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THE CONTACT WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ISSUE - 629, 25 AUG. - 31 AUG. 2015 PH: (905) 671 - 4761

‘WE ARE STABLE’ says India after the crash

What to expect after global stock selloff Washington Monday was one of the most volatile days in Wall Street history, with high-volume wild swings.

The DJIA fell almost 1100 points within minutes after the opening, and then recovered most of the loss, finally ending down 588 points, or almost 4%. The selloff was global. In Europe, stock exchanges in

Kong and Australia fell 45%. So let’s start with where we are. The Contact Weekly predicts that we’re headed for a global financial panic and crisis.

According to Friday’s Wall Street Journal, the S&P 500 Price/Earnings index (stock valuations index) on Friday morning (August 21) was at an astronomically high 21.63. This is far above the historical average of 14,

P/E ratio will fall to the 5-6 range or lower, which is where it was as recently as 1982, resulting in a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 3000 or lower.

I’ve been pointing out for years that the Wall St bubble had to burst at some point, with 100% certainty. It’s impossible to predict the exact time. It’s worth noting that we still don’t know to this day why

Britain, Germany and France fell around 5%, and in Asia, stock markets in Japan, Hong

indicating that the stock market is in a huge bubble that could burst at any time. We predict that the

the stock market crashed on that particular day, Black Monday, October 28, 1929, instead of a few

Ben Kingsley Wants His New Movie To Change Americans’ Image Of Sikhs

The Oscar winner talks with HuffPost Live about how he hopes the film will change perspectives on

Sikhs. In his new film, “Learning to Drive, “ Academy Award-winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley plays a soft-spoken Sikh taxi driver, Darwan, who gives driving lessons to a work-obsessed Manhattanite, Wendy, played

by Patricia Clarkson. Their unlikely friendship transcends both status and race, but Kingsley hopes it can resonate beyond that for audiences.

During a conversation with HuffPost Live on Monday, Kingsley discussed the way his character, who faces the Continued on Page 2

weeks earlier or later. So it’s quite possible that when the crash comes, we’ll never know why it occurred on precisely that day. Most of the commentators and analysts on Monday were their usual glib selves, saying things like, “This is a healthy correction,” and “This is a buying opportunity, and “China has too small economy to affect the rest of the world.” I listened to a number of analysts on CNBC and Bloomberg TV on Monday, and I did notice

a change. Normally, mentioning the price/ earnings ratio (stock valuations) is always strictly forbidden, or if it’s mentioned, then the analysts simply lie, saying “it’s low,” which is ridiculous. But on Monday, I actually heard two or three analysts mention, however briefly, that stock valuations were unsustainably high.

This is quite remarkable, as if some secret code were being violated.

There’s was one particular exchange that was especially interesting.

Mohamed El-Arian is quite possibly the most glib analyst on TV, always taking a professorial tone, and answering every question by intoning something like, “There are three reasons: one ... two ... three ...” On Monday, he was specifically asked if stock valuations were high.

He said, almost under his breath, that they were, and then quickly changed the subject to something completely different.

Apparently he is not ready yet to break Continued on Page 2

Mumbai cops put paid to ‘kill Dawood’ plan in 2005 NEW DELHI In a significant disclosure, former Union home secretary R K Singh has said that Indian

Court starts Beant Singh assassination case against Jagtar Singh Tara Chandigarh Additional District and Session judge of Union Territory of Chandigarh Justice Jasvir Singh Sidhu started hearing the case of Beant Singh’s assassination against Bhai Jagtar Singh Tara via video conference on August 19. Due to unavailability of evidence by the

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the court deferred next hearing on September 14. Reliable sources informed that CBI had submitted the first hand evidences to Supreme Court while challenging the lower Court’s decision about Bhai Jagtar Continued on Page 2

intelligence agencies had to abort a covert operation they had planned to take out fugitive underworld don and mastermind of Mumbai serial blasts Dawood Ibrahim. In an

interview to a news channel, Singh said the plan, prepared by national security advisor A K Doval when he headed the Intelligence Continued on Page 2

Issue - 629 (2)

25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

What to expect after global stock...

Continued from Page 1 the secret code by saying clearly that valuations are unsustainably high, though he evidently is aware of it.

It was one of the many weird things on a weird day.

Some analysts are calling this Monday the new “Black Monday,” but it’s not. From the point of view of my theory, October 28, 1929, is a very special day because it was a day of total panic, and it traumatized the nation, and it’s remembered to this day.

But this day was nothing like that, not a day of total panic. It was a bad day, but it will be soon forgotten.

This was no new “Black Monday.”

What this Monday seemed like was a prelude to the real day of panic. And with stock markets plunging globally, the panic may not begin on Wall Street at all - it may begin elsewhere and spread to Wall Street.

It may be that China already appears to be in full-scale panic, though it’s hard for me to judge for sure from this distance. If I were to guess what’s going to happen in the next few days it would be this: I would expect Wall Street stocks to bounce back up

on Tuesday. Expect to see a lot more volatility, with stocks rebounding one day, and plunging the next. Then, one day, a real panic will occur, and that will be the day that will be remembered for years. That day has to come, with 100% certainty.

We just don’t know exactly when.

Modi Reviews Market Crash, Says Problems Only ‘External’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to push ahead with the reforms agenda and increase public spending as part of the drive to strengthen the economy, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told the media on Monday evening in the wake of the stock market crash.

According to Jaitley, PM Modi, who reviewed the crash and the plunge of the rupee during a meeting with him and other top officials, also said the economy was stable and the problem was “external and not internal”.

The Finance Minister, who had earlier briefed Modi on the situation, said the government and the regulators were keenly watching global developments but there was no need for a bailout package as of now. The

Prime Minister was of the opinion that “our economy is stable” but more needed to be done, Jaitley said.

“We will keep watching the situation and respond when required,” he added.

The review of the economy by the Prime Minister came in the backdrop of the benchmark Sensex plunging by 1,624.51 points at 25,741.56 - its lowest since August 2014.

The fall wiped out nearly Rs. 7 lakh crore of the investors’ wealth. The Rupee also fell to 66.64 against the US dollar - the lowest in 23 months. The Prime Minister is keen that the present global crisis should be converted into an opportunity for India, Jaitley said. Earlier in the day, the finance minister termed the market crash as “transient and temporary” and expressed hope that the situation would stabilise as domestic macro-economic indicators were strong.

“There is not a single domestic factor in India which has either contributed or added to it.

These are external factors.

I have not the least doubt that this turbulence is transient and temporary in

nature. Markets will settle down,” he said. Jaitley said that although the downward trend in the stock markets started on August 11 after devaluation of currency by China, “but we were able to hold on at the last till last week...today we have been quite adversely affected.

“Since China has been contributing 50 per cent to global growth in past few years, it is obvious that uncertainty will shake the market.”

He further said that but for the impact of currency and stock markets, “all other parameters are in sound footing. Oil and commodity prices are declining which is favourable.” The Minister stressed that growth projection of 8.1 to 8.5 per cent for the current fiscal, even in this global adversity, was going to be broadly maintained. “Prime Minister was of the opinion in given scenario we can maintain growth figures at reasonable level...in order to further strengthen economy, we should take steps so that world over crisis can be converted to opportunity for India,” he said.

African currencies crashing, along with

commodities and China Stock markets usually get most of the attention, but in fact the global selloff is applying to currencies and commodities as well. A number of currencies are falling against the dollar, following in the lead of China’s surprise devaluation of its yuan currency.

African economies, and African currencies, are being hit hard China’s devaluation and economic slowdown.

More than one-quarter of Africa’s exports go to China, and countries like South Africa, Kenya and Zambia are being hit hard.

Zambia derives almost 70% of its export earnings from copper, and with copper prices falling, Zambia’s currency fell 4.6%. The price of oil keeps falling, and oil-exporting countries Nigeria and Angola are losing substantial portions of their income. The price of oil is falling dramatically, reaching as low as $38 per barrel on Monday.

Countries outside Africa, such as Venezuela, Russia and Saudi Arabia, are suffering because their income depends on oil being closer to $100 per barrel.

What makes the global financial situation so precarious is that there doesn’t seem to be any good news anywhere.

Economic growth is tepid in the U.S. and slowing, while there’s no growth to speak of in China, Europe, or any of the developing countries with the possible exception of India.

Another bizarre twist in today’s world is that investors are very concerned when the US Federal Reserve is going to raise interest rates, with the base Fed Funds Rate currently almost zero (0.13%). With all of these currencies weakening and devaluing against the dollar, the dollar is getting stronger, which will make America less competitive in the world, and affect the US economy. However, there’s another angle to this. With near-zero interest rates in the U.S., it’s been possible for countries and businesses around the world to borrow a lot of money, and go deeply into debt. If the Fed Funds Rate goes up, then the interest rates on those debts will also grow, causing further problems for these borrowers.

Mumbai cops put paid to... Court starts Beant Singh assassination..

Continued from Page 1 Bureau under the Vajpayee government, involved using members of the rival underworld gang led by Chhota Rajan to target Dawood when he was set to travel to Dubai for the wedding of his daughter in

of Chhota Rajan gang. The claim is significant also because of the timing: it comes at a time when evidence has emerged that Doval’s interest in the leader of the notorious crime syndicate may not have waned even after a decade he

showed that Indian agencies have been tracking him with considerable success.

The dossier which Doval had planned to submit to his Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz had the latter not cried off from his engagement in Delhi, included the will that Dawood has prepared, bequeathing his property to his wife Mehzabeen, as well as the precise coordinates of the house Dawood bought next to a hospital in Karachi.

Ben Kingsley Wants His New Movie To...

2005. However, the plot was disrupted by a posse of Mumbai cops who mysteriously emerged in Delhi to arrest Rajan’s accomplice Vicky Malhotra and Fareed Tanasha.

The claim has shone fresh spotlight on Dawood’s links with sections of Mumbai cops, one of the factors why he came to be known as the “uncrowned king” of the city. It has rekindled suspicions about the manner in which Mumbai cops landed in New Delhi to enlist the help of Delhi Police ostensibly to execute arrest warrants pending against members

spent outside the government following his superannuation.

Last week, Indian agencies responded to claims of Pakistani officials here that they had got dossiers showing complicity of Indian agencies in Baluchistan insurgency by releasing a fresh photograph of the ageing don. So far, Indian agencies have used an old photograph - one which was taken in 1993 - in all the dossiers submitted to Pakistan to claim that the fugitive was being sheltered by the hostile neighbour, and to demand his return.

The image of the ageing don with a receding hairline

Continued from Page 1 stereotyping that’s become all too common for Sikhs in post-9/11 America, can become a learning opportunity for viewers. “Just as it was important for Gandhi to be told, ‘Get off the train, kaffir,’ and be thrown off, unfortunately it is important to understand Darwan’s stillness and dignity in the context of a pretty wellsteady flow of abuse,” Kingsley told host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. “And I hope that the film may allow audiences to look at the next Sikh they see in the street, or in a supermarket or at the wheel of a car slightly differently.”

Naseeb Singh and Bhai Navjot Singh.

While the case was under trial in a Court of Union Territory, the accused trio Bhai Jagtar Singh Hawara, Bhai Paramjit Singh Bheora and Bhai Jagtar Singh Tara managed to escape from Burail jail, Chandigarh by digging a Bhai Paramjit Singh Bheora tunnel on January 22, were arrested within a year 2004, along with a common while Bhai Jagtar Singh Tara and Devi Singh succeeded in reaching Pakistan.

Bhai Hawara and Bhai Bheora were sentenced to life convict till death by the Court of Union Territory.

Bhai Jagtar Singh Tara was arrested this year in Thailand and was brought back to India with the help of Thai authorities. Bhai Jagtar Singh Tara recently expressed distrust in Indian Constituency via his Advocate Simarjit Singh Bhai Lakhwinder Singh, convict Devi Singh. Bhai and had refused to contest Bhai Shamsher Singh, Bhai Jagtar Singh Hawara and his cases in court.

Continued from Page 1 Singh Hawara and Bhai Paramjit Singh in the Apex court. The former Chief Minister of Punjab Beant “Singh” was assassinated in a bomb blast in the Civil Secretariat, Chandigarh on August 31, 1995. The CBI had arrested nine people in this case. The arrested nine were Bhai Balwant Singh Rajoana, Bhai Jagtar Singh Hawara, Bhai Paramjit Singh Bheora, Bhai Gurmeet Singh Engineer,

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25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

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25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

The ‘Sardar Bahadur’ of the Sikhs!

Opinion

August 30 is the 154th birth anniversary of Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha.

This week, I am presenting a collection of articles on Bhai Kahn Singh by various sources namely, Harbans Singh of “The encyclopedia of Sikhism”, Roopinder Singh, The Tribune, SikhiWiki, Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha, Punjabi’s pioneering encyclopedist - on The Sunday Tribune, Historical documents on Kahn Singh Nabha, An Encyclopedist of Sikh Renaissance by Bal Anand, etc. - Editor Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha (Aug. 30, 1861Nov. 23, 1938) has received the most deserved attention as a rare breed of a deeply disciplined scholar-aristocrat.

According to the modern researchers, he was indeed the tallest figure of the Sikh resurgence with the focus on Punjabi in Gurmukhi script during the complex socio-cultural and religious fermentation in the colonial Punjab. The life of Bhai Kahn Singh need be examined as an inspiring saga of the monumental dedication and labor of love in interpreting the Sikh scriptures in proper perspectives in their relationship with the other relevant works of the divinity and principles of Indian literary traditions. He could single

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handedly accomplish what would seem beyond the combined capacity of the many times well provided teams of scholars in our contemporary academic institutions. The small princely state of Nabha situated in the back waters of Malwa region, always under the shadow of the next door larger Patiala state with its colorful rulers, has surely earned a rank above all the other states of formerly PEPSU because of the name of Bhai Kahn Singh associated with it. It is here in this sleepy town that seekers of scholarship and learning come across the brightest example of the pen proving mightier than the sword and tons of wealth.

An administrator, encyclopedist, a diplomat, historian, hunter, an interpreter of Sikh scriptures, a tennis player, tutor to an heir apparent and scholar, Bhai Kahan Singh of Nabha is widely known as the author of Mahan Kosh, the encyclopedia in Punjabi that was published in 1930. Bhai Kahan Singh was born in a Dhillon Jat family in the village of Sabaz Banera, what then used to be the territory of the princely ruler of Patiala.

His father, Mahant Narain Singh, was steeped in the Sikh tradition and was well known for his ability to recite Guru Granth Sahib. Narain Singh was a man of saintly character, and he succeeded to the charge of Gurdwara Dera Baba Ajapal Singh, at Nabha, after the death of his grandfather Sarup Singh in 1861. Kahn Singh was the eldest of the three brothers and one sister.

Bhai Kahn Singh did not go to any school or college, but was well-versed in various Indian languages, including Hindi, Braj Bhasha, Sanskrit, Urdu, Persian, English and of course, Punjabi. He was deeply seeped in the Sikh lore. Bhai Kahn Singh of Nabha was, indeed, one of the towering intellects of the 19th century, whose writings and actions left a deep impact on the region and the religion he belonged to. His imprint is to be seen in the literature he produced, as well as the actions of his student, Maharaja Ripudaman Singh of Nabha, who lead the reform movement among the Sikhs, sponsored the Anand Marriage Act and steered the legislation for the management of the Sikh Gurdwaras, which eventually lead to the formation of the SGPC. Kahan Singh was taught music by the famous musician, Mahant Gajja Singh.

By: SUNNY BAINS

By the age of ten, he could recite freely both the Guru Granth Sahib and Dasam Granth. He read Sanskrit classics with pundits in and around Nabha. He sought Maulawis in Delhi to teach him Persian because that was the language of his

gurus. He learnt martial arts from the Nihangs (Sikh warriors) and was also a good shot and fond of hunting. He also played the sitar and the dilruba with distinction. As an administrator, he began his innings in 1880, when he started working for Nabha state. He held administrative positions that included City Magistrate, Nazim, Mir/Munshi, Nehar Nazam. The term nazim was used for an administrator and would roughly be equivalent of Collector or Deputy Commissioner.

In 1883 he went to Lahore where during his two-year stay he studied Persian texts and assisted Professor Gurmukh Singh, a leading figure in the Singh Sabha, in the publication of his work Sudhararak.

In 1887 he was appointed tutor to Tikka Ripudaman Singh, the heir apparent of Nabha state. From the Maharaja’s private secretary to judge of the High Court, he held several different appointments in the state, serving for a brief interregnum, 191517, in the neighboring Sikh state of Patiala. His granddaughter, Hardarshan Kaur, describes him as “always immaculately dressed to suit the occasion, a very integrated personality.

He spoke softly in a well-measured tone and invariably gave full consideration and

respect to the views of others.” A typical day in his life started very early, when, after prayers, he went for a long walk. After breakfast he would work till noon. A short siesta, and he worked again until late afternoon, then attending to the visitors from various walks of life.

An important facet of Bhai Kahn Singh’s life is his association with Max Arthur MacAuliffe, who he met by fortuitous chance in 1885 in Rawalpindi. Bhai Kahn Singh explained the Guru Granth Sahib to the Englishman and also helped him with the research of his work, The Sikh Religion, which was published in six volumes by the prestigious Clarendon Press, an imprint of Oxford Press, in UK in 1907. Bhai Kahn Singh contributed to the book in various ways, and even accompanied MacAuliffe to England. The author later transferred the copyright of his book to Bhai Kahn Singh.

MacAuliffe often visited Nabha and other places to work with Bhai Kahan Singh who, in the meantime, had published Nanak Bhavarth Dipika (1888), Ham Hindu Nahin (1898), Gurmat Prabhakar (1898), Gurmat Sudhakar (1899), Gur Gira Kasauti (1899) and Sharaab Nikhedh (1907). He had also come out with two tikas or exegeses, Jaimant Assamedh (1896) and Visnu Purana (1903). According to Major A. P. Singh, grandson of Bhai Kahan Singh, Macauliffe also offered his house, 10 Sinclair Road, London, to him. Bhai Kahan Singh, however, declined the offer.

From among Bhai Kahn Singh’s works, his maiden work was Raj Dharam (1884), written at the instance of Maharaja Hira Singh of Nabha. It was followed by Nanak Bhavarth Dipika was an exegesis of extracts from the Hanuman Natak, based on his notes prepared for the instruction of the young prince under his tutelage.

Overall, the social situation in Punjab at that time was one in which excesses of the ruling classes had led to decay in the moral values. He and other reformers sought to reaffirm the uniqueness of the Sikh thought, and it was in this spirit that Ham Hindu Nahin (We are Not Hindus), a short booklet, was written in 1898. The title was provocative and it brought about quite a reaction, so much so that Bhai Kahn Singh eventually submitted a translation of the book in English to the British officials to clear the air. !! Continued on Next Page

Climbers bodies found on Ecuador volcano after 20 years QUITO Three bodies found on Ecuador’s Chimborazo volcano are believed to be those of climbers who went missing some 20 years ago in an avalanche, officials said Sunday. Mountain guides located the remains Saturday during a climb on the volcano, which soars to 6,310 meters (20,700 feet) high in the Andes, about 130 kilometers (81 miles) south of Quito.

A missing persons police official, Fernando De la Torre, said investigators were working to determine if the remains were those of the climbers missing in the avalanche that hit between 1994 and 1995.

The frozen remains were found with backpacks, climbing gear and a film camera. Snowcapped Chimborazo is Ecuador’s highest currently inactive volcano.

Issue - 629 (5)

25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

Facebook Would you want to ‘live’ forever online? How decides what’s

The only people who ever win arguments, are losers!

Real winners know better than to waste their precious energy scoring petty points. They see how it is far more sensible to build on consensus than to beat down the doors of intellectual resistance with the battering ram of logical insistence. The planets offer you significant success, as long as you respect the following principle: don’t focus on differences, disputes and disagreements. Look instead for points in common and reasons to co-operate. !!!

‘Happy-ever-afters’ are narrative devices - the storyteller’s way of saying ‘that’s all for now folks.’

For as long as life goes on, the fairytale continues, challenges keep coming and conflicts keep arising.

So if we want a true taste of eternal happiness, our only option is to find some way to greet those ongoing irritants with the kind of philosophical stoicism that borders on humble gratitude! It may not be perfect - but at least it’s life! Make that your starting point, and you may yet have far more than that to be glad of. !!!

Two plus two equals four.

We all understand that, it’s logical. There’s nothing to debate, nor is it a subjective statement. It doesn’t depend on how you are feeling, the time of the year or on whether a majority of people canvassed in an opinion poll agree. Oh, how reassuring such factors are. And, oh, how misleading. They cause us to imagine that the world is full of things that can be easily quantified and explained. Some things, though, just defy all our attempts to make sense of them. Be philosophical about that in your personal life. !!!

You have born blessed with the ability to have visions, insights, ideas and understandings that other people can’t even aspire to. It is beyond their imagination to even conceive sensitivity to the depth at which you experience it. But - as with all gifts, all talents, all assets - there is a potential downside, a price you may have to pay in the world or in your heart. In your emotional and personal life, you are now going through a profound, reflective phase.

You will emerge from this wiser, stronger, happier than ever. !!!

