’s argument that it is governed by Californian law.The social networking company blocked the account of a French professor and art lover after he uploaded a picture of Gustave Courbet’s 1866 canvas ‘The Origin of the World’, which shows a close-up view of female genitals.The Paris appeal court’s decision upheld a lower court ruling in March 2015 that a clause in Facebook’s terms of agreement signed by users was ‘abusive’ in reserving exclusive rights to a California court to hear disputes.Facebook, based in Palo Alto, California, had appealed against a Paris high

court’s authority to hear the case but the appeal court said Facebook’s claim was

inadmissible.Facebook said French courts were not competent to handle the case and that the contract with the user was “not a consumer contract because Facebook’s service was free.” But a high court judge ruled in 2015 that, “if the proposed service was free to the user, Facebook was generating significant profits from the business, including via paid applications, advertising and other resources.”

Issue - 654 (10)

Saini Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance from the GTA for their slim, fair, beautiful, 5’2"/ ’83 born daughter, born, raised, educated in Canada, Bachelors in Business Management, and employed in the Finance division of a reputable Canadian company. The boy should be clean shaven, born, raised and educated in Canada & professionally employed. Please email sub2405@gmail.com or call 416-741-0777 *** 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 ***654*** 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. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: gill.roop@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-639-317-7836 ***654*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their beautiful daughter, 25 yrs. old, working as RN in Seattle (USA) completing BSN in Nursing from University of Washington, born in Canada. The boy should be born in Canada/America, well educated, professional (Doctor/ Dentist) employed with moderate family values. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: hk_leen@yahoo.com Jat Sikh Kahlon parents seek a suitable match for their daughter, 29 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, beautiful, American born, Bachelor’s in Socialogy, Diploma in Radiology, working as a technologist, well settled. The boy should be well educated, handsome, well versed in both cultures. Students in Canada/America can also be considered. Please send your biodata & recent picture to: k87kirank@gmail.com Or Call : 011-91-98785-06555 ***654*** Aggarwal family from America seek a match for their M.D. Doctor daugther, 30 yrs. old, 5’-2” tall, American Citizen, working as a Doctor in Reputed Hospital. The boy should be Doctor in U.S.A. & from Aggarwal. Call: 1-917-2518017 ***654*** Aggarwal family from America seek a suitable match for their Manglik son, 28 yrs. old, 5’-5” tall, C.P.A., working in a reputed company as a C.P.A., earning good salary, American Citizen.The Girl should be professionally educated, bearutiful, family oriented, Manglik, well versed in both cultures & from Aggarwal family. Call: 1-917-251-8017 ***654***

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Teetotaller Khatri Sikh boy, 32 yrs. old, 5’-7” tall, working as a Software Engineer in Milwaukee U.S.A. having HIB Visa & green card is in process. The Girl should be beautiful, educated, family oriented, Canadaian/ American Immigrant or Citizen.

Girls on student visa or work permit can also be considered.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: mandyusa9@gmail.com Or Call: 1-414-552-7913 ***654*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 27 yrs. old, 5’-5” tall, Canadian Citizen, working as PSW in a nursing home in Ontaorio, currently in India for a limited time. Looking for a well educated, well settled and family oriented match. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: msalwan108@gmail.com Or Call : 1-778-386-5994 ***654*** Seeking a suitable match for 28 yrs. old, 5'-8" tall, Sikh, Canadian born boy, educated, non vegetarian, Tonk Kashatri, Currently employed as a CATSA, screening officer at YVR Airport, Associates in Criminology degree, currently volunteering as well at Corrections Service of Canada, very actively involved in the community. The girl should be from a sikh background, tall, slim, fair complexion, well versed in both Canadian and Indian cultures & well educated. caste no bar. Family is well established in Vancouver. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to:sunshine_bear11 @yahoo.com *** 654*** Lubana Sikh Parents seeking a suitable match for their WellSettled Engineer Son, 30 yrs. old, 6'-1" tall, Athletic built. The girl should be beautiful, tall, well educated, family oriented. Caste No Bar. Please email bio-data & recent picture to: Amar3264@aol.com or call: 1408-781-4086 *** 654*** Jat Sikh Amrit-dhari, USA citizen boy, 5'-9" tall, 28 yrs. old (Aug87), graduate, Electrical Engineer and Management from University of California, working as an Engineer in Federal Gov. The girl should be professionally qualified, Amrit-dhari Jat Sikh, preferred from USA or Canada.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to:khalsa5756 @gmail.com or call: 1- 916-7086291 or send WhatsApp message. *** 654*** Ramdassia Sikh girl, 42 yrs. old, 5'-5" tall, divorcee, on visitor visa in USA. The boy should be American immigrant or citizen, between 40-45 yrs. of age. Call: 1-925-665-6010 *** 654*** Ramgarhia Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their daughter, 28 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, B.Sc. Nursing degree holder, registered nurse at present living in India The boy should be

Canadian/American Immigrant or Citizen. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: sohalsp@gmail.com Or Call : 647-829-5872 (Leave Message) ***654*** Ramgarhia Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 30 yrs. old, 5’ tall, B.Sc. Nursing, Registered Nurse (RN) working in India, beautiful and family oriented. The boy should be Canadian/American Immigrant or Citizen. Please email recent picture and bio data to: sohalsp@gmail.com Or Call: 647-829-5872 (Leave Message) ***654*** Down-to-earth, handsome, intelligent, family-oriented Jat Sikh boy living in US since 1998, Belongs to well-educated, humble family, 29 yrs. old, June 1986 born, 5'-10" tall, US Citizen, slim and athletic built, graduated from UCLA and working as a Mortgage Loan Officer. The girl should be educated and residing in US/Canada/UK. Please send your bio-data and recent picture to: nirmalranu@yahoo.com *** 654*** Match for Goldsmith girl, 27 yrs. old, 5'-7" tall, MBA, CMA, working as a manager financial analyst in a good company.

Father is well settled business man. whole family Canadian Citizen. The boy should be well educated, well settled, Canadian Citizen, belongs to reputed family. Please send your biodata and recent picture to: sunny_kanda94@hotmail.com or Call: 647-832-8208 *** 654*** Jat Sikh Alwal family seeking matrimonial alliance for their 1984 born son, 6’-3” tall, clean shaven, Canadian immigrant, M.Com degree holder. The girl should be family oriented and educated. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: ratwal07@gmail.com Or Call : 1403-615-4958 ***654*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their son, 34 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, born & raised in Canada, well settled in Job. The Girl should be beautiful, family oriented, born & raised in Canada.

Call : 1-604-671-0002 ***654*** Toronto based Jat Sikh Grewal educated family seeks professional match with Masters/ Bachelor degree (Engineer, Doctor, CGA or Lawyer) from Canada or USA for their Indian born, Canadian citizen, convent educated, Canadian university degree holder, fair complexioned daughter, born in 1977, 5'-3.5" tall, Well versed in both cultures, permanently employed with Federal Govt as a Senior Officer. Brief marriage got annulled. Divorcees with children please excuse. Serious inquiries only. Respond with complete qualifications, profession, family details with recent pictures to:

matrimonial13 @hotmail.com *** 654*** Required a professional Canadian match for Canada PR Arora girl, 27 yrs. old, 5'-6" tall,B.Pharmacy. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: aroramail2015@gmail.com or call: 011-91-94174-15590 or 011-91-84270-80900 *** 654*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 29 yrs. old,raised in Canada, 5’-8" tall, professionally employed, well versed in both cultures. The boy should be well educated, prosefsessionally settled, between 29-35 yrs. of age & from canada. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: matad5757@gmail. com or call: 1-778-895-7815. *** 654*** Ramgarhia parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 29 yrs. old, 5’-11” tall, University graduate, employed, ready to move on to next step towards marriage.

For information Please Call : 289-684-3919 Or Email :julyshaadi@gmail.com ***654*** Lubana Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 27 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, Canadian Citizen, degree in informatic security from Canada, running his own successful businees, belongs to a very good family. The girl should be suitable educated, beautiful, family oriented from Canada/America. Please email recent picture to and bio-data to : kuldipsinghshah@gmail.com Or Call : 647-721-2632 ***654** Jat Sikh parents seeking a suitable match for their daughter, born and raised in Canada, born in 1986, 5’-7” tall, Master’s degree in Physiotherpy, well settled in job in Ontario, well versed in both cultures. The boy should be Canadian, well educated and professionally employed. G.T.A. preferred.

Please email recent picture and bio-data to : sanjog60@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-204-881-7405 ***654*** Tonk Kashtriya prents seeking a suitable match for their Canadian Citizen daughter, 28 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, CGA, B.Com, working in govt. job. The boy should be well educated and professionally settled. Caste no bar. Toronto based family is prefered. Please send you biodata. and recent poicture to :singhjag_@hotmail.com Or Call : 416-722-9771 ***654*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their well settled daughter, DOB 1981, 5’6” tall, born and raised in Canada, well versed in both cultures, family oriented, chartered professionally accountant designation and professionally employed in senior

management position. The boy should be well educated with family values.Boy on Student Visa/Workpermit (Well Educated) may also be considered.Please Call : 647298-9665 ***654*** Punjabi Saini family seeking a suitable match for their US Citizen, son, 1988 born, 5’-6” height, MBA graduate and working as Management Consultant. The girl should be educated and family oriented.

The family is well setteld in the BAY AREA. Preference will be given to BAY AREA and Doaba region in Punjab. Please Contact : (408) 859-6555 or (408) 930-9299 ***654*** Well settled Jat Sikh Gill family seeks a suitable match for their daughter, 33 yrs.old, 5’-6” tall, College graduate with diploma in Business Administration and accounting. The boy should be 30-37 yrs. of age, well qualified and raised in Canada.Please Call : 905-874-0721 ***654*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their son, 31 yrs. old, 5’-11” tall, Athletic built, Degree in Major Psychology, American Police Officer, Canadian/ American Citizen. The Girl should be beautiful, educated, family oriented & Jat Sikh.

Preference will be given to Health Professional. Please send you bio-data. and recent picture to :kk532@drexel.edu Or Call : 647-625-5946 Or : 905-488-1790 ***654*** Jat Sikh parents looking for a suitable match for their daughter, born and raised in Canada, 29 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, Master’s degree in nursing, currently working in GTA. The boy should be well educated, professionally employed, prefered non-drinker, non-smoker, vegetarian. Malwa area prefered.Please email recent picture and bio-data to: msbrar100@gmail.com Or Call : 416-970-7028 ***654*** Toronto based Ramgharia Gursikh parents seek M.D.match for their M.D. daughter, 31 yrs. old, 5'-3" tall, working in research in the USA, waiting residency. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: ajitsinghjhita@yahoo.ca or call: 416-274-4196 *** 654*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 31 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, born and raised in Canada, Chartered Accountant, vegetarian, non-drinker, nonsmoker, clean shaven, working in GTA with family values, the girl should be from Jat Sikh family, raised in Canada, well educated, tall, beautiful and family oriented. Malwa area prefered. Please recent picture and bio-data to :msbrar100@gmail.com Or Call : 416-970-7028 ***654***

Issue - 654 (11)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

CIA director says Islamic State group has used and can make chemical weapons Washington CIA director John Brennan has said that Islamic State fighters have used chemical weapons and have the capability to make small quantities of chlorine and mustard gas, CBS News reported Thursday.

“We have a number of instances where ISIL has used chemical munitions on the battlefield,” Brennan told CBS News, which released excerpts of an interview to air in full on the “60 Minutes” news program on Sunday.

The network added that he told “60 Minutes” the CIA believes that the IS group has the ability to make small amounts of mustard or chlorine gas for weapons.

“There are reports that ISIS has access to chemical precursors and munitions that they can use,” Brennan said.

Brennan also warned of the possibility that the Islamic State group could seek to export the weapons to the West

for financial gain.

“I think there`s always the potential for that. This is why it`s so important to cut off the various transportation routes and smuggling routes that they have used,” he said.

When asked if there were “American assets on the ground” searching for possible chemical weapons caches or labs, Brennan replied: “US intelligence is actively involved in being a part of the efforts to destroy ISIL and to get as much insight into what they have on the ground inside of Syria and Iraq.”The release of the interview excerpts comes two days after similar comments from spy chief James Clapper before a congressional committee.

“ISIL has also used toxic chemicals in Iraq and Syria, including the blister agent sulfur mustard,” Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told lawmakers on Tuesday.

He said it was the first time an extremist group had produced and used a chemical warfare agent in an attack since Japan`s

Aum Supreme Truth cult carried out a deadly sarin attack during rush hour in the Tokyo subway in 1995.

President Bashar alAssad`s regime and rebel forces have accused each other of using chemical agents in the nearly five-year war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

After an August 2013 sarin attack outside Damascus that much of the international community blamed on Assad`s government, the regime agreed to turn over

UK govt intervenes in row over writing laws on animal skin LONDON Britain’s government intervened Monday to try and save the tradition of printing all laws on vellum made of animal skin, which dates back beyond the Magna Carta but is under threat to cut costs.

a debate to try to block it.

In a bid to secure the future use of vellum, Cabinet Office Minister Matthew Hancock told the Daily Telegraph that his department would be prepared to cover the cost of recording all laws on ani-

The House of Lords decided last week that the centuries-old practice would be scrapped and laws would be printed on paper instead of goatskin or sheepskin in a bid to save £80,000 (103,000 euros, $116,000) per year.

That prompted fury among some lawmakers in the House of Commons and a senior lawmaker in Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party, James Gray, was set to organise

mal skins.

“While the world around us constantly changes, we should safeguard some of our great traditions and not let the use of vellum die out,” he said.

Paul Wright, general manager of William Cowley, Britain’s last remaining vellum makers and suppliers to parliament, welcomed the intervention.

He argued that printing laws on vellum lent them a greater sense of gravity,

giving the example of the result of Britain’s looming referendum on whether to leave the European Union.

“If we record that on paper, does it not almost lessen it?” Wright told the BBC. But parliamentarians spoke out to make clear it was them, not the government, who would decide whether vellum would continue to be used.

“It’s an important principle that parliament, not government, holds and cares for its archives,” Chris Bryant, the main opposition Labour party’s shadow leader of the House of Commons, wrote on Twitter.

Vellum scrolls with laws on are kept in the Act Room in the Victoria Tower at the Houses of Parliament.

They take up a large amount of space - one, an act dealing with taxation dating back to 1821, is nearly 350 metres long and would take two men a full day to roll up.

its chemical arsenal.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) which oversaw the dangerous removal and elimination of Syria`s avowed stockpile now says that declared arsenal has been completely destroyed.

But the global arms watchdog has still warned of the continued use of mustard, sarin and chlorine gas in the conflict, without blaming the regime, the rebels or the IS group for use of the weapons, which are banned under

international law.

Last year, officials in the autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan said blood tests had shown that IS fighters used mustard agent in an attack on Kurdish peshmerga forces in August.

Thirty-five peshmerga fighters were exposed and some taken abroad for treatment, officials said.

At the time of the attack, The Wall Street Journal cited US officials as saying they believed IS had used mustard agent.

Starving man resorts to stealing but ISIS cuts off his hand to teach him lesson!

Washington This man is made to pay the ultimate price for stealing as his hand was ordered to be chopped off by the brutal ISIS judges as punishment. The incident took place in Raqqa, the stronghold of the Islamic State, the MailOnline reported. In a barbaric assault on the poor man, the ISIS enforcers cut off his right hand with a meat cleaver. The incident came to light after the photos of the incident were posted online with Arabic captions, saying “implementation of the punishment of a thief from Raqqa city”.The grisly photos show the victim is surrounded by dozens of men while two ISIS enforcers pinning down the victim as his right hand is being chopped off.

His hand was placed on a wooden desk before it is cut off. The severed body part is then put into a white plastic bag.

Issue - 654 (12)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Islamic State determined to strike US this year, say Intelligence officials

WASHINGTON Leaders of the Islamic State are determined to strike targets in the United States this year, senior intelligence officials have said, telling lawmakers that a small group of violent extremists will attempt to overcome the logistical challenges of mounting such an attack. In testimony before congressional committees, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and other officials described the Islamic State as the “pre-eminent terrorist threat.” The militant group can “direct and inspire attacks against a wide range of targets around the world,” Clapper said on Tuesday.

Marine Lt Gen Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the Islamic State will probably conduct additional attacks in Europe and then attempt the same in the US. He said US intelligence agencies believe IS leaders will be “increasingly involved in directing attacks rather than just encouraging lone attackers.” Clapper also said alQaida, from which the Islamic State spun off, remains an enemy and the US will continue to see cyber threats from China, Russia and North Korea, which also is ramping up its nuclear program.

North Korea has expanded a uranium enrichment facility and restarted a plutonium reactor that

could begin recovering material for nuclear weapons in weeks or months, Clapper said in delivering the annual assessment by intelligence agencies of the top dangers facing the country. Clapper said that Pyongyang announced in 2013 its intention to refurbish and restart nuclear facilities, to include the uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon and its plutonium production reactor, which was shut down in 2007.

He said US intelligence had assessed that North Korea has expanded Yongbyon and restarted the plutonium production reactor there.

Clapper also told the Senate Armed Services and intelligence committees that North Korea

has been operating the reactor long enough that it could begin to recover plutonium “within a matter of weeks to months.”

Both findings will deepen concern that North Korea is not only making technical advances in its nuclear weapons program, following its recent underground test explosion and rocket launch, but is working to expand what is thought to be a small nuclear arsenal.

US-based experts have estimated that North Korea may have about 10 bombs, but that could grow to between 20 and 100 by 2020.

North Korea on Sunday launched a rocket carrying an Earth observation satellite into space. The launch followed a Jan. 6 underground nuclear explosion that North Korea claimed was the successful test of a “miniaturized” hydrogen bomb. Many outside experts were skeptical and Clapper said the low yield of the test “is not consistent with a successful test of a thermonuclear device.”

Clapper said that Pyongyang is also committed to developing a long-range, nuclear-armed missile that is capable of posing a direct threat to the United States, “although the system has not been flight-tested.”

Woman chops off rapist’s genital, takes severed organ to police as evidence A 32-year-old woman walked into a police station in Madhya Pradesh’s Sidhi district on yesterday, carrying the dismembered genital of her brother-in-law.

A mother of three, the woman alleged her brother-in-law had been raping her for days, and so, she had hacked off his privates with a sickle in order to stop him.

When the police sent medical support to the man, he was found hanging from a tree near his house, having committed suicide. The woman recounted she had been living with her relative while her husband worked in Nashik, Maharashtra, which is about 700 miles away.

She said her brother-in-law had been raping her for days, and as he “forced himself” on her that day, she severed her genital with a sickle and brought it to the police as a piece of evidence.

The woman, who had come to the police station with her children, has been booked for attempt to murder. “This is a rare case and has to be investigated for a proper chargesheet,” Sidhi SP Abid Khan told The Times of India .

The police added the woman was found to be mentally stable, with no regrets about what she had done.

Climate change forcing Mandela’s grandson embraces Islam species to move

SYDNEY Warming temperatures are causing about half of the world’s plants and animals to move location, an international conference in Australia heard Wednesday, with every major type of species affected.

Camille Parmesan, an expert from Britain’s Plymouth University on how climate change impacts wildlife, said data on thousands of species found that many had shifted their ranges towards the poles or up mountains over the past century. “The global imprint of warming on life is evident in hundreds of scientific studies,” Parmesan told the Species on the Move conference, which is focused on how species are responding to climate change.

“While about half of all studied species have changed their distributions in response to recent climate change, we are starting to see negative

impacts for the most vulnerable species.” Other changes had been observed such as plants flowering earlier or migratory birds arriving sooner in the year than previously, she added.

Parmesan said areas most at risk included sensitive systems such as polar regions dependent on sea ice and mountainous forests.

“Recovering these vulnerable species under a changing climate may not always be possible,” she warned.

Parmesan said studies showed that about half of species have moved their geographical ranges poleward and/or upward while about two-thirds of species studied have shifted towards earlier spring breeding, migrating, or blooming. Every major group has been impacted including trees, herbs, butterflies, birds, mammals, amphibians, corals, invertebrates and fish.

CAPE TOWN The grandson of former South African late president Nelson Mandela has married Rabia Clarke in a traditional Muslim Nikah ceremony held in Cape Town. He converted to Islam two months ago, the Muslim News has reported. Nkosi Zwelivelile “Mandla” Mandela released the following statement Sunday evening. “I am honoured and delighted to announce my marriage to Rabia Clarke, in Cape Town, on 6 February 2016.

I wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Rabia’s parents, her extended family and the Muslim community, for welcoming me into their hearts.”

Influential Islamic leader Sheikh Ebrahim Gabriels, who wedded the two, informed Anadolu Agency that Mandla embraced Islam two months ago. Mandla is currently the Xhosa traditional chief of Mvezo, Nelson Mandela’s birthplace, while Rabia Clarke is from a Muslim household in a Southern suburb of Cape Town. “Although Rabia and I were raised in different cultural and religious traditions, our coming together reflects what we have in common: We are South Africans,” Mandla said.

Hotel staff was sworn to secrecy and were not allowed to speak of the wedding. Little is known of the new bride. In 2013, family disputes raised to the surface only months before Nelson Mandela’s death. The feud erupted and led to questioning

of Mandla’s leadership legitimacy as head of clan.

Mandla has been married three times previously. In 2004, he married Tando Mabuna-Mandela in a civil ceremony. He is still legally married to her and has been in a longstanding divorce struggle centered on community property disputes. In 2010, he

married Anais Grimaud in a traditional ceremony. Three years later he accused his wife of having cheated on him with his younger brother, Mbuso Mandela and their marriage was annulled. His third marriage to Mbali Makhathini was declared null and void by the courts in 2014.

Pakistan’s ISI trains LeT, JeM terrorists says Parvez Musharraf Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told an Indian news channel that his country’s spy agency, Inter Services Intelligence, trains Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists. “ISI trains Jaishe-Mohammad and Lashkar-eTaiba terrorists,” Musharraf told Aaj Tak channel. According to the channel, although Musharraf

referred to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks’ mastermind and Lashkar patron Hafiz Saeed as a Pakistan hero, he termed JeM chief Masood Azhar as a terrorist. When Musharraf was President of the country, JeM operatives were found to be involved in bids on his life.During the interview, Musharraf also blamed India for derailing the peace process.

Issue - 654 (13)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Pak foils attempt to free Daniel Pearl murderer, 97 militants nabbed

New ISIS video shows 4-yr-old UK boy blowing up a car A new ISIS propaganda video shows a four-year old British boy, named ‘Jihadi junior’, blowing up a car and killing three people, accused of spying in Syria for the West.

ISIS has released a new propaganda video purportedly showing a four-year-old British In the latest video, a child dressed in ISISs trademark camouflage clothing and a black headband, is apparently shown with his hand on the detonator. The video also features a masked man with a British accent threatening Prime Minister David Cameron in a speech.

The video also shows three prisoners, dressed in orange, being tied up in the car before the boy presses the detonator.

The film ends with the car exploding.“You will never fight us except behind fortified fortresses or behind walls.

Firstly, when you sent your spies to Syria and when you

authorised for your men, thousands of miles away, to push a button to kill our brothers who lived in the West.

So today, were going to kill your spies the same way they helped you kill our brothers.

So prepare your army and gather your nations for we too are preparing our army,” the boy said.

The boy, identified as Isa Dare by his grandfather Henry Dare, had also appeared in another propaganda video by ISIS a month ago, the Independent reported.The boy has spent almost all his life in the clutches of ISIS. His London born mother, Grace Dare, converted to Islam and fled to Syria in 2012 where she married a Swedish extremist fighter Abu Bakr. Grace Dare was brought up as a Christian but converted to Islam and started using the first name Khadijah before fleeing to Syria in 2012, her family said.

The Pakistan Army said on Friday it had arrested 97 militants linked to Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and foiled a jailbreak aimed at freeing Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the mastermind of the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl. Chief military spokesman Lt Gen Asim Bajwa said the militants arrested in Karachi were accused of involvement in attacks on two airbases, the Karachi airport, regional intelligence headquarters and police installations between 2009 and 2015.

“This is the biggest ever arrest of those involved in terror activities,” said Imtiaz Alam, a local journalist. The arrested militants include Lashkar-e-Jhangvi commanders Naeem Bokhari and Sabir Khan, and Farooq Bhatti, believed to be the deputy chief of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).

Bajwa told a news briefing the army intelligence believed terror groups were trying to cooperate with each other to carry out attacks. He said the LeJ and AQIS had been working “in collusion” with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Several arrested militants, including Bokhari, were in the advanced stages of planning a jailbreak at Hyderabad

Central Jail to free Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who kidnapped and killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel

led to the arrests, the paramilitary Pakistan Rangers carried out 7,000 targeted operations in

Pearl in 2002, he said.

Six suicide bombers were enlisted for the attack while 19 militants were involved in facilitating it, Bajwa said.

More than 350 kg of explosives was recovered from a building believed to be their hideout.

Video footage of the building showed plastic barrels filled with explosives, washing machines used to transport arms and ammunition, long lengths of detonating cord and dozens of ball bearings. It also showed rifles that Bajwa said were stolen from police. “This plan was 90% ready for execution,” he added.

The army will continue its operation in Karachi, which has been an unprecedented success, for another year, he said. During the campaign that

Karachi. Of the 12,000 militants arrested by the military, 6,000 were handed over to police.

Since the launch of the military operation in Karachi, there had been a significant fall in kidnappings, murders and other crimes, Bajwa said.

“In September 2013, when the Rangers operation began in Karachi, terrorism was at its peak,” he added.Bajwa noted that some sections of society had e xpressed concern before the start of the military operation, saying it could create a backlash across the country. “A total of 13,212 operations have been carried out by intelligence agencies,” he said.

India launches lightest Nigeria child suicide bomber gun weighing 250g refuses to kill, rips off explosive vest Strapped with a booby-trapped vest and sent by the extremist Boko Haram group to kill as many people as possible, a young teenage girl tore off the

explosives and fled as soon as she was out of sight of her handlers.

Her two companions, however, completed their grisly mission and walked into a crowd of hundreds at Dikwa refugee camp in northeast Nigeria and blew themselves up, killing 58 people along with them.

Later found by local self-defence forces, the girl’s tearful account is one of the first indications that some of the child bombers brainwashed and trained by Boko Haram are aware that they are about to die and kill others.

“She said she was scared because she knew she would kill people. But she was also frightened of going against the instructions of the men who

brought her to the camp,” said Modu Awami, a self-defence fighter who had questioned the girl.

She was among thousands held captive for months by the extremists, according to Algoni Lawan, a spokesman for the Ngala local government area that has many residents at the camp and who is privy to information about her interrogation by security forces.

“She confessed to our security operatives that she was worried if she went ahead and carried out the attack that she might kill her own father, who she

knew was in the camp,” he told the AP on Thursday.

The girl tried to persuade her companions to abandon the mission, he said, “but she said she could not convince the two others to change their minds.”

Her story was corroborated when she led soldiers to the unexploded vest, Awami said Thursday, speaking by phone from the refugee camp, which holds 50,000 people who have fled Boko Haram’s Islamic uprising.

The girl is in custody and has given officials information about other planned bombings that has helped them increase security at the camp, said Satomi Ahmed, chairman of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency.

The United States on Thursday strongly condemned the bombings. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the US remains committed to assisting those afflicted by the conflict and supports efforts to provide greater protection for civilians and the regional fight against terrorism.

Boko Haram’s 6-year-old Islamic insurgency has killed 20,000 people, made 2.5 million homeless and spread across Nigeria’s borders.

New Delhi Two years after India launched Nirbheek, a handgun pitched as the country’s ‘first gun for women’, a state-run arms factory has launched a similar gun which it says is India’s lightest gun.The new .22-calibre revolver is named Nidar, it weighs a mere 250g (8.8 ounces) - that’s half of .32-calibre Nirbheek’s 500g (1.1lb); and it costs 35,000 rupees ($513; £357) - Nirbheek came with a steep price tag of 122,360 rupees ($1,990; £1,213).

Manufacturers say Nidar is made with an aluminium alloy which makes it very light, but has ‘strength similar to steel’, it has a 40-mm barrel and is just 140mm in length which makes it ‘small enough to fit into a palm’.

Both Nirbheek and Nidar are synonyms of Nirbhaya - the nickname given by the Indian press to Jyoti Singh, the 23-yearold victim of December 2012 fatal gang rape on a bus in in Delhi.

All three words mean fearless in Hindi.They are produced by government-owned factories, and their manufacturers say carrying them will make people more confident and ‘fearless’.

An official at the state-run Rifle Factory Ishapore, near the

eastern city of Kolkata (Calcutta), said Nidar was aimed at ‘professional Indian men and women’. ‘I believe our customers would be people who travel a lot, who have security risks. They will buy this gun for their personal

safety,’ factory in-charge PK Agarwal told the BBC. He said he expected the gun to be more popular with women. ‘I think it will be ideal for women. If a woman takes a taxi at night, the driver will think 10 times before trying anything with her because he knows she has a gun in her purse,’ he added. But can carrying a gun make people safer? Not really. Most places in India do not allow guns - even the licensed ones - and there are metal detectors at many offices, malls, cinemas, markets and other public places to enforce this. So even if ‘professional Indian men and women’ were to get a gun, it will be of little use to them because they will not be able to carry it around with them.

Issue - 654 (14)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

UK has most immigrant-origin Russian scientists ‘to shoot down parliamentarians in Europe meteorites’ thru nuclear missiles Amid continuing concerns over immigration in Britain and Europe, a new study released on Monday shows the UK and the Netherlands have the highest number of MPs of immigrant-origin, including those of Indian descent.

versity of Leicester, suggest the Netherlands and Britain lead in the presence of citizens of immigrant origin in national parliaments; south European countries fare the worst.

Morales said: “The study is the first of its kind to

Ten MPs of Indian origin were elected in the May 2015 election in Britain, the highest number so far.

Campaign groups have estimated the number of MPs categorised as “black and ethnic minorities” too was the highest in Britain after the election: 42.

The new findings are from an international project called “Pathways to Power”, which studied political representation of immigrant-origin MPs in Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.

The findings, announced by Laura Morales of the Uni-

compare in a systematic way the political representation of citizens of immigrant origin across European countries.

“Our findings show that migrants and their nativeborn offspring are underrepresented in national parliaments in all countries, but they are much more likely to gain elected national office in the Netherlands and the UK. “The study also shows that centre-left wing parties are, in most countries, still the most permeable to citizens of immigrant origin and are the ones contributing more to including this

BEIJING China confirmed its second imported Zika case Monday, a day after the first victim was discharged from hospital, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Few cases of the mosquito-borne illness have been reported in Asia, but the World Health Organization has declared a glo-

said Sunday.

The agency Monday quoted health officials as confirming a second imported case but gave no immediate details.

While it causes only mild flu-like symptoms in most people, Zika is strongly suspected of causing a rapid rise in the number of children born with micro-

bal health emergency to combat Zika as cases spread elsewhere.

Beijing confirmed its first imported case of Zika on February 9. Officials said the 34-year-old man was diagnosed with the virus after he returned from Venezuela on January 28 and reported a fever, headache and dizziness, Xinhua reported. He was treated in hospital in Jiangxi province and had fully recovered, it

cephaly - abnormally small heads and brains - to mothers infected during pregnancy.

Brazil has been most affected by the outbreak that has spread rapidly through Latin America and the Caribbean, with 1.5 million people in the country infected since early 2015.

Meanwhile, a minister in the Philippines has urged women to delay pregnancy until more is known about

sector of our populations to the national political arena.”

Westminster was found to be among the parliaments most representative, with around 11% of MPs being of immigrant origin. The other country leading on this dimension of representation is the Netherlands, with around 12% MPs of immigrant origin.

“The findings indicate that the direct descendants of immigrants (second generation), born in the UK, are more likely to be represented than first-generation immigrants. Nevertheless, over 3% of British IO (immigrant-origin) MPs in the Parliaments elected in 2005 and 2010 were born abroad,” the study said.

The Labour Party has had a historical lead in the presence of Indian origin MPs in British parliaments. This gap, however, has been closing in recent electoral cycles, with the Conservative Party significantly increasing the number of immigrant-origin MPs and MPs with ethnic-minority backgrounds on its benches.

Second Zika case confirmed in China

the mosquito-borne Zika virus raging in Latin America, even though the Asian country’s only reported case of zika was four years ago.

Much remains unknown about Zika, but the virus has been linked to thousands of cases of birth defects in Latin America, and the World Health Organisation has declared an international public health emergency.

“To those who are not in a hurry to get pregnant, maybe they can postpone and wait next year when we know more about the virus,” Health Minister Janet Garin said in a radio interview on Sunday, suggesting they practice family planning methods.

Garin said she was also asking Filipinos to avoid Zika-affected countries because “travelers, who contracted the disease abroad, may then transmit the virus sexually to their partners”.

The scare over Zika has been heightened by warnings from the Pan American Health Organisation that in a few cases the virus could have been sexually transmitted.

Moscow Russian scientists want to upgrade their nuclear missiles in order to prevent meteorites threatening to hit earth by smashing them while they are still in space.

While it may sound similar to the plot of sci-fi disaster films Armageddon and Deep Impact, Russian scientists are planning to tweak their intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs, to target meteorites. Russian news agency TASS reports the missiles would have the power to destroy meteorites measuring from 20m and up to 50m in size.

Senior rocket researcher Sabit Saitgaraye, from the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau, said they plan to test their missiles on the asteroid 99942 Apophis, which he believes will pass ‘dangerously close’ to Earth in 2036. However, NASA has ‘effectively ruled out the possibility’ of an impact. Discovered in 2004, the asteroid, which is the size of three-and-ahalf football fields, gathered the immediate attention of space scientists and the

media when initial calculations of its orbit indicated a 2.7% possibility of an Earth impact, but the possibility was later ruled out.

Mr Saitgarayev said: ‘Most rockets work on boiling fuel. Their fueling begins 10

is unclear whether the project will ever get the green light.

It is not the first time Mr Saitgarayev has put forward plans to destroy meteorites. In 2013 he said a Soviet-era ballistic missile

days before the launch and, therefore, they are unfit for destroying meteorites similar to the Chelyabinsk meteorite in diameter, which are detected several hours before coming close to the Earth.

‘For this purpose, intercontinental ballistic missiles can be used, which requires their upgrade.’

As a result, modifying solid-fueled ICBMs will require millions of pounds and permission from the authorities, and as such it

system dubbed ‘Satan’ should be put back into use defending the earth from asteroids.

He pointed out that the missiles could be kept poised and ready to launch for up to a decade.

It means a missile could be launched against an approaching asteroid with a mere 20 minutes warning, in contrast to modern missile systems, which require several days of preparation ahead of a launch.

Issue 654 (15)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Katrina-Aditya’s film is a slow and laborious romance Director: Abhishek Kapoor Cast: Aditya Roy Kapur, Katrina Kaif, Tabu, Aditi Rao Hydari, Akshay Oberoi, Rahul Bhat, Tunisha Sharma, Mohammed Abrar Sheikh Rating: 2 Stars Firdaus the kid enters in slo-mo, wearing Vogueapproved clothes. Noor is entranced by her beauty.

Firdaus the woman socialises. Noor stares.

She smiles. He continues

staring. She dances. More staring. This is what love feels like, we are told. It also feels like half of Abhishek Kapoor’s romantic saga, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. The rest of the imagery here is Kashmir’s gorgeous landscape and Tabu

sermonising on love and belittling Noor. The attempt here is to treat a literary classic artistically - it even is set against the backdrop of India’s art scene - but the result is largely soulless and listless. Would you care for Firdaus aka Estella and Noor aka Pip after two hours and 10 mins? You’re more likely to struggle stifling a yawn.

Meet Noor Nizami, an orphan who runs a shikara and is also an assistant to his carpenter brother-in-law

in Kashmir. In the opening scene, we see his benevolent side as he feeds a mysterious militant (Ajay Devgn). But his identity is largely shaped as that of a boy truly, madly, deeply in love with a girl, who is way above his league on social and economic scale.

Begum Hazrat (Tabu), a

gloomy aristocratic lady living in a mansion, is the first one to spot Noor’s love-struck gaze for her child, Firdaus, and she encourages it albeit with a manipulative streak. Just as the kids are bonding, she sends Firdaus away to London. Noor is told to make it big if he wants Firdaus. And so he grows up to be a multipurpose artist (Aditya Roy Kapur) who sketches, paints, sculpts and welds. He likes to do most of this with his shirt off. It seems to work for he is a prolific artist, who delivers work with such efficiency that it will make young artists feel miserable about their artistic process.

His success is also accomplished with such speed - he gets a “space” in art galleries from Delhi to London - that that there is a benefactor behind his sudden fame shouldn’t come as a surprise. Busy enjoying his success, Noor drinks, buys a vintage car and does everything to win over his sweetheart, Firdaus (Katrina Kaif), who is also in Delhi letting her (red) hair down. If you are to go

by Abhishek Kapoor ’s view, all Indian artists do is party hard. (He even gets Thukral and Tagra to

do a cameo.) After one such soiree, Noor leads Firdaus to his room/studio where he shows her all the paintings he has made of her and then wastes no time to woo her almost as if his creative demonstration of love now needs to be reciprocated physically.