Imagine getting so deeply into a soap opera that you can’t sleep for worrying how things will turn out! In the soap opera of daily life, we all get more hooked than we should. We worry about processes we cannot influence. We waste energy trying to turn back tides. We don’t place enough faith in divine providence and natural serendipity. There are, now, some situations you can have a positive impact on - and some that you are best off watching from a distance. Be aware of the difference and use your energy wisely. !!!

Do you always do the right thing? Of course not.

You’re only human. Do you sometimes leap to crazy conclusions?

Naturally. But, then, we all do that. To be human is to be fallible. It’s just that some of us are better at pretending to be perfect.

You’re not afraid to put up your hand and say, ‘I made a mistake’, when you know this is what has happened. Don’t then, be afraid to put up your other hand today and say, ‘I may not be correct about everything, but I am correct about this one.’

Because in one key respect you are now right. !!!

Washington For centuries humanity has been searching for the secret of eternal life without success, but a new social networking site is promising its users digital immorality.

Eter9 claims to learn about

it already has 5,000 people who have signed up to use it, although some have described the concept as ‘creepy’ and ‘spooky’.

Launched by Henrique Jorge, a Portuguese software developer, the concept appears to mimic the plot

your personality as you share photographs, links and comments before continuing to post for you once you die. The site relies upon a form of artificial intelligence to create ‘virtual beings’ that can interact with other users. Each user will have a digital ‘Counterpart’ based on their previous posts. While the social network is only it Beta stage,

of the science fiction film Transcendence to some degree.

In the movie, artificial intelligence expert Dr Will Caster, played by Johnny Depp, uploads his consciousness onto a computer so he can continue to live after his death.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Jorge said: ‘We are trying to create an AI system that

learns faster from other networks like Facebook, as the Eter9 information at the moment is quite small.’

A statement on the Eter9 website added: ‘This network has specificities which allow a human being to achieve immortality in cyberspace. ‘Eter9 makes it possible to eternalize the user and gives them the permanent ability to interact within the network 24/ 7 through an element called counterpart, which will be active even while the user is offline, both in terms of posting content and commenting.

‘The counterpart will also be responsible for the user’s eternal life.

‘The counterpart will absorb all the information according to the posts and comments, and process that information within the limits of the acquired knowledge.

‘The interaction will be progressively more effective, taking into account the acquired information and its ‘experience’, and also the interaction between the physical part and the virtual connections.’

trending

Ever wondered how Facebook determines what you see in your news feed every time you log in? The social networking site has actually devised different algorithms for it. Apart from things like where you live and the pages you follow, it primarily looks for two broader signals -- Topics that are being mentioned a lot and topics that suddenly seen an increase in mentions, Re/ Code reported. For example, singer Justin Bieber is mentioned often on Facebook. So the total volume of mentions is always high and is not a good indicator of whether or not he is part of a trending topic.

So, Facebook would look for a hike in mentions relative to the normal prattle around Bieber. “This means that things that trend are not just the most highly mentioned people or topics, they have to be tied to some kind of relevant event,” the report said.

The ‘Sardar Bahadur’ of the Sikhs!

Continued from Page 4 It set forth forcefully the Singh Sabha standpoint with regard to Sikh identity and is regarded as one of the first treatises of separatism among the Sikhs by some.

The Gurmat Prabhakar was a glossary of Sikh terminology, concepts and institutions and Gurmat Sudhakar was an anthology of important Sikh texts, scriptural and historical. His Guru Chand Divakar (1924) and Gur Sabad Alankar (1925) deal primarily with rhetoric and prosody employed in the Guru Granth Sahib and some other Sikh texts. His Gur Gira Kasauti answers some of the questions raised by his pupil, Tikka Ripudaman Singh, about the meanings of certain hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib, and his Sharaab Nikhedh is a didactic work stressing the harmful effects of drinking. Among his other works are Sadu and Chandi di Var (1935).

From among his works which were published posthumously, Gurmat Martand (2 volumes) which essentially follows the format of his earlier Gurmat Prabhakar but includes much more explanatory material was published in 1960. A travelogue was published posthumously in 1984.

Nabha and Patiala states

did not always enjoy a positive relationship even though the rulers of both states, Maharaja Bhupindra Singh and Maharaja Ripudaman Singh, were related.

However, Bhai Kahan Singh, Bhai Arjan Singh Bagrian and Raja Gurdit Singh of Retgarh played a significant role in effecting reconciliation between the two rulers. He compiled Gurushabad Ratanakar Mahan Kosh from 19121930. During the years 1915-1917, he was the legal adviser to the political agency of Patiala state.

Mahan Kosh, as it is commonly called, has 64,263 entries and is well known for pithiness and accuracy.

Maharaja Bhupindra Singh of Patiala sponsored its publication, and Punjabi University, Patiala translated it into English and Hindi. A Sikh with strong convictions, Bhai Kahan Singh practiced what he preached. He advocated inter-caste marriages and his son’s marriage was such. His niece, a widow, was remarried, in accordance with his wishes.

Overall, he lived the life of an erudite country squire.

He lived in Nabha, where his great-grandson, Major A P Singh, resides now. He would retire to the hills of Solan and Simla in the

summers, and was also known as a good tennis player. He contributed financially and otherwise to the Khalsa College, Amritsar, and presided over the Sikh Educational Conference in 1931, a singular honor. In 1932, the British government gave him the title of Sardar Bahadur. In 1933, he was presented a sword by King Nadir Shah of Afghanistan, where he had gone for research.

His son, Bhagwant Singh, popularly known as Hari ji, wrote Dasam Granth Tuk Tatkara, and index of Dasam Granth, thus continuing his father’s legacy. According to Mr. Bal Anand, “S. Divan Singh Maftoon, a distinguished journalist of Urdu who edited ‘Riyast’ to expose the wrong doings of native rulers, had the highest admiration for Bhai sahib as a gentleman scholar. He said, “Had Bhai Kahn Singh been born in in the USA, Americans would have elected him as their President!” It would indeed be most appropriate to declare Bhai Sahib’s birth day as Punjab’s Day of Dictionary and Language.

Bhai Kahan Singh passed away on November 23, 1938. His keen interest in religious issues touched the life of many and earned the wrath of certain Hindu elements. He was furious and wanted that the Sikh

religion and its dictates be taken seriously and depicted correctly. “Hum Hindu Nahin” was published to prove that point. He was responsible for the removal of all kinds of idols from the Parkarma of Harmandir Sahib, condemning it as idol worship. He always protected truth and fought injustice in all spheres of life. His social and political programs were always directed to fulfil his literary and religious agenda. As we reflect on his rich legacy, this week, it is only natural that we salute this Renaissance man, Punjab’s pioneering encyclopedist.

A man of aristocratic bearing, he had the interests of an aesthete and loved art, flowers and music. In several spheres, he was the arbiter of taste through his writings; he subtly molded the course of the Sikh awakening at the turn of the century. Bhai Sahib was conferred the title of ‘Sardar Bahadur’ by the British but for his scholarship and not the usual service of the British Empire.

Many generations have passed, but this extraordinary scholar still lives through his works. Bhai Kahn Singh has left a permanent imprint on the latter-day Sikh learning.

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Many victims are using cell phones to trap offenders

Technology is proving to be a weapon for an increasing number of harassment victims, who are using their cell phones to name, shame and trap their attackers.

On Monday, a Facebook post by a 20-year-old Delhi girl exposing a man who harassed and threatened her in the Capital’s Tilak Nagar area, created an uproar on social media.

The massive reaction prompted immediate action by Delhi Police, who nabbed the man by Monday evening. The girl had posted a photograph of the man on her Facebook and Twitter accounts, alleging that he passed obscene comments, dared her to ‘do whatever she can’ and threatened her with dire consequences.

The incident occurred in West Delhi’s Tilak Nagar area on Sunday evening.

Hours after Jasleen posted the video and

shared the incident on Facebook, it went viral, which prompted Delhi Police to take swift action.

“When I told him that I am clicking his picture and I’m going to file a complaint against him, he responded by posing for the picture and said‘Jo kar sakti hai kar le.

Complaint karke dikha, fir dekhiyo kya karta hun main’ (Do whatever you want, complain against me and then wait and watch what I will do),” the girl wrote on her Facebook wall.

A senior police officer said the accused, identified as Sarvjeet Singh (26), has been arrested and booked under Sections 354A (punishment for sexual harassment) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the IPC. He is a resident of Paschimpuri area of west Delhi.

Islamic State destroys temple at Syria’s Palmyra Islamic State militants have destroyed a temple at Syria’s ancient ruins of Palmyra, activists said Sunday, realizing the worst fears archaeologists had for the 2,000-year-old Roman-era city after the extremists seized it and beheaded a local scholar.

Palmyra, one of the Middle East’s most spectacular archaeological sites and a UNESCO World Heritage site, sits near the modern Syrian city of the same name. Activists said the militants used explosives to blow up the Baalshamin Temple on its grounds, the blast so powerful it also damaged some of the Roman columns around it.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Sunday night that the temple was blown up a month ago. Turkeybased activist Osama alKhatib, who is originally from Palmyra, said the temple was blown up Sunday. Both said the extremists used a large amount of explosives to destroy it.

Both activists relied on information for those still in Palmyra and the discrepancy in their accounts could not be immediately reconciled, though such contradictory information is common in Syria’s long civil war. The fate of the nearby Temple of Bel, dedicated to the Semitic god Bel, was not

Indo-Pak DGMOs meeting to go ahead as planned says Aziz

A day after calling off IndoPak NSA-level talks, Pakistan on Sunday said the meetings between the DGMOs of the two countries and representatives of Pakistan Rangers and Border Security Force (BSF) will go

ahead as agreed in Ufa. “Yes, Rangers and BSF are going ahead. DGMOs will also talk, but it requires mechanism which goes beyond and suggestions have been made to make sure that some reduction in tension takes place,” Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz said. “I think Pakistan Rangers-BSF (meeting) is confirmed for 6th

(September). Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) can meet anywhere, they can agree among themselves, whenever they want to meet,” Aziz told CNN-IBN when asked about the dates for the meetings.

Holding India squarely responsible for the cancellation of the NSA talks, Aziz dubbed New Delhi’s stand of discussing only terror as a “unilateral decision” and harped that the Ufa objective was to reduce tension for which there was a need to discuss Kashmir. Aziz said the agreement reached in Ufa between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his

Indian counterpart Narendra Modi was interpreted differently by both the countries. “We wanted modalities of Kashmir to be discussed. Holding talks on Kashmir will reduce tension. Ufa objective was to reduce tension, so we need to discuss Kashmir, not terror.” Aziz also said Pakistan will not propose talks in New York when leaders of the two countries will be present next month for multilateral summits and insisted that it is up to India to do so. Talking about underworld don and most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim who is hiding in Pakistan, Aziz said India has not given any official proof. Pakistan last night called off the NSA-level talks, hours after India made it clear that discussions on Kashmir and a meeting with Hurriyat separatists will not be acceptable to it. Talking about the decision, Aziz said, “Every time there is a small incident, you cannot postpone the discussion indefinitely by saying terror still continues, who decides?”

immediately known.

Islamic State group supporters on social media also did not immediately mention the temple’s destruction.

and fertilizing rains.

The head of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, said Friday that Islamic State extremists in Syria and Iraq are engaged in the “most brutal,

23 soldiers and government-allied militiamen were killed Sunday in an attack by Islamic State militants in the turbulent Anbar

The Sunni extremists, who have imposed a violent interpretation of Islamic law across their selfdeclared “caliphate” in territory they control in Syria and Iraq, claim ancient relics promote idolatry and say they are destroying them as part of their purge of paganism.

However, they are also believed to sell off looted antiquities, bringing in significant sums of cash.

Al-Khatib said the Baalshamin Temple is about 500 meters (550 yards) from the Palmyra’s famous amphitheater where the group killed more than 20 Syrian soldiers after they captured the historic town in May. The temple dates to the first century and is dedicated to the Phoenician god of storms

systematic” destruction of ancient sites since World War II — a stark warning that came hours after militants demolished the St. Elian Monastery, which housed a fifth-century tomb and served as a major pilgrimage site. The monastery was in the town of Qaryatain in central Syria.

News of the temples destruction comes after relatives and witnesses said Wednesday that Khaled al-Asaad, an 81year-old antiquities scholar who devoted his life to understanding Palmyra, was beheaded by Islamic State militants, his bloodied body hung on a pole. He even had named his daughter after Zenobia, the queen that ruled from the city 1,700 years ago.

Meanwhile in Iraq, at least

province west of Baghdad, Iraqi military and police officials said, in the second heavy death toll suffered by the Iraqi military and its allies in recent days in the vast Sunni region.

The officials said Sunday’s attack, which killed 17 soldiers and six Sunni militia fighters, took place in the rural district of Jaramshah, north of Anbar’s provincial capital, Ramadi.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists. They said the Islamic State fighters used suicide bombings and mortar shells and that chief of army operations in Anbar, MajGen. Qassim al-Dulaimi, was lightly wounded in the attack.

Real Bajrangi Bhaijaan reaches Pakistan to bring back Geeta

After moving the Punjab and Haryana High Court to speed up the process to unite Geeta alias Guddi, 23, a mute and deaf woman who is struck in Pakistan from last 12 years, a Panipat, Haryana based advocate has left for Pakistan to meet Geeta and collect her DNA samples. “I have reached Pakistan and will make an effort to match Geeta’s DNA profile based on the blood samples with the couples who are claiming to be her parents.

I will present the details of

my initiative before the Punjab and Haryana high court on September 10,” Momin Malik said. Malik who left for Pakistan on Saturday, August 22, had submitted that he was willing to visit Islamabad to initiate legal proceedings to bring back the woman to India. He had also said that it was the duty of the Indian embassy in Islamabad to provide legal assistance to Geeta who was an Indian citizen. Geeta lives with Bilqees Edhi, wife of Abdul Sattar Edhi who has

founded Pakistan largest Edhi Foundation .Geeta had crossed the border when she was 11 years old.She was spotted by Pakistani Rangers who handed over her to Edhi Foundation which has been supporting her from last 12 years.

Geeta’s story came to light when Salman Khan starer Bajrangi Bhaijaan hit the screens recently as one film character Shahida appears to that of Geeta who is also mute and had crossed Pakistan border in her childhood.

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Quadruplets born to German mum, 65 BERLIN Highly premature quadruplets born to a 65-year-old German woman three months ago are doing well and will leave hospital in a few days, media reported Monday. German commercial television station RTL presented what it called the first footage of Neeta, Dries, Bence and Fijon since they were born about at 15 weeks in early May. “We can see that the children are doing well.

They feel good with their mother,” said Christoph Buehrer, who heads neonatal services at the Charite hospital in Berlin where the infants have been treated since their birth. In a case that has sparked controversy in Germany, teacher Annegret Raunigk - who has already had 13 children - gave birth to the quadruplets by Caesarian section after travelling to Ukraine for fertility treatment with anonymous sperm and egg

donors. The three baby boys and a girl, who weighed between 655 and 960 grams (1.4 to 2.1 pounds) at birth, were described

by Buehrer as “absolute high risk” cases.Two of the newborns had to be given help breathing, and two had to undergo surgery. But they are now out of danger, and have gained about three times their birth weight, RTL said.

Buehrer described them now as “normal children”. Raunigk, a grandmother of seven, had said that she decided to try to have another child because her youngest daughter, who was nine, wanted a little brother or sister.News of her multiple pregnancy emerged in April when she dismissed critics who said she was acting irresponsibly due to her age. “How does one have to be at 65?” RTL quoted her as saying at the time. “One must apparently always fit some cliches which I find rather tiring.

“I think one must decide that for oneself.”Ghost train loaded with gold from Nazi Germany may have been found. According to local media reports, the two claimants - a Pole and a German - say they have found a 500-foot long armoured train with gun platforms and a cargo of precious metals.Polish officials have said that the location of a train from Nazi Germany, believed to be loaded with gold, gems and other treasures looted from Jews by the Nazis, may finally have been unearthed. A lawyer representing two anonymous men has sent a letter to Polish officials claiming that his clients have found the lost ghost train, and they are willing to reveal the location in exchange for ten per cent of the value of the train’s contents.According to local media reports, the two claimants - a Pole and a German - say they have found a 500-foot long

armoured train with gun platforms and a cargo of precious metals, although the location has till now been kept hidden.The ghost train, which was filled with treasure and even armed, vanished in May 1945 after entering a secret system of tunnels under the Owl Mountains as the Germans fled

visiting the island in June, La Monde via The Guardian reported.He believes the island is Plato’s Atlas, or Atlantis, contradicting the long-held view that inspiration for the fictional island lies somewhere in the strait of Gibraltar. The writer said that the southern tip of Sardinia resembles ‘a marine Pompeii submerged by mud’ where metal tools, ceramics, pots and oil lamps were found in the mid-20th Century, in a state suggesting people hastily abandoned the site.He wanted to uncover why Sardinia was plunged into a ‘dark age’ in 1,175 BC. Nuraghi, which are megalithic fortresses with a central tower dating from

between the 16th and 12th century BC suggest the civilisation was quite advanced before disaster struck.

Between 9,000 and 20,000 of these mid Bronze Age structures have been registered over the past 20 years, including 20 on the plateau of Giara, which rises 1,968 feet (600 metres) above sea level, stretching over 16 square miles (42 square kilometres). The most complex is Su Nuraxi, at Barumini, which was discovered in 1950.

The fortress, constructed from huge basalt blocks, is surrounded by a maze of circular walls – the remnants of a later hamlet. Its central tower is conical and covered with a dome dating from the 16th century BC, with four more turrets added in the 12th century BC. The turrets are connected by underground tunnels as well as a storage cavity used to keep food at a steady 12°C throughout the year.

No one is sure exactly what they were used for and suggestions range from defences, houses for lords and towers for signalling and spreading news, such as the fall of Troy. Another complex settlement at Su Mulinu, near Villanovafranca has been studied, including a large bastion dating from 1,400BC.

Sochi A black labrador retriever has assumed the role of mum to three liger cubs who were abandoned by their parents after being born in a zoo in Russia.

The triplets, who are the offspring of a lion and a tiger, had been rejected shortly after their birth at Sochi Zoo. Zookeepers brought in Grona the labrador to see if she would take on the role of surrogate mother. After some training, she accepted the ligers as her own and has started nursing and cleaning the cubs in place of their own biological parents, a

advancing Soviet forces near the end of World War II, according to Polish folklore.The secret tunnels, which the Nazis never finished, were part of a project known as “Riese,” which means “Giant.” The area of tunnels belonged to Germany then but is now a part of Poland.

Ancient civilisation wiped out by comet Dog that adopts triplet lion cubs

Sardinia The island of Sardinia may be Plato’s island of Atlantis, an expert claims. Writer and Atlantis expert Sergio Frau says the southern end of the Mediterranean isle resembles an underwater Pompeii, which may have been the inspiration for Plato’s fictional Island of Atlantis.He and another expert believe a tidal wave that was caused by a comet washed the ancient civilisation away in the second millennium BC, taking the island back to a dark age.

Mr Frau, who is one of the founders of Italian newspaper La Repubblica, was joined by a dozen Italian scientists when

tigress called Marusya and a lion called Simba. Captured on camera, the liger cubs, who are now ten days old, can be seen feeding before they are then seen looking rather sleepyeyed on a bed.

Ligers are believed to be the largest of all felines and males have been known to reach lengths of up to 12 feet. They exist only in captivity and are often genetically or physically sterile and therefore unable to reproduce and continue their lineage. Ligers tend to enjoy swimming, which is a characteristic of tigers, and are sociable like lions.

Russia’s stunt-loving Putin rides to bottom of Black Sea

Moscow Another summer, another trip to the bottom of a sea for Russia’s

adventure-loving president.

Vladimir Putin climbed into a three-seat submersible craft

Tuesday to check out an ancient sunken ship found recently in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea - the peninsula annexed by Russia last year from Ukraine. He descended 83 meters (272 feet) to see the remains of the Byzantine trading ship, which he said dated back to the 9th or 10th century. On previous trips deep underwater, Putin has explored the Gulf of Finland and Lake Baikal in submersibles. He also went scuba diving in the Kerch Strait that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, where he brought up fragments of

ancient Greek jugs, or amphorae, that his spokesman later admitted had been planted.

Speaking by radio to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev while still under water, Putin said he hoped the trading ship would shed light on Russia’s development and show “how deep our historical roots are.”

He told Medvedev he should have come along. “It’s great, there are lots of objects, amphorae scattered around,” Putin said. He ended the chat with a casual “Big hug!”

Off the vessel, Putin was greeted by Medvedev, who did

give him a hug, and also by his chief of staff and defense minister. They were among the many Russian officials who accompanied him on this week’s trip to Crimea.

Pressed by a reporter whether it was wise to spend money on such ventures when Russia’s economy is struggling through a painful recession, Putin said his dive should help attract publicity and donors to the important work being done by the Russian Geographical Society to study “how our state was built, including in this region.”

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Singapore botches ex-leader’s name on historic currency package

SINGAPORE Singapore’s central bank has apologised for misspelling the name of the city-state’s first president on the packaging of a special currency issue marking the country’s 50th year of independence.The name of the late president Yusof Ishak was spelt “Yusok Ishak” on the cover folder containing the Sg$50 and Sg$10 commemorative notes, launched Thursday, much to the embarrassment of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

“This should never have happened, is not acceptable, and I take full responsibility,” MAS managing director Ravi Menon said in a statement.