Cut to an artist and his muse in bed. It doesn’t take long for the film to be as directionless as Noor

Nothing much happens in Ryan Reynolds film Directed by Tim Miller Starring Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein Rating: 2 Stars We get it, okay, that he is the coolest “super”-hero of them all, for being most antihero, most talkative,

least tortured, pan-sexual (little suggestion of that here) and played by the twinkly-eyed Ryan Reynolds. We are even with it when the film starts with supercool credits that don’t name actors but instead the characters in it

a “douchebag”, a “cool chick”, a “British villain”, a “comic relief”, and a “cameo”, directed by “an overpaid tool”. The writers, not surprisingly, are billed as “the real heroes”.

This is an origin film so nothing much happens but for Wade Wilson, an exSpecial Forces guy, finding love, cancer, cure, and mutation, in that order, on way to becoming Deadpool, the guy with burnt skin and self-healing powers. However, even so, the jokes stop being funny, including the asides to the camera in the constant

breaking of the ‘fourth wall’, long before director Tim Miller calls it a day. It doesn’t help that the action sequences, against a villain (Skrein) whose most menacing line is “So what’s my name?”, don’t lift the ennui. The only impressive fight is much too late and right at the end.

Reynolds is good though, fulfilling all that’s required of him in a role where he must surpass at everything, whether standing up, horizontal in air or lying down. Baccarin as girlfriend Vanessa can barely catch her breath.

the lover who wanders from Kashmir to Delhi to London.

With the violent struggle for independence in Kashmir largely sidelined for an intense love story which never emotionally resonates, Fitoor really could have unfolded anywhere.

The snowy-backdrop of Kashmir here just appears to be for visual enhancement.

But great images alone do

not translate into a memorable love story. You need actors who share chemistry and communicate the tension to carry it off.

Noor’s class consciousness, a major plot point in the novel, quickly vanishes as soon as he enters Delhi’s brimming art scene. Aditya Roy Kapur starts off well, as he uses his eyes to demonstrate Noor’s overwhelming passion for Firdaus.

Issue 654 (16)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Aamir Khan and Kangana Ranaut dine with Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Make in India week, a multi-sectoral exhibition to showcase India’s manufacturing capabilities, on Saturday (February 13) in Mumbai. Later, he held a private dinner which was attended by Bollywood stars Aamir Khan and Kangana Ranaut at Turf Club in Mumbai. While Aamir Khan was seen in black pathani kurta, Kangana was wearing a floral dress. Kangana completed her look with a headband. Both were clicked when they were leaving the place after the dinner. The event was also attended by Ramesh Sippy and his wife Kiran Juneja. On the work front, Aamir is currently is busy shooting for Dangal.

I wants to be a part of a biopic says Parineeti Chopra Asked if she would like to act in a biopic, Parineeti told IANS over phone from Mumbai: “Of course, I would like to be a part of a biopic. It is a great idea and if the person is inspirational, I would love to (be a part)...”

The ‘Ishaqzaade’ actress, who made her Bollywood debut in 2011 with “Ladies vs Ricky Bahl”, says she has not thought about whom she would like to portray on the silver screen.

“I have not thought about who would I like to play. If I would’ve (thought), I would have become a script writer...” the 27-year-old quipped. She says she would “wait for a nice

and good offer (on biopic) to come” to her.

On the big screen, Parineeti will next be seen in the upcoming movie ‘Meri Pyaari Bindu’, with debutant Akshay Roy. She will be seen playing an aspiring singer in the Maneesh Sharma production, which will also star Ayushmann Khurrana.

Here’s what Radhika Apte likes to do in her free time

Radhika Apte is currently shooting with Rajinikanth for ‘Kabali’ in Malaysia. For her, spending time on the set with the Thalaiva

has been an experience to cherish. But when back in her hotel room, Radhika has been catching up all the films she has missed out on.

These include Bollywood, Hollywood and film festival stuff.

For an actress, this is the best way to imbibe all types of cinema.

Sonam Kapoor made Bollywood open up on their fears. Here are the jaw-dropping answers

In a unique social media campaign, which encourages unleashing one’s fears and exhibiting courage, the lead actor of Neerja, Sonam Kapoor has encouraged one and all to speak out loud about their fears and how they overcame it using brief video clips of their experiences.

Using the hero Neerja

Bhanot as a synonym of courage, as the heroic young girl displayed exemplary courage while facing fear during the 1986 hijack of Pan Am Flight 73, B-Towners too shared their own fears.

The idea behind the campaign is to identify and acknowledge one’s fears and ways in which they overcame the same

as this would encourage others to follow suit in times of need.

The campaign gained momentum with people speaking about their fear of spiders, snakes, acceptance, ocean, heights, dreams amongst others.

Sonam Kapoor herself shared her fear of letting her father down.

Issue 654 (17)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Charlize Theron in No one wants to date Fifty Fast & Furious 8? Shades Of Grey actor Dakota Johnson. Why, you wonder?

Charlize Theron is reportedly gearing up to face off against Vin Diesel and his speedloving crew in the next Fast & Furious film.

The Mad Max: Fury Road star is in early talks to play the villain in the eighth installment of the hugely successful street racing series, according to a website.

If Theron signs on, the project will reunite her with filmmaker F. Gary

Gray, who directed her 2003 movie, The Italian Job. Vin and his franchise costars, including Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris, are all expected to return for the follow-up to Furious 7, which currently stands as the sixth-highest film.

Production on Fast 8 is expected to begin in the northern spring, ahead of an April 2017 release.

Dakota Johnson feels men are too scared to ask her out because of her role in the erotic movie Fifty Shades Of Grey.

Dakota Johnson essayed the role of Anastasia Steele, a college graduate who has a sadomasochistic relationship with young business magnate Christian Grey, played by Jamie Dornan.

The 26-year-old has been single since splitting from Drowners rocker Matt Hitt last year. Johnson and Hitt had a brief affair till February 2015.

Since her break-up, Dakota has been single and is worried why men don’t approach her.

Referring to the racy scenes in the movie, Johnson told mirror.co.uk, “Some people

think this is something I’m interested in, in my private life, which is not the case.”

“I’m an actor, I pretend.

But I guess it’s something that happens with a lot of actors; people think that, in real life, they are like the characters they play,” she said.

However, Johnson says she is too busy concentrating on her career to worry about men.

“My life has changed dramatically. There are times that I feel lonely, but then I just watch movies and read books and I’m happy that I have the time to do those things. I cherish my solitude,” she said.

“Luckily I have such a distraction in my job, I don’t think about men very often.

All of my focus is on my job at the moment,” she added.

Dakota Johnson is all set to start shooting for the next sequel of the film Fifty Shades Darker. The film is slated to hit the theatres in 2017.

I was told to settle for the fat girl parts says Kate Winslet Actress Kate Winslet, the best supporting actress winner at the Bafta this year, said she was once told by a drama teacher to “settle for the fat girl parts”. The “Titanic” star, 40, dedicated her award, which she won for playing Apple marketing executive Joanna Hoffman in “Steve Jobs”, to women who are the subject to criticism.

“When I was younger, when I was 14, I was told by a drama teacher that I might do OK if I was happy to settle for the fat girl parts,” Winslet said in her acceptance speech.

“So, what I always feel in these moments is that any

young woman who has ever been put down by a teacher, by a friend, by even a parent, just don’t listen to any of it, because that’s what I did I kept on going and I overcame my fears and got over my insecurities.” It was Winslet’s third Bafta win, after she took home awards for “Sense and Sensibility” (1996) and “The Reader” (2009). She beat out competition from fellow actresses Julie Walters and Rooney Mara.

Winslet is also nominated for an Oscar for her role in the Danny Boyle-directed biopic of the Apple mogul. If she wins, it would be her second Academy award.

Justin Bieber is not my boyfriend says Hailey Baldwin Model Hailey Baldwin, who is rumoured to be in a relationship with Justin Bieber, has set the record straight stating that the singer is “not my boyfriend”. The 19year-old has shut down rumours of a possible link up.

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s about to go on tour. Relationships at this age are already complicated, but I don’t really like to talk about it because it’s between me and him,” Baldwin told a website. “Everyone is making this to be such a big deal and it’s really not. And it’s just between

us,” she added. Baldwin whose dad is actor Stephen Baldwin added

that the duo already face the difficulty of dating in the spotlight, so she’s not looking to make the situation any more complicated than it needs to be.

Issue 654 (18)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Chinese scientists achieve 150,000 penguins killed by iceberg temp 3 times hotter than sun Beijing A nuclear reactor in China has created plasma at a temperature of 50 million Kelvins (49.999 million degrees Celsius or 90 million Fahrenheit) for 102 seconds. The temperature

is thought to be three times hotter than the core of the sun or ‘roughly the same as a mid-sized thermo-nuclear explosion,’ according to the South China Morning Post. The experiment was done in a machine called the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST).

It happened last week at the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Jiangsu province. The research team had aimed to maintain a plasma of 100 million Kelvins for over

1,000 seconds, nearly 17 minutes. However, the length of time that the plasma was sustained and controlled remains significant, as this is one of the main obstacles to implementing nuclear fusion more widely.

Despite the extreme temperatures reached during the experiment, there have

been other plasmas produced which have been much higher in different types of machines. However, other super-hot plasmas have not been maintained for as long, largely due to their volatile temperatures and the consequent safety considerations.

The plasma being created is a super-hot gas formed from heating atoms in the magnetic EAST device.

While the technology - in which the atoms fuse at extremely high temperatures to release large amounts of energy - is many decades from being perfected, its proponents believe that it could eventually replace fossil fuels and conventional nuclear fission reactors.

Nuclear fission is different from nuclear fusion in that is the splitting of atoms rather than joining them together. There is an on-going scientific effort worldwide to increase knowledge of nuclear fusion.

SYDNEY Some 150,000 penguins died after a massive iceberg grounded near their colony in Antarctica, forcing them to make a lengthy trek to find food, scientists say in a newlypublished study.

The B09B iceberg, measuring some 100 square kilometres (38.6 square miles), grounded in Commonwealth Bay in East Antarctica in December 2010, the researchers from Australia and New Zealand wrote in the Antarctic Science journal.

The Adelie penguin population at the bay’s Cape Denison was measured to be about 160,000 in February 2011 but by December 2013 it had plunged to an estimated 10,000, they said.

The iceberg’s grounding meant the penguins had to walk more than 60 kilometres (37 miles) to find food, impeding their breeding attempts, said the researchers from the University of New South

Wales’ (UNSW) Climate Change Research Centre and New Zealand’s West Coast Penguin Trust.

‘The Cape Denison population could be extirpated within 20 years unless B09B relocates or the now

UNSW’s Chris Turney, who led the 2013 expedition, told the Sydney Morning Herald Friday.

‘The ones that we saw at Cape Denison were incredibly docile, lethargic, almost unaware of your

perennial fast ice within the bay breaks out,’ they wrote in the research published in February. Fast ice is sea ice which forms and stays fast along the coast.

During their census in December 2013, the researchers said ‘hundreds of abandoned eggs were noted, and the ground was littered with the freezedried carcasses of previous season’s chicks’.

‘It’s eerily silent now,’

existence. ‘The ones that are surviving are clearly struggling. They can barely survive themselves, let alone hatch the next generation. We saw lots of dead birds on the ground... it’s just heartbreaking to see.’

In contrast, penguins living on the eastern fringe of the bay just eight kilometres from the fast ice edge were thriving, the scientists said.

Issue 654 (19)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Intelligent robots North Korea leader Kim Jong Un calls for more rocket launches threaten millions of jobs North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has praised scientists involved in the country’s recent rocket launch that he said struck a “telling blow” to enemies and ordered them to press ahead with more launches, state media reported on Monday.

Earlier this month, North Korea ignored repeated international warnings and launched what it said was an Earth observation satellite aboard a rocket.

Washington, Seoul and other powers view the launch as a prohibited test of missile technology and are pushing hard to have Pyongyang slapped with strong sanctions.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the ruling Workers’ Party on Saturday gave a banquet in honour of scientists, officials and others who it said contributed to the February 7 rocket launch. Kim and his top deputies were present.

In a speech, Kim said the launch gave confidence and courage to his people and dealt a “telling blow to the enemies seeking to block the

advance of our country”, KCNA said, in an apparent reference to Seoul and Washington.

Kim said the North’s launch decision was made when “the hostile forces were getting evermore frantic to suffocate” North Korea, and called for

launching more working satellites in the future.

The launch, which followed the North’s fourth nuclear test last month, aggravated already-strained ties between the rival Koreas. Last week, Pyongyang expelled all South Korean workers from a jointly run factory park in the North and put the area in charge of the military in retaliation for Seoul’s decision to suspend operations there.

Seoul on Sunday accused North Korea of having channelled about 70% of the money it received for workers at the Kaesong park into its weapons programs and to buy luxury goods for the impoverished nation’s tiny elite.

North Korea was able to divert the money because workers in Kaesong were not paid directly. Instead, US dollars

were paid to the North Korean government, which siphoned off most of the money and paid only what it wanted to the employees in North Korean currency and store vouchers, according to a statement from Seoul’s’ Unification Ministry.

The South Korean government estimate did not detail how it arrived at that percentage.

North Korea has previously dismissed such views.

The jointly run park, which was the Koreas’ last major cooperation project, employed about 54,000 North Koreans who worked for more than 120 South Korean companies, most of them small and medium-size manufacturers. The project, which began during an era of relatively good relations between the Koreas, combined cheap North Korean labour with the capital and technology of wealthy South Korea. While the Kaesong closure will hurt North Korea, it is not critical to that nation’s economy.

North Korea gets the vast majority of its earnings from trade with China.

The United States and Japan have announced plans for new sanctions over North Korea’s recent nuclear test and rocket launch, while the UN Security Council is likely to deliver more soon. Even China is starting to sound more like an angry neighbour than a comrade-inarms, cut North Koreans have their own take on things and it’s decidedly unapologetic.

France’s 104-year-old twins say closeness is the secret When they were born premature in 1912, doctors gave Paulette and Simone the slim-

Thiot are happy to pose for the camera at their retirement home in Onzain, central

mest chance of survival. But 104 years later, the French twins say there’s a simple secret to their longevity: sticking together. With their long white hair tied back in ponytails and gold spectacles perched on their noses, Paulette Olivier and Simone

France. “This will be fun!” they say in chorus. There is no official confirmation that Paulette and Simone are the oldest twins in France, but they appear to be the likely holders of the title.

“We’re being very spoiled,” one of them says as they

show off the flowers given by the local council and fellow retirement home residents to mark their 104th birthday.

Paulette and Simone were born in the central village of Limeray at 11:00 am on January 30, 1912 to Marie Lamolie, a dressmaker, and her husband Joseph, a carpenter.

Their entry to the world did not bode well. “We were premature,” says Simone, who can still get around these days without the help of a Zimmer frame.

“We were due in March but we were born in January. They gave us a very small chance of surviving. I didn’t even weigh a kilo. And you, just three pounds,” she says to her sister. “They had to keep us wrapped up for four months.”

Paulette, widowed at 36, worked as a hairdresser for 15 years in Algeria, then in Paris.

Advances in artificial intelligence will soon lead to robots that are capable of nearly everything humans do, threatening tens of millions of jobs in the coming 30 years, experts warned Saturday.

‘We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task,’ said Moshe Vardi, director of the Institute for Information Technology at Rice University in Texas. ‘I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?’ he asked at a panel discussion on artificial intelligence at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Vardi said there will always be some need for human work in the future, but robot replacements could drastically change the landscape, with no profession safe, and men and women equally affected.

‘Can the global economy adapt to greater than 50 percent unemployment?’ he asked. Automation and

robotization have already revolutionized the industrial sector over the last 40 years, raising productivity but cutting down on employment. Job creation in manufacturing reached its peak in the United States in 1980 and has been on the decline ever since, accompanied by stagnating wages in the middle class, said Vardi.

Today there are more than 200,000 industrial robots in the country and their number continues to rise. Today, research is focused on the reasoning abilities of machines, and progress in this realm over the past 20 years has been spectacular, said Vardi.

‘And there is every reason to believe the progress in the next 25 years will be equally dramatic,’ he said. By his calculation, 10 percent of jobs related to driving in the United States could disappear due to the rise of driverless cars in the coming 25 years. According to Bart Selman, professor of computer science at Cornell University, ‘in the next two or three years, semi-autonomous or autonomous systems will march into our society.’

Issue 654 (20)

7+( :(,5' $1' :21'(5)8/ 5 India’s annual ‘Rural Olympics’, formally known as the Kila Raipur Sports Festival, is held every winter in Kila Raipur on the outskirts of Ludhiana. This year marks the 80th edition of the festival, which was held for the first time in 1933.

The four-day event is a unique celebration of Indian rural culture, with competitions held for rustic sports and games, including horse racing, being run over by farm machinery, horseback acrobatics and other unusual

demonstrations of strength.

The main attraction of the festival -- the bullock cart races -- were not organised this year due to a ban on bull races by the Supreme Court.

Nonetheless, spirits were high as competitors - from teenagers to pensioners - vied for top place in contests such as pulling vehicles with their ears, Punjabi martial arts, tug of war and balancing bicycles on their teeth. Horses and dogs also competed in various events.

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16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

585$/ 2/<03,&6 ,1 3,&785(6

Issue 654 (22)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Indian-origin couple held for New high commissioner hails Indian diaspora, ‘bhangra’ in UK ‘enslaving’ 28-year-old woman Noting that ‘bhangra’ and ‘tandoori’ had gone mainstream, new Indian high commissioner

every inch, since it was originally built for India. All community members must feel that this is their

Britain.

The genre has gone mainstream, particularly due to popular contribu-

Navtej Sarna paid tribute to the large Indian diaspora that now has a significant presence in every field in contemporary Britain. Speaking to leading members of the Indian community in the Gandhi Hall of India House over the weekend, Sarna reiterated the conception of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that even if overseas Indians had different passports, they had as much claim on India as Indians.

“This India House is as much yours as ours. It reflects Indian-ness in

home and they are always welcome”, he said.

Sarna, who replaced Ranjan Mathai in early January, noted that the 1.5 million-strong Indian community here had flourished in every field, be it business, politics, culture, medicine, or law, and wielded political influence.

His remark about the popularity of ‘bhangra’ drew the most response from the gathering, reflecting the strides the genre has made since the 1960s.

Birmingham is the centre of this genre of fusionbased music in post-war

tions over the decades from artistes such as Apache Indian, Bally Sagoo and Panjabi MC. Channi Singh, considered the ‘godfather’ of British ‘bhangra music’, was honoured with an OBE in 2012. Urging the community to assist in infrastructure development, Sarna said the high commission’s consular was reflected in Britain having the highest share of Indian electronic visas issued (24%), and nearly 300,000 Overseas Citizen of India cards being issued.

An Indian-origin couple has been charged and remanded to police custody in Britain after a 28-yearold woman was found being held in domestic servitude in the Greater Manchester area.