“I apologise on behalf of my colleagues who worked hard to prepare the notes and folders, but are deeply disappointed that we made this most unfortunate mistake.

We will put this right.” Apart from the cover folder, the error also appeared in an enclosed booklet, although there were no mistakes on the dollar notes celebrating the anniversary.

Apart from Yusof’s portrait, the special Sg$50 note also contains the image of the country’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, who died in March. The MAS said it was printing stickers to fix the error and will make them available for those who have already bought the package to paste over the misspelled name.

Long queues of buyers formed outside banks when the collectible currency went on sale on Thursday. Singapore, one of the world’s wealthiest societies, marked its 50th independence day this month with fireworks, a massive military parade and a celebration of its rapid economic development.

Hackers release data from cheating website Ashley Madison online Toronto Hackers dumped online personal details of more than a million users of infidelity website AshleyMadison.com, tech websites reported on Tuesday, the latest high-profile cyber attack that threatens to wreak strife in relationships across the globe. After threatening to release salacious details on as many as 37 million customers of the website, which uses the slogan “Life is short. Have an affair,” hackers claimed to publish a huge cache of email addresses and credit card data stolen in July.Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the authenticity of the posting. Avid Life Media, which owns Ashley Madison and Established Men, widely described as a “sugar daddy site,” did not verify the data was real, but said it was aware of the claim. The hackers used the dark web which is only accessible using a specialized browser.Still within hours, thousands of email addresses from North America and Europe including many linked to corporations and universities sprouted up on other sites as people decrypted the database.

It is possible to create an Ashley Madison account using

Dementia may be stabilising in some countries

PARIS The occurence of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease may have stabilised in some wealthy nations, according to a study released Friday. A review of data from Sweden, the Netherlands, Britain and Spain showed the percentage of the population with dementia - the umbrella term for neurodegenerative diseases of the brain - holding steady, along with the number of new cases, said the study, published in The Lancet Neurology.

The findings, however, were sharply contested by other experts. Researchers led by Carol Brayne, a professor at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health and the University of Cambridge, compared dementia occurence in old people across two time periods spanning the last several decades. They found little change across the two periods, and in one case even a small decline, in the percentage of the population affected. This unexpected trend could be the result of better living

conditions and education, as well as improvements in the prevention and treatment of vascular diseases that lead to stroke and heart attack, the researchers said. “The suggested decrease in dementia occurence coincides with improvements in protective factors ... and a general reduction in risk factors over recent decades,” Brayne said in a statement. If borne out, the findings are very good news, and suggest that an impending “dementia epidemic” - due mainly to an ageing population could be less severe than feared.

Approximately seven percent of people over 65 suffer from some form of dementia, a percentage that rises to 40 percent above 80 or 85 years of age, according to different estimates. But experts reviewing the study challenged the underlying numbers, and cautioned that its conclusions as to why dementia may have stabilised - if indeed it did - are overdrawn. “While this study is welcome in showing

that the percentage of people in particular age groups developing dementia could be getting smaller, the overall number of people with dementia is still set to increase as more people live into their 80s and 90s,” said Jeremy Hughes, Chief Executive of Britain’s Alzheimer’s Society.

“With no cure, few effective treatments and an economic impact exceeding that of cancer or heart disease, dementia remains the most critical health and social care challenge facing the United Kingdom,” he wrote in a comment. Most Western nations along with Japan - where the over-85 age group is the fastest growing demographic are facing the same general scenario. “The evidence put forward to suggest declining prevalence in high-income countries is fairly weak,” said Martin Prince, a professor at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. “A wise approach for policymakers - until we have much clearer evidence to the contrary - is to assume that ... numbers will continue to increase in line with population ageing.” Others welcomed the study’s focus on preventative measures. “Encouragingly, this research suggests that healthier behaviours may have helped reduce dementia risk in laterborn generations,” said Matthew Norton of Alzheimer’s Research UK. “Measures to help people adopt healthy lifestyles now could have a real impact on the numbers of people living with dementia in the future.”

someone else’s name and email.The hackers have appointed themselves as “the moral judge, juror, and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on all of society,” the company said in a statement. “These are illegitimate acts that have real consequences for innocent citizens who are simply going about their daily lives,” it said.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating the theft alongside the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and local police, it said. The hackers, who call themselves The Impact Team, leaked snippets of the compromised data in July and threatened to publish names and nude photos and sexual fantasies of customers unless Ashley Madison and another site owned by Avid Life were taken

down.“Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and Established Men,” tech website Wired quoted The Impact Team as saying in a statement accompanying the online dump. “We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM (Avid Life Media) and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data,” the hackers said, according to Wired.Other higher-profile attacks such as those on big companies, like Sony Pictures Entertainment and Target, have seen credit card data of customers stolen, unleashing massive financial damage to individuals and companies. But this data dump appeared to confirm that the hackers were not driven by blackmail or commercial motives, but rather ideological ones.

Greenpeace demands Swiss shut world’s oldest nuclear plant GENEVA Greenpeace said Thursday it had launched legal action to demand that Switzerland shut down Beznau, the world’s oldest commercial nuclear plant, for security reasons. The plant, located in the northern Swiss canton of Aargau, near the German border, has been running for 46 years. “The Beznau nuclear plant would not resist a powerful earthquake,” the environmental protection group said in a statement. The organisation said it, along with the Swiss Energy Foundation and the Tri-national Nuclear Protection Association, had filed the suit on Wednesday demanding “the definitive closure of the installation.” Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Swiss authorities launched probes to determine how all of the country’s four nuclear power plants would withstand an earthquake. In July 2012, they determined that all were fit to withstand a severe earthquake, and could keep running since they posed no threat to the population or the environment. But Greenpeace and the other plaintiffs in the case said the experts’

calculations were based on erroneous technical norms. The organisations said they had asked in a letter that the Federal Inspectorate for Nuclear Safety (IFSN) “correct its July 2012 decision and order the closure of the Beznau plant.” If the IFSN

maintains its decision, it should announce this publicly, Greenpeace said. The plaintiffs would then take the case to a federal administrative court, and if necessary all the way up to the supreme court, it said in a statement. Beznau, which opened in 1969 and counts two reactors that are currently undergoing repairs, became the world’s oldest nuclear plant after the 2012 closure of Britain’s Oldsbury reactor. Switzerland is considered to have only a “moderate” earthquake risk, but some 10,000 quakes that have hit the Alpine country since the 13th century, and 12 have caused significant damage, according to seismologists.

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Tianjin puppy becomes blast symbol

Tianjin From the horror of the warehouse blasts in China’s port city of Tianjin comes a tale of survival that has bewitched Chinese social media users and become a symbol of hope amid the relentless flow of dark news and images.

More than 72 hours after explosions devastated parts of the city, search and rescue teams came across a mongrel puppy at the blast site. It is not known where the puppy came from or if it had an owner. But Chinese soldiers who examined the dog said it was “miraculously unscathed”. It is not clear whether the dog survived the explosions or wandered into the area after the blasts, but the images provided a rare glimmer of good news for Chinese netizens. “It’s a miracle that the puppy managed to survive such horrific blasts. I hope it will find a

good home,” said Weibo user Zun Bao. Another user shared the puppy’s story on his microblogging account and said: “This is Shenghua which translates to ‘Biochemistry’ in Chinese - he was rescued by a chemical specialist team in Tianjin. The puppy wouldn’t even leave its rescuers, such loyalty.”

Shenghua’s heart-warming rescue story attracted tens of thousands of comments and likes on Weibo, Facebook and Wechat. “We have been reading so many stories of death and loss, especially our young firefighters. So I am glad to hear how a tiny puppy has become a story of strength and kindness in China today,” said Weibo user Yang Yi Chang. “This is more than just any old animal story Reading it among all the doom and gloom of Tianjin coverage literally lifted my spirits,” remarked another.

Animal rights activist beaten with duck in Spain MADRID An animal rights activist was beaten with a duck by a Spanish woman defending one of the country’s most bizarre and controversial festival traditions.

The man was whacked with the bird while he filmed the annual “duck chase” in the Catalonian seaside town of Roses, where every August ducks are thrown into the Mediterranean and then caught and brought back to the shore by swimmers. “Continue, continue. Continue to abuse, I am filming you. A little bit of empathy for the animals. They also have a life, like your children or your family,” the man who was filming can be heard saying in a video of the incident released by animal rights group Animal Rescue Espana. The footage shows a young woman wearing a white bathing suit attack the man with a duck holding it by the legs as she repeatedly lashes him with it. As the attack goes on, animal rights activists gathered on the shore can be heard chanting, “You would not do that to your dog,” before they were removed by police. Every year since 1918 about 50 ducks are thrown into the sea in the town north of Barcelona, with swimmers then racing in to catch them and bringing them ashore however they can. But after Sunday’s incident, the town’s mayor is

80-yr-old bungee jumps off one of Europe’s highest bridges

SOFIA A Bulgarian octogenarian has made a lifelong dream come true by bungee jumping from one of Europe’s highest bridges, the woman told AFP on Monday.

Penka Baleva leapt from the 190metre (620-foot) Europe Bridge, near the Austrian city of

Innsbruck, on Saturday. “It was quite scary but I kept my head together and did it,” Baleva, who turned 80 in June, told AFP over the phone. “It was beautiful, with these spectacular natural views all around. And I always take pleasure in jumping!” The retired midwife from the Black Sea city

of Varna discovered parachute jumping 13 years ago, and has accomplished 14 tandem skydives and 39 bungee jumps so far.

After giving up her hopes to make it to South Africa and jump from the 216-metre-high Bloukrans Bridge, Baleva set her sights on Innsbruck. Baleva explained she had picked August 15 as the day for her jump because it marks the Assumption of the Virgin Mary - the feast day celebrating Mary’s rise to heaven - which she believed would bring her good luck. “I told myself: ‘I must go there and do it, whether I will live or die’,” she said. “I never dream too much about things that I cannot accomplish. But I always keep dreaming.”

mulling putting an end to the “duck chase”. Interviewed by local online news site Emporda, the mayor of Roses, Montse Mindan, prosposed “holding a referendum next year on what residents think, if they want to keep this festival, a tradition that will celebrate its centenary in two years.” While the ducks are not killed, Animal Rescue Espana

run ahead of a pack of half-tonne fighting bulls, are a part of summer festivals across the country, the most famous during the San Fermin feria in Pamplona. At least seven people have lost their lives at bull festivals since the beginning of July, including one man who was gored in the neck earlier this month while filming a run on his

said they suffer “stress, internal hemorrhaging, pain, fear and suffering.” The group launched a petition on the Change.org website demanding that Roses ban the “duck chase” as well as bull runs. The petition has received over 10,000 signatures since it was launched on August 14. Spain has many controversial animal-based traditions, often in honour of patron saints, which animal rights groups argue are cruel. Bull runs, where people

mobile phone. Festivities at the annual San Antolin festival in the Basque coastal town of Lekeitio revolve around a contest where young men battle to pull the head off a dead goose as it is dragged on a pulley across the harbour.

Previously a live goose was used. Villagers in the northern village of Manganeses de la Polvorosa used to hurl a live goat from the top of their church tower to honour its patron saint but the practice was banned in 1992.

Russians caught for planning sex attack on bear, ramming SUV at it 7 times

Moscow Three Russians have been arrested after they were caught ramming their SUV over a bear repeatedly. Three Russians have been arrested after they were caught ramming their SUV over a bear repeatedly. The video was leaked online and the reports suggest that the men were also planning a sexual attack on the

Marksmen kill rare species in New Zealand bird cull WELLINGTON A bird cull on a New Zealand island has been abruptly halted after marksmen killed four rare takahe, an endangered species with only 300 known to exist, officials said Friday. The deaths were “deeply disappointing”, Conservation Department director Andrew Baucke said in a statement. He said “experienced members” of the local deerstalkers association were undertaking the cull,

targeting the over-populated pukeko on the island sanctuary

of Motutapu near Auckland. “The hunters had been carefully

briefed on how to differentiate between the flightless takahe and pukeko, including instructions to only shoot birds on the wing,” Baucke said. An examination of the four dead takahe showed they were killed by shotgun pellets. Of the 300 takahe known to exist, there were 21 at the Motutapu sanctuary where the aggressive pukeko numbers more than 1,000 and is considered a threat to the rare species. Deerstalkers

Association president Bill O’Leary told Radio New Zealand he was “appalled” by the accidental deaths. “We’re very conscious of the fact that the birds are an endangered species and that was the purpose of the cull on pukekos because of the damage that they do to nests and to eggs.”

The takahe were thought to be extinct until their rediscovery in southwestern New Zealand in 1948.

poor animal. According to a report published in Mail Online, the bear was reversed more than seven times even after it tried its best to run away.The police has arrested the Russians on charges of cruelty and they will face jail term for six months. In the video, one can see the bear bleeding profusely after being trapped inside the Pajero SUV. Voices can be heard from inside the vehicle. In order to save its life from these cruel men, the bear tries to bite the tyre and is pushing itself hard to get out of the mess. In an attempt to free itself, the bear is even growling as one of the man kicks it but no one can be seen around to come to its rescue. The Mail Online report suggest that the men were also planning a sexual attack.In the video, three men and a woman can be heard shouting inside the SUV moment the bear cries in pain. The woman can be heard screaming, “it can kill us.”

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Qualified Match for Sikh TonkKashatriya Girl, 24-06-89 born, 5'4" tall, M.Sc. Nursing , working as a lecturer. Brother is Government employee in PSPCL (SDO). Preference Canadian PR . Call: 1-604-377-1403 *** 629*** Recently widowed gentlemen looking for suitable match from jat sikh family, should be 52+ yrs. old, Currently residing in Canada, will be travelling to India. Inquiries from visitors and permit holders welcome. Preferences to England and North America. Please Send your bio-data & recent pictures to: singh37k@yahoo.ca or call: 1778- 578- 8787 *** 629*** Canadian PR, 5'-5" tall,1985 born, Jatt Sikh, Post Grad (Canada), B.Tech(India), Interested nice Jatt Sikh families. Please contact with boy's professional qualifications, bio-data and recent pics at: dhillonmatrimonial2015@gmail.com *** 629*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 1984 born, 6'-2" tall, M.Com. L.L.B degree holder from India and perusing Law degree in Canada. Looking for an educated beautiful and family oriented girl. Please email recent picture & bio data to: ratwal07@gmail.com or Call: 1403-615-4958 ***629*** Saini Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 25 years old, 5'-11" tall, Mechanical Engineer, MBA degree holder, Gold Medalist, teetotaler, currently residing in India. The girl should be Canadian immigrant or Citizen, educated and family oriented.

Grandparents and uncles are well settled in Canada. Younger brother is also settled in Canada.

Please respond with picture and bio data to: gurpal791@yahoo.com or Call: 1-780-665-1400 Or : 011-9199142-21152 ***629*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their well settled daughter, D.O.B. 1980, 5'-5" tall, born and raised in Canada, Working as a specialized in Medicine/ Associate Professor in Ontario.

The boy should be highly qualified and professionally employed, born and raised in North America. Please Call: 905915-1648 ***629*** Jat Sikh parents suitable for their son, 28 year old, 5'-10" tall, Canadian Citizen, Degree in Police foundation and real estate certification. Running his own successful business, vegetarian.

The girl should be 5'-6" tall, well educated, family oriented, Canadian Citizen or immigrant.

Student Visa/work permit can also be considered. Call: 780743-8785 ***629*** Jatt Sikh family seek a suitable match for their handsome son, 37 yrs. old, 5'-8" tall, California raised, University graduate, Masters

25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

degree, professionally employed.

Please call 916-913-5905 *** 629*** Down-to-earth, handsome, intelligent, family-oriented Jat Sikh boy living in US since from 1998, Belongs to well-educated, humble family, Age 29, June 1986 born, 5’-10", US Citizen, slim, athletic, 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 & recent picture to: gsranu@yahoo.com *** 629*** Jat Sikh Gill parents seek a suitable match their son, 30 yrs. old, 5’-8” tall, born & raised in Canada, University graduate, professionally employed as a Mechanical Engineer in Ottawa.

The girl should be Canadian born, University graduate, at least 5’-4” tall, professionally employed.

Please send your bio data and recent picture to: matrimonial514@hotmail.com or call 1-514-655-1884 ***629*** Suitable match for Sikh Tonk Kashatriya beautiful girl, 29 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall, American Citizen, B. Sc. Medical, employed as a D.N.A. Analyst, girl has her own property. Elder brother is doing M.D. The boy should be educated, professionally employed and from U.S.A. only. Caste no Bar. Please send your bio data & recent picture to: jagdeep48@yahoo.com or call: 1-510-793-2395 ***629*** Jat Sikh gill parents looking for a match for their Canadian born daughter, 31 yrs. old, 5’-2” tall, well educated and working in her field.

The boy should be born or raised in Canada, professionally qualified, clean shaven and from Jat Sikh family. Please call: 1-604522-4470 ***629*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 29 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, beautiful, fair, family oriented, diploma in Accounting, working on CGA and professionally employed. The boy should be professionally qualified and settled with family values.

Please send your bio data and picture to: amardeep.chehal@gmail.com or call:647-285-8466 ***629*** Jat Sikh Sran parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, born and raised in California, graduate in Finance and accounting from a reputed University of San Jose State, Professionally employed. The boy should University graduate, Professionally settled, family oriented from California. Bay are preferred. Please email recent picture & bio data to: balwindersran2560@gmail.com Or Call: 1-408-824-5006 Or: 1-408849-1525 ***629*** Ramdasia Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, born and raised in Sweden, M.B.A-degree, beautiful,

settled in Job. The boy should be Canadian Citizen/immigrant, equally qualified and family oriented. Girls Nanaka Parivar is well settled in Canada. Please Call: 647-708-0580 Or: 647-7613313 ***629*** Ramdasia Sikh Parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 29 yrs. old, 5'-4" tall, raised and educated in Canada.

E.C.E. diploma holder and settled in permanent job, innocently divorced after short marriage. The boy should be educated, settled with family values. Please call: 416-845-9819 ***629*** Amritdhari Jat Sikh Binning family seeks Amritdhari, professionally qualified boy with a good family background for their Canadian immigrant daughter 27 yrs. Old, 5'-5" tall, BA Tech (India). Please send your bio data and recent picture to: jasmeenjass96@gmail.com Or call: 1-604-808-0755 ***629*** Jat Sikh parents seeking a suitable match for their son, 31 yrs. old, 6' tall, clean shaven, Canadian citizen, well educated, professionally employed. The girl should be well educated, slim, tall, having good family values and from Canada only. Please send your biodata and recent picture to: njinder78@gmail.com ***629*** Ramdasia Sikh Parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 30 yrs. old, 6’ tall, Canadian Citizen, Bio-medical engineering degree holder and professionally employed. The girl should be Canadian immigrant or Citizen., beartiful, tall, slim, well educated with family values. caste no bar Please call : 1-604-328-5749 ***629*** Jat Sikh Parents from Vancouver seeking an educated,clean shaven, Canadian Jat Sikh boy from Vancouver or Calgary only for their daughter, 31 yrs. old. 5’3” tall, beautiful, working as RN, well versed in both cultures and sweet natured. Please send your biodata and recent picture to : pam_johal@yahoo.ca Or call : 1604-780-8010 ***629*** Nai Sikh boy, 27 yrs. old, 5’11’’ tall, clean shaven, non-smoker, non-drinker, fair, handsome, Canadian immigrant, only son, one sister in Canada, good job in Toronto (Automobile) urban-rural property in India. The girl should be tall, beautiful, of equal status with family values. Toronto preferred.

Please send your biodata and recent picture to: singh1112015@hotmail.com Or call: 289-242-6151 ***629*** Jat Sikh parents invite correspondence for their daughter born & raised 25 yrs. old, 5’7” tall, degree holder, beautiful. The boy should be university graduate clean shaven, atleast 5’11” honest, working and candian born/raised only.

Vancouver area preferred. Please send your biodata and recent pic-

ture to: jatinder96@gmail.com Or call: 1-604-679-0692 ***629*** Seeking compatible match for Canadian raised, beautiful, Sikh Lobana MD girl, born in 1985, 5ft, 6", doing final year of Internal Medicine residency in the US. The boy should be doctor, Sikh, and between 30-36 years of age.

Caste no bar. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: sukhi1822@ hotmail.com or 416469-2801 *** 629*** Lubana sikh family seeks a suitable match for their son, Canadian citizen, Medical Doctor in residency, 29 yrs. old, 5'-9" tall, turbaned. The girl should be equally qualified in medical field from USA or Canada. Contact: kmultani333 @gmail.com or 647-479-8389 *** 629*** Saini Sikh parents, seeking a suitable match for their well settled daughter, US citizen, 1985 born, 5'-1", BS (Accounting), working in her field. The boy must be US citizen/PR, equally or more qualified, clean shaven and well settled. New York / New Jersey preferred. Respond with recent photo and biodata to: kaurm14@yahoo.com or call: 1- 718-779-2763 *** 629*** Jat Sikh family seeks a qualified and well-settled/employed, professional/business man, having good family values, reputable background, Jat Sikh, clean shaven and handsome match for their daughter, Canadian citizen, family-oriented, having good cultural and family values, well versed in both cultures, beautiful, very fair, slim, Dental Hygienist, 27 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall. Preferred well settled professional/ business man in GTA (Toronto).