The police said officers attended an address in Bomford on February 11 and arrested a 47-year-old woman on suspicion of slavery, servitude and forced labour offences under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

Minu Chopra was charged with holding a person in slavery or servitude between July 31, 2015 and

February 11 this year, intentionally arranging or facilitating entry into the UK of a person with a view to their exploitation, and knowingly holding another person in slavery or servitude between January 1, 2011 and July 30, 2015.

Chopra appeared at the Manchester Magistrate’s Court on February13 and was remanded into custody. She is due to appear at the Manchester Minshull St Crown Court on March 11.

Sanjeev Chopra, 47, was arrested on February 13 and charged with holding a

person in slavery or servitude between July 31, 2015 and February 11 this year, intentionally arranging or facilitating entry into the UK of a person with a view to their exploitation and knowingly holding another person in slavery or servitude between January 2011 and July last year.

The victim was removed from the address and is being cared for by partner agencies, Greater Manchester Police said.

Individuals of Indian origin have figured in similar cases in recent years in Britain.

Issue 654 (23)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Copycat! Cong does an AAP in Punjab, woos youth with digital strategy The Congress is trying to emulate in Punjab the election strategy used by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to script a historic victory in Delhi last year, including running campaigns on digital platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. The two parties will challenge the BJP-SAD government, which will seek a third straight term in state elections next year.

The Congress is looking to double its current band of volunteers by training them to recruit others as it attempts to beat AAP?at its own game. The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP has already begun its door-todoor campaign in the state with Parivar Jodo that is di-

rected at garnering support from families in villages.

State Congress president, Capt Amarinder Singh, who is personally monitoring the volunteers’ wing, has been hosting web in-

teractions on Skype with college students in a bid to woo young voters. The youth volunteers wing has been doubling those efforts by setting up outreach programmes through so-

Khap forces minor to marry 35-yr-old, father moves court A man has moved court against khap panchayat for forcing him to marry his minor daughter to a middle-aged man and then threatening him

with Rs 25 lakh fine if he didn’t send the girl to him, the police said on Sunday.

The incident of an alleged forced child marriage and harassment by khap was reported from Gunga village, about 60 kilometres from Barmer.

Sheo station house officer Dhannapuri Goswami said that the

police had received the court order , directing them to register a case against 17 members of the khap panchayat, on Saturday.

Girl’s father Genaram

Prajapat alleged that he had filed the case in a local court on February 6 against the khap panchayat members after they threatened to slap Rs 25 lakh fine on him besides social boycott on February 1. He said the same khap had forced him to marry his 12-year- old daughter to 35- year- old Leelaram (the police have

yet to confirm the name) of Sonadi village about a year ago.

The girl, who returned to meet her parents recently, refused to go back to Leelaram, alleging harassment, the father alleged in his complaint.

The police have filed the case against 17 khap panchayat members under sections of 147, 149, 406, 384, 500 and 504 of the IPC. “We have begun investigation. We will take action accordingly,” Goswami said. turbid waters near some shores could provide a refuge for corals.

The duo identified a dozen sites which could be used for the purpose including western coasts of Australia, northern Philippines, the southern Red Sea and the Persian Gulf among others.

programme that is funtioning out of an office set up at Singh’s residence. The focus is to reach out to people in villages and towns.

“We are people from different fields who have quit jobs to work with Amarinder. We will enroll volunteers who will spread the message of Amarinder through a door-to-door campaign. The idea is to reach out to those who are not inclined towards any particular party. It is a chain process of engaging volunteers to make more volunteers,” said Pushpdeep Sekhon, a party volunteer who left his high-profile corporate job for politics.

The Congress will also dis-

tribute pamphlets to spread the Singh’s campaign message and poll promises. AAP is already distributing a four-page pamphlet that carry messages of Kejriwal on Punjab’s shattered economy, drug addiction menace and farmer suicides. A colourful sticker that reads, “Punjab nu bachaun layi main ate mera parivar Arvind Kejriwal ate Aam Aadmi Party naal (To save Punjab, me and my family are with Arvind Kejriwal and AAP),” is being stuck on houses supporting AAP. The party has also prepared a mobile phone application that will serve as a databank on AAP supporters.

One possible contender to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court is an Indian-American appeals court judge, Sri Srinivasan, who has pro-business credentials and a stellar resume.

If he was nominated his background may make it more politically challenging for Republicans as they plan to block anyone put forward by President Barack Obama.

Srinivasan, 48, has served on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since he was confirmed on a 97-0 bipartisan vote in the US Senate in May 2013. Republican senators who supported him then would likely be asked to justify why they couldn’t back him for the Supreme Court.

Many names are likely under consideration and the White House has not tipped its hand, but recent Supreme Court appointments have tended to be appeals court judges and the appeals court in Washington on which Srinivasan serves has often been a springboard to the high

court. Scalia himself served on the court, as did other Supreme Court members Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Ruth

of Appeals, and Jacqueline Nguyen, a VietnameseAmerican woman who serves on the same court as Watford.

Little is known about

Bader Ginsburg.

The White House said on Sunday that Obama will wait until the U.S. Senate is back in session before making a nomination. The Senate returns from recess on Feb. 22.

Republicans have called for Scalia’s seat to remain open so that the next president, who would take office in January 2017, can nominate a replacement.

Other judges Obama could consider appointing include Paul Watford, a black man who serves on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court

Srinivasan’s views on divisive social issues like abortion and affirmative action.

But as a senior Justice Department lawyer in 2013, he was part of the legal team that successfully urged the high court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that restricted the definition of marriage to heterosexual couples for the purposes of federal benefits.

The ruling helped pave the way for the court’s ruling in June 2015 that legalized gay marriage nationwide.

Srinivasan could not be reached for comment.

poor air quality - and pollution from coal was found to have caused 366,000 deaths in 2013, said Qiao Ma, a PhD student at the School of Environment at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

She projected that air pollution will cause anywhere from 990,000 to 1.3 million premature deaths in 2030 unless more ambitious targets are introduced. “Our study highlights the urgent need for

even more aggressive strategies to reduce emissions from coal and from other sectors,” said Ma. In India, the main culprit was burning wood, dung and biomass for cooking and heating.

cial media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Members of the party’s student wing, the National Students Union of India, have been tasked with managing the enrollment

Indian-American who could be the next US SC justice has a stellar resume

Millions die from air pollution, mainly in China, India Air pollution kills more than 5.5 million people around the world each year, with over half of those deaths occurring in fastgrowing China and India, researchers have said.

And the number of premature deaths will continue to climb in the years ahead unless more aggressive measures against pollution are adopted, scientists warned the American Association for the Advancement of Science confer-

ence in the US capital.

“Air pollution is the fourth highest risk factor for death globally and by far the leading environmental risk factor for disease,” said Michael Brauer, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health in Vancouver, Canada. Air pollution ranks behind high blood pressure, diet and smoking as the fourth greatest risk factor for fatalities worldwide, accord-

ing to the Global Burden of Disease study, done by the Institute for Health Metrics. “Reducing air pollution is an incredibly efficient way to improve the health of a population,” said Brauer. China and India account for 55 percent of yearly global deaths from air pollution.

Some 1.6 million people died of air pollution in China in 2013, while India saw 1.4 million deaths.

In China, burning coal is the biggest contributor to

Issue 654 (24)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Mind power rules this week, as does developing an insatiable curiosity. You’ll go far if you read everything you can find and become inspired. Read motivational books if it will help you take action and do what you have to do. The information you pick up could be crucial in helping you get a better job, persuading your love interest out on a date.

Mental activity could keep you awake at night.

Your subconscious mind seems to be very active at this time, too, so by tapping it you may be able to put its helpful attributes to good use. Consider journaling every day and your creative ideas could leap off the page, helping you resolve problems and gain a new perspective on life.

It’s well worth socializing this week as it could significantly change your life.

Whatever issues or challenges you face, someone you meet is bound to have an answer - or at least some advice. Even so, it doesn’t mean you have to discuss your innermost secrets.

Carefully choose the people in whom you confide.

This week is all about action related to your goals and ambitions. The cosmos may have some amazing surprises for you in the form of encouraging events or people you meet.

If you have been procrastinating concerning an important career plan, this is the time to get busy. However, you will also benefit from befriending likeminded people who might be able to offer you support.

A new influence kicks in, motivating you to start on all those plans and ideas you’ve been thinking about. Traveling, whether for pleasure or business, is strongly indicated, too. You’ll benefit more by taking the road less traveled. If you’re going on vacation, opt for places off the beaten track. They can open you to new life experiences.

Allow your intuitive awareness to guide you through the maze of money matters this week. If you’ve despaired of ever getting your finances sorted out, the current alignment encourages you to renew your efforts. In this instance knowledge is power.

The more you know, the more access you’ll have to facts that can banish fears associated with not having enough money.

What do you do if other people seem to question your motives? Perhaps you feel that a love interest, partner, or other people around you are being too inquisitive, and you don’t like it! This week you’ll need to flex your muscles and give as good as you get. If somebody seems to be trampling on your boundaries, let them know you won't tolerate it.

Your love life is getting much more interesting. If you’re in a long-term partnership, taking on a challenge together could be good for you both, especially if you increase your joint income as a result. Looking for love?

Opt for a more proactive approach to finding the person of your dreams. This doesn’t just apply to socializing.

You’ll enjoy pitting your wits against others in a competitive sense, whether this involves sporting or entrepreneurial activities or both. This week’s powerful Mercury focus encourages you to think in terms of strategies to get what you want. Whatever you do, don’t leave things to chance. With just a little thought you can do so much better.

A calm, peaceful life may seem like an unattainable dream. This week looks just as hectic as ever, particularly on the home front. It’s at such times when in the thick of it that you can make great progress. If you feel challenged, see it as a plus. It brings an opportunity to progress, even if unwillingly at first.

There are two sides to the week ahead very fast and very slow. When it comes to closing deals, getting a bargain, or sending your message out to the world, be quick off the mark. The faster you respond to the opportunities around you, the better off you will be. The Universe loves speed, so pick a goal and plan, talk, and advertise your way to success.

Are you on the same merry-goround and feeling overwhelmed, with financial issues causing feelings of frustration? If so, the way to deal with this isn’t to flail around in the water trying not to drown but to gather information and make intelligent decisions. If you feel panic rising, this is the time to find someone who can inform you of solutions.

Issue 654 (25)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Technology Indian sites prone to cyber-attacks

by Pak during key events India-Pakistan rivalry has spilled over into cyberspace through hacktivism and even “state-sponsored” attacks with popular Indian websites more prone to such strikes during highprofile events like cricket matches and Indepen-

objectives of the cyber activities between India and Pakistan, ranging from loosely- affiliated hacktivist groups defacing symbols and institutions to more coordinated state-sponsored attacks.

“These are nationalistic hacker groups,” Nagraj

there is a big anniversary in the physical world or geo-political context, it is important to be vigilant on the cyber context and be prepared as well when it comes to websites or other cyber assets,” Seshadri said.

According to the report,

dence Day, a CIA-backed threat intelligence company has said.

Analysing patterns of cyber-attacks around several events like Independence Day, 26/11 and cricket matches, Bostonbased Recorded Future in its report suggested many possible motivations and

Seshadri, co-author of the report ‘Hactivisk: India vs Pakistan’, told PTI after the release of the study yesterday, which he said, is based on information extracted from the public domain.

“The objective mostly is public embarrassment. If there is a big event, or if

India and Pakistan’s Independence Days, which fall on August 15 and August 14 respectively, create a predictable pattern (at least over the past three years) of attacks and retaliatory strikes by the opposing hacker groups.

An uptick in such activity before and after this year’s

Google rolls out features to strengthen online security Internet users in India Wednesday are more conscious about their online safety, internet giant Google India said on Wednesday as it rolled out

several new features and resources designed to protect users online.

Google India released some key interesting search trends of last year that point towards the de-

mand of greater cyber security. The trends showed that in the past year there have been 20 percent more searches for “change password” and 97 percent more

searches for “two-step verification”. Two-step verification requires more than just a password to sign into your Google account, such as a 6-digit code that is sent to your phone for more protec-

tion. Google said that in the past year itself, there have been 591 percent more searches for “how to track a lost phone”. So to ramp up the online security, Google is offering initiatives like simplifying security settings to making trustworthy messages easier to spot in Gmail.

Google will also be driving multiple initiatives to drive awareness about online safety among Indian Internet users. “With an increase in the number of users coming online and the rise in the penetration of smartphone users in India, we at Google are committed to offering users a safe Internet experience,” Sunita Mohanty, director, trust and safety, Google India said in a statement.

Independence Day should not come as a surprise, the report said.

Taking a closer look at the activities of the Pakistan Cyber Army (PCA), the report said it has been consistently active at least since the 2007 hacking, defacing and shutting down high-profile Indian websites.

Government and private sites have been targeted

by PCA including Indian Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (a Fortune 500 company), Indian Railways, the Central Bureau of Investigation, Central Bank of India, and the State Government of Kerala.

In fact, investigations by Recorded Future found that PCA has been publicly posting tutorials on some of its social network groups including Facebook on how to hack or deface an Indian website.

Instagram to roll out view counts for videos

In order to provide a better engagement measurement to video creators and marketers, social networking giant Facebook’s photo and video-sharing app Instagram has announced to launch a video view count feature.

“Companies like Gold’s Gym used Boomerang to make muscles flex, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment ran a Marquee ad showing three videos throughout the day promoting its release of ‘Furious 7’, and small business ‘Out of Print’ ran a stop motion video ad to drive holiday sales,” said a blog post.

The new feature, which will be rolled out in “the coming weeks”, will give cre-

ators a tally of the impressions a video has received, whereas likes could be viewed as an engagement metric, VentureBeat reported.

Instagram said that in the past six months, the amount of time people spent watching videos on the service has increased by more than 40 percent.

With this feature, the users will be able to see the number of views and also how many people have liked and commented on a video.

The feature will be available as part of Instagram’s version 7.16 on iOS and Android.

Twitter-owned Vine is already offering this feature.

able to see the percentage of people who have viewed their videos with sound globally.

A research by Facebook found that 80% of people react negatively when feedbased mobile video ads play loudly, blaming the

is the most effective way to advertise in a mobile feed environment,” Matt Idema, vice president, monetization product marketing at Facebook, said.

“Video advertisers that tailor their creative with vi-

platform and the advertiser.

By including captions, advertisers can increase video view time by an average of 12 percent, the findings showed.

“Numerous studies and campaigns have made it clear that capturing people’s attention at the very beginning of a video

suals that get people to stop scrolling and watch will drive the best business results on Facebook,” Idema added.

The social network giant alsoplans to launch new reporting metrics that will help advertisers see the percentage of people who have viewed their videos.

Facebook introduces auto captioning for video ads

Facebook has introduced a new tool for its users.The social networking giant on Wednesday introduced automated captioning for sound-off videos, among other features.

The new tool generates captions for video ads and delivers them to the advertiser within the ad creation tool to review, edit and save to their video ad.

“Creatively, mobile video draws on the craft skills and experience we have developed as an industry building for film, TV and the traditional web and compresses them into a new form designed to immediately connect with an audience,” Mark D’Arcy, chief creative officer, creative shop of Facebook, said in a statement.

The other updates include reporting and buying options for video ads.

Advertisers will now be

Issue 654 (26)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Dating apps taking on Tinder Silicon Valley Valentine’s Day is not just a big day for couples - millions of singles are expected to fire up dating apps today in search of romance.

Tinder leads the market in the UK, boasting 26 million ‘matches’ per day globally.

The company says it broke its own records last Valentine’s Day as people flocked to the app looking for love. Behind the app is dating giant Match, which also owns other big names including match.com, OKCupid and Plenty of Fish - but there are plenty of start-ups hoping to charm singles and top the app store charts.

‘Whatever competitors do, they will need to be cash rich and able to support the business to stand a chance of success,’ says Paolo Pescatore, director of Multiplay and Media at CCS Insight. ‘But there is scope for new players to emerge that focus on a specific niche.’ Combining match-making with games and quizzes, DatePlay is designed to generate ‘more meaningful matches’ than its rivals. Behind the app is entrepreneur Vana

Koutsomitis, who first pitched her idea on the BBC television series The Apprentice.

She did not win Lord Sugar’s investment - he judged the project too risky - but she has continued work on her app, which

she hopes will make online dating more fun. ‘If you sign up for any of the online dating sites that focus on meaningful relationships, you’ll be asked to fill out tonnes of questions about yourself,’ she says.

‘What we’re doing is making an interface that is a game instead of these self reports.’

Singles hoping to challenge strangers to a round of battleships or gin rummy will have to look elsewhere, for now. The app will be launched with its first game this summer, with more added later. ‘Our first game is a Buzzfeedstyle game where you will be answering questions

about your preferences in terms of photos. You’ll work through it in a fun and interactive way.’

One concern raised on The Apprentice was that people might spend all day playing a game, only to be matched with somebody they did not find attractive.

But Koutsomitis says playing for longer improves your chances of finding the perfect date. ‘As you continue to play the game we continue to get more data about you... that allows us to match you with better people,’ she explains.

In a bid to cut out ‘creeps and timewasters’, Hanky lets existing members decide whether new joiners should be allowed in. The app, for men only, launched in January. At the time, founder Jonas Cronfield boasted: ‘Our users are nicer.’ But critics say Hanky fosters superficiality and superiority, by providing an environment where people are judged on their appearance. And while it is not the first dating service that lets people judge others on their looks, critics say the app divides a community that has fought discrimination.

The company insists it has good intentions.

App shakes up earthquake science NEW YORK Smartphones could become the makeshift quake detectors of the future, thanks to a new app has launched designed to track tremors and potentially save the lives of its users. MyShake, available on Android, links users to become an all-in-one earthquake warning system; it records quaketype rumblings, ties a critical number of users to a location, and could eventually provide a countdown to the start of shaking.

Its inventors say the app, released by the University of California, Berkeley, could give early warning of a quake to populations without their own seismological instruments.

“MyShake cannot replace traditional seismic networks like those run by the US Geological Survey,” said Richard Allen, leader of the app project and director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory.

“But we think MyShake can make earthquake early warning faster and

more accurate in areas that have a traditional seismic network, and can provide life-saving early warning in countries that have no seismic network.”

Earthquake-prone countries in the developing world with poor ground-

sitivity - they can only record earthquakes above magnitude 5 within 10 kilometres (6 miles) - they make up for in ubiquity.

Currently, 300 smartphones equipped with MyShake within a 110-km square area are

based seismic network or early warning systems include Nepal, Peru, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Iran, he said.

The algorithm behind MyShake, developed by a handful of Silicon Valley programmers, relies on the same technology smartphone gamers depend on to sense the phone’s orientation, known as the accelerometer, in order to measure movement caused by quakes.

What smartphones lack in sen-

enough to estimate a quake’s location, magnitude and origin time.