Respond with bio- data and recent pictures to: sarjeetdhugge@hotmail.com or call: 647502- 4220 *** 629*** Jatt Sikh well settled parents seek a suitable match for their daughter 33 yrs. old, 5’3” tall, slim, fair with sharp features, M.B.B.S. (UK), doing residency in England. The boy should be Canadian immigrant or citizen, equally educated, family oriented. Please send your recent picture and bio-data to: laurenaujla@gmail.com Or Call: 1604-987-6454 ***629*** Preferably Canada PR, professionally Qualified match for Sarswat Brahmin, Manglik Boy, 77-1990/ 12:30 PM (Noon) Khanna (Punjab) India, B.Tech (civil), Pres-

ently working as Consulting Architect & Valuer. Father Retired as SDO (Pb.Govt), Mother Retired as AGM from food corporation on India. Sister married & well settled in Europe. Only son. Please call: 011-91-98156-55384 or Email: ashiana.khanna@gmail.com ***629*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their Canadian born son, D.O.B.- 1980. 5’11” tall, professionally empolyed. The girl should be educated, beautiful and family oriented. Please call : 416-5402764 ***629*** Jat Sikh parents seek professionally qualified match for their daughter, 28yrs. old, 5’4” tall, born and raised in USA, MBA degree, working for a prestigious federal govt agency. The boy should be professionally qualified and empolyed with family values. Only medical doctor may cotact from India. Serious inquiries only. Please email recent pictur and biodaata: match_matrimonial @yahoo.com or call : 1-650-822-3679 ***629*** Ramgariha Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their daughter ,44 yrs old, 5’4” tall, British Citizen, divvorcse (Issueless), slim, attractive. The partner should be Canadian Citizen or immigrant educated, betwwen 44 -48 yrs. of age, family oriented. Preferably from Vancouver area. Please send your biodata and recent picture to: warishsingh1942@gmail.com or Call: 1-604-790-7210 ***629*** Jat Sikh Parents seek a suitable alliance for their son,Canadian Citizen, Certified Professional Engineer, May 87 born, 5'-6.5" tall, smart, handsome, B.Engg and M.Engg from Toronto based, universities employed in Toronto, drawing handsome salary. The girl should be slim,qualified and well settled in job. Interested please contact with picture of girl to: rdrandhawa@yahoo.com or call: 647 295 9106 *** 629*** Professional, well qualified match for Jat Sikh, beautiful girl, 27 yrs old, 5’6” tall, B.Sc. computer science, M.Sc Maths, B.Ed, M.Sc in information technology, UGC NET cleared, one year M.B.A, working as a professor in a reputed college in India, family is well settled in USA. The boy should be Canadian/American, immigrant/Citizen educated and family oriented. Please email detail to : bandesha1988@gmail.com or call : 1-707-782-6244 ***629***

Housekeeper Wanted Everyday duties include: Cleaning the house on 3 levels (16 rooms), kitchen, dishes, counter, floor, fridge, cupboards, dishwashers, washing, drying clothing and ironing, preparing lunch & dinner, grocery shopping, keeping the household supplies fully stocked, receiving & servinng guests, rotate seasonal clothing in closets, maintain pantry and routinely clear out of date & spoiled items, bed making, linen changing, eldercare responsibilities (massage).

Driving license a must. Live-in preferred. Serious inquiries only.

Be prepared to state your salary expectations. Must have 1-2 yrs. of working experience in a fast paced environment. Please call: 647-632-3999

Issue - 629 (11)

25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

Kung fu tourism: foreigners learn at China school

QUFU In the countryside outside the birthplace of the Chinese sage Confucius, 35 students - the vast majority of them foreigners - battle the elements as well as exhaustion at a remote kung fu training academy. The students in Qufu, from as far afield as Brazil, Ukraine, Spain and France, vary in age from six - a young boy who accompanied his mother on a summer holiday - to 50. It is a disciplined, regimented regime, with activities beginning at 6.00 am every day and featuring several hours of practice.

This includes runs up and down thousands of steps through the steep hills of a neighbouring national park, interspersed with meals. The students are divided into three groups based on their ability, with

each group assigned a kung fu master who blows a whistle at the start of every activity. They line up to pay their respects to him each time. The learners can choose how long to stay, from those taking short breaks to one Dutch man who has been training for a year to become a kung fu master and open his own academy in Holland. Qufu, in the eastern province of Shandong, is best known as the birthplace of Confucius, and the town is dominated by his family’s sprawling residence.

At times the school can feel like a holiday camp.

But the kung fu masters do not hesitate to punish those who fail to follow instructions to the letter including by assigning students to clean the gym for a week.

World’s oldest message in bottle found in Germany after 108 years at sea

London The message, in English, German and Dutch, asked anyone who discovered the bottle to fill in some information on where and how they found it.A message in a bottle that a retired post office worker found while on holiday on the German island of Amrum has turned out to be the oldest of its kind, media reports said.The bottle was thrown into the sea 108 years ago by British scientists, Telegraph.co.uk reported.

When Marianne Winkler found the message in April, she had no idea how old it would turn out to be.“It is always a joy to find a message-in-a-bottle on the beach,” she told the Amrum News, a local website. As they could not open the bottle they had to break the bottle.

Ireland heritage certificates presented to Obama, Cruise DUBLIN Ireland’s call to its 70million-strong diaspora to make a show of their

back to the 13th century, were less willing to part with 45 euros - 120 euros for a framed copy - to prove

ancestry at up to 120 euros ($132) each went largely unanswered and the government as a result scrapped its “Certificate of Irish Heritage scheme” this week. Introduced in 2011 as an “expression of the importance the government attaches to recognising people of Irish descent”, the certificates have been presented to famous figures such as U.S. President Barack Obama, former president Bill Clinton and actor Tom Cruise.But others, who like Cruise may have been able to trace their Irish lineage

it, and just 3,000 were sold.

“It’s a very good concept but certainly the take-up was lower than expected,” Jimmy Deenihan, junior minister for diaspora affairs, told national broadcaster RTE on Tuesday.The certificates, which quote the Irish constitution’s pledge to cherish all people of ancestry living abroad and feature an image of an emigrant ship leaving the shore, were “a must have for anyone with Irish descent”, according to the website where they could be purchased. Prime

Minister Enda Kenny presented Obama with his certificate during the Irish leader ’s annual St. Patrick’s Day trip to the White House.Obama’s greatgreat-great grandfather is from the Irish village of Moneygall, which named a service station after the American president following his 2011 visit.Other drives to mobilise the diaspora during Ireland’s financial crisis proved far more successful. A year-long government-led campaign to lure visitors with Irish roots helped reinvigorate tourism and kicked off a recovery in the sector in 2013.

The government will continue to make special presentations of the heritage certificates. “The people that I presented them to, including a number of (U.S) Congress representatives and senators, were very happy with them and when I visited Capitol Hill last January, they had them displayed in their offices,” Deenihan said. “That will continue and people are very proud of that connection.”

History created in Saudi Arabia as women register to vote Washington Women in Saudi Arabia will finally get a chance to cast their ballot and also contest in elections this year in December.

Women in Saudi Arabia are all set to make history. In the coming elections in December this year, they will finally get a chance to cast their ballot and also contest in elections. The official announcement was made by King Abdullah in 2011 and now it will eventually be put to effect.

According to a report in The Independent, women in Saudi Arabia have begun registering themselves to vote in the local polls for the first time in the country’s history. In what is seen as a major boost to the limited rights of the women, officials see it as a “significant milestone in progress towards a participation-based society”.

Jamal Al-Saadi and Safinaz Abu Al-Shamat became the first women to register as voters after they arrived at the

initiation of electoral offices in Madinah and Makkah respectively, said another report in the Saudi Gazette.

“The participation of the

enable Saudi women to have a say in the process of the decision making,” the King said.

“This long overdue move is welcome but it’s only

Saudi women in the municipal elections as voters and candidates was a dream for us,” Jamal AlSaadi told the Saudi Gazette.“The move will enable Saudi women to have a say in the process of the decision making,” she added.

The announcement for this major reformation was made four years ago when King Abdullah declared that women would be allowed to take part in the polls. This came after the year witnessed less women participation in the polls. “The move will

a tiny fraction of what needs to be addressed over gender inequality in Saudi Arabia,” Amnesty International UK’s Karen Middleton told The Independent.

Saudi Arabia and Vatican City were the two countries that only encouraged men participation during the electoral season. While Saudi Arabia has made a move to bring the women in par with the men, it now remains to be seen whether or not the Vatican City will call for a similar change.

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25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

Madrid electrical bicycle share system takes off MADRID They allow you to climb the steepest streets of Madrid without sweating, even on sultry summer days: more than 50,000 residents of the Spanish capital have signed up for a public electric bike share system. In the shadow of the San Ildefonso church in the heart of Madrid, Anne Stauder, a tourist from Luxembourg, is trying out a BiciMAD bike for the first time. “We came from Luxembourg with our four bicycles inside our car - my children, my husband and me and we have visited the city like that for 10 days. But I wanted to try the electric bike because Madrid is hilly,” the 44-year-old said. The white bicycles work just like a regular bike but an electric motor kicks in to help with pedalling, and most importantly it give an extra push up hills. The city of some three million people launched its electric bike share system in June 2014. While other European cities like London and Paris set up shared bicycles schemes earlier,

Madrid is the first major city to offer a system that only uses electric bicycles. The argument behind BiciMAD is that with only regular bikes, they accumulate in low-lying areas and need to be shuffled around by trucks to redistribute them to higher ground - as happens in Barcelona. Margot Bonilla, a 28year-old IT technician, started using the electric bikes in July and no longer uses the metro to get around the city.

“You exercise, you don’t pollute and you move around fast.

It’s just a bit expensive for my taste,” she said. An annual membership to the bike sharing scheme costs 25 euros ($27.7) while renting a bicycle costs 50 cents during the first half hour, then 60 cents for the next half hour. By comparison a ride on the Madrid metro costs 1.5 euros for travel in the centre of the city.

Another problem is a lack of bicycles, Bonilla added.

“Yesterday I had to walk home because I went to two stations and did not find any,” she said, repeating a common complaint from regular users of the system.

The city rents the bicycles from Spanish firm Bonopark, which since 2013 has supplied electric bicycles for a similar scheme in the northern Spanish city of San Sebastian. “We have a thousand bicycles available at 160 stations

bicycles from Bonopark since the bicycle sharing program was launched in June 2014. It blames the shortage of bicycles on a technical glitch with the docking system, which often fails to recognise bikes and locks them,

right now,” said the head of the BiciMAD system, Joaquim Jimenez. “We will have 2,000 electrical bicycles once the system is fully operational and the goal is to have 4,000 by 2026 when the contract ends,” he added. Madrid city hall has spent 535,000 euros to rent the

making it impossible for users of the system to take them for a ride. The electrical bicycles also suffer all sorts of attacks: they are mistreated by users, yanked from docking stations to be taken for a free ride, abandoned anywhere, sometimes even in the city’s Manzanares river.

Since the launch of the scheme, 470 bicycles have either been stolen or vandalised to the point that they could no longer be used, according to a city hall tally. The vandalism has increased since the start of summer but city hall does not link the influx of foreign tourists during the peak travel season with the rise.

Stolen BiciMAD bicycles usually resurface since they can only be recharged at a public station and they weight a hefty 22 kilos (48.5 pounds), said Jimenez.

The launch of the electrical bicycle sharing scheme has led to an increase in the use of bicycles in general in the city, despite the lack of cycle lanes. “Clearly we want a city with fewer cars,” the city councillor in charge of mobility, Ines Sabanes, said.

“We need the use of bicycles to develop, it is an obligatio n,” she added, referring to European Union demands that Madrid boost public transportation to curb high air pollution levels.

China film lambasted Aussie armed robber uses bed sheets to flee online for distorting history

Sydney A maximum security prisoner has staged an audacious escape in the Australian state of New South Wales by tying bed sheets together to climb over a wall. Stephen Jamieson, 28, is reported to have attached a pillow round his waist to avoid being injured by razor wire. He was serving a 12-year sentence for armed robbery. He is reported to have escaped after cutting through a gate at the back of a small secure exercise yard attached to his cell. “He was able to get out of that exercise yard and then he had a range of bed sheets that he tied together and was able to swing them over the wall to then effect his escape by scaling that wall,” New South Wales Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Severin told ABC News. “It appears that he also had a pillow [that was] put around his waist and enabled him to make good his escape over the razor wire.” Commissioner Severin said Jamieson had a history of trying to escape and was put into solitary confinement after a man-made hole was discovered inside a workshop at the prison. “He was clearly

somebody that was in maximum security for all the right reasons and furthermore he was actually segregated in the maximum security section,” he said.

The commissioner said that the escape was “a very serious matter” and would be the subject of an intensive security review because there was “absolutely no excuse for anybody being able to escape from maximum security”. A huge manhunt for Jamieson is now under way.

BEIJING Social media users blasted a new Chinese film Monday for depicting a summit of world leaders during World War II which embellished history by portraying revolutionary leader Mao Zedong as vital to a conference he never attended. The Cairo Declaration - an upcoming war film produced by a company affiliated with China’s military - is part of a host of governmentdirected events to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender. The US, Britain and China met in Cairo in November 1943 to map out a post-war path for Asia, during which they decided that territories ceded to Japan before the war should be returned to China.But the film’s trailer and poster have faced a backlash on social media and state media, with internet

users pointing out Mao played no major role at the conference.

China - then known as the Republic of China - was instead represented by Nationalist leader

Chiang Kai-shek, who went on to lose China’s civil war to Mao’s Communist forces. “I’m sad that my contributions at the Cairo Conference haven’t been recognised in the film,” joked one user on Monday.Others were more jaded.

“Let Mao be a part of the

Working longer hours increases stroke risk by up to 33pc PARIS Working 55 hours or more per week is linked to a one third greater risk of stroke compared to a 35-40 hour work week, according to research published Thursday.Based on a review of 17 studies covering 528,908 men and women followed for an average of 7.2 years, the increased stroke risk remained once smoking, alcohol consumption and level of physical activity were taken

into account. The study, published in The Lancet, found that compared with people who logged a standard week, those working between 41 and 48 hours had a 10 percent higher risk, while for those working 49 to 54 hours, the risk jumped by 27 percent.

Working 55 hours or more a week increased the risk of having a stroke by 33 percent, the study showed.

conference, it’s not like the rest of our history is real anyway,” wrote another user. China is planning to hold a large-scale military parade in Beijing next month to commemorate what it calls the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. A trailer for the film posted on YouTube opens with Mao making an impassioned speech saying, “The task for Communists around the world is to oppose Fascism through struggle”. The poster advertising the movie features the actor playing Mao looking out into the distance, but a website has been set up allowing Internet users to mockingly edit themselves or others in his place. Edited versions circulating on social media variously had in Mao’s place Gollum, the fictional character from The Lord of the Rings, as well as a Minion, the yellow workers from the Despicable Me film franchise.

One even has current Chinese President Xi Jinping, who was born in 1953, in Mao’s place. “By featuring Mao, who was not present at the meeting, but excluding Chiang, the poster shows no respect for history nor to Mao,” culture critic Sima Pingbang was quoted as saying by the Global Times tabloid. An editorial in the Chinese-language edition on Monday of the newspaper, which has close ties to the Communist Party, called the use of Mao to promote the film “inappropriate”.

Issue - 629 (13)

25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

Why Kashmir government is missing in India-Pakistan row over talks ! By Jagtar Singh At the time when tension is escalating between India and Pakistan on the issue of agenda of the talks between national security advisors of the two countries with Kashmir having cropped up as the main hurdle, it is the elected government of Jammu and Kashmir about which none is talking in this entire cacophony. For Pakistan, Kashmir is the core issue.

It is the invitation extended by Pakistan to the Hurriyat Conference to meet its National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz before the scheduled meeting with India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval when he arrives in New Delhi on Sunday that has been objected to by India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

However, Jammu and Kashmir has an elected government headed my Mufti Mohammad Sayeed from the PDP, the party that is in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party. The entire focus is on Hurriyat that is considered to be the legitimate representative of the people of Kashmir and not the elected government. How come that the Mufti government or for that matter any other elected government in Jammu and Kashmir earlier failed to get legitimacy to be the true representative of the people and their aspirations? The poll percentage in the last election in the troubled state was the highest ever. Despite high poll percentage, the government has failed to represent itself as symbol of participatory democracy. This is a serious issue raising question mark over the role of the elected government vis-à-vis the demand for self-determination.One has to

go deep into history to trace the root cause. Jammu and Kashmir was part of the Sikh empire with Raja Gulab Singh from this region being the prime minister of Mahara Ranjit Singh. It was Gulab Singh who betrayed his masters after the death of Mahara Ranjit Singh during the AngloSikh war for which he was rewarded by the East India Company. That was during the first Sikh war in 1846.It was Gulab Singh who entered into negotiations with Lord Hardinge after the first Sikh war at Kasur.

Although he was accompanied by other Sikh sardars, he went to meet Lord Hardinge alone. He negotiated surrender on Hardinge’s terms. As per the terms, Lahore Durbar was to pay Rs 1.5 crore as indemnity for the expenses of war. The treasury was empty. Hardinge sold Kashmir and Hazara to Gulab

Singh, thereby bringing the state under Dogra rule. Hardinge later entered into a separate treaty with Gulab Singh at Amritsar on March 16, 1846. Before the state was taken over by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Dogras ruled over Poonch state.It is the people of Kashmir who came into confrontation with the despotic Dogra rulers and it was during the regime of Mahara Hari Singh that the police killed 21 persons in firing on July 13, 1931. The people were protesting against the arrest of Abdul Qadir. That was the day that the struggle started in Kashmir. A shirt soaked in blood became the flag during the procession in which the people carried 21 bodies. The colour of the Kashmir flag is red. That was the struggle of the people against the despotic rule of the Maharaja.

The red flag adopted by the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent

Salvador said. “Unfortunately, one person with a gun thinks he can shoot anything,” Salvador told AFP, adding no one has been arrested in the latest incident. “The potential to teach people the importance of the eagles to wildlife and biodiversity has been compromised.” Famed for its elongated nape feathers that form into a shaggy crest, the Philippine eagle, one of the world’s largest, grows up to a metre (3.3 feet) long with a twometre wingspan.The Swissbased International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists the species as “critically endangered”, due to the depletion of its tropical rainforest habitat and hunting. Philippine

eagles kill macaques and other smaller animals for food and need vast tracts of forest as hunting grounds, routinely driving away rivals from their territory.Gunshots accounted for nine out of every 10 Philippine eagle casualties recorded by the foundation over seven years. The latest bird to be killed had been rescued as a juvenile three years ago and treated for superficial gunshot wounds.

Returned to the wild in Mindanao’s Mount Hamiguitan reserve two months ago, the eagle’s carcass was tracked about a kilometre (half a mile) away from where it was released, after a fitted radio transmitter indicated the bird had stopped moving.Killing critically endangered Philippine species is punishable by up to 12 years in prison and a fine of up to one million pesos ($21,600).

Salvador said the foundation would press charges once the eagle’s killer was found.

Guarding the bird, also called the “monkey-eating eagle”, is compounded by inadequate forest rangers, with just six assigned to the vast Hamiguitan range, Salvador said.

Assembly has three equidistant vertical next to the staff and a white plough strips.Of course, what happened after 1947 is a different issue and the revolt against the accession of the state with India was triggered by the British army officers in Gilgit and that is now part of history.

However, over the last several decades, the elected governments in the state have failed to get legitimacy from the very people whom they claim to represent. Several of the elections earlier were stated to be stage managed to give the semblance of an elected government being in power but which never represented the aspirations of the people that came to be exploited.

There is a parallel in Punjab when the so called Akali Dal government

headed by Surjit Singh Barnala came into power as part of the tacit understanding behind the Punjab Accord signed between Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Akali Dal chief Sant Harchand Singh Longowal during Assembly elections in 1985. This elected government lacked legitimacy and the situation only further flared up in the state.

In case Hurriyat is to be eclipsed, it is the elected government that must draw its legitimacy by representing the aspirations of the people of all the three regions which are represented in the red flag by three vertical splits.

Participatory democracy is considered to be the best antidote to militancy. Elected government does not necessarily lead to participatory democracy.

Milk tea keeps your teeth white

Rare Philippine eagle shot dead

MANILA A rare giant Philippine eagle has been shot dead two months after being released back into the wild following treatment for another shooting, in a blow to efforts to save the species from extinction, conservationists said Wednesday. The raptor ’s remains were found on a forest floor last weekend with a gunshot wound on its right breast, three years after it was rescued and treated, the Philippine Eagle Foundation said. It was the 30th to be found dead or wounded out of an estimated population of just 400 pairs in the wild, which reside mainly on the large southern island of Mindanao, its executive director Joseph

Ottawa For many, a good cup of tea is not complete without a splash of milk. And milk-drinkers can now rejoice, after a study found adding it to tea can actually stops teeth becoming stained.

It was even more effective than whitening toothpastes, and was as equally good as some bleaching products, researchers found. ‘Tea is the second most consumed drink in the world, and the way it’s processed affects how teeth are stained,’ said Dr Ava Chow, of University of Alberta’s School of Dentistry.

‘The more the tea is processed or oxidized, the higher its staining properties are. But we’ve found that the addition of milk to tea reduces the tea’s ability to stain teeth.’ Tea contains tannins - water soluble compounds that cause the bitter flavour - she

explained. They are dark in colour and can stain the teeth.

Dr Chow found that casein, the main protein in milk, binds to the tannins in tea and prevent staining. Intially, she designed her study as a way of introducing undergraduate dental hygiene students to research, but was surprised by the results and decided to publish them.

As part of the study, Dr Chow used human teeth that had been extracted, excluding teeth that had fillings, signs of tooth decay, or obvious cracks and fractures.

She analysed the colour of the teeth and recorded them, before putting them through a ‘staining process’.This involved putting the teeth into either a solution of tea, or a solution of tea with milk for 24 hours at 37 C. At the end of 24 hours she recorded the colour of the teeth again.

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Can you spot what’s lying Guinness World Records recognises near the beach in Tianjin 112-year-old Japanese as oldest man

Tianjin High levels of toxic chemicals remained inside the core area in the Chinese city of Tianjin on Friday, more than a week after a massive warehouse explosion that killed at least 114.Masses of dead fish have been washed ashore in China’s Tianjin city after the deadly explosions.

Technicians have detected levels of cyanide as much as 356 times the national safe level within the evacuated area, although levels outside the zone show no undue contamination, according to state media reports.Workers in protective suits have already started clearing wreckage, including charred car bodies and crumpled shipping containers, from the site of a chemical warehouse that exploded.Officials have ordered nationwide checks on dangerous materials, and the Chinese military said it was inspecting storage

measures for weapons, ammunition and fuel, as well as chemical, explosive and toxic materials, the official newspaper People’s Liberation Army Daily reported.Training in the handling of such materials and in executing emergency response plans will also be stepped up, the newspaper said.

Driving home the importance of such efforts, President Xi Jinping and other top leaders gathered in Beijing to hear a report on progress in investigating the disaster.

“Lately, in some places there have been major industrial safety accidents, one after the other, revealing yet again that problems in the area of industrial safety remain prominent and grave,” said a statement issued after the meeting Thursday.Safety work needs to be improved and attitudes need to change to “contain the outbreak

of major accidents, bring about a fundamental improvement in industrial safety and safeguard the lives and property of the masses of the people,” the statement read.

Along with safety violations, official corruption was added as a contributing cause of the Aug. 12 disaster in the port city of Tianjin following revelations Wednesday that the son of a former police chief, one of two silent owners of the warehouse, used his connections to help obtain licenses despite safety violations.The other owner is a former executive at a stateowned chemical company who also used his connections to smooth the way for approval for the facility run

by Ruihai International Logistics, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The explosions that rocked the port city of Tianjin were among China’s worst industrial accidents in recent years and the deadliest on record for the country’s firefighters, who accounted for 102 of the 179 total dead and missing. Authorities say almost 700 people remain hospitalized, while 30,000 people in and around the area have had their lives turned upside down by the disaster.

China’s ministry sued for terming homosexuality a disorder Beijing A college student in China is suing the education ministry for describing homosexuality as a “disorder that should be treated”. The female college student in south

about her sexual orientation at a library.

Almost every book she consulted categorized homosexuality as a mental disorder, with some even suggesting electroshock therapy to

China’s Guangdong Province used the alias Qiu Bai when filing the case to prevent exposure of personal information, reported Xinhua news agency. Qiu’s frustrations began when she sought answers on her doubts

cure the “disease”.

On May 14, Qiu wrote to the Ministry of Education (MOE), asking them to clarify what regulations were in place to supervise such content. However, her request received no response in the required

limit of 15 days. She responded with a lawsuit against the ministry.

“Homosexuals are already under great pressure.

Additional stigma from textbooks will cause direct harm. The MOE should bear the duty to monitor and supervise such content,” Qiu said.

Her application has been received by the Beijing Municipal No.1 Intermediate People’s Court and is pending further procedure.

Roughly 40 per cent of 90 textbooks published after 2001 prescribe treating homosexuality as a disorder. Half of the textbooks insist its a disease that can be cured through therapy, according to an investigation by NGO Gay and Lesbian Campus Association.

London Do you know the secret to a long, happy life?

Yasutaro Koide, a 112year-old living in the central Japanese city of Nagoya who was officially recognized by Guinness World Records on Friday as the world’s oldest man, says to “not overdo.”

Koide was born on March 13, 1903, and worked as a tailor. He became the oldest man with the death of Sakari Momoi of Tokyo in July at age 112.

Three of his seven children, two of his nine grandchildren and one great grandchild attended a ceremony at a nursing home where he was given a plaque and a green vase.

Koike was beaming but teary-eyed as those attending applauded. “The best thing is to not overdo,” Koide said. He also recommended not smoking or drinking and said his favorite food is bread.

Koike also recommends “enjoying everything,” according to local reports that say he can read the newspaper without glasses.The newspaper Chunichi Shimbun quoted a

granddaughter, Aya Kikuchi, as saying her grandfather once tended to

centenarians. So many, in fact, the government is reportedly considering

be very strict about manners. “He was very stubborn, but he got nicer with age,” she said. “His lifestyle is one that avoids stress.”One of the world’s fastest-aging countries, Japan has about 54,000

scrapping or scaling back a 52-year-old program that presents each person reaching the century mark with an ornate sake dish and letter of congratulations from the prime minister.

Teen’s eyes gouged out by sister after gangrape as part of exorcism ritual A teenager was brutally gangraped in Argentina and her eyes were taken out by her sister as part of an exorcism ritual.A teenager was brutally gangraped in Argentina and her eyes were taken out by her sister as part of an exorcism ritual.

16-year-old is now hospitalised and is battling for her life after this cruel attack which involves her

family members. According to a report published in Mail Online, the girl was apparently seeing some goats and the family thought it is related to demons. The family claim that they were told by a local pastor to carry out the deadly ritualReports suggest that after the gangrape the teen’s eye balls were removed with the help of a knife.

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Nawazuddin as The Mountain Man shoulders the film Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte, Pankaj Tripathi, Gaurav Dwivedi Direction: Ketan Mehta Ratings: 3 Stars The best part about making a biopic is that the story - an extended version, at least - is already out there. The way it is adapted for a 2-hour long Bollywood film is where the real struggle lies. Director Ketan Mehta takes on the mountain-high project of depicting on film Dashrath Manjhi’s life in Manjhi The Mountain Man. And he succeeds only in parts. Because in order to make a biographical film, the real hitch is filtering out the most interesting snippets from the person’s life.

The story of Dashrath Manjhi, as is common knowledge by now, is one of determination, patience and pure grit. This labourer from Gehlore village near Gaya, Bihar, hammerchisel-ed down an entire mountain because it stood as an obstacle in his way to the nearest hospital in Wazirpur. And, as the man puts across his reason to break the mountain down, “Yeh ghav bahut gehri hai (This wound is very deep).”

Manjhi’s wife died after she fell off the mountain and couldn’t be taken to the hospital in time.

The film uses a non-linear mode of storytelling, flipping back and forth among different timelines.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui essays the titular character.

Manjhi begins at a time when the man curses the

mountain for causing his wife Phaguniya’s (Radhika Apte) death. Over some sepia-tinted and other bright-hued shots, we are taken to the world of Manjhi. In this part of justindependent India, untouchability is abolished, but the Manjhis are kicked and beaten for touching the Mukhiyas. In this village of Gehlore, poor men are roasted alive in brick kilns, but the bricks need to be perfectly proportioned.

There are light-hearted moments of humour inter-

spersed with intense under-the-moon shots of

Abhishek and Rishi in a no-destination journey Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Supriya Pathak, Asin, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub Direction: Umesh Shukla Ratings: 2 Stars Abhishek Bachchan is not a bad actor. After all, his career includes films like Yuva, Guru, Raavan and the likes. Of late, no one’s got any clue what has happened to him. Call it fate or bad choices or a secret which probably Rohnda Byrne’s The Secret will be able to reveal, he is just not able to

gift his fans a film that they would lap up. All Is Well just deepens that mystery further. But more on that later.

All Is Well, directed by Umesh Shukla, has been touted as a ‘journey within’, but it has little meat to do justice to that tag. Inder Bhalla (Abhishek Bachchan) strums songs on his guitar in Pattaya and sings old Hindi numbers in cafes in Thailand. A phone call from moneylender-cumgoon Chima (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) gets this aspiring singer back to India, to his father. Bhalla

Senior (Rishi Kapoor) has his own share of problems.

His bakery in Kasol, Himachal Pradesh, runs on sales to exactly four customers, and his wife (Supriya Pathak) has Alzheimer’s to battle. He is eyeball-deep in debt, and Chima’s Rs 20 lakh hang around his neck like an albatross. Following years of fighting with his father and a final breaking-point-ish face off, Inder leaves his house. And goes to Bangkok to run away from his problems, and returns a decade later.

lovemaking. And looming large over everything else

is the average Gehlore resident’s harshest reality:

The mountain. It is against such a canvas that director Ketan Mehta’s rendition of Dashrath Manjhi’s tale unfolds. The film skims through topics like political apathy, public name-calling and the hardships that Manjhi had had to face.

But condensing 22+ years to a mere two-hour span is a task as formidable as that mountain in Gehlore.

The film is brilliant in the performances by its cast, and most of it rides on Nawazuddin’s able shoulders.

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Can’t survive in Hollywood without agent says Irrfan Khan

“Piku” actor Irrfan Khan is one of the few Hindi film actors who has been able to land roles in Hollywood.

He says agents ease the process of survival in the West, but it doesn’t mean that life gets transformed by merely having an agent.

Irrfan, who will be seen in Inferno, said here: “In Hollywood, you cannot survive without an agent. There is no system where you just pick up the phone and greet them (filmmakers)...

No, you have to go through an agent. You have to be part of the system, otherwise you cannot function.”

He stressed that “there is a misconception that if you get an agent, your whole life will be transformed.

“It is completely false. An agent cannot create work for you. He is just a mediator. If there is work, he brings it for you,” added the actor.

He said of his own agent: “I never said that he doesn’t get any work but still takes money. He takes money only when he gets work.”

25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

A peek into her life says Gauahar Khan Gauahar Khan is known for her stint on small screen and has also appeared in some Bollywood films.

Sister of TV actress Nigaar Khan, Gauahar has plenty of reasons to be in the news, be it her controversial TV shows or a debate on her perfect age. Gauahar is ambitious and has higher goals in life.

Not only modelling and TV, the actress has also made her mark in the famous Bollywood musical, Zangoora. After pursuing modelling, Gauahar Khan (earlier Gauhar Khan) made her acting debut in 2009 with Yash Raj Films’ Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year as Koena Sheikh. Yes! Gauahar, who is so famous on small screen, had actually started her on the big screen, and later appeared on small screen. She also starred in films like the action thriller Game in the year 2011, starring Abhishek Bachchan; and another film Ishaqzaade in the year 2012, which was a debut of Parineeti Chopra and Arjun Kapoor. In this film, Gauahar played the role of Chaand Bibi, which was acclaimed by many. Gauahar not only acted in films, but also featured in item numbers. She is one of the most loved item girls in Bollywood these days. Her ‘Jhallah wallah...’ number from Ishaqzaade left the music lovers asking for more. Her beautiful moves won her accolades and she stood out in the film with her small, yet notable presence. Her other popular item songs include ‘Parda’ from Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai and ‘Nasha’ in Aan: Men at Work. Not only this, she also performed a hit number ‘Naa pera kanchan mala’ in South film Shankar Dada MBBS. Gauahar Khan was in a relationship with a Delhi based businessman’s son, Kushal Tandon, who was also her co-contestant in one of the real-

ity shows. He is a TV actor and has a massive fan following. The two fell for each other on the show, but broke up soon after doing two reality shows together. Gauahar was head over heels about her relationship. However, the love didn’t last long. Their fans had a name for the lovely couple - ‘Gaushal’.

Gauahar Khan was slapped by an audience member while she was hosting one of the reality shows, India’s Raw Star, at Film City. The actress was attacked and threatened by an audience member who said that “being a Muslim woman, she should not have worn such a short dress”. The accused was identified as Mohammed Akil Mallick. Reportedly, he slapped and touched her inappropriately during the break of the show. However, there was a twist in the tale when the accused claimed that Gauahar had actually paid him to slap her on national television. Whether Gauahar Khan was born in 1980 or 1983, still remains a secret.

In one of the TV shows, Gauahar celebrated her 29th birthday in the year 2009, and when she was asked her age on national television.

‘Manjhi...’ a very inspirational film says Urvashi Rautela Actress Urvashi Rautela, who made her debut opposite Sunny Deol in Singh Saab The Great, is full of praise for Ketan Mehta's Manjhi - The Mountain Man. "It is a very inspirational movie and everyone must watch it," Rautela said at a special screening of the film here. Manjhi - The Mountain Man is a story of man who breaks the

mountain for 22 years to carve a path. When asked if she would expect her lover to go to that extent, Rautela said: "I want my life partner to be loyal and very simple, I don't want him to do something like this".

The actress has featured in a sizzling item number for Bhaag Johnny, an upcoming thriller which stars Kunal Khemu, Mandana Karimi and Zoa Morani. About her forthcoming projects, the actress said: "I am doing Great Grand Masti, which is releasing next year.

Then I have Sanam Re, which is scheduled for Valentine's Day next year and a Tips film with Ramesh Taurani.

Kriti Sanon’s right technique of shaving Actress Kriti Sanon says shaving can be a smooth sail for women if done with the right technique to get the best results.

“I thoroughly believe that shaving is the best way of hair removal as it’s the most convenient and hassle free of all the methods. Women simply need to know the right technique of shaving to get the best results,” Kriti said in a statement.

The actress, who ventured into Bollywood with Heropanti opposite Tiger Shroff, busted myths around shaving in an interactive panel discussion along with aesthetic physician Rashmi Shetty and make-up artist Namrata Soni, organised by Gillette Venus, here on Friday.

The panel shared their ex-

pertise and enlightened women on the techniques of shaving and vouched for shaving being one of the most hassle free methods of female hair removal.

Shetty took the platform of

the “educative session” to talk abut how shaving doesn’t lead to darkening of skin.

“Many of whom I have interacted with believe that shaving will make their skin become darker or that their hair would grow faster and thicker which is why they refrain from it. However, in reality hair growth is determined by one’s genetic and hormonal makeup,” Shetty said. While Soni said that “shaving helps in maintaining the health of the skin by keeping it soft, smooth and in exfoliating the skin, as well”. The session also witnessed discussion between the audience and panel members, where personal experiences was shared at a common platform.

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Paris Hilton ‘really You need to share a good happy’ with boyfriend relationship with your

hairdresser says Eva Green

Socialite Paris Hilton says she is “really happy” with boyfriend Thomas Gross and thinks she will marry and have children someday. The 34-yearold socialite, who met the Swiss businessman in Ibiza earlier this year, said she could not be happier as “great things” are happening, reported Hello magazine. “I’m really happy right now and that’s all I can confirm.

This is turning into a magical, marvellous summer. Even though

Thomas isn’t Spanish, I have to admit that really great things happen to me in Spain.

Life smiles on me here,” she said.

Though she did not want to talk too much about her relationship, Paris is convinced that she will get married and have children one day. “Of course and I will. It’s just a matter of time... I am sure that moment will come. For now, I want to live life to the full, enjoy all the marvellous things that are happening to me.

Professional hair care leader L’Oreal Professionnel is proud to announce their new international spokesperson - Bond Girl Eva Green. Eva will be the new face for the brand’s strategic 2015 launches. “As an actress, hair is very important. You need to share a good relationship with your hairdresser and together create hairstyles. My hairdresser uses, of course, the leader of hair products, L’Oreal Professionnel. I am very glad to be on board on this new adventure,” says Eva. “We have chosen Eva because she perfectly embodies our values.

She is extremely sensitive to fashion trends and counts on the expertise of hairdressers, both on and off screen. Her beauty , modernity and personal appeal captivate the audiences. I am convinced that she will be an amazing advantage for the brand,” says Annular Lecerf, International Managing Director at L’Oreal Professionnel. Born in Paris, Eva is known for her natural beauty - particularly her translucent complexion, blue eyes and signature brunette hair, which she often trans-

Kristen Stewart to star in Karl Lagerfeld’s film

Julianne Hough gets engaged

Actress Kristen Stewart, Chanel’s newest campaign model, will star in a film directed by designer Karl Lagerfeld for an upcoming show of the French fashion house. The story, conceived by Lagerfeld, offers a fictional, behind-the-

scenes look at a biopic in the making about founder Gabrielle Chanel, reports

variety.com.

Stewart portrays an actress impersonating the designer as a young woman. Geraldine Chaplin, who has played Chanel in previous Lagerfeld films, is in the movie as well. Lagerfeld filmed the project last month in two days at director Luc Besson’s Paris studio. Lagerfeld said Stewart “played it really, really mean.”

forms for films and red carpet appearances.Whether wearing her hair in a loose, wavy style or a sophisticated and glamorous chignon, she always channels powerful femininity . At 34, Eva Green has more than 18 films and TV series to her name. In 2015, she will begin shooting Tim Burton’s new film Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children while also continuing to appear in the hit American TV series Penny Dreadful, in which she plays the title role alongside Josh Hartnett.

“You only see her in tests and she’s complaining about everything. She’s mean with the director; mean with the producer,” he told fashion industry trade magazine WWD. Lagerfeld is the head designer and creative director of Chanel, Italian house Fendi and his own label.

Actress Julianne Hough has got engaged to Canadian ice hockey player Brooks Laich after more than a year of dating. The 27-year-old actress, who previously dated American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, was “overwhelmed with joy and excitement” when the Canadian player, 31, proposed to her after 18 months of dating, reported Female First. The Safe Haven star broke the news on Instagram, where alongside a photograph of herself staring at her ring while wrapping

her arms and legs around Brooks on a balcony overlooking a lake. “We are overwhelmed with joy and excitement to share with you our recent engagement. #fiance #love.” The Dancing with the Stars judge started dating the Washington Capitals player in February 2014 after being set up on a

date by a mutual friend.

The blonde beauty and Ryan, 40, split in March 2013 after almost four years of dating amid rumours she got tired of waiting for him to get down on bended knee.

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Smartphone SaleS fall in China Scientists map a world without humans

BEIJING Smartphone sales in China have fallen yearon-year for the first time, according to data gathered by Gartner. The market research firm says 4 percent fewer handsets were sold in the months of April, May and June compared with the same period in 2014. It suggests the market has "reached saturation" meaning about half the population owns a smartphone and is not upgrading on an annual basis. However, not all manufacturers experienced a drop. Samsung's sales were 49 percent lower - despite the launch of its Galaxy S6 models- and Lenovo also experienced a big fall-off in demand.

Thieves steal Rodin sculpture in Denmark COPENHAGEN Two robbers have made off with a bronze bust by French sculptor Auguste Rodin from a Copenhagen museum in a bold theft in broad daylight, the museum said Friday.

"So far we have no indications of where it has gone and police investigations are ongoing," a spokesman at the Glyptoteket museum, Jakob Fibiger Andreasen, said.

Andreasen declined to put a price on Rodin's 1863 "Man with a Broken Nose" but Danish media have estimated its worth at around

two million kroner (268,000 euros, $304,000). The theft occurred on July 16 but the museum has only just announced it. Surveillance

camera footage shows two men taking down the bust from its base, putting it in a plastic bag and then placing it into another bag, be-

fore calmly walking out of the museum in broad daylight during normal opening hours. Another surveillance camera film shows the men had visited the museum over a week earlier, on July 7, to disable the alarm.– AFP "They were inside the museum to reconnoiter about a week prior to the theft," inspector Ove Randrup of Copenhagen police's robbery and theft unit told daily Politiken.

"Whoever may have taken the statue will have difficulty in moving it, as it has been reported to both Interpol and Europol," Andreasen said.

ISLAMABAD Researchers have provided the first estimate of how the mammal diversity world map would look like if modern man had never existed.

Then most of northern Europe would probably now be home to not only wolves, Eurasian elk and bears, but also animals such as elephants and rhinoceroses, researchers said, Daily Mail reported. Researchers have based their estimates on the distribution of each species according to its ecology , biogeography and the current natural environmen-

tal template. “Northern Europe is far from the only place in which humans have reduced the diversity of mammals,” said Jens-Christian Svenning, from the Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University in Denmark. The current world map of mammal diversity shows that Africa is the only place with a high diversity of large mammals. However, the world map shows far greater distribution of high largemammal diversity across most of the world, with particularly high levels in North and South America.”

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naSa CurioSity rover takeS Selfie on marS Washington Nasa’s Curiosity rover used its inbuilt ‘selfie stick’ to capture this 360 degree image of itself sitting in the Marias Pass re-

gion of Mars. The robot has been in the area drilling into rock dubbed ‘buckskin’ to investigate the chemical makeup of the red planet and is currently analysing samples in its internal laboratories.

Curiosity initially noted the area was high in silica and hydrogen on May 21 while climbing to a site and turned round to have a closer look.