There were some 3.4 billion smartphone subscriptions worldwide in 2015, according to the Ericsson Mobility Report, so the app’s creators hope to build a seismic network covering the globe.

“We want to make this a killer app, where you put it on your phone and allow us to use your accelerometer, and we will deliver earthquake early warning,” Allen said.

Issue - 654 (27)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Women may write better code

North Carolina Computer code written by women has a higher approval rating than that written by men - but only if

their gender is not identifiable, new research suggests.

The US researchers analysed nearly 1.4 million users of the open source program-sharing service Github. They found that pull requests - or suggested code changes - made on the service by women were more likely to be accepted than those by men.

The paper is awaiting peer review.

This means the results have yet to be critically appraised by other experts. The researchers, from the computer science departments at Caly Poly and North Carolina State University, looked at around four million people who logged on to Github on a single day - 1 April 2015.

Github is an enormous developer community which does not request gender information from its 12 million users.However the team was able to identify whether

roughly 1.4m were male or female - either because it was clear from the users’ profiles or because their email addresses

could be matched with the Google + social network.

The researchers accepted that this was a privacy risk but said they did not intend to publish the raw data. The team found that 78.6 per cent of pull requests made by women were accepted compared with 74.6 percent of those by men.The researchers considered various factors, such as whether women were more likely to be responding to known issues, whether their contributions were shorter in length and so easier to appraise, and which programming language they were using, but they could not find a correlation.

However among users who were not well known within the community, those whose profiles made clear that they were women had a much lower acceptance rate than those

Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim remarks are offensive and dangerous says Hillary Clinton

WASHINGTON US Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton today lashed out against her Republican rival Donald Trump, calling his anti-Muslim rhetoric as “offensive and dangerous”. “We need to understand that American Muslims are on the front line of our defence. They are more likely to know what’s happening in their families and their communities, and they need to feel not just invited, but welcomed within the American society,” Clinton said participating in Democratic presidential debate.” HIllary said.

“So when somebody like Donald Trump and others stirs up the demagoguery against American Muslims, that hurts us at home.

It’s not only offensive; it’s dangerous,” she added.“The same goes for overseas, where we have to put together a coalition of Muslim nations. I know how to do that. I put together the coalition that imposed the sanctions on Iran that got us to the negotiating table to put a lid on their nuclear weapons programme,” she said in response to a question.“You don’t go tell Muslim nations you want them to be part of a coalition when you have a leading candidate for president of the United States who insults their religion. So this has to be looked at overall, and we have to go at it from every possible angle,” Clinton said in response to a question on ISIS.

whose gender was not obvious.

‘For outsiders, we see evidence for gender bias: women’s acceptance rates are 71.8% when they use gender neutral profiles, but drop to 62.5% when their gender is identifiable . There is a similar drop for men, but the effect is not as strong,’ the paper noted.

‘Women have a higher acceptance rate of pull requests overall, but when they’re outsiders and their gender is identifiable, they have a lower acceptance rate than men. ‘Our results suggest that although women on Github may be more competent overall, bias against them exists nonetheless,’ the researchers concluded.

Despite various high profile initiatives, tech firms continue to face challenges in terms of the diversity of their staff, in terms of both gender and ethnicity, particularly in more technical careers.

Just 16 percent of Facebook’s tech staff and 18 percent of Google’s are women according to figures released in 2015.

However the researchers’ findings are still encouraging, computer scientist Dr Sue Black OBE told the BBC. ‘I think we are going to see a resurgence of interest from women in not only coding but all sorts of techrelated careers over the next few years,’ she said. ‘Knowing that women are great at coding gives strength to the case that it’s better for everyone to have more women working in tech.

US, Cuba to resume direct flights after more than 50 years

WASHINGTON The United States and Cuba will sign a bilateral agreement on Tuesday to restore regular flights between the two countries after more than half a century, the State Department said.

“While US law prohibits travel to Cuba for tourist activities, this arrangement will facilitate authorized travel,” the State Department said Friday in a statement.

The United States announced plans to resume the flights in December, on the one-year anniversary of the start of reconciliation between Washington and Havana.

Under the new arrangement, airlines in the two countries can now strike deals in such areas as code-sharing and aircraft leasing, the Cuban Embassy said at the time.

However, tourist travel still remains illegal because the trade embargo that the Americans

slapped on Cuba in 1960 after Fidel Castro came to power in a communist revolution remains in effect. The State Department said flights are expected to be re-established later this year and will “enhance traveler choices and strengthen people-to-people links between the two countries.”

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Assistant Secretary of State Charles Rivkin will travel to Havana for the signing. Commercial flights between Cuba and the United States were cancelled 53 years ago but since the mid-1970s authorized charter flights have been allowed under certain conditions.The State Department said that the new arrangement “will continue to allow charter flight operations.”

The United States and Cuba formally restored diplomatic relations in July and re-opened embassies in each other’s capitals.

Sikh teen writes a book on US bullies NEW YORK A Sikh-American teenager has penned a book about bullying of children from the community in the US based on his experiences and that of others to raise awareness on the issue.

Karanveer Singh Pannu, an 18year-old high school student from New Jersey, has written the book ‘Bullying of Sikh American Children: Through the Eyes of a Sikh American High School Student’.

“Sikh-American youth are largely unrepresented and do not seem to have a voice on the national stage or in the media, especially when it comes to bullying,” Pannu told NBC News.

“I wanted to help in any way I could to alleviate this pain and suffering which children from my faith go through on a daily basis,” he said.

In the book, Pannu introduces the Sikh faith and discusses the significance of the turban and the history of Sikhs in the United States.

He also details the results of a bullying survey he conducted of Sikh-American children in order to draw from their experiences as well as his own.

Pannu also suggests practical

solutions drawn from interviews with several child psychiatrists and psychologists.

He said he hopes the book can help other Sikh-American children who have experienced bullying, as well as parents and school administrators trying to understand the students’ experiences.

According to a study by The Sikh Coalition, 67 per cent of turbaned Sikh youth in Fresno, California, have experienced emotional and physical bullying in schools and also cyberbullying.

“A very emotional mother called me and thanked me profusely for writing this book,” Pannu said.

“She wanted to help me in any way in order to get the book into the hands of the school authorities. Another non-Sikh reader after reading the book is gifting a book to the local school library,” he said.

In December, a 12-year-old Sikh boy in the US had to spend three days in a juvenile detention centre after he jokingly told a classmate that he had a bomb in his school bag.

Issue - 654 (28)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Facebook India MD Kirthiga Reddy resigns, to reboot in US WASHINGTON A day after closing down its controversy-ridden Free Basics programme here, Facebook

India Managing Director Kirthiga Reddy today stepped down from her current role and will relocate to the US. The social networking giant has started looking for a successor to Reddy, who would be moving to Facebooks headquarters in the US in the next 6-12 months.

Reddy said she along with William Easton, Managing Director of Emerging Markets (APAC) and Dan Neary, VP Asia Pacific, have started looking for her successor in India.

Facebook yesterday shut down Free Basics in India, days after telecom regulator Trai barred operators from charging

discriminatory rates for Internet access based on content.

“When my family relocated to India, we knew that we would move back to the US some day.

Its a bittersweet moment to share that the return timeframe is coming up in the next 6-12 months,” Reddy said in a post on the social networking site today. “It will be business as usual over the next 6-12 months. I am working closely with William Easton and Dan Neary as we search for my

US WWII veteran reunites with wartime girlfriend in Australia

A 93-year-old World War II veteran from the United States embraced his wartime girlfriend in Australia in their reunion Wednesday after more than 70 years apart. Norwood Thomas and 88-year-old Joyce Morris laughed as they wrapped their arms around each other after Thomas flew from Virginia to the southern Australian city of Adelaide to reconnect with his long-lost love. “This is about the most wonderful thing that could have happened to me,” Thomas said, in a reunion broadcast on Channel 10’s “The Project.”

“Good,” Morris replied with a laugh. “We’re going to have a wonderful fortnight.”

Morris was a 17-year-old British girl and Thomas was a 21-yearold paratrooper when they first met in London shortly before D-

Day. After the war, he returned to the U.S. The pair wrote letters to each other, and Thomas asked Morris to come to the U.S. to marry him. But somehow Morris misunderstood and thought he’d found someone else, so she stopped writing.

The two eventually married other people. Thomas’ wife died in 2001; Morris divorced her husband after 30 years.

Last year, Morris asked one of her sons to look for Thomas online, and they found his name featured in an article about D-Day that ran in The Virginian-Pilot newspaper. Thomas and Morris reconnected via Skype. After their story went public, hundreds of people made donations to help fund Thomas’ trip to Australia from his hometown in Virginia Beach.

Indian-origin US man wins $3.1 million in discrimination case

successor in India. I have also begun to explore new opportunities at Facebook back at Menlo Park,” she added. Free Basics was offered in India in partnership with Reliance Communications and was earlier known as Internet.org.

Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has also slammed Free Basics saying such differential pricing modes are “plainly not acceptable” and Internet should not become a monopoly of few.

After months-long consultation process, triggered by the net neutrality debate, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) earlier this week barred operators from charging different rates for data access, dealing a blow to Free Basics and other such plans like Airtel Zero.

While Facebook had promoted Free Basics as a programme aimed at providing basic Internet access to people in partnership with telecom operators, critics slammed the service saying it violated the principle of net neutrality. Reddy said over the last six years, starting as the first employee for Facebook in India, she has had the privilege to be part of its amazing growth journey, from the firms operations in Hyderabad to being a business partner for its clients. “Above all, its all been about our mission: Give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. We have only just begun,” she added.

WASHINGTON An Indian-origin man who was among 47 immigrants denied recruitment as police officers for being foreign-born has won a $3.1 million discrimination suit filed against the Chicago police department in the US, according to a media. Masood Khan won $3.1 million in compensation, along with Glenford Flowers, a Belize-born man, as victims of the discriminatory hiring policy, “American Bazaar” reported on Thursday. Both men took part and passed the 2006 police exam. But their candidacy was rejected because they had lived in the US for less than 10 years.

They filed charges of discrimination, which were upheld by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and referred to the justice department. “Chicago, through CPD (Chicago police department), has pursued policies and practices that discriminate against individuals

The 15-year-olds, described as close friends and in a relationship, were found lying

detectives reveal the two girls were very close friends, appearing to also be in a

next to each other under a covered patio near the cafeteria at Independence High School, near Phoenix, police said in a statement.The teens each sustained a single gunshot and a weapon was found near their bodies along with a suicide note.“Investigators working the case say evidence found at the scene leads them to believe that one female took the life of the other female before taking her own life,” the statement said.

“Information gathered by

relationship.”

Police said they don’t believe any students at the school witnessed the tragedy that took place shortly before 8:00 am (1500 GMT).The school was placed on lockdown after the shots rang out, with panicked parents rushing to the site for word about their kids.US man charged with throwing alligator into fast food restaurant.

A Florida fast food restaurant got a customer it wasn’t expecting when a live alligator was tossed through a drive-thru

born outside the US because of their national origin and that deprive or tend to deprive foreignborn individuals of employment opportunities because of their national origin,” the lawsuit stated. The department of justice also sought back pay, interest on lost wages and compensatory damages on behalf of Khan and Flowers who applied to be police officers but were rebuffed by the rule. According to the complaint, more than 92 per cent of the candidates that were rejected because of the rule were foreignborn, while only eight percent of these had lived in the country for more than 10 years. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began the investigation into the policy but was unable to reach a resolution and the case was referred to the department of justice in 2014.

The Chicago city council’s finance committee is expected to sign off on the $3.1 million settlement on Monday.

Two teen girls killed at Arizona school in murder-suicide window by a patron. Joshua James, 23, of Jupiter, Florida, had wanted to play a practical joke on a friend working at the Wendy’s restaurant in Royal Palm Beach when he decided to hurl the reptile into the building, his parents told local broadcaster WPTV. “It was a stupid prank,” Linda James said.

James faces charges of aggravated assault, and unlawful possession and transportation of an alligator, WPTV said. The incident took place in October.

James found the 3-foot alligator on the side of the road and led the reptile into his truck, according to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission incident report cited by the station.

He drove to the Wendy’s restaurant and placed an order, received a drink at the drive-thru window, and then threw the alligator through the opening, it said.

The report contains a photo of the alligator sitting on the floor of the restaurant, WPTV reported.

The alligator was released back into the wild.

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16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Uber agrees to settle safety lawsuits for $28.5 million San Fransisco Uber has agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle litigation brought by customers who alleged the ride hailing service misrepresented the quality of its

safety practices and the fees it charged passengers, the company said on Thursday.

The two proposed class action lawsuits said Uber charged passengers a “Safe Rides Fee” of as much as $2.30 per trip to support its “industry leading background check process.”

However, Uber does not use fingerprint identification which is required by taxi regulators, court filings said. The cases, filed in a Northern California federal court, were brought after district

attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco made similar allegations in separate 2014 litigation. Uber asked a San Francisco state judge to dismiss most of that lawsuit, saying the prosecutors are improperly seeking “tens of millions of dollars” in penalties

Google’s Sundar Pichai is now the highest paid CEO in United States

San Fransisco With Google announcing the handing over a whopping £142 million (Rs 1,406 crore) worth of shares to India-born chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai, he has got a hefty boost to his pay package bringing him in the big league of his former colleague and now SoftBank chief Nikesh Arora, who is considered in the world’s top salary bracket.

Google pays approximately Rs 335 crore, or $50 million per annum, to Pichai and before the £142 million worth of shares he received, he was also given shares worth £173 million in Google’s parent company Alphabet. He is entitled to claim these shares in 2018.Arora, who was the fourth most-important person at Google and had quit the tech giant in 2014 to join Japan’s SoftBank, was appointed president of the bank last year with a salary packet of around $135 million (approx Rs 850 crore) a year, which had made

him the highest paid India-born executive beating Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Pepsi chief Indra Nooyi.When asked about his phenomenal compensation, Nikesh had remarked in a television interview that “a lot of the math” around his compensation was sensational and people did not have the numbers right, but he said he “was paid well”. Nadella has emerged as the top-paid CEO in the US with a pay package of $84.3 million (Rs 575 crore) a year for 2015. The Equilar 100 CEO Pay Study, an analysis of CEO salaries at the 100 largest public US companies as measured by revenue, was last year topped by Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who has been now pushed by Nadella to the second position.

Nooyi is ranked 19th with $19.08 million. Legendary investor Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway is ranked last at 100th position with a total compensation of $464,011 million.

and restitution.

At a hearing on Thursday, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Mary Wiss said she had tentatively decided to reject Uber`s dismissal request.The cases are part of a range of legal and regulatory issues facing Uber. A lawsuit filed by Uber drivers seeking to be classified as employees and entitled to benefits is scheduled for trial in June. As part of the $28.5 million rider settlement, Uber also agreed to rename the “Safe Ride Fee” a “Booking Fee.” Around 25 million riders could qualify to participate in the settlement, Uber said. A San Francisco federal judge will have to approve the deal. Uber said technology helps safety efforts but no means of transportation is 100 percent safe.“Accidents and incidents will happen,” the company said in a statement.

“That`s why it`s important to ensure that the language we use to describe safety at Uber is clear, precise and accurate.”The consolidated class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Matthew Philliben et al vs. Uber Technologies Inc and Rasier LLC, 14-5615.

Cockroach-inspired robots can squeeze through cracks

MIAMI Inspired by cockroaches that can squeeze through tiny spaces, US scientists have designed a small robot that may one day help locate people in the rubble of earthquakes, tornadoes or explosions. The technology by the University of California, Berkeley was unveiled Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

‘What’s impressive about these cockroaches is that they can run as fast through a quarter-inch (0.6 centimeter) gap as a halfinch (1.25 cm) gap, by reorienting their legs completely out to the side,’ said lead researcher Kaushik Jayaram, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. ‘They’re about half an inch tall when they run freely, but can squish their bodies to one-tenth of an inch the height of two stacked pennies.’ The palm-sized robot,

known as CRAM - for compressible robot with articulated mechanisms - is capped with a plastic shield, much like the wings on the back of a cockroach. ‘In the event of an earthquake, first responders need to know if an area of rubble is stable and safe, but the challenge is, most robots can’t get into rubble,’ said Robert Full, a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley. ‘But if there are lots of cracks and vents and conduits, you can imagine just throwing a swarm of these robots in to locate survivors and safe entry points for first responders.’

Researchers say their robots are inexpensive to make, and they are working on various versions for real-world testing. Funding for the research has come from the US Army Research Laboratory, as part of a collaboration with between industry and university partners.

World’s most polluted city, Delhi, plans limits on car use NEW DELHI The Delhi government plans another round of tough measures to restrict the use of private cars and clean up toxic air in the Indian metropolis, the world’s most polluted city.

From April 15, for two weeks, cars will only be allowed on the road on alternate days, going by whether their number plates are odd or even, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday. “We are seriously considering if we can do this for 15 days every month,” Kejriwal said. “We can’t do this on a permanent basis until we get better public transport.” The rule hits most of the 2.6 million cars that ply the traffic-choked roads of Delhi and its surrounding areas. That figure accounts for roughly a third of all the 8.5 million vehicles on the streets, from motorbikes to autorickshaws. Kejriwal said his plans had overwhelming public support and were necessary to rein in the rising levels of air pollution that regularly cloak the city in smog.Doctors say Delhi’s 16 million residents are at risk of suffering irreversible lung damage and some children there already have the lungs of chain smokers. The new proposal follows a two-week trial at the beginning of January

that took more than a million cars off the roads each day. Most drivers followed the rules, with traffic sharply reduced from the

chief justice and other judges followed it. Some of them even biked to work.” In a city known as India’s rape capital, women

usual rush-hour chaos. The impact on pollution, though, was less clear, with data showing that air quality remained at unhealthy levels.

Following criticism over exemptions for women, politicians, judges, police and motorbikes, the government has said it is reviewing who will be exempt this time. A survey showed about four-fifths of respondents supported the plans, with most respondents opposed to waivers for groups such as ministers, Kejriwal said.

“We will request VIPs to voluntarily follow the odd-even rule,” he added. “Last time the

will continue to be allowed to drive when they want if they are alone, he said. The World Health Organization said in 2014 that New Delhi had the most polluted air among nearly 1,600 cities it studied. A monitoring station at the United States embassy in the capital on Thursday recorded an air quality index of 157, showing that pollutants were three times the level deemed safe. The US embassy recently added black to its colour-coded scale, to indicate AQI readings in excess of 500, a level off the scale used by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

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16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

NRIs can buy house in India, rules consumer body NEW DELHI Non-Resident Indians, who return to the country “every now and then”, can purchase a house in India, the apex consumer commission has said while asking Supertech Ltd to pay around Rs 64 lakh to an NRI for denying possession of a flat in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh.