After drilling into the rock it used the camera on its robotic arm to capture multiple images which were stitched together

into a self-portrait at the drilling site. Since it landed in August 2012, the probe has travelled 6.9 miles across the surface of Mars. It is in a deep

bowl known as Gale Crater.

At the centre of the depression is a huge mountain, informally called Mount Sharp.

Curiosity is currently climbing through its foothills, examining the rocks as it goes.

Early results show that the samples collected by Curiosity contain high levels of silica and more hydrogen than anywhere else visited so far. Silica is a rock-forming compound containing silicon and oxygen, commonly found on Earth as quartz. High levels of silica in

the rock could indicate ideal conditions for preserving ancient organic material, if present, so the science team has been keen to take a closer look. And high levels of hydrogen suggest more water than elsewhere. “The ground about one metre beneath the rover in this area holds three or four times as much water as the ground anywhere else Curiosity has driven during its three years on Mars,” said DAN Principal Investigator Igor Mitrofanov of Space Research Institute, Moscow.

Buckskin was the first rock drilled by Curiosity since an electrical circuit in the drill’s percussion mechanism exhibited a small, transient short circuit in February during transfer of sample powder from the third target drilled in the Pahrump Hills area. ‘We were pleased to see no repeat of the short circuit during the Buckskin drilling and sample transfer,’ said Steven Lee, deputy project manager for Curiosity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

‘It could come back, but we have made changes in fault protection to continue safely drilling even in the presence of small shorts.’

Govt extends Taslima Nasreen’s visa by one year

New Delhi Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen’s visa was on Friday extended for a year by the Home Ministry.

The decision has been taken following an intervention of home minister Rajnath Singh as Taslima has been requesting the Indian government to further extend her visa.

The 52-year-old writer’s visa was granted for a year with effect from July 23, a Home Ministry official said.

Reacting to the decision, Taslima told PTI that she

was very happy even though she was expecting her visa to be extended by more than a year.

“Anyway, this is always a welcome news. I am yet to be officially conveyed (the

government decision) and you are the one who broke the news to me,” she said.

Taslima, living in exile since she left Bangladesh in a cloak of secrecy in 1994 in the wake of threats to her by fundamentalist groups, was given a oneyear visa by the government in 2014.

Taslima, a citizen of Sweden, has been getting Indian visa on a basis since 2004.

She has also stayed in the US and Europe in the last two decades. However, on many occasions she had expressed her wish to live in India permanently, especially in Kolkata.

The writer had to leave Kolkata in 2007 following violent street protests by a section of Muslims against her works.

Taslima said if she is not able to stay on in India she will suffer from an “identity crisis” which will affect her writings and championing the cause of women’s rights.

Centre may drop Robert Vadra from ‘no frisking’ list Robert Vadra, C o n g r e s s president Sonia Gandhi’s son-inlaw, is likely to be stripped of his privilege of exemption from being frisked at airports if he travels with a SPG protectee, with the Home Ministry giving its approval for a review of people who enjoy such exemption.

Sources said the MHA had asked the Civil Aviation Ministry to proceed with its plans of reviewing a list of 33 categories of persons, which includes Vadra and the Dalai Lama, who are exempted

from frisking at airports across the country.

The Home Ministry has conveyed that it does not consider the threat perception to Vadra to be serious enough for the no-frisking exemption. It has, however, asked the ministry to take a decision after consulting the SPG, which protects his wife.

Yippee noodles follows Maggi, fails tests Lucknow Even as the controversy over the presence of lead in Maggi noodles is yet to settle down, samples of another popular noodle brand have failed quality tests in Uttar Pradesh.

Though ITC recently rolled out advertisements emphasising on the safety and the quality of its noodles, Yippee has failed quality tests.

According to reports, the presence of lead in a sample of Yippee noodle has been found above the permissible limit.

The detailed report of the Food and Drug Authority (FDA) laboratory, Lucknow, mentions that the lead content has been found to be

1.705 part per million (PPM) instead of the permissible limit of 1PPM. The lead content in its taste maker has also been found to be 3.24 PPM instead of the permissible limit of 2.5 PPM.

The samples were collected on May 21 from the retail outlet of Vishal Mega Mart in Aligarh district.

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Issue 629 (22)

25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Climate talks failure not an optionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; JAIPUR Two of the world's most vulnerable low-lying island nations, Kiribati and Tuvalu, have said failure at upcoming climate talks in Paris is not an option as rising sea levels threaten their very existence. The Pacific island nations say they have been forced to con-

sider such nuclear options as buying land abroad to grow food and preparing their people to migrate as the seas slowly claim their homelands. But as representatives of Pacific island nations met in Jaipur in the western Indian desert state of Rajasthan this week, the message was clear -- world leaders

meeting in Paris in December must deliver on expectations of a historic deal to combat global warming.

"Failure is not a fallback position, it is not an option, we cannot have it as an option. We must get success," Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga told AFP in an interview. "We may be able to run away,

we may be able to purchase land in other places, maybe Australia, New Zealand. "But that won't stop climate change, it will not stop the cause of climate change. It will not assure the people of Tuvalu that they will be safe there." Sopoaga said climate change was now "enemy number one for Tuvalu", nine coral atolls

that are home to about 11,000 residents. Scientists predict Tuvalu and Kiribati, which are little more than a metre (three feet) above sea level, could disappear in the coming decades. Both nations already suffer from a range of problems linked to climate change, including more intense storms like

the one that devastated Vanuatu earlier this year and salination of ground water, which makes it impossible to grow crops. The situation is so dire that Kiribati is considering relocating the entire population, or building man-made islands to rehouse them.

"For us we think that things have progressed, have advanced too much,

it's too late for us," Kiribati's special envoy Teekoa Luta told AFP in Jaipur, where representatives of 14 Pacific nations held talks on Friday. "Paris we hope will buy us some time, but we are not positive that anything that is achieved in Paris, the outcomes would be in time for us."

The UN conference in Paris will seek to crown a six-year effort by 195 nations with a post2020 pact on curbing greenhouse gases. But Luta said her tiny nation of 100,000 people was already struggling to cope with the fall-out from climate change.

"Our resources are constrained, our institutional capacity to cope with our health problems are constrained," she said. "We spend most of our budget fixing the (natural) damages month after month and then we don't have money to spend on health, education and (other) social services."

Kiribati recently called for a global moratorium on building new coal mines and expanding existing ones -- a move Luta said she hoped that major economies including India would eventually support.

US girl goes back in water to save friend

MIAMI A 10-year-old American girl who was bitten in the leg by a shark at a Florida beach waded back into the surf to save a younger friend, relatives said.

Kaley Szarmack is recovering in a hospital after receiving 90 stitches following the shark attack Wednesday in shallow water off the city of Jacksonville, her father told WJXT radio. "She got bit on the right leg. She said she felt it and she turned around and she could see the shark and she could see the fin flailing around," Dave Szarmack told the station.

The girl got out of the water and yelled to a friend to do the same, screaming about the shark. But that younger girl stayed put.

"So she turned around and went back and got the 6year-old and took her out of the water. She pulled the little girl back out of the water," the father said.

Kaley's wound is large and took surgeons an hour to suture, but she is expected to recover fully, he added.

"She'll be able to run, jump, swim and surf in not too long of healing time. Going to have a pretty big scar and quite a story to tell, though," Dave said.

Issue 629 (23)

25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015

Dawood Ibrahim’s new residence in Karachi near Bilawal’s residence As proof of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s presence in Pakistan, the dossier prepared by New Delhi for NSA-level talks with Islamabad states that as recently as September 2013, Dawood acquired a new residence in Karachi’s Clifton area that is close to the residence of Bilawal Zardari, son of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

The dossier cites the address as Shireen Jinnah Colony, near Ziauddin Hospital, Clifton, Karachi. It is “located near Ziauddin Hospital, where medical treatment could be provided to Dawood Ibrahim whenever required. The place is close to the residence of Bilawal Zardari”, it adds.

Another new residence purchased by Dawood is located at Main Margalla Road F-6/2, House No.7, Islamabad, the dossier adds.

In addition, details of four

passports issued to Dawood by Pakistan have been detected by India.

These are: Passport No. G866537 issued from

588518, daughter Mahrukh who is married to Pakistani cricketer Javed Miandad’s son holds Pakistani passport J-563473 and

Dawood‘s hideouts: Moin Palace, near Abdullah Shah Gazi Dargah, Clifton, Karachi; 6/A, Khyaban Tanzeem, Phase-V,

Rawalpindi, C-267185 issued from Karachi, G886537 issued from Rawalpindi and KC-285901 issued from Karachi.

India has also found that Dawood‘s wife Mahjabeen holds Pakistani passport J589103, his son Moeen holds Pakistani passport J-

other daughter Mehreen holds Pakistani passport J563439. Dawood‘s brothers Anees and Mustaqin hold Pakistani passports H144394 and KA-713357, respectively.

Indian agencies had earlier located the following nine addresses in Pakistan as

Defence Housing Area, Karachi; ISI Safe House located on the Bhoubhan Hill, around 20km from Islamabad on the Islamabad-Muree Road; Margalla Road, P-6/2, Street No. 22, House No. 29, Islamabad; 17 CP Bazar Society, Block 7-8, Amir

Khan Road, Karachi; 30th Street in Ph-5 extension of DHA in Karachi; Abdullah Shah Gazi Saab Ki Mazar, Karachi; 8th floor of Mehran Square, near Pardesi House-3, Talwar Area, Clifton, Karachi and a Palatial Bungalow in the hilly area of Nooriabad in Karachi.

According to a report published in Indian agencies are also in possession of an April 2015 telephone bill in the name of Dawood‘s wife Mehjabeen with D-13, Block-4, Karachi Development Authority, Sch-5, Clifton, as the installation address.

The newspaper also published a fresh photograph of the 59-yearold gangster, and reported that Dawood‘s latest photographs indicate he has a receding hairline, is clean shaven and has not undergone any facial cosmetic surgery. The agencies also have documents that show that

Dawood‘s family members travelled between Pakistan and Dubai. They also have images of Dawood‘s Pakistani passport, the report stated. According to India’s dossier, “All these details were shared with Pakistan on a number of occasions through diplomatic channels. The dossiers of Indian fugitives staying in Pakistan, including that of Dawood Ibrahim, were also shared a number of times in forums like the Home Secretary level talks.” The last time a dossier on Dawood was shared with Pakistan was during Home Secretary level talks between the two countries on May 24-25, 2012 in Islamabad.

“Dawood Ibrahim is known to frequently change his locations and addresses in Pakistan since he has amassed immense property in Pakistan and moves under the protection of Pak agencies,” the latest dossier states.

Law panel report next week on aap mla Surinder Singh to retain death sentence or not getS bail in aSSault CaSe

New Delhi Days after its consultation process saw a majority opposing death penalty, the Indian Law Commission will submit its report on the muchdebated subject to the

Supreme Court of India next week recommending as to whether capital punishment should be retained or done away with.

The law panel will submit its report to the Supreme Court “sometime” next week on whether India should continue with death penalty or abolish it. A copy will also be handed over to the Law Minister as any call on changes in penal provisions will be taken by Parliament.

The report assumes significance as it comes days after a debate was generated over the hanging of Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Memon.

The Commission is working overtime to complete the report as its three-year term is coming

to an end on August 31.

The Supreme Court, in Santosh Kumar Satishbhushan Bariyar vs Maharashtra and Shankar Kisanrao Khade vs Maharashtra, had suggested that the Law

Commission should study the death penalty in India to “allow for an up-to-date and informed discussion and debate on the subject”.

In a consultation paper released on May 22 last year, the Law Commission had said that at this juncture, an exhaustive study on the subject would be a useful and salutary contribution to the cause of public debate on this issue.

Such a study will also provide a definitive researchbacked orientation to the lawmakers and judges on this very contentious issue, it had said.

The Commission said the study would have to address queries and concerns of courts and

present an international perspective on the issue.

Former President late A P J Abdul Kalam and DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) MP Kanimozhi were among the people who had supported abolishing death penalty while responding to the consultation paper.

A discussion held last month on a Law Commission consultation paper on whether capital punishment should be retained or abolished saw most of the participants opposing capital punishment.

While former Kalam, Kanimozhi and former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, supported the abolition of death penalty, SC Bar Association’s Dushyant Dave favoured retaining the capital punishment.

Several of those who responded to the consultation paper and experts who participated in the day-long consultation sought a more unambiguous definition of ‘rarest of rare’ case where death penalty can be handed down by the courts.

According to the Commission, those who support retention of capital punishment felt its strong need in cases where the sanctity of the society was violated.

New Delhi Surinder Singh, AAP MLA from Delhi Cantonment area who was arrested for allegedly assaulting an NDMC worker, was granted bail on Saturday by a Delhi court. The two other accused - Sanjay Singh and Parveen - were also granted bail on a personal bond of ‘30,000 each.

During the arguments the police had demanded that all the accused, who were arrested on Friday and produced before the court, be remanded to judicial custody as witnesses in the case have received threats.

However, the court turned down police’s plea for judicial custody of the accused and granted them bail observing that none of the offences for which they have been booked were punishable

with jail term for more than seven years and there was no chance of their absconding or fleeing from justice. Further, the statements of the witnesses under section 164 CrPC have already been recorded.

Senior advocate Ramesh Gupta, who appeared for Singh, questioned the jurisdiction of the court to deal with the case saying it did not have the power to hear the matter lodged under provisions of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. He said that as charges under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act have been slapped in the case, only a sessions court can hear the bail pleas.On August 4,

Surinder Singh was booked for allegedly beating and manhandling an NDMC worker in Tughlaq road area when a team of municipal officials was doing routine their check and had apprehended an erickshaw driver to ascertain his documents.

Singh allegedly made casteist against the NDMC employee.

The NDMC employee was reportedly carrying out an antiencroachment drive against unauthorised vendors when the incident took place. Singh is the third AAP MLA who has been arrested in the last two months. Former Delhi Law Minister Jitendra Singh Tomar was held in a fake educational degree case in June and Kondli legislator Manoj Kumar was apprehended in July.

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Your sensitive, spiritual side is out in full force early this week, so pay attention to subtle nudges that could save you time and money. The New Moon encourages you to move in new circles and think about expanding your social options. There’s fun to be had if you want it. Passions will be unleashed from Thursday, putting you in a much more proactive mood.

You’re on a roll socially, with many opportunities to mix, mingle, and enjoy some fabulous evenings out. You might feel motivated to volunteer, too, particularly if others need a helping hand. It should now be easier to make headway with your career and begin to put plans into action.

Later in the week the focus shifts to spiritual matters, rest, and relaxation.

With a full house at the top of your chart, you might be in the position of having to make key decisions that could affect future plans. If you have big dreams, you're ideally placed to start manifesting them. The New Moon in Aquarius encourages you to move outside your comfort zone and challenge yourself in the process.

The New Moon in your zone of shared resources may be one of the best times for reorganizing your financial situation, or at least making a start on it. Use this opportunity to get advice and put it into action. You're also primed for adventure and embracing a learning curve. A lineup in Pisces might encourage vacation plans, whether you go abroad or stay close to home.

With Mercury now gathering pace in Aquarius, interactions settle down and become more predictable. This is a good time to sign documents, close deals, and generally get back into the swing of things.

When it comes to finances you’ll need to keep a grip on things. The Pisces focus suggests you’ll be tempted to splurge just for the sake of it, so go easy if you can.

Romantic opportunities seem particularly upbeat this week, encouraging you to add a touch of magic to an ongoing relationship or to help a new liaison blossom. You’ll also find that everyday interactions, including business meetings, benefit from your creative and inspirational input.

When Mars and Venus head into Aries you could be more impulsive.

The midweek New Moon can be helpful if you’ve been thinking of starting a business enterprise or developing your creative potential. Mercury is picking up speed, so this is the perfect time to move from research to action. Romantic opportunities look promising, with a chance to take a budding liaison to a new level of commitment.

The early part of the week can of fer tender embraces and the chance for a special date. Romance is sweet and magical, leading to the potential for a relationship that encompasses mystery and the unknown. You have a great opportunity to start on DIY projects or other plans as the cosmos lends its support.

Home life seems upbeat so long as everyone is being honest with each other. There’s a chance that this might not be the case, particularly if you sense someone isn’t telling the truth. Any dilemmas resulting from this may be short-lived when Mars and Venus move into Aries later this week.

Instead of holding back, people will be ready to tell it like it is, helping to clear the air.

This isn’t the time to be overconfident or take things for granted. Instead, it helps to bring balanced judgment to the table, particularly if your reputation is at stake. Later, indecision and a lack of facts may give way to a determination to succeed no matter what. A more dynamic mindset could work wonders as Mars and Venus enter Aries.

This week’s New Moon is the second in Aquarius this year, bringing another opportunity to forge ahead with an idea whose time has come. As Mercury gets up to speed, you’ll find your efforts are quickly rewarded. Meanwhile, continue to stay in control where finances are concerned. Cut back on items you no longer use or need, as doing so could save you a lot.

You’ll gain control of the reins as the Sun glides into your sign midweek, enabling you to forge ahead with personal plans. On the same day, the New Moon in your spiritual sector can be useful for starting practices such as meditation, yoga, or anything else that helps you feel more peaceful. Mars and Venus jog into your personal money zone, so it's time to take action.

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Technology Live streaming gets better - Comcast’s Xfinity Share app now available to all users Live streaming is getting much better yet again with Comcast now making its Xfinity Share app available to all subscribers. Xfinity Share lets users stream

content directly to the television. It also lets users share from mobile to mobile, though, if that’s more convenient. When we launched Xfinity Share, we

wanted to give people an easy way to share big moments on the big screen. Now, we’re announcing some changes that will significantly expand

the number of people who can use the app, the company announced Thursday in a blog in its official website.

Starting today, every Xfinity

customer - video, Internet, voice, and home - can use Xfinity Share to live stream and send photos and videos to a TV. They can also use the app to send or receive

live streams, photos, and videos on a mobile device, it added.

It said to watch live streams or receive photos and videos from Xfinity Share on

the TV, consumers will still need to have X1 DVR capable set-top boxes.

Here’s how you can live stream your’s or your kids’ activities to your loved ones from afar- Open the Xfinity Share app, select “Stream Live,” select “Stream to other contacts,” enter the home phone number or comcast.net email address for the person you want to see the video, and click “Stream.” A notification will pop up on that person’s TV, and all that person needs to do to watch the live streaming is click the “Info” button on the X1 TV remote.

The Xfinity Share app is available to download for free from the Apple Store for iOS devices or from Google Play for Android devices.

Google-Twitter deal on search moves to desktop Google and Twitter announced Friday their partnership placing tweets in online search results

has been extended to desktop.

Confirmation came in a tweeted exchange between the two US tech

firms.

“Hey @twitter, Search party at our place. Meet us on desktop?” Google said,

to which Twitter replied, “You got it, @google. We`ll bring the Tweets.”

The two firms agreed in May to place tweets in

Google mobile search results, and that the same would apply to desktop at a later time.

The two firms had a similar arrangement dating back to 2009, but tweets disappeared from Google search results in 2011.

The tie-up could help boost engagement at Twitter, which has seen growth sputter compared with other social networks. It also brings fresh content and commentary from Twitter to Google search queries. “It`s a great way to get real-time info when something is happening,” Google`s Ardan Arac said

Yahoo Weather app gives warnings 15 minutes before rain or snow Yahoo has released a new feature in the form of its Weather app.

According to the Engadget, the app will send the users an alert 15 minutes before rain or snow is expected to start so the users have enough time to prepare.

The new feature in the app takes readings

from the barometric sensors in users’ iOS devices.

Yahoo says its Weather software is more accurate with improvements made to the methods it uses to determine and serve forecasts, with the ability to zoom in on small areas should the need arise.

when the deal was announced in May. In an update Friday, Arac said, “We`ve extended this to desktop now too, and in English everywhere.”

Facebook major source of news, not Google

Facebook now accounts for more of the traffic to news sites than Google, according to latest results.

Links shared on Facebook and Twitter have become a crucial source of incoming traffic, and have been vying with search as a source of new readers for some time, said results from the analytics firm Parse.Ly. “The company’s latest estimates show that social-media sources accounted for 43 percent of the traffic to the Parse.Ly network of media sites, while Google accounted for just 38 percent,” Fortune magazine quoted Parse.Ly’s chief technical officer Andrew Montalenti as saying.

This is not the first time that Facebook has edged past Google in the trafficreferral race, Montalenti

said. “The social network took the top spot by a small amount last October, but this month’s lead is far more dramatic,” Parse.Ly’s CTO said quoting from the company’s data.

It is clear that search has hit a kind of plateau and is not really growing any more as a referral source for media.

“There’s a lot of effort among media companies being placed on specific social channels like Twitter, but our data shows that Twitter is basically a distant traffic source,” Montalenti was quoted as saying.

“Facebook is more like a black box in terms of how it operates. And yet it’s this huge and growing traffic source,” he said.

16-year-old NRI kid claims his search engine is 47% more accurate than Google!

Google is the undisputed king of search engines! It is said to have one of the fastest, most accurate search results as compared to other search engines that exist.

But, now a kid has challenged the authority of Google. Sixteenyear-old Anmol Tukrel, an Indianorigin Canadian citizen has designed a personalised search engine that claims to be as high as 47% more accurate than Google, and about 21% more accurate on an average.

Tukrel is just a standard 10 student and has been working on the project for

just a couple of months. He has taken around 60 hours code and build a search engine, which is a part of the submission to the Google Science Fair. The Google competition is applicable for those

came to know about Google already having a personalized search engine, he planned to take it to a next level. Tukrel’s development kit included only a computer with at least 1GB of free storage

between ages 13 and 18.

According to reports, when Tukrel was in India for a short internship in Bangalore, that’s when he

space, a python-language development environment, a spreadsheet program and access to Google and New York Times.

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Crime branch cops slap fresh FIR In Kerala, a drive for ‘blood money’ to save fellow villager against godman Sarathi Baba

A fresh case of sexual abuse has been filed against arrested selfproclaimed godman Sarathi Baba alias Santosh Roul.

The case was registered on Friday following a complaint made by an erstwhile woman inmate of his ashram in Kendrapara district, police said.

The unmarried woman along with her mother came to the police headquarters for the second time on Friday to register their complaint.

Similarly, three other

women have earlier brought criminal charges against Roul with intent to outrage their modesty.

Earlier booked for several charges of cheating, forgery and fraud, Roul is currently lodged in Choudwar circle jail in Cuttack.

Meanwhile, Roul’s adopted son Satyam, who was arrested on Wednesday, was being interrogated by the crime branch police. He was questioned for over ten hours on Friday.

The court has allowed the crime branch police to

take the junior Roul on remand for three days as his interrogation was necessary to establish the allegations of economic offences against the father-son duo. In a related development, the crime branch police had on Friday picked up for questioning a woman, who was earlier impersonating as a CBI inspector and submitted an FIR at local Mangalabag police station in Cuttack on behalf of Roul’s woman companion.

A sleepy village near south Kerala’s Kollam district is bustling with activity these days as residents bear down to collect half a crore rupees in “blood money” through crowdfunding.

It’s a last-ditch attempt to rescue one of their own 41year-old Santhosh C, who is on death row in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after being convicted of murder.

The people of Kadakkal village believe Santhosh is incapable of taking a life and are scrambling to gather the hefty sum for his disadvantaged family as a court in Abu Dhabi prepares to hear his appeal

on September 7.

Under Shariah law prevalent in Arab nations, diyat, or blood money, is compensation paid by a convict to the victim’s family in exchange for

mercy in cases of murder and accident.

In 2011, Subin Varghese, an electrician from Kerala working with a contracting

firm in Abu Dhabi, was stabbed to death in a brawl. Santhosh, who was employed with the same firm and was staying in the room next to Subin’s, was arrested based on statements from neighbours.

According to UAE police, the two had an argument during a drinking session and Santhosh in a fit of rage took out a knife and stabbed Subin several times who died of his injuries.

A court in Abu Dhabi awarded Santhosh the death sentence in 2013, but he was later granted the option of diyat.

Government to set up national fingerprint database of criminal A national fingerprints database of nearly 30 lakh convicts and arrested criminals will be created by the government soon for speedy identification of offenders and for expediting ongoing probes.

The database of convicts and crime offenders will be set up by the Home Ministry by collating records

from all the states and Union Territories.

Currently, the Central Finger Print Bureau (CPFB) has data of over 9.7 lakh fingerprint records of convicted or arrested persons in digitised form. However, there are around 20 lakh fingerprint records with fingerprint bureaus of states and union territories which

are yet to be linked to the central database.

“We have now decided to integrate the records of the state agencies and make them part of the national database.

The National Informatics Centre is creating a ‘cloud’ for this integration,” a Home Ministry official said.

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Asteroid will not destroy Earth

WASHINGTON The world can breath easy. A giant asteroid is not hurtling towards Earth about to wipe out much of the Americas, Nasa has felt compelled to explain following a swirl of online

rumors.

Blogs and off-beat news sites have claimed a major asteroid will impact earth in mid-to-late September near Puerto Rico, causing major destruction throughout the region. But that theory is entirely baseless, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a post this week, trying to damp down the

Doomsday predictions.

“There is no scientific basis - not one shred of evidence - that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates,” said the manager of the Near-Earth Object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Paul Chodas. The lab explained that all known hazardous asteroids have a less than .01 percent chance of impacting Earth in the next 100 years.

“If there were any object large enough to do that type of destruction in September, we would have seen something of it by now,” he said. NASA pointed out that Doomsday theorists have made similar predictions in the past, including the Mayan calendar claim in 2012, all of which were not backed up by science and turned out to be false.

“Again, there is no existing evidence that an asteroid or any other celestial object is on a trajectory that will impact Earth,” Chodas said.

Facebook tops social pack in US WASHINGTON Facebook remains the dominant social network for US Internet users, while Twitter has failed to keep pace with rivals like Instagram and Pinterest, a study showed Wednesday.

The Pew Research Center report found 72 percent of Americans who are online currently use Facebook, a modest uptick of one percentage point from a year ago and five points higher than in 2012. Because the vast majority of Americans use the Internet, the figures suggest 62 percent of all US adults are on Facebook, according to Pew. The study showed Pinterest, the bulletin-board style network, was used by 31 percent of those surveyed while Facebook-owned photo-sharing network Instagram grabbed 28 percent, with both showing significant growth.

Twitter’s share remained stuck at 23 percent, the same level as last year, although it rose from 16 percent in 2012.

Facebook has an added advantage over its rivals because its users are “highly engaged,” according to the survey, which found 70 percent of Facebook users saying they log on daily, including 43 percent who do so several times a day. That compared with daily engagement of 59 percent for Instagram users, 38 percent of those on Twitter and 27 percent of Pinterest users.

LinkedIn, a social network oriented toward career enhancement, saw its user base decline to 25 percent of online adults, from 28 percent in 2014.

But those who use the platform daily rose to 22 percent from 13 percent a year earlier. Some 10

US approves female Viagra with strong warning

New York The first drug to treat low sexual desire in women won approval from US health regulators on Tuesday, but with a warning about potentially dangerous low blood pressure and fainting side effects, especially when taken with alcohol.

The US Food and Drug Administration said the pink pill, to be sold under the brand name Addyi and made by privately held Sprout Pharmaceuticals, will only be available through certified and specially trained health care professionals and pharmacies due to its safety issues.

Addyi, whose chemical name is flibanserin, is designed for premenopausal women whose lack of sexual desire causes distress. The condition is formally known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or HSDD. The drug needs to be taken daily.

Addyi has been nicknamed the “female Viagra” even though it

does not work like Pfizer Inc’s blockbuster Viagra pill for men that in 1998 became the first approved drug for erectile dysfunction.“This is the biggest

breakthrough in women’s sexual health since the advent of ‘the Pill’” for contraception, The National Consumers League said in a statement. “It validates (and) legitimizes female sexuality as an important component of health.”

But Public Citizen, a consumer watchdog group that testified against the drug earlier this year, predicted that Addyi will be pulled from the market within a few years because of “serious dangers to women, with little benefit” to them.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t heard

the last of this drug.”

The FDA had twice rejected the Raleigh, North Carolina-based firm’s drug. But the latest decision comes after an advisory panel concluded in June it should be approved with strict measures in place to ensure patients are fully aware of the risks.

Sprout officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The news sent shares of Palatin Technologies, which is creating a rival drug for HSDD, up about 30 percent to $1.21 in extended trade.

Palatin’s experimental treatment called bremelanotide is now in late-stage trials and works differently from Addyi. It attempts to activate certain brain pathways.

Palatin in a statement late Tuesday said its drug, if approved, would only be taken as needed, not on a daily basis like Addyi, thereby providing women “greater control and flexibility in their treatment.”

percent of online adults said they used Tumblr, the blogging platform acquired two years ago

by Yahoo. That compared with six percent the last time Pew asked in December 2012.

Tumblr is popular among younger adults with 20 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29

These apps are especially popular among young adults, and were used by 49 percent of smartphone owners between the ages of 18 and 29, Pew found.

“The emergence of messaging apps is noteworthy as these communication tools serve different social needs than

reporting they use it, Pew found.

The survey mirrored the global picture for the major social networks. Facebook last month said its monthly active user based grew to 1.49 billion. Twitter’s user base increased only marginally to 316 million.Pew found that Facebook was notably popular among women, garnering 77 percent of those who are online, and the 18-29 age group, where 82 percent use the social network. The Pew survey also showed considerable interest in messaging applications which allow smartphone users to bypass carrier networks. Some 36 percent of smartphone owners said they used messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Kik or iMessage.

traditional online social networks,” said lead author Maeve Duggan, a researcher at Pew. “The data also show how swiftly an already complex terrain of interaction is becoming more varied.” The survey found 17 percent of adult smartphone owners used apps which automatically delete messages to protect privacy such as Snapchat or Wickr. Among young adults, the percentage was even higher at 41 percent. The Pew report is based on telephone interviews conducted from March 17 to April 12 among a national sample of 1,907 adults, including 1,612 Internet users, with a margin of error between 2.6 and 4.6 percentage points, depending on the subgroup.

18th century treasure worth $4.5m found off Florida

MIAMI Treasure hunters off Florida found $4.5 million in gold coins from a Spanish ship that sunk during a hurricane in the 18th century, the salvage company said Wednesday. Ten galleons traveling from Havana to Spain went down off Florida’s east coast, not far from Vero Beach, in the July 1715 storm. The vessel broke up and booty was flung far and wide. “Over 350 gold coins including 9 Royals were recovered on July 30 & 31. This amazing recovery occurred on the actual 300th Anniversary” of the wreck, Brent Brisben, the head of 1715 Fleet - Queens Jewels, said on Facebook. It was the second major find by the treasure hunters in recent months. In June, they

found about 50 coins with a total of about $1 million. The latest coins found are extremely rare and are worth about $300,000 each, Brisben said. “These Royals are perfect specimens of coinage of the time and they were made on royal order for the king of Spain,” he explained. And “we work extremely close to shore, which is surprising to most people,” he said. “These shipwrecks were pushed by the hurricane into the outer edge of the reef and then they were utterly destroyed by the wave action, so pieces of these ships have floated for miles all the way into the beach up into the dunes.” Under US state law, the state of Florida gets 20 percent of the returns on treasure found off its coasts.

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From drinking the blood of a cobra to combat training: Meet women who serve in the US Army New York Two women have made military history after becoming the first female soldiers to pass the US Army’s grueling Ranger Course.

The two, along with 94 men, passed the 62-day leadership course, which teaches students “how to overcome fatigue, hunger, and stress to lead Soldiers during small unit combat operations,” it said in a statement.In April, 19 women and 381 men began the first Army Ranger school that included women. The course, based at Fort Benning, Georgia, includes training in woodlands, mountainous terrain and Florida swampland. (www.benning. army.mil) Army Rangers are rapidly deployable troops trained for mountain, desert and swamp terrain and often go after special operations targets. “Highlights of the course include a physical fitness test consisting of 49 pushups, 59 sit-ups, a five mile run in 40 minutes, and six chin-ups; a swim test; a land navigation test; a 12-mile foot march in three hours; several obstacle courses; four days of military mountaineering; three parachute jumps; four air assaults on helicopters; multiple rubber boat movements; and 27 days of mock combat patrols,” the statement said. A graduation ceremony will

be held at Fort Benning on Friday.The U.S. military began a process two years ago to open thousands of frontline combat jobs to women. The service branches have been developing genderneutral requirements for all jobs in the military and evaluating whether to recommend that any remain closed to women. The Army had faced resistance to allowing women to serve in combat units, but since such experience is a factor in promotions and job advancement in the military, women have had greater difficulty than men in moving up to the top ranks, officials have said. About 90 percent of senior Army infantry officers qualified as Rangers, which should allow women graduates to better compete with their male counterparts.

Google launches Wi-Fi router for home use Silicon Valley Google Inc launched a Wi-Fi router on Tuesday, the latest

move in the company’s efforts to get ready for the connected home and draw more users to its services. The cylinder-shaped router, named OnHub, can be pre-ordered for $199.99 at online retailers including the Google Store, Amazon.com Inc and Walmart.com. The router comes with in-built antennas that will scan the airwaves to spot the fastest connection, Google said in a blog post. With the router, users will be able to prioritize a device so that they can get the fastest Internet speeds for dataheavy activities such as downloading content or streaming a movie. The router can be hooked up with Google’s On app, available on Android and iOS, to run network checks and keep track of bandwidth use among other things.Google said OnHub automatically updates

with new features and the latest security upgrades, just like the company’s Android OS and

Chrome browser. The router is being manufactured by network company TP-LINK, Google said, hinting that ASUS could be the second manufacturing partner for the product.

The product launch comes days after Google restructured itself by creating Alphabet Inc, a holding company to pool its many subsidiaries and separate the core web advertising business from newer ventures like driverless cars. Making products for the smart home is one such venture.

Google last year bought Nest, a smart thermostat maker, for $3.2 billion, aiming to lead the way on how household devices link to each other and to electricity grids.

The global market for “Internet of Things”, the concept of connecting household devices to the Internet, will nearly triple to

$1.7 trillion by 2020, research firm International Data Corp said in June. Technology firms including Intel Corp, Cisco Systems, Samsung Electronics and telecom giants Vodafone and Verizon are betting heavily on Internet device-connected homes for future revenue and profit.

Google has also been working on providing faster Internet with its Google Fiber service in some US cities. It also aims to expand the reach of the Internet through Project Loon, under which it is floating balloons 20 kilometers above the Earth’s surface to beam Internet connection to rural and remote areas.

Spotify’s new privacy policy angers users Washington Some high-profile Spotify users say they have left the music service over changes in its terms and conditions. The streaming platform now wants access to pictures, contact phone numbers and sensor data stored on the user’s smartphone as well as permission to view social media activity. Minecraft creator Markus Persson, aka Notch, tweeted to his 2.4m followers that he has cancelled his account. Spotify said the changes would help it “tailor improved user experience”.

Sensor data, such as how fast the user’s phone is moving, helped the Swedish firm develop Spotify Running, a new feature that tailors music playlists to physical activity.

21 per cent users of Apple Music leave app

SAN FRANCISCO Only 21 percent of users who have tested Apple Music no longer use it, Apple said, countering the results of a survey that found defection rates at more than twice that amount.

In a survey of 5,000 people in the US, released Tuesday, music industry research company MusicWatch found that 48 percent of those who had tried out the new online streaming music service have stopped using it. Apple said that the number was much lower. A spokesman for the company told AFP that “79% of people who signed up for a trial are using the service.”

In the MusicWatch survey, 28 percent of respondents who were trying out Apple Music said they also have Spotify Premium subscriptions, but only 11 percent were users of the free version of Spotify and six percent used the free

version of internet radio Pandora. Those products are seen as the main competitors to Apple Music, which was released June 30, years after the competing musicstreaming services.

To edge its way into that market, Apple has offered a three-month trial period to new subscribers, after which subscriptions cost $9.99 per month.

Apple has long been a key player in the digital music landscape thanks to its iTunes store and is hoping to capitalize on that established user base, with a goal of reaching 100 million Apple Music users.

Earlier this month, Apple’s head of internet software and services, Eddy Cue, said the newcomer music service had 11 million users. Spotify has 20 million paid subscribers and 75 million users overall, according to its website.

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US MOM CONFESSES TO KILLING 3 SONS IN THE LAST 13 MONTHS Mark Zuckerberg world’s

Bellefontaine A woman calmly called the emergency dispatcher to report her baby son wasn’t breathing on Tuesday and then hours later confessed to killing him and her two other young sons over the past several months because her

Hailey as her only friend.

“It was her plan to eliminate male children in order that this father would have more attention available for her and for Hailey the daughter,” Goslee said. “That’s a fact.”Her uncle, Joe Skaggs, was furious that a judge ordered the

Judge Dan Bratka, whose ruling sent Noah and Hailey home.

The Pilkingtons were married in March 2010, when she was 18 and he was 38, and Gavin was born that June. Their other three children were born in quick succession.

Authorities had not been sure what caused the death of 3month-old Niall Pilkington in July 2014, which was attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

After 4-year-old Gavin died in April, their daughter Hailey and the newborn boy, Noah, were taken into custody with Logan County Children’s Services pending an investigation.

Cautious eye being kept on panda twin cubs

husband ignored their daughter, authorities said on Wednesday.

Investigators believe Brittany Pilkington used each boy’s comfort blanket to suffocate them in their crib or bed over the last 13 months, because she wanted her husband to pay more attention to herself and their 3-year-old daughter, Prosecutor William Goslee said.Pilkington, 23, is jailed on murder charges in all three deaths, including her 3month-old son Noah, who died on Tuesday, less than a week after he was returned from protective custody on a judge’s order.

Goslee said he won’t likely seek the death penalty because of the background of Brittany Pilkington, including the fact she had been dominated by her husband Joseph Pilkington, 43, who had been her “semi-stepfather” at one point. Goslee said she apparently feared how the boys would grow up, and described her daughter

surviving children returned to the couple last week.

“Why would you give them back after a little boy just died and when you’re in the middle of an investigation?” Skaggs, standing in front of his niece’s apartment, told The Columbus Dispatch on Tuesday.But Goslee said on Wednesday they didn’t have any evidence of a crime in the earlier deaths, and no one could have predicted Pilkington would kill her remaining son.

“Everybody that is involved in this is truly emotionally distraught including myself, quite honestly - and it isn’t because the system failed,” Goslee said. “It’s because this child is dead. This was not a foreseeable event.”

The Associated Press left messages seeking comment from the attorneys who represented the Pilkingtons in the protective custody case as well as Logan County Family Court

WASHINGTON The oldest known US veteran, Emma Didlake, died Sunday, just weeks after meeting President Barack Obama. She was 110.

The African American housewife got sick early Sunday and died suddenly after complaining of feeling tired over several days, the San Antonio Express-News reported, citing her granddaughter Marilyn Horne. “It was a month ago today that we went to the White House, a month ago today,” said Horne, 62, of the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, Michigan. “I think she felt she had accomplished everything and could take her rest.” Didlake met with Obama on July 17. She has received various decorations for her service during World War

II. Didlake had joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in 1943, defying racism and segregation at a time when most women stayed home.

“Emma Didlake served her country with distinction and honor, a true trailblazer for generations of Americans who have sacrificed so much for their country,” Obama said in a statement.

“I was humbled and grateful to welcome Emma to the White House last month, and Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to Emma’s family, friends and everyone she inspired over her long and quintessentially American life.” With her death, the oldest known living US veteran of the war is Richard Overton.

US veteran, 110, dies

WASHINGTON National Zoo staff are keeping a close eye on giant panda Mei Xiang’s newborn twins, given the cubs’ fragile state just days after their birth, the zoo’s lead veterinarian said on Monday. “The cubs are doing pretty well. These early days everything’s still touch and go, so we’re watching them closely but we’re very hopeful right now,” Dr. Brandie Smith told CNN. Mei Xiang, a star tourist draw, took staff by surprise on Saturday by giving birth to the twins about four-and-a-half hours apart after being artificially inseminated. Giant pandas are among the world’s most endangered species.

richest individual under 35

New York Facebook Co-Founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is the wealthiest individual under the age of 35, with a personal fortune of USD 41.6 billion, says a Wealth-X report.

Zuckerberg is joined on the list by fellow Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, who claimed the second place on the list with an estimated net worth of USD 9.3 billion and Eduardo Saverin who was ranked fourth with an estimated net of USD 5.3 billion.

The top-20 list features only six women. Huiyan Yang, the 34year-old Vice Chairman of Chinese real estate developer Country Garden Holdings, is the richest woman on the list, taking the third spot with an estimated net of USD 5.9 billion, as per Wealth-X, the global wealth intelligence and prospecting company.The top-10 wealthiest

individuals under the age of 35 also include Scott Duncan at the fifth position with a wealth of USD 5 billion, Elizabeth A Holmes (6th, USD 4.5 billion), Nathan Blecharczyk (7th, USD 3 billion), Brian Chesky (8th, USD 3 billion), Joe Gebbia (9th, USD 3 billion) and Thomas Persson (10th, USD 2.7 billion).

As many as 11 of the world’s top 20 wealthiest individuals under the age of 35 are from the US, while three each are from China (including Hong Kong) and Switzerland.However, no Indian featured on the list. The youngest individual on the list is Snapchat Chief Executive Evan Spiegel, who at the age of 25 has amassed a fortune of USD 1.9 billion.Wealth-X provides insight into the ultra-wealthy with the world’s largest collection of curated research on ultra high net worth individuals.

Chicago’s famed arts museum to showcase Krishna paintings Washington A famed arts museum in Chicago would exhibit a series of paintings on Lord Krishna which includes some of the rare collection of such paintings from India.

Christened “Gates of the Lord: The Tradition of Krishna Paintings” at the Art Institute Museum of Chicago, the exhibition from September 13 to January 3, 2016 would include over 100 artworks from India and the US, a media release said.

“Gates of the Lord” comprises drawings, pichvais, paintings, and historic photographs borrowed chiefly from two major private collections in India, the Amit Ambalal Collection (Ahmedabad) and the TAPI Collection (Surat).