National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC), presided by Justice J M Malik, directed the firm to pay Rs 63,99,727 to south Delhi resident Reshma Bhagat and her son, Tarun Bhagat, who had booked a flat in the builder’s project in 2008. The firm was scheduled to hand over its possession to the complainant in 2009 and when it did not construct the house, the Bhagats approached the consumer commission for refund and damages, the complaint said. The firm had opposed the complaint seeking refund and other damages, claiming that the

flat was booked in the name of Tarun, an NRI, and it was not for residing purpose but solely to earn profit and he could not claim to be a ‘consumer’ himself.

The commission rejected the firm’s contention, saying “it cannot be made a ‘rule of thumb’ that every NRI cannot own a property in India. NRIs do come

to India, every now and then.

Most of the NRIs have to return to their native land. Each NRI wants a house in India. He (Tarun) is an independent person and can purchase any house in India, in his own name.” The NCDRC also rejected the firm’s claim that the complainants

were offered an alternative flat but they rejected it and hence the complaint should be dismissed. “It is well settled that nobody can force anybody to accept the flat of the choice of the opposite party (firm). Any other flat cannot be imposed upon the consumers. They have got their free will to accept or reject the other flats offered to the complainants. It is difficult to fathom why the flat which was promised to be given to complainants, originally, was not given,” it said. According to the complaint, the complainants had made payment of Rs 63,99,727 to Supertech Ltd in 2008 for a luxurious flat which was to be built in Greater Noida and the flat’s possession was to be given

by December, 2009.The firm, however, did not construct the flat and the complainants approached the commission seeking Rs 1.40 crore from the firm, including interest and damages.

SC pushes govt to bring back Indian construction workers abducted by IS

NEW DELHI Concerned over the fate of 39 Indians taken hostage by ISIS one-and-a-half-years ago from a construction site in Iraq’s Mosul, the Supreme Court on Friday asked the External Affairs Ministry to appoint a nodal officer to ensure better coordination with Baghdad and international agencies for securing their release. The direction came after a PIL was filed by lawyer Gaurav Kumar Bansal, who sought a direction to the MEA to intervene

Scientists express doubt over meteorite death attribution NEW DELHI Indian scientists have expressed doubt that a man in the southern state of Tamil Nadu was the first person to have been confirmed killed by a meteorite strike, as the state’s top official has declared.

The experts said the small crater, the absence of a sonic boom before impact, a lack of debris and the green and blue colour of rock recovered from the scene suggest some other cause. “It is highly improbable, but we will only be absolutely sure after a chemical analysis,” said V. Adimurthy, a senior scientist at India’s space agency.

The mysterious event has triggered an international debate about whether a meteorite,

space debris, leftover explosives or even frozen waste from a plane passing overhead may have killed the man.

The meteorite attribution was

IS militant’s wife admitted in Agra hospital for months, police failed to detect NEW DELHI The Agra police has failed to detect the wife of IS militant Mohsin Iqbal Syed, who underwent brain surgery and remained admitted in a reputed Agra hospital for months.

The security lapse was revealed by a team of Intelligence Bureau that interrogated five senior Neurosurgeons of Agra in a hope to locate the doctor who operated on the terrorist’s wife. While Mohsin is yet to reveal the name of the hospital, he has identified it as being located on the National Highway - 2. Sources claim that Mohsin went several times to Lucknow, Muzaffarnagar and Jaipur and has a number of contacts in the entire Western UP who are in direct contact with their Syrian handler Safi Armar alias Yusuf. The IS module uncovered in Uttarakhand has also been found to be in contact with Iqbal. The IB team did not give any information to the Agra police regarding its investigation

and the inquiry from Agra based neurosurgeons, which has caused a sense of panic in the medical fraternity.

announced this week by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram, a former film star who is known for her authoritarian style.

A bus driver was killed by the meteorite at an engineering college in the state, she said, and awarded a sum of 100,000 rupees ($1,470) in compensation to his family. “A meteorite fell within the college premises,” she said. Jayalalithaa has a cult-like following in her state, with her pictures on prominent display in the offices of her party’s politicians, as a sign of their unquestioning loyalty.

Since her comments, state officials have been reluctant to discuss publicly what happened.

A team of scientists from the

Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore arrived in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday to inspect the 2-metre (6.56-ft) -wide crater and collect the recovered rock sample, which is small enough to fit in a hand.

G.C. Anupama, an astronomy professor at the institute, said the probe would focus on the chemicals in the debris, as meteorites have high iron levels.

She declined to comment whether she believed the debris was a meteorite. C.B. Devgun, who has been tracking meteorites for the last two decades, said the colour of the rock and absence of other particles ruled out a meteorite.

“It cannot be a meteorite,” he said. “It was a greenish colour and no other pieces of debris were found. Normally it would be a darkish yellow or darkish black in colour, just like burned coal, with a slightly melted surface.”

The last reported death from a meteorite strike was in 1825, according to a list maintained by International Comet Quarterly, a scientific journal. In 2013, a meteorite that exploded over central Russia rained down fireballs and caused a shock wave that smashed windows, damaged buildings and injured 1,200 people.

and expedite the process of release of the abducted Indians.

Bansal claimed he had information that the abducted Indians may not be alive. “I have learnt that one of the missing persons Harjit Masih, who successfully managed to escape from the hands of ISIS, is claiming that all Indian Nationals were asked to kneel shoulder to shoulder by militants dressed in black near a railway track and were shot at one by one,” said the PIL. The court’s direction comes five days after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met families of those abducted and, based on her recent meetings with Arab and Palestinian leaders, told them they were “alive”.

Swaraj had also assured them the Centre was “fully and continuously engaged” and “every possible effort” was being made to ensure their release.

Bansal said an RTI revealed that the MEA is yet to issue a “protocol” for securing release of those abducted. “It is pertinent to mention here that the absence of protocol provides the government a free hand to follow such modus operandi which suits them most,” said his PIL. The SC’s direction was in line with what it had ordered in a case where seven Indian seamen were held captive by Somali pirates since 2010. A nodal agency, which was formed by the MEA after the SC direction, was very effective in that case and the seamen were rescued within months.While Bansal tried to convince the court that the Iraqi kidnapping case stood on a different footing and direct interference of the court was required, the CJI said: “Even if they are at a sea or a desert, rescue is a rescue. Some were taken away by pirates some taken away by ISIS, but the issue and concern is the same.”

Wild elephant rampage in Indian village Bengal A wild elephant went on a rampage in a village in India’s eastern West Bengal state on Wednesday, damaging around 100 structures, villagers said.

Video taken in the village of Ektiasal showed the beast wandering around and knocking over flimsy huts.

T h e elephant strayed into the village early in the morning and woke up villagers with its roaring. “The elephant entered from a nearby

forest area. It has destroyed many houses and people are scared and helpless,” villager Milan Saha said. No injuries were reported.

Attacks by elephants have been on the rise in eastern India.

Wildlife experts say the destruction of animal habitats in the country is one of the main reasons for the increase in encounters between wild animals and villagers in rural areas of India.

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16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

In bid to attract more Indian students, UK increases scholarships KOLKATA The number of Indian students has decreased in the last few years in the UK, following a clamp down on bogus colleges.

The British government will woo Indian students by increasing scholarships, a British High Commission official said on Friday.

“If you compare the figures with what was there three to four years ago, the numbers have come down. It is because we clamped down heavily on bogus colleges.

Now we are maintaining excellence and only bona-fide institutes are left,” Andrew Soper, minister counsellor (political and press) of the British High Commission told reporters in Kolkata. He said the inflow of students from India had stabilised now and that the UK is expecting a gradual increase. On the scholarship count, Soper said under the ‘Great Britain’

campaign, the UK governmnent was offering 59 undergraduate and 232 postgraduate scholarships across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In the last couple of years, the number of scholarships under the UK’s flagship Chevening program had

British newspaper reverts to using Bombay

increased four-fold, to Rs 25 crore. Soper also said efforts had been made to ease the visa process, with every 9 out of 10 students getting it. “If you have got an admission into a UK university, you will get a visa,” the official said. Some of the most popular courses for Indians include management studies and engineering. British Council India’s Director Rob Lynes said Indians had received over Rs 40 crore worth of scholarships this year. At present, about 20,000 Indian students were studying in different varsities of the UK. However in 2013, the figure was around 24,000. As part of exchange programs, about 1,000 UK students were studying in India, Lynes said.

Goa threatens to list India’s treasured peacocks as vermin

MUMBAI India’s popular tourist state of Goa has ruffled a few feathers with its proposal to reclassify the national bird the peacock as vermin, making them easier to cull, reports said Friday.

The move comes just weeks after Goa’s legislative assembly caused similar consternation when it ruled that the resort state’s beloved coconut trees were not in fact trees, but palms.

‘We have listed several wild species including wild boar, monkey, wild bison (Gaur), peacock as nuisance animals,’ the Press Trust of India quoted Goa’s agriculture minister Ramesh Tawadkar as saying.

‘These animals are creating (a) problem for farmers and are destroying their cultivation in rural areas,’ he told reporters on Thursday evening, according to the PTI report. The colourful peacock is India’s national bird and is protected under the

country’s Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.

But animal rights groups fear the Goa government’s proposal to reclassify the peacock as a ‘nuisance animal’ is intended to make it easier to cull the birds.

‘Goa seems to be trying to (have) India’s national bird labelled this way so that they may be hunted and killed,’ Poorva Joshipura, the CEO of PETA India, told AFP. ‘If Goa wants to remain on the tourist map, people expect it to be a paradise for animals too,’ she added. Last month, opposition politicians in Goa reacted with outrage after the state government reclassified the coconut tree as a palm because it doesn’t have any branches.

Officials said it was necessary to remove the coconut from the list of protected trees to make it easier to fell ‘economically unviable’ and dangerous trees, and replace them with newer ones.

“letting loose one’s horses or ferocious dogs”.In his complaint, Surve’s son alleged Subbarao’s dogs were not fed on time and

not home at the time, his domestic help rushed Surve to the health centre and that he paid Rs1 lakh to Surve’s family after

thus, had been provoked and thus, Subbarao must be held liable for Surve’s death. However, Subbarao argued in his plea that his dogs were well trained and cared for, were vaccinated regularly and well fed.” He has claimed Surve went inside the dog yard while the “dogs were having their food, even though he had been warned against doing so on several previous occasions”. “He provoked the dogs and when they began barking, he started to run in the opposite direction. One of the dogs thus, got incited and attacked him,” Subbarao said.

He also claimed since he was

his death. Subbarao said that at best he could be charged for negligence but not for culpable homicide not amounting to murder—a charge that entails a sentence between ten years and life imprisonment.

Shedge meanwhile, has urged the high court to quash all charges against him considering that he only let out his farmhouse on rent and that he was not even present at the accident site and instead, was in his house in Pune at the time.

Shedge has claimed the charges against him are “malafide and that he has been charged at the behest of locals”.

Two face murder charge after dog kills gardener

LONDON British newspaper The Independent will switch back to using Bombay rather than Mumbai when referring to India’s financial capital, its editor said Wednesday. Amol Rajan said the move was a stand against what he said was the closedminded view of Hindu nationalists. The city was officially renamed Mumbai in 1995, a change forced through by the far-right Shiv Sena party.

However, within the city, the old colonial name and the Marathilanguage name are often used interchangeably.

“The whole point of Bombay is of an open, cosmopolitan port city, the gateway of India that’s open to the world,” said Rajan, who was born in Kolkata formerly known as Calcutta - and raised in London. “If you call it what Hindu nationalists want you to call it, you essentially do their work for them,” the 32-year-old told BBC radio.

“As journalists, as someone who edits The Independent, it’s incredibly important to be specific about our terminology.

“I’d rather side with the tradition of India that’s been open to the

world, rather than the one that’s been closed, which is in ascendance right now,” he said, referring to the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Their coalition partner Shiv Sena is strongly pro-Marathi, the dominant language and ethnic group in the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. Rajan said postcolonial India had the “open, secular, pluralist and tolerant” tradition of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.

It also had a “slightly nastier strain of Hindu nationalism” and it was important to “venerate the tradition of India which shows the best of India - an open metropolis”. Shiv Sena renamed the western Indian city after the goddess Mumbadevi, the protector of fisherman who were the area’s original inhabitants.

Marathi speakers had always called the city “Mumbai”, and the move was popular among that community, whereas “Bombay” was an anglicised take on the Portuguese colonial name “Bom Bahia”, or “good bay”.

Mumbai Two senior citizens have approached the Bombay high court seeking relief after they were booked by the police under the stringent charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder after the pet dog of one of the men mauled his gardener, thus, leading to his death.

The petitioners, Tanaji Shedge and S Subbarao, residents of Pune and Raigad, have filed a petition claiming that the charge under Section 304 is unwarranted and that the FIR against them be quashed.

According to their plea filed through their counsel advocate Nitin Sejpal, Shedge, an agriculturist who resides in Pune, had let out his Raigad farmhouse on rent to Subbarao, a retired banker.

Subbarao has kept several dogs as pets at the farmhouse and on August 21 last year, his gardener Tukaram Surve was attacked by one of Subbarao’s pet dogs. By the time, Surve was rushed to the local primary health centre, he was dead. Surve’s son then filed a police complaint against both Shedge and Subbarao and the police booked them under section 304 IPC on the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and under section 106 of the Bombay Police Act under the charge of

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16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Snapdeal employee Dipti Sarna’s kidnapper was inspired by SRK's Darr

A one-sided love affair, a Bollywood inspiration and a history-sheeter-the investigation into the alleged abduction of Snapdeal executive Dipti Sarna has thrown up several interesting details. On Monday, cops identified the mastermind as Devender who carries a reward of Rs 3 lakh on his head announced by the Haryana government. He and his accomplices were arrested.

Inspired by Shah Rukh Khan's hit 1993 film Darr, he plotted Dipti's kidnapping along with four accomplices who were identified as Pradeep, Mohit, Fahim and Majid. The motive was love, cops said.

Police said Devender was so much in love with Dipti that he was even ready to go to jail for her. He told the police he fell in love with the 24-year-old when he first saw her at Rajiv Chowk Metro station in January last year. He meticulously planned the abduction, taking care to

even find out her favourite brand of chips. When the cops asked Devender that he was named in 30 other FIRs and still he committed this crime, he replied, "Mohabbat ke naam pe ek muqadma aur sahi. (It's okay to have another case for love). Cops said it was for this reason that he did not harm the victim. During his interrogation, Devender said he was deeply influenced by Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan and Shah Rukh Khan's character in Darr. Ghaziabad police said the historysheeter fell in love with Dipti around January last year.

Dipti was then an M-Tech student and a frequent Metro user.

The police said she was frequently seen in the company ofas referred to by Ghaziabad SSP Dharmender Singh-'Mr A'.

After 'falling in love at first sight', Devender started stalking Dipti.

During interrogation, he told police that he conducted over 150 recces from Vaishali Metro station to her home.

Indian children trafficked to United States is a reality, says US diplomat Cases of Indian children being smuggled to the United States are a reality, a US diplomat said on Friday, reacting to a media report that police had busted an international child trafficking racket operating in Bengaluru.

Police on Tuesday said they had arrested 16 members of a gang suspected of sending at least 25 children from the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat illegally to the United States using fake documents in order to acquire visas.

Craig L Hall, US Consul General in Kolkata, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation he was not aware of this case as the visas had reportedly been acquired from the US consulate in Chennai but said there had been similar cases in the past.

“We have seen examples of this,” Hall said on the sidelines of an international conference on human trafficking in eastern town of Siliguri.

“Last year, the United States issued more a million visas to Indians who were travelling to the United States and among those million, there were very likely cases of children being smuggled and trafficked into the US” According to a report by the NDTV, the children were matched with adult couples and made to pose as a family, presenting false documents at the US consulate to get the required visas for their journey.

India has become too tolerant of intolerance says Amartya Sen

Nobel Laureate and economist Amartya Sen on Friday said India as a nation had become too tolerant of intolerance.

Delivering the Rajendra Mathur Memorial Lecture organized by the Editors Guild of India memorial lecture , Sen said the

Indians have enough reasons to be proud of their traditional tolerance and plurality but have to work hard to preserve it “The problem is not that Indians have turned intolerant. In fact to the contrary we have been much too tolerant of intolerance,” he said.Talking about the recent attacks on writers and scholars Sen said when people in minority (of scholarship of community) are attacked by organized detractors they need country’s support.

“This I am afraid not happening adequately right now and this did not happen adequately earlier as well. But then it did not start with the present government though it has added substantially to restrictions already there,” he said while delivering a lecture on

“The Centrality of the Right to Dissent “.

Recounting how M F Hussain, the acclaimed painter, was hounded out of this country “by relentless persecution led by a small organized group”, Sen said it did not get the kind of support that could have stopped his migration.

“In this case however the Indian government at least was not involved though it could have easily protected Hussain. Indian

government’s complicity however was much more direct when India became the first country in the world to ban Salman Rushdies’ Satanic Verses,” he said.

Referring to the Dadri incident in which Mohammad Akhlaq Saifi was lynched by a mob for allegedly storing beef in his home last year Sen said the Constitution does not have anything against anyone eating beef, storing it in the refrigerator even if there are some people who are offended by other people’s food habits.

“Murders have occurred on account of hurt sentiments arising from private eating,” he said.

Sen said most Indians, including Hindus like him, accept the food habits of those belonging to other groups and are ‘familiar and tolerant’ of other people’s religious beliefs.

Citing solution to the prevailing situation of intolerance he said it could be done by first, blaming the Indian Constitution for what it does not say, second to not allow some of the colonial rules under the Indian Penal Code go unchallenged and third that we should not be tolerant about intolerance which undermines our democracy.

The adult couples then flew to the United States with the children, left them there and returned to India.

The suspected traffickers told police they were reuniting the

feel confident that we have good systems in place and this is something we are vigilant about.”

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 5,466 cases of human trafficking

children with their parents in the United States, all illegal immigrants, NDTV reported. But it quoted police officials as saying they believed the children were being sold.

Hall said the US consulate in Kolkata was thorough in the way it granted visas and that dozens of applications were rejected annually based on suspicions that human trafficking was involved.

“I know in our consulate in Kolkata, we have good relations with the law enforcement agencies and we have a team in the embassy dedicated and watching out for cases like this and when we suspect them, we investigate together with the Indian authorities,” said Hall.

“Dozens of applications have been blocked as we have thought them to be very suspicious. We

registered in 2014, an increase of 90 percent over the past five years. Activists say this is a gross under-estimation of the scale of the problem.

Thousands of Indians - largely poor, rural women and children are lured to big cities each year by traffickers who promise good jobs but sell them into domestic or sex work or to industries such as textile workshops.

In many cases, they are not paid or are held in debt bondage.

Some go missing, and their families cannot trace them.

Hall said New Delhi and Washington were working together to combat human trafficking and welcomed plans

by India to draft a new antitrafficking law and the creation a central agency to better coordinate between various states and institutions.

Polio-stricken Siddhant did not want a job to eke out his livelihood. Neither did he wish to draw doles for his disability.

So this 25-year-old Gaya resident chose a vocation that is not consciously adopted by others, and came up with an enterprising plan begging, which fetches him Rs 30,000 every month. “Why should I run after a paltry grant of Rs 600 given to the disabled in Bihar? I earn no less than Rs 1,000 everyday and that, too, for no work. I am happy with my present state, I don’t think of a future or the past,” said Siddhant, who is uneducated.

As a child, Siddhant’s right leg was affected by polio. His mother, who supported the family of two by making earthen lamps, lost all

hopes of a cure. Siddhant then decided to start begging to help his mother supplement her meagre income. “I hire a loudspeaker-fitted rickshaw for Rs 200 a day. When my earnings exceed Rs 1,200, I pack up for the day, pay the rickshaw-wala, who drops me home,” said Siddhant. Although unschooled, Siddhant is better placed than other beggars. According to the 2011 Census data on ‘nonworkers by main activity, education level and sex’ released recently, of the total 25,857 beggars in Bihar, 95 including 78 males and 17 females have graduate or higher degrees other than technical ones. A majority of beggars 9,848 males and 12,421 females are illiterate.

Beggar earns Rs 30,000 each month

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16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Son of Canadian beer magnate Drug cartel ruled in Mexico prison hit by riot gets life for killing father

London The son of a wealthy Canadian beer baron was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for murdering his father, following a long and sensational trial in New Brunswick province.But he may seek parole after 10 years behind bars.Dennis Oland, 47, was found guilty in December of second-degree murder against his father, Richard Oland, who was part of the locally prominent family that owns Moosehead Breweries.

The 69-year-old father was found dead in a pool of blood in his office on July 7, 2011. His body bore numerous stab and blunt-

force wounds to the head, neck and hands. Police said his son was the last person to see him alive.Dennis Oland pleaded not guilty at trial and continues to deny involvement in the killing.In arguing its case, the prosecution pointed to the younger Oland`s financial problems, suggesting that he had grown violent when his father refused a demand for money.It argued that a brown jacket belonging to Dennis Oland bore small blood splatters and traces of DNA that experts said almost surely came from his father. Moosehead is Canada`s oldest independent brewery, based in Saint John.

London With an exclamation of “Finally”, Pope Francis embraced Patriarch Kirill on Friday in the

a stage, bandstands and crowds waving yellow handkerchiefs.

Mariachis serenaded as his chartered plane pulled to a stop

first meeting between a pontiff and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, a brief but historic encounter held during a stopover in Cuba before the pope flew on to Mexico.

The meeting in the small, woodpanelled VIP room of Havana’s airport was a landmark development in the 1,000-year schism that has divided Christianity.

“We are brothers,” Francis said as he embraced Kirill. The men exchanged three kisses on the cheek.“Now things are easier,” Kirill agreed. “This is the will of God,” the pope said.

Later Friday, Francis flew into Mexico City’s airport to begin a five-day visit during which he plans to bring a message of solidarity with the victims of drug violence, human trafficking and discrimination to some of that country’s most violent and poverty-stricken regions.

A smiling Francis was greeted with a rock concert-like show with blue floodlights illuminating

and people shouted “Brother Francis, you’re already Mexican”.

President Enrique Pena Nieto and his wife met Pope Francis on a red carpet. The pontiff made no public remarks before beginning a 22-kilometre (13 1/ 2-mile) trip to the papal envoy’s residence for the night.

In Havana, the two church leaders’ meeting and signing of a joint declaration was decades in the making and cemented Francis’ reputation as a risktaking statesman who values dialogue, bridge-building and rapprochement at almost any cost.In the 30-point statement, the pope and patriarch declared themselves ready to take all necessary measures to overcome their historical differences, saying “we are not competitors, but brothers”.

Francis and Kirill also called for political leaders to act on the single most important issue of shared concern between the Catholic and Orthodox churches today: The plight of Christians in

Monterrey Authorities found dozens of knives, cocaine and flat-screen televisions at the Mexican prison where a brawl killed 49 inmates, officials said today, highlighting the control drug cartels hold over many penitentiaries.

The battle at the Topo Chico prison in the northern industrial city of Monterrey was triggered by a dispute between rival leaders of the Zetas gang, authorities said.

Officials acknowledged that the prisoners had their own “selfgovernment” at the facility, where 100 guards monitored 3,800 convicts.

After reclaiming control following yesterday’s pre-dawn riot, authorities found half a kilogram of marijuana, 23 doses of crack cocaine, 30 doses of cocaine, 120 makeshift blades, 80 knives, 60 hammers, 400 lighters, 16 USB sticks, 10 MP3 players, and two 67-inch televisions, Rodriguez said.

“There is a self-government, obviously because of the financial shortfall and the lack of guards,” Rodriguez said, adding that the prison was overcrowded by 35 per cent.

3 kisses and a hug: Pope ‘finally’ meets Russian Orthodox leader

Iraq and Syria who are being killed and driven from their homes by the Islamic State group.

“In many countries of the Middle East and North Africa, entire families of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being exterminated, entire villages and cities,” the declaration said.

While the meeting has been hailed by many as an important ecumenical breakthrough, Francis has also come under criticism for essentially allowing himself to be used by a Russia eager to assert itself among Orthodox Christians and on the world stage at a time when the country is increasingly isolated from the West. The declaration was signed in the uniquely ideal location of Cuba: Far removed from the Catholic-Orthodox turf battles in Europe, a country that is Catholic and familiar to Latin America’s first pope, but equally familiar to the Russian church given its anti-American and Soviet legacy. The pope helped mediate the declaration of detente between the US and Cuba in 2014. “If this continues, Cuba will become the capital of unity,” the pope said.Calling the talks “very substantive”, Kirill said: “The results make it possible to say that today the two churches can actively work together to protect Christians around the world.”

The Vatican is hoping the meeting will improve relations with other Orthodox churches and spur progress in dialogue over theological differences that have divided East from West ever since the Great Schism of 1054 split Christianity.

An official at the state’s human rights commission, Sylvia Puente Aguilar, said extortion, beatings and murders are common at the prison.

“There is a dispute because illegal activities have been detected inside, such as drug

sobbed as they read a list of the dead outside the prison. 12 other inmates were injured.

40 bodies have been identified and all had wounds consistent with stabbings or beatings with hammers and sticks, Rodriguez said.

dealing,” Aguilar told Milenio television.

The prison battle was triggered by a dispute over control of the facility between rival Zetas members Jorge Ivan Hernandez Cantu, alias “El Credo,” and Juan Pedro Zaldivar Farias, alias “El Z-27,” according to the authorities.

Following the clash, both Zetas leaders were among 233 inmates who were transferred from the state facility to federal prisons, where people convicted of more serious crimes are usually held.Relatives of victims

A former inmate told AFP about a dangerous life inside the prison.

“You never sleep well because if you sleep deeply, the scorpion will sting you,” said Juan, a 28-year-old former convict who was released last month.

Covered in tattoos up to his forehead, Juan said around 50 Zetas drug cartel members lord over the prison and are protected by the authorities “because they have a lot of money” from a “tax” they charge other inmates.

Spider wins out over deadly snake

SYDNEY A spindly spider has taken on a deadly brown snake - and won in a very Australian telling of the story of David and Goliath.

Farmer Patrick Lees, from Weethalle about 400 kilometres (250 miles) west of Sydney, said he found the spindly-looking ‘daddy long legs’ spider with the snake on Saturday.‘The snake was already dead, I made sure of that before I took the photo,’ he joked to AFP about the snake which is known for its deadly venom. ‘I’m not sure if the spider killed it with poison, it probably just got caught up (in a web).’Lees’ photo of the snake, strung up by its tail by spiders’ webs and with the daddy long

legs perched on it, has struck a chord since he posted it to The Aussie Farmer Facebook page.

He said he left the creature to its fate. ‘I can’t deny the spider its victory,’ Lees said. ‘I’m not sure if it killed it but it definitely won in the long run.’ The Australian Museum’s Graham Milledge said it was possible the snake was killed by the spider but it was impossible to know for sure.

‘The most likely scenario is that the snake got entangled in the spider’s web,’ he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ‘Usually what happens then is the spider will try to wrap the snake and then they’ll bite it.’

Issue - 654 (34)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

‘India should declare Romas as national minority of Indian origin’ New Delhi should declare Roms as a national minority of Indian origin, as it has nothing to lose by admitting that these are people of Indian descent, feels Jovan Damjanovic the president of the World Roma Organisation- Rromanipen.

The Roma are gypsies who are believed to trace their origin to nomadic communities like the Dom, Banjara, Gujjar, Sansi, Chauhan and Sikligar from the North West parts of India.

Damjanovic who is in the Capital to attend a three-day conference on the international Roma community being organised by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in collaboration with the Antar Rashtriya Sahayog Parishad Bharat (ARSPB) told Hindustan Times in an exclusive interview that recognition from the Indian authorities will be the first step towards countering the negative perceptions about the Roms.

Mainly concentrated in Central, Eastern and Southern parts of Europe, the Roms are counted among the most discriminated people in the world and considered as people with criminal propensity.

“We are expecting after all these years India should recognise the Roms as Indian national minority.

There is anthropological and physical evidence that we belong to India. Indians could win at cultural, economical and political level by accepting the origins of these 12-15 million people,” Damjanovic told HT. Damjanovic who has been a Minister Without Portfolio, in the Government of Serbia was critical of the European Union for failing to stem the discrimination faced by the Roms in several countries, including forced eviction.

“European countries have double standards, while they welcome refugees from one country, they are treating Roma people in a different way. They are not making a mistake; they are doing it on purpose. All member states of the UN are compelled to host refugees from any country, but for Roma the rules are different,” he said.

On the allegations that Roma are not keen on assimilation and integration, and prefer to remain in ghettos and on the margins, he said it is a deliberate attempt at creating misinformation about the community. “All Roms are models of integration everywhere they are given an opportunity, the truth is that we are excluded. We have the Indian spirit of respect and integration.”

Historic Jain temple demolished in Pak to pave way for metro project

Notwithstanding a court order, authorities in Pakistan’s Punjab province have demolished the remains of a centuries-old Jain temple to pave the way for a controversial metro line project.

In violation of the Lahore high court’s order to suspend all work on the line within 200 feet of buildings of historical value, the Punjab government on Thursday demolished the remains of the already damaged temple.

Located near famous Anarkali Bazaar of old city, mob had damaged Jain Mandir in 1992 after the demolition of Babari Mosque in India. The temple was being used these days for some commercial purposes like shops and the office of the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) and a private filling station before its was completely destroyed by the Shahbaz Sharif government.

Supreme Court Lahore’s registry branch, Shalimar Garden, Chauburji monument, Saint Andrew Church, GPO building, tomb of Mehrunisa, Budhu ka Awa, tomb of Baba

Mauj Daria, Shah Cheragh Building, Awan-e- Auqafand and Dai Anga Tomb are other historical sites that fall on the route of the project.

The Lahore high court in January had issued a stay order against the construction work for the metro line project within 200 feet of historical buildings along its route. Opposition parties in Punjab assembly have not only brought a resolution in the House against the government’s move to demolish/damage historical sites but also launched a drive to protest against the Sharif brothers (Shahbaz and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif), terming them as “builders having no care for the historical sites and people’s properties”. Activist Kamal Mumtaz rushed to the Lahore high court and moved a contempt petition against the government for violating its court order and continuing the construction work of metro line.

He pleaded to the court to intervene and stop the government from demolition of historical sites.

To change the perceptions about Roms and to create an atmosphere of inclusion, where equal rights can be afforded to the community, Damjanovic said governments and the international community has to treat them seriously as nation of culture and not as a social problem.

“We need to open the door for dialogue, leading to the solution within framework of existing legal provisions. We also need patience, commitment and political will,” he underlined.

The three-day conference being inaugurated by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on February 12 is aimed at connecting the Roms with sister communities in India especially in the states like Rajasthan and

Punjab.The conference seeks to study political, social and economic challenges being faced by the Roma community in different countries and to examine existing constitutional safeguards available to them; to review the existing scholarly studies and literature on the connections of Roma with India and for creating awareness within India about them and to encourage more research about Roma/Sinti cultural roots in renowned institutions in India.

There is also a proposal to set up scholarships for Roma students for their higher studies in India and to re-establish cultural links and promote cultural studies among the Roma youth spread across many countries.

“India is committed to all people of Indian origin, we celebrate their cultural links. Such conferences help us to understand and create awareness,” Ambassador C Rajasekhar, director general of ICCR said.

In India conferences on the Roma people have been held in the past as well; the first Roma conference was organised in1976 in Chandigarh which was attended by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi; she also inaugurated in 1983 the International Roma Cultural Festival. In February 2001, 33 Roma scholars and representatives from 12 countries attended a conference where they interacted with former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Australia on Thursday appointed veteran woman career diplomat Harinder Sidhu as its next high commissioner to India, the second Indian-origin official to serve as the country’s envoy to India in less than five years.

Sidhu, whose family hails from Punjab, will be the second Indian-origin Australian high commissioner in India, after the former diplomat Peter Varghese, who served in India from 20092012.Sidhu said she was looking forward to her new role in a dynamic country.

“India is one of the most exciting places for a diplomat to be at the moment. India’s economic prospects are bright and it is becoming a more influential and active international player,” said Sidhu, who was born in Singapore but migrated to Australia with her family as a child.

“At a personal level, I have always been fascinated by the country of my heritage and am keen to learn more about India– its language, culture and history – while I am there,” she added.

She will replace the outgoing High Commissioner Patrick Suckling.

Sidhu, a senior career officer with the department of foreign affairs and trade, has been also serving as First Assistant Secretary of the Multilateral Policy Division.

She has previously served overseas in Russia and Syria.

“India is one of Australia’s closest and most significant partners in the Indo-Pacific

built on strong people-topeople links,” Bishop said.

Australia also has strong strategic and defence ties with India, conducting its first

region. It is our 10th largest trading partner and our twoway investment is worth over USD 20 billion,” Australian foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop said while announcing Sidhu’s appointment as the new High Commissioner.

Bishop stressed that Australia would continue to push for the conclusion of a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement with India, designed to take “our economic relationship to a new level”.

“Sidhu will also have nonresident accreditation to Bhutan. Australia and Bhutan enjoy a warm relationship,

bilateral maritime exercises in 2015, she said.

There are also over 450,000 people of Indian descent currently residing in Australia driving our strong education, cultural and tourism links, Bishop said.

Sidhu’s previous roles included First Assistant Secretary in the Department of Climate Change, Assistant DirectorGeneral in the Office of National Assessments and Senior Adviser in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

She holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Economics degrees from the University of Sydney.

Indian-origin woman to be new Australian high commissioner to India

Issue 654 (35)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

No pressure from ICC for WT20 participation in India, says PCB Amid mounting speculation on Pakistan’s participation in next month’s World Twenty20 in India, the country’s Cricket Board today said it is not under any pressure from the ICC to send its team and a final decision remains

solely dependent on government clearance.

Pakistan Cricket Board is awaiting government go ahead to travel for the mega-event starting march 8.

“Until now no such thing has come from the ICC nor was any such thing discussed at the recent ICC meeting where we raised our concerns clearly about

security for the Pakistani players in India,” a top PCB official told PTI today.

The PCB’s statement came in response to media reports that ICC had warned Pakistan of legal consequences should they withdraw from the

tournament.

The official admitted that if government does not give its permission to play in India for security reasons, there was nothing the PCB could do.

“Look we have got no instructions or directions from our government as yet about sending the team for the World T20. We have asked for advice and we

are waiting for it,” the official said.

When asked if the PCB apprehends any action from the ICC in case of a pullout, the PCB official said the world body did nothing when Australia pulled out of the ICC World

Youth Cup in Bangladesh for security reasons.

“Has the ICC taken any action against them? All cricket boards, when it comes to security and safety issues, have to depend on advice from their governments. The bottomline is we made our position clear at the ICC meeting and we feel there is a genuine reason for concern

Mistakes in the Power Play cost us series, says Sri Lanka captain Chandimal A disappointed Sri Lanka captain Dinesh Chandimal said not playing well in the Power Play overs cost his inexperienced side the just-concluded Twenty20 series against India.

In Ranchi, the Lankans bowlers bled runs throughout while here in the final match, they lost half the side inside six overs.

“Throughout the series we played good cricket. In the first game we got momentum but in the second and third games, we did not start well. In Ranchi, we did not bowl well in the first

six overs and here we lost four wickets during Power play overs. These are mistakes in the last two games,” Chandimal said

at after the nine-wicket loss in the third T20 in Vizag on Sunday.

Chandimal also rued the lack of experienced players in the side to counter the Indian team.

“We have got an inexperienced team. They don’t know how to stay at the crease and get some more runs. We struggled with that. I think they will learn as soon as possible and we are looking forward to do well in the next series.”

The Sri Lankan captain though took out a few positives from the lost series, saying they found a few future players.

“In Dushmanta (Chameera), Dasun Shanaka, Kasun Rajitha, we found those players for future, we can get this positive out of the series,” he said.

if our players play in India,” he said.

He noted that it was the ICC which had itself withdrawn Pakistani umpire Aleem Dar from officiating in a bilateral series in India few months back.

“Have not countries and their boards in the past withdrawn from ICC events including the World Cup on security and political grounds? We have never said we will not play in the World T20 what we made clear at the ICC meeting was simply that if our government advised us against sending the team to India we will request the ICC to shift our matches to neutral venues,” the official added.

The official said PCB’s position was made clear at the ICC meeting and it would be foolish to draw comparisons between the Pakistani contingent of athletes going for the South Asian Games in India and the cricket team.

Viv Richards ready to coach Pakistan cricket team The West Indian batting legend Sir Vivian Richards is open to the idea of coaching Pakistan national cricket team though he feels that the current coach Waqar Younis is doing a “great job”. Richards, who has become a much sought after figure in the ongoing Pakistan Super League, where he is mentoring Quetta Gladiators team, said said he would not decline any coaching offers from Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).

“Waqar Younis at present is doing a great job with the Pakistan team but if given an opportunity to take up a coaching assignment with Pakistan cricket I would definitely give it a shot as I believe I have a lot to offer to the game,” the 63-year old said.

Considered one of the alltime greatest batsmen in world, Richards said it is sad that international teams are not touring Pakistan. “Pakistan is an

important member of the world cricket community and it is sad to see no international cricket being

played in Pakistan and I just hope things improve soon.” Nadeem Omar, the owner of the Quetta Gladiators team, which was brought for the lowest amount in the PSL, has surprised everyone with its performances. Omar also confirmed Richards’ interest in working with the Pakistani cricketers. “Yes, he has also told me that he is willing to come to Pakistan and work in any capacity with cricketers.

I’ll be lying if I say I’ve moved on says Dhoni

Mahendra Singh Dhoni has admitted that he hasn’t quite moved on from Chennai Super Kings (CSK), who have been suspended from the Indian Premier League (IPL) for two seasons. He will be leading the new franchise Rising Pune Supergiants this season and Dhoni said it will feel ‘a little different’ when he walks out to the middle donning a different jersey from what he has been wearing for eight years.

“I would be lying if I say I have moved on. That is the special part of being a human being. There has got to be an emotional connect after eight years (with CSK). After eight years of IPL, it feels very different to play for any other team,” Dhoni said at the jersey launch of his new team.

“All of a sudden if you want me to say that I am very

excited to play for a new team, don’t give credit to CSK and the fans for the love and affection they have

alongside the likes of Suresh Raina, Brendon McCullum and Ravindra Jadeja as the trio will turn

given us, it will be wrong.

But as a professional, I would like to thank the Pune team for taking me.

Of course there will be added responsibility as captain but as a professional we are supposed to do the job with more than 100 hundred percent commitment. And that is what we will try to do,” he added.

Dhoni also admitted that he would miss playing

out for the new franchise from Rajkot.

“There are a lot of players we will miss,” he said. “We were together for eight years, our core group was the same. We were so consistent and our strength was that we played as a team. We have taken some former CSK players but then at the auction, the two new teams were expected to do most of the buying.

Issue 654 (36)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

‘Coworking’ grows amid search for new office lifestyle WASHINGTON When Lance Macon started his real estate consulting firm, he did not want a traditional office. But he wasn’t going to work out of his home or a coffee shop either. Macon instead signed on with the ‘coworking’ space Cove, where he gets an available desk and conference room, along with coffee, Wi-Fi, copier access, soft drinks and a professional work environment. ‘I have to be in the field every day, so it doesn’t make sense for me to have a regular office,’ Macon said at the workplace in the Columbia Heights neighborhood in Washington, a short walk from his home. ‘Here, I have the comfort of the office, but I don’t have the expense and hassle of being trapped in the office.’ In Washington and in communities around the world, growing numbers are turning to this new kind of work environment, shar-

ing office space with people from various fields and using their smartphones and laptops as portable offices. A survey by the website

Deskmag, which tracks the trend, found 7,800 coworking spaces worldwide as of October 2015, up from 3,400 in 2013 and just 75 in 2007. These workspaces had more than 500,000 members, tenfold growth since 2011.

The survey projected the number of coworking spaces to grow to more than 10,000 in 2016, in

dozens of counties, with a strong growth trajectory in Canada, Italy, France, Thailand, Australia and India.

While informal office sharing has always existed, the

emergence of coworking spaces with low-cost memberships has become appealing to new startups as well as individual entrepreneurs, consultants and others who want a flexible but professional work environment. ‘These spaces fill a need for people seeking a work community who don’t necessarily have a work organization,’ said Gretchen

Spreitzer, a University of Michigan professor of management who leads the school’s coworking research project. Spreitzer said the coworking movement is a natural extension of the ‘sharing economy’ which draws on unused resources like vehicles or apartments. ‘People are used to the idea of sharing a car, or sharing tools, so it makes sense to be part of a coworking community,’ she said. Spreitzer said coworking helps provide ‘a sense of belonging’ that allows independent workers to thrive, while also making more efficient use of real estate.

She sees ongoing growth in coworking because ‘we have more people freely choosing independent careers and more people working remotely, helped by collaborative technologies like cloud computing and strong Wi-Fi.’

Obama phones Putin, asks him to stop Russian jets bombing Syria

WASHINGTON US President Barack Obama urged Russia on Sunday to stop bombing “moderate” rebels in Syria in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad, a campaign seen in the West as a major obstacle to latest efforts to end the war.

Major powers agreed on Friday to a limited cessation of hostilities in Syria but the deal does not take effect until the end of this week and was not signed by any warring parties - the Damascus government and numerous rebel factions fighting it.

Russian bombing raids directed at rebel groups are helping the Syrian army to achieve what could be its biggest victory of the war in the battle for Aleppo, the country’s largest city and commercial centre before the conflict.

There is little optimism that the deal reached in Munich will do much to end a war that has lasted five years and cost 250,000 lives.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin and Obama had spoken by telephone and agreed to intensify cooperation to implement the Munich agreement.

Issue 654 (37)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Health Say hello to pearly whites with these natural teeth-whitening tips!

Do you cringe if you have to smile for a photograph? Do you avoid socializing with people because you feel that your teeth are an embarrassment?

Discoloured or yellow teeth are a normality nowadays, if people’s current lifestyles are considered. There are many reasons why your pearly whites might not be very pearly white. Excessive drinking – alcohol, tea or coffee, lack of personal hygiene, smoking, are a few of them.

Your teeth are one of the first things people notice.

Good health and confidence are a couple of things that a good set of teeth promote.

Who doesn’t want to have a beautiful smile with white sparkling teeth?

People often seek clinical help to remove the yellow tinge from their teeth, but such treatments take time and are likely to be exhorbitant. If you wish to get rid of yellow teeth, you can try some natural remedies.

There are many kitchen ingredients that you can use to restore that pearly white smile.

1. Baking soda and lemon juice: You’ve certainly heard of the whitening properties of baking soda and lemon juice is considered a natural bleaching agent. Mix

some baking soda with lemon juice , enough to make a paste. Take the paste on a toothbrush and brush your teeth thoroughly. Leave the paste on for 1 minute, then rinse, so as to avoid the acid effecting enamel. A piece of advise: Avoid frequent use of baking soda. It is an abra-

An egg a day doesn’t risk your heart

Due to their cholesterol content, their reputation has been perceived as “bad” for quite some time, but now eggs are back in

the game with a new study revealing that they don’t increase the risk of heart

attack.

The University of Eastern Finland study shows that a relatively high intake of dietary cholesterol or eating one egg every day is not associated with an elevated risk of incident coronary heart disease.

Furthermore, no association was found among those with the APOE4 phenotype, which affects cholesterol metabolism and is common among the Finnish population.

In the majority of population, dietary cholesterol affects serum cholesterol levels only a little, and few studies have

linked the intake of dietary cholesterol to an elevated risk of cardiovascular diseases. Globally, many nutrition recommendations no longer set limitations to the intake of dietary cholesterol.

The study did not establish a link between dietary cholesterol or eating eggs with thickening of the common carotid artery walls, either.

The findings suggest that a high-cholesterol diet or frequent consumption of eggs do not increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases even in persons who are genetically predisposed to a greater effect of dietary cholesterol on serum cholesterol levels.

The findings are published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

sive, meaning that it will help remove stains, but it can also be harmful. After continued use, it can begin to wear away the tooth enamel, which will cause your teeth to darken.

2. Strawberry and salt: Strawberries contain a good amount of vitamin C, which helps make your

teeth whiter. It also contains an enzyme called malic acid, which may help to remove surface stains.

Salt on the other hand, is one of the fundamental dental cleansing agents that has been used since time immemorial. Many toothpaste brands also use salt as an ingredient in their toothpaste. All you have to do is take about three large strawberries, crush them into a pulp and add a pinch of salt. Take a generous amount of the mixture on your toothbrush and brush your teeth. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes before rinsing. You can also add a dash of baking soda in

the mixture, but as mentioned above, it is better to avoid its frequent use.

3. Oil pulling: This method of teeth whitening has been around like fire for a while and people haven’t stopped gushing about its positive results! Coconut oil along with its health properties is here to stay. All you have to do is take a mouthful of coconut oil, (you can soften it beforehand or simply put it in your mouth and let it soften by itself), and swish it around in your mouth like a mouthwash for a good 10-15 minutes. Spit it out, rinse with water and then, brush your teeth. You can use this method once everyday!

Focus on quality, not quantity, of food to stay slim Have you come across a few people who never seem to worry about weight and yet manage to stay slim?

One secret that works behind their seeming effortlessness may actually be a sharp focus on the quality of food that they eat, suggests new research.

“These results are encouraging because they imply that instead of putting restrictions on one’s diet and avoiding favourite foods, weight gain could be prevented early on by learning to listen to inner cues and putting emphasis on the quality instead of the quantity of food,” said lead researcher Anna-Leena Vuorinen from the University of Tempere in Finland.

You know that one friend who never worries about weight and seems to stay effortlessly slim? That friend, and others like him might unknowingly possess secrets to helping those who struggle with their weight.

The findings are based on Global Healthy Weight Registry that surveyed adults who have successfully maintained a healthy body weight throughout

their lives.

The registry was created

by Cornell Food and Brand Lab of Cornell University in the US. Those who voluntarily signed up for the registry answered a series of questions about diet, exercise and daily routines.

The researchers then divided the respondents into

more likely to use strategies that differ from traditional recommendations for weight loss or maintenance.

These strategies include eating high-quality foods, cooking at home and listening to inner cues in order to stay slim.

two groups. Group one, the mindlessly slim, consisted of 112 adults who reported that they did not maintain strict diets.

The other group consisted of those who dieted regularly, thought about food frequently and were highly conscious of what they ate.

After comparing the responses from each group, the researchers found that mindlessly slim individuals were

Also they did not indicate feeling as guilty as the other group about overeating.

Furthermore, mindlessly slim people were more likely to have an enjoyment-based, internally informed approach to food and eating, the study found.

The findings were presented recently at the annual scientific meeting of The Obesity Society in Los Angeles, US.

Issue 654 (38)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Say goodbye to your acidity woes with these ten simple tips!

Acidity or acid reflux is something everyone suffers at some point. For some, it may even be a daily occurrence.

Overeating, spicy food, being overweight, excessive intake of alcohol and/ or caffeine, are just some of the reasons you may have acidity.

Acidity occurs due to excess acid secretion in the gastric glands of the stomach. The feeling is also known as heartburn and is one of the most common and primary symptoms of acidity.

Even though medication is easily available, they

don’t have the tendency to provide a lasting cure.

However, there are certain ways through which you can easily curb the problem.

1. Coconut water is known as one of the best coolants for heartburn 2. Ditch those carbonated and caffeinated beverages and opt for a healthier alternative like green tea or herbal tea 3. Drink a glass of milk everyday 4. If you are a regular smoker, cut down on the habit 5. Reduce the spice quotient in your food. Try to

avoid pickles, spicy chutneys, vinegar, etc 6. Eat small but regular meals. Keeping long intervals between meals is another cause for acidity 7. Mint is a natural coolant. Boil some mint leaves in water and have a glass after meals 8. Sucking on a piece of clove can do wonders for heartburn 9. Have vegetables like drumsticks, beans, pumpkin, cabbage, carrot and spring onions 10. Have your last meal at least two to three hours before you hit the sack

How this gene variant influences what we eat

Hate the taste of broccoli?

Do you perceive honey as too sweet? According to a new study, a common gene variant should be blamed for our food choices.

The McGill-led research team has recently discovered that for girls who are carriers of a particular gene variant (DRD4 VNTR with 7 repeats), the crucial element that influences a child’s fat intake is not the gene variant itself.

Instead, it is the interplay between the gene and girls’ early socio-economic environment that may determine whether they have increased fat intake OR healthier than average eating compared to their peers from the same class background. The DRD4 repeat 7 is found in approximately 20 per cent of the population and is known to be associated with obesity, especially in women. Lead researcher Laurette Dube said that

they found that among girls raised in poorer families, those with DRD4 repeat 7 had a higher fat intake than other girls from the same socio-economic background, but they also found that girls with exactly the same gene variant who came from wealthier families, compared to these with the same economic conditions, had a lower fat intake.

Dube noted that this suggests that it’s not the gene acting by itself, but rather how the gene makes an individual more sensitive to environmental conditions that determines “for better or worse” a child’s preference for fat and consequent obesity as the years pass by.

Interestingly, the researchers found this effect to be true only in the girls that they tested. They speculate that this may be because, from an evolutionary standpoint, it may have

been more important for girls to be able to gain weight easily to adapt to adverse conditions in order to reproduce.

Another possibility they advance is that at age four, it may simply be too early to see these effects in boys since boys and girls gain weight at different stages at this age, and may also have different behavioural responses to hunger and feelings of satiety. These results underscore the importance of moving beyond a ‘one-sizefits-all’ approach to childhood obesity prevention, said Dube, adding “we need to move towards targeted approaches that focus on populations that are particularly vulnerable to both genetic and environmental factors: those who are biologically more vulnerable under adverse environments are those likely to be more responsive to improvements in their conditions.”

Dark circles? Make them disappear with these five simple natural remedies!

It’s morning. You get up and walk towards your mirror. What do you see when you look at yourself? If the answer is ugly bags and dark circles under your eyes, then this one’s for you!

Dark circles can occur because of various factors like ageing, dry skin, prolonged crying, working for long hours in front of a computer, mental or physical stress, lack of sleep and/ or an unhealthy diet, etc.

What do you do get rid of them? Get a good amount of shut-eye? Sadly, that’s not the immediate answer to your problem.

And no, going to a dermatologist will not exactly erase those dark circles immediately without you spending your

hard-earned money.

Dark circles are not a serious skin problem, but they make people look tired, exhausted, unhealthy and older.

We, however, have the solution! You can totally bid goodbye to those tell-tale signs of fatigue with these natural home remedies.

1. Rose water: Rose water is an amazing thing to have around at home, especially for these kind of emergencies. Rose water is full of incredible

properties that rejuvenates the skin as well as soothe

tired eyes. What you have to do is soak a couple of cotton pads in rose water for a few minutes and then put the cotton pads on your eyes. Let them sit for at least 15-20 minutes. Do this twice everyday for a few weeks for best results.

2. Almond oil: Everyone is aware of how good almond oil is for the hair, but few know about its skin care properties. Al-

your eyes, right before you go to bed. Keep it overnight and wash it off the next morning. You can do this daily till the shadows disappear.

3. Lemon juice: Lemons are known for their natural bleaching tendencies and can potentially be used for skin-lightening. To get rid of dark circles, use some cotton to apply some lemon juice under

mond oil is like juice for the skin. For dark circles, all you have to do is dip your finger into the oil and massage the oil gently under

your eyes. Leave it on for 10 minutes and rinse off.

However, if the application leaves you with a burning sensation, avoid further use.

4. Raw potato:

Potatoes, just like lemons, have skin-lightening prop-

erties and also reduce puffiness around the eyes.

Simply grate one or two potatoes and extract the juice.

Soak a couple of cotton pads in the potato juice and keep it on your eyes. Leave it on for 10-15 minutes and rinse it off with cool water. Repeat once or twice daily for a few weeks.

5. Cucumbers: Last but not the least, cu-

cumbers are known to calm and soothe tired skin and eyes, which is why you see it as one of the most used ingredient in skin and eye creams. Because of its cooling tendencies, cucumber is the number one go-to natural remedy. Take two slices of refrigerated cucumbers and put them on your eyes for 10 minutes.

Do this daily twice a day.

Issue 654 (39)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016

Honeyed Pork Chops Ingredients: 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 6 boneless pork chops 3 tablespoons honey 1/2 cup water 1/4 cup soy sauce 1 small onion, chopped 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper Directions: Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat, and brown the pork chops about 5 minutes on each side. Transfer to a baking dish.

In a bowl, mix the honey, water, soy sauce, onion, ginger, and pepper. Pour over the pork chops in the baking dish.

Bake pork chops 1 hour in the preheated oven, to an internal temperature of 145 degrees F (63 degrees C).

Grilled Salmon Ingredients: 1 1/2 pounds salmon fillets lemon pepper to taste garlic powder to taste salt to taste 1/3 cup soy sauce 1/3 cup brown sugar 1/3 cup water 1/4 cup vegetable oil Directions: Season salmon fillets with lemon pepper, garlic powder, and salt.

In a small bowl, stir together soy sauce, brown sugar, water, and vegetable oil until sugar is dissolved. Place fish in a large resealable plastic bag with the soy sauce mixture, seal, and turn to coat. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Preheat grill for medium heat.

Lightly oil grill grate. Place salmon on the preheated grill, and discard marinade. Cook salmon for 6 to 8 minutes per side, or until the fish flakes easily with a fork.

Ingredients: 2 (7 ounce) cans whole green chile peppers, drained 8 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, shredded, 8 ounces Longhorn or Cheddar cheese, shredded 2 eggs, beaten 1 (5 ounce) can evaporated milk 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1/2 cup milk 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Spray a 9x13-inch baking dish with cooking spray.

Lay half of the chilies evenly in bottom of baking dish. Sprinkle with half of the Jack and Cheddar cheeses, and cover with remaining chilies. In a bowl, mix together

the eggs, milk, and flour, and pour over the top of the chilies.

Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes. Remove from oven, pour tomato sauce evenly over the top, and continue baking another 15 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining Jack and Cheddar cheeses, and serve.

Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo Ingredients: 1 pound fettuccini pasta 1 tablespoon butter 1 pound cooked shrimp - peeled and deveined 4 cloves garlic, minced 1 cup half-and-half 6 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley salt to taste Directions: Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.

In a large skillet, cook and stir shrimp and garlic in the butter for about one minute. Pour in half and half; stir.

Sprinkle Parmesan cheese in one table-

spoon at a time, stirring constantly. After all Parmesan is added, mix in parsley and salt. Stir frequently making sure it does not boil. Sauce will take a while to thicken.

When sauce has thickened, combine with cooked pasta noodles; serve hot.

Pepper Steak

Hawaiian CHiCken kabobs Ingredients: 3 tablespoons soy sauce 3 tablespoons brown sugar 2 tablespoons sherry 1 tablespoon sesame oil 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder 8 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into 2 inch pieces 1 (20 ounce) can pineapple chunks, drained skewers Directions: In a shallow glass dish, mix the soy sauce, brown sugar, sherry, sesame oil, ginger, and garlic powder. Stir the chicken pieces and pineapple into the marinade until well coated. Cover, and marinate in the refrigerator at least 2 hours.

Chili Rellenos Casserole

Preheat grill to medium-high heat.

Lightly oil the grill grate. Thread chicken and pineapple alternately onto skewers.

Grill 15 to 20 minutes, turning occasionally, or until chicken juices run clear.

Ingredients: 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 medium onion, chopped 2 large bell peppers, sliced into thin strips 2 cloves garlic, minced 1/3 cup soy sauce 1/3 cup honey 1/3 cup red wine vinegar 1 1/2 pounds flank steak, cut into thin strips Directions: Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat.

Cook onion, bell peppers, and garlic in oil until tender-crisp, stirring frequently. Set aside.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat.

Pour soy sauce, honey, and red wine vinegar in pan, then add beef. Cook beef, stirring frequently, until done, about 10 to 15 minutes. Stir in cooked vegetables, and cook another 10 to 15 minutes.

Issue 654 (40)

16 Feb. - 22 Feb. 2016