“These rare loans are augmented by important objects from a number of public and private collections within the United States, including the Art Institute’s own permanent collection, in order to present the richest possible story of Pushtimarg art and tradition,” the museum said.

Said to be the first major US

exhibition to explore the unique visual culture of the Pushtimarg, a Hindu denomination from

paintings offer further insight into the Pushtimarg sect: its mode of veneration, history, and

Western India, the lead sponsorship for the exhibition has been provided by industrialist Mukesh Ambani, his wife Nita and the Reliance Foundation.

The exhibition takes visitors through a year in Nathdwara, where the daily worship of Shrinathji is characterised by the changing seasons and a bustling festival calendar.

Gallery by gallery, visitors are introduced to the pichvais used as backdrops for Shrinathji in his shrine, each uniquely suited to a particular season or festival.

The accompanying miniature

important priests and patron families.Enhancing the experience of the sect’s rich culture are festival and devotional music, a shrine reconstruction, and touchscreen kiosks that allow visitors to page through religious manuscripts, an artist’s sketchbook, and a historic photo album.The exhibition concludes with an exploration of the works, sketches, and observations of prominent 20th and 21st century Nathdwara artists who have kept the painting tradition flourishing through the present day.

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With humour & honesty, former US President 130m-yr-old plant among ‘first flowers’ Jimmy Carter talks about his cancer Washington With a broad smile and an upbeat attitude, former President Jimmy Carter told the world Thursday that he has cancer in his brain, and feels “perfectly at

ease with whatever comes.”

Carter said doctors had removed melanoma from his liver, but found four small tumors in his brain. Later Thursday, he received radiation treatment. He also began receiving injections of a newly approved drug to help his immune system seek out and destroy the cancer cells wherever else they may appear.

Wearing blue jeans and a blazer, Carter spoke with good humour and unsparing honesty, revealing that he had kept suspicions of

cancer from his wife, Rosalynn, for weeks until the diagnosis was confirmed in June.“Now I feel it’s in the hands of God, whom I worship, and I’ll be prepared for anything that comes,” he

said.Carter’s team of doctors at Emory Health Care includes Dr. Walter Curran Jr., who runs Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute. Treatments for melanoma have improved tremendously recently, and Carter’s prospects are good even at the age of 90, Curran said. But he cautioned against the idea that Carter can be “cured.”

“We’re not looking for a cure in patients who have a disease like melanoma that has spread,” Curran said. “The goal is control

and to have a good quality of life.”

Carter said he thought the cancer was only in his liver and was removed with surgery on Aug. 3, but an MRI exam that same afternoon showed the spots on his brain. Carter said he went home that night thinking he had only a few weeks to live, but found himself feeling “surprisingly at ease.”The former president didn’t discuss his long-term prognosis, but said he will cut back dramatically on his humanitarian work while following the orders of a team that includes the world’s best “cancertreaters.”

His treatment regimen will include four injections of pembrolizumab, which was approved by the FDA for melanoma patients last year, at three-week intervals.

“This is not a eulogy in any way,” said grandson Jason Carter, who is taking over as chairman of the board of trustees at the Carter Center, which promotes peace, democracy and health care improvements around the world.

Still, his grandfather’s responses to reporters often expanded into reflections on his life, faith and family.

Dogs evolved with climate change, suggests new study Washington The species of dogs in North America’s heartland back around 40 million years ago, fossils show, were small animals that would have looked more like mongooses than any dogs alive

today and were well-adapted to that habitat.A new study of North American dog fossils as old as 40 million years suggests that the evolutionary path of whole groups of predators can be a direct consequence of climate change.“It’s reinforcing the idea that predators may be as directly sensitive to climate and habitat as herbivores,” said Christine Janis, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University. “Although this seems logical, it hadn’t been demonstrated before,” she added.The climate in Noth America’s heartland back around 40 million years ago was warm and wooded. Dogs are native to

North America. The species of the time, fossils show, were small animals that would have looked more like mongooses than any dogs alive today and were welladapted to that habitat.

Their forelimbs were not

specialised for running, retaining the flexibility to grapple with whatever meal unwittingly walked by. But beginning just a few million years later, the global climate began cooling considerably and in North America the Rocky Mountains had reached a threshold of growth that made the continental interior much drier. The forests slowly gave way to open grasslands.

To find out if this transition affected the evolution of carnivores, Figueirido and the team, including Jack Tseng of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, examined the elbows and teeth of 32 species of dogs spanning the

period from 40 million years ago to 2 million years ago. They saw clear patterns in those bones at the museum.“At the same time that climate change was opening up the vegetation, dogs were evolving from ambushers to pursuit-pounce predators like modern coyotes or foxes - and ultimately to those dogged, follow-a-caribou-for-a-whole-day pursuers like wolves in the high latitudes,” researchers said.“The elbow is a really good proxy for what carnivores are doing with their forelimbs, which tells their entire locomotion repertoire,” said Janis.The telltale change in those elbows has to do with the structure of the base where the humerus articulates with the forearm, changing from one where the front paws could swivel (palms can be inward or down) for grabbing and wrestling prey to one with an always downwardfacing structure specialised for endurance running. Modern cats still rely on ambush rather than the chase (cheetahs are the exception) and have the forelimbs to match, Janis said, but canines signed up for lengthier pursuits.

In addition, the dogs’ teeth trended towards greater durability, researchers found, consistent perhaps with the need to chow down on prey that had been rolled around in the grit of the savannah, rather than a damp, leafy forest floor. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

MIAMI An ancient plant that grew underwater in what is modern day Europe, had no petals and bore one single seed may have been the world’s first known flowering plant, a study said Monday.

More than 1,000 fossils of the plant, called Montsechia vidalii, were pored over for the new study, which seems to oust a Chinese plant that has also been considered among the first.

“A ‘first flower’ is technically a myth, like the ‘first human,’” said paleobotanist David Dilcher, lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peerreviewed US journal. “But based on this new analysis, we know now that Montsechia is contemporaneous, if not more ancient, than Archaefructus (sinensis),” a similar aquatic plant found in China. Scientists have known about Montsechia vidalii for a long time. Its fossils were first discovered more than a century ago in the limestone deposits of the Iberian Range in central Spain and in the Montsec Range of the Pyrenees.

But Dilcher said many of the fossils were misinterpreted, because Montsechia “possesses no obvious ‘flower parts,’ such as petals or nectarproducing structures for attracting insects, and lives out

its entire life cycle under water.”

The plant, which may have looked like seaweed that grew in freshwater, contains a single seed, which is the defining characteristic of a flowering plant, or angiosperm. Dilcher said the seed “is borne upside down.”

The stems and leaf structures of the plants “were coaxed from stone by applying hydrochloric acid on a drop-by-drop basis,” said the study. The specimens were then examined under a stereomicroscope, light microscope and scanning electron microscope.

They date to 125-130 million years ago, around the same time as dinosaurs such as the iguanodon and brachiosaurus roamed the Earth, the study added.

“The reinterpretation of these fossils provides a fascinating new perspective on a major mystery in plant biology,” said Donald Les, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, who authored a commentary on the discovery in the same journal.

“David’s work is truly an important contribution to the continued quest to unravel the evolutionary and ecological events that accompanied the rise of flowering plants to global prominence.”

US ‘Batman’ killed after his Batmobile broke down

WASHINGTON A man known for dressing up in a Batman superhero costume to cheer up sick children in hospital was struck and killed on a US highway after his “Batmobile” broke down, reports said. Lenny Robinson, 51, had got out of his Lamborghini, customized to resemble the Caped Crusader’s “Batmobile”, on an unlit stretch of highway in Maryland Sunday night to check the engine when it was struck by another vehicle,

slamming the car into him. He died at the scene, The Washington Post said. Robinson, who lived in Maryland and was a father of three boys, worked in the cleaning business before buying an elaborate Batman costume and car, The Post reported. He spent his free time striding into hospitals across the state, northwest of Washington, visiting sick children, handing out gifts and signing autographs as “Batman”.

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Conjoined sisters can see through each other’s eyes London A pair of conjoined twins who shares a brain and a skull has defied doctors’ expectations and has learned to walk, talk and

even argue with one another.

When Tatiana and Krista Hogan, now seven, were born, their parents were warned to expect the worst with the twins not expected to survive the day. But the children, who live with their family in Vernon, British Columbia, have continued to defy expectations and now enjoy similar lives to their classmates.

Not only do the twins see through one another’s eyes, they also share emotions and feel it when the other is tickled. While each controls her own limbs, both twins can control one each of the other’s legs and arms. But while they are feel the same things they also have different personalities. According to their mother Felicia, the girls adore going to school, watching Power Rangers and eating cake.

What’s more, she says, they are always happy and bring her and their father, Brendan, such

joy, along with their other children Rosa, 11, Christopher, nine, Shayleigh, five. ‘Seeing everything I have to go through with them would make your head

spin,’ said Mrs Hogan. ‘It’s hard but I wouldn’t change it.

In my next lifetime, if I could chose this life, I would choose it.’ Mr and Mrs Hogan were given the news that their babies were joined at the head and that their futures would be uncertain during Mrs Hogan’s pregnancy. But their mother says abortion ‘was not an option’.

Instead, the pair have been constantly monitored since birth - and caused marvel among doctors astonished how their shared brain works.

‘Over the years Tatiana has become the prominent leader,’ says their mother. ‘Krista is quieter and can be more in her own shell.’ Or as Tatiana puts it: ‘I’m the red Power Ranger Jason! The leader’ Dr Douglas Cochrane a neurosurgeon who has treated the girls as they have grown up admitted: ‘They have amazed

Girl, 5, hypnotises creatures

London They say you should never work with animals on live television.

But this five-year-old girl has amazed the Chinese public by hypnotising a series of animals on a popular talent show, reported the People’s Daily Online. Han Jiaying put five animals, including a chicken, a rabbit and a lizard, to sleep within five minutes using just her voice and the touch of her hands. During the performance on ‘Amazing Chinese’, China’s answer to Britain’s Got Talent

by China Central Television Station, she stroked each

animal before laying them on their back. She then carried on stroking them for a few more seconds before lifting up her hands. Surprisingly, the animal remained completely still and appeared to be in a trance. After five minutes, the dog, lizard, frog, chicken and rabbit all looked like they were lying asleep on their backs. Judges on the talent show and members of the audience looked visibly stunned as Jiaying worked her magic. At the end of the performance, all the animals woke up simultaneously when she shouted.

me - how they are the same but how they are different, how they are dealing with an error of nature to live healthy lives.’

Their grandmother Louise McKay said they continue to defy expectations with the fulfilling lives they lead. ‘One doctor said they would be lying on their backs all their lives,’ said Mrs McKay, ‘but they have surpassed everybody’s expectations.’

The girls have learnt how to run and play together but it has yet to be established whether or not they share thoughts.

The family believe they are definitely capable of communicating with each other within their own heads from the way they are often mischievous together and can share a joke without speaking.

While the girls can be affectionate with each other, like any siblings, they can also squabble and Mrs Hogan said they have to work hard to ensure they get along - as they will be together for life.

‘We tell them, “You two have to spend the rest of your lives together in this world, you need to cooperate and be nice to each other.”

‘They still have moments where they can fight and get angry and frustrated with each other and those fights can get violent.’

The girls will never be able to be separated or live independent

Snaps with unexploded WWII mine

Burry Port A family narrowly avoided disaster after posing for photographs next to an unexploded World War II mine they thought was a buoy. Kelly Gravell was on a beach near Burry Port, Carmarthenshire, with her two children last Wednesday when they discovered the seaweed-covered object. The 32-year-old was left stunned when the beach was closed just five days later after Carmarthenshire Council rangers spotted the 70-yearold bomb and called in the bomb squad. Gareth, the children’s father, tweeted his surprise and shared the photographs of Erin, six, and Ellis, four, online. The 34year-old wrote: ‘So the buoy my kids were jumping on all weekend turns out to be a

WWII bomb. Oops.’ Ms Gravell said the children were more interested in the barnacles on it than what the object actually was. She said: ‘The tide was up so we discovered what we later learned was the bomb - we just thought it was a buoy.

‘We were more interested in the barnacles on it and the kids were looking at them while Gareth noticed that it had a chain on.

‘I even made the joke that it was a big bomb at the time but did not think anything of it. It’s only afterwards when the reality has set in that we were actually very lucky. ‘We were close to disaster - it’s shocking.’

The couple, who run a waste management firm, insisted they would return to the beach.

Mystery of Mona Lisa smile ‘solved’ London The Mona Lisa’s mysterious expression may have captivated the world, but hers isn’t the only enigmatic smile Leonardo da Vinci created.Researchers examining an earlier painting by the Renaissance master claim to have unravelled the painter’s secret to creating an ‘uncatchable smile’. The study reveals how La Bella Principessa, painted by da Vinci before he completed the Mona Lisa in the late 15th Century, uses a clever trick to lure in the viewer.Researchers found that by expertly blending colours to exploit our peripheral vision, the shape of the subject’s mouth appears to change according to the angle it is viewed from. When viewed directly, the slant of the mouth is distinctly downwards, according to the research by scientists at Sheffield Hallam University and Sunderland University. As the viewer’s eye wanders elsewhere to examine other features, however, the mouth appears to take an upward turn, creating a smile that can only be seen indirectly, much like the Mona Lisa’s. ‘As the smile disappears as soon as the viewer tries to ‘catch it’, we have named this visual illusion the ‘uncatchable smile,’ researchers Alessandro Soranzo and Michelle Newberry of Sheffield Hallam University wrote in a

paper published in the journal Vision Research.To find out how da Vinci’s illusions worked, the researchers set up test in which people either viewed the portraits from a distance or saw blurred versions, according to a report in Discover magazine. The researchers used a series of experiments to examine how

different points of view and levels of blur in the images themselves could alter a viewer’s perception.

The researchers asked volunteers to look at La Bella Principessa, Mona Lisa and another typical painting from the same era Portrait of a Girl, painted in 1470 by Piero del Pollaiuolo. First they conducted a number of tests to see how a viewer’s distance from the portrait would influence their perception. They found that when viewed from further away, both the Bella Principessa and Mona Lisa appeared to be

smiling more than the portrait by del Pollaiuolo.They also used digital manipulation to alter the level of flur in each of the paintings. They found as blur in the two da Vinci paintings was increased, the smiles appeared to increase. In del Pollaiuolo’s painting the perception of the girl’s smile remained broadly the same, and actually decreased slightly as the blur worsened.

This suggests da Vinci’s technique specifically relies upon the viewer seeing the mouth with unfocused eyes in order for the smile to appear. In a final experiment, the researchers tested whether the mouth or the eyes were responsible for the mysterious smile illusion by masking the features with black rectangles.

They found when the mouth was obscured, the illusion did not appear to work, but when the eyes were obscured, viewers still detected the hint of contentment in La Bella Principessa’s smile.

Soranzo told Discover, ‘Given da Vinci’s mastery of the technique, and its subsequent use in the Mona Lisa, it is quite conceivable that the ambiguity of the effect was intentional.’ La Bella Principessa is thought to depict 13-year-old Bianca Sforza, the daughter of Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan, who was to be married to a commander of the duke’s Milanese forces.

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Queen Elizabeth shows no sign of stepping aside LONDON After 63 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth next month becomes Britain’s longestruling monarch but there is little prospect of her stepping aside, as other ageing European crowned heads have done, in favour of her son, Charles. Those close to Elizabeth - who on Sept. 9 takes the long-service record from her great-greatgrandmother Queen Victoria say the 89-year-old has no intention of succumbing to the European fashion for abdication. That means Prince Charles, 66, already a recordholder himself as Britain’s longest-serving heir apparent, will have to wait longer still until he becomes king. “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family,” Elizabeth said in a 21st birthday broadcast to the nation in 1947. The milestone of overtaking Victoria has already prompted speculation as to whether Elizabeth might step aside. When asked if abdication were a possibility, a senior palace source told Reuters: “Life means life.” The religious overtones to a British coronation are deeply symbolic for Elizabeth, who as queen is Supreme Governor of the Church of England. “The queen won’t abdicate, she must not abdicate, there’s absolutely no reason for her to abdicate and indeed constitutionally and religiously she cannot abdicate: she is an anointed queen,” royal

historian Hugo Vickers told Reuters. Margaret Rhodes, the queen’s cousin and a friend since childhood, believes she will never break her commitment to the nation. “The vows that she made on coronation day are something so deep and so special that she would not consider not continuing to fulfil those vows until the day she dies.”

Rhodes told the BBC in 2006.

The abdication in 1936 of the queen’s uncle Edward VIII - for reasons of love rather than old age - proved traumatic enough, plunging the monarchy into a constitutional crisis that put her reluctant father on the throne. In the Netherlands and Spain, longstanding monarchs have in recent years given up their thrones saying they needed to pass on the mantle to a younger generation.The Dutch Queen Beatrix announced shortly before her 75th birthday in January 2013 that she would abdicate in favour of her son Willem-Alexander. “I am not stepping down because the tasks of the function are too great, but out of the conviction that the responsibilities of our country should be passed on to a new generation,” she said.

In June last year, Spain’s once popular King Juan Carlos abdicated at the age of 76 in favour of his son Felipe after a series of corruption scandals in the royal family. “A new generation is quite rightly demanding to take the lead role,” he said. In Britain, though, there is little demand for Elizabeth to go, nor any clamour for Charles to be king.If anything, the opposite may be true. Charles,

World’s first ever Sky Pool being built in London

London A swimming pool suspended 10 storeys above the ground, bridging two apartment, is being built in London. This will be the first ever “sky pool” in the world. In a first, a suspended glass-bottom swimming pool is being built in London. The pool, proposed to be called as the “Sky Pool” will be entirely made by glass, and will be seen bridging two apartment buildings in London’s Nine Elms district, Glass of 20 cm thickness will be used to make the 25 x 5 m, 3 meter deep pool. This pool which is a part of the 2000-home complex - Embassy Gardens being built at Nine Elms, a riverside district.The Ballymore group behind this ambitious project says

Embassy Gardens is “a highly collaborative effort, calling for delicate and imaginative management of several different architect partnerships to create an entirely new district that Londoners can be proud of,”.About the sky pool, Ballymore’s chairman and CEO, Sean Mulryan, said ““The experience of the pool will be truly unique, it will feel like floating through the air in central London.” The pool is being built by Arup Associates with expert advice from Reynolds, renowned aquarium designers.

However, the pool will be for private use of the residents. If you get a chance, would you like to take a dip in this pool and feel like floating in mid-air?

who has been groomed from birth to one day be king, is less popular than his mother: In a poll in April, 53 percent said they liked him compared to 77 percent who liked the Queen. Only 19 percent of Britons wanted a republic, compared to 70 percent who supported the monarchy.

Even keen republicans such as Labour member of parliament Paul Flynn say the monarchy is safe while Elizabeth remains on the throne but question its future under Charles. “This one, I’ve come to terms with, it will be delayed for little while. It is questionable whether the most likely end of the monarchy will come with Charles,” Flynn told Reuters.In contrast to the strict political neutrality observed by Elizabeth, Charles has spoken out about issues from the destruction of historical buildings to organic farming and Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Ukraine.

Critics said letters Charles had written to ministers, some of which were published in May against the wishes of the government and royal family,

showed a desire to meddle in everything from the supply of equipment for British troops fighting in Iraq to the fate of the Patagonian Toothfish.Supporters said the letters showed Charles was speaking up on issues Britons cared about. Professor Philip Murphy, Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and an expert on the monarchy, said Charles’s view of himself as a “spokesperson for the common man” was dangerous.“The public may not tolerate that for very long and certainly political leaders might not,” he told Reuters. Some commentators have suggested that only serious illness could prompt Elizabeth to hand over to Charles, particularly if she were to lose her 94-year-old husband Prince Philip, although even then a regency is thought more likely.

“I don’t think abdication is entirely off the cards,” royal biographer Robert Lacey told Reuters.

Some, like Flynn, suggest on the death of the queen there should not only be a referendum on the monarchy but also on whether

the crown should pass to Charles’s son Prince William, who is 33. “I think it would be a popular choice to have a referendum on skipping a generation,” said Flynn who dismissed the current system for head of state as “first past the bed post”.

Prince William and Prince Harry, the children of Charles and Princess Diana, his first wife who died in a Paris car crash in 1997, are the most popular members of the family, liked by 79 percent of the British public. Murphy said for many Britons, there were plenty of more pressing concerns than reform of the monarchy. “There’s a sense of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he said.As it stands, republicans or those wanting constitutional change, will have a long wait.

Asked in 2012 whether the queen should abdicate or if the throne should skip a generation, Prime Minister David Cameron replied: “I think both those things are out of the question.”

Packages could be delivered by unicycle drones

London It might put an end to those irritating missed delivery cards and the fleets of couriers ferrying our internet shopping to our homes.A new type of robotic vehicle could soon be carrying our packages and parcels to our doors, according to designers.

The Transwheel drone uses robotic arms to carry deliveries on single self-balancing wheel.

It would use GPS to navigate between locations and facial recognition software to confirm the identity of recipients. For larger items, the drones could also work together to share the load.Kobi Shikar, an engineering and design student at Shenkar School of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan, Israel, claims they could even replace the need for container lorries. He said the robotic delivery service could replace the need for large delivery vehicles clogging up the roads but perhaps more usefully it may also remove the need to deliver items during working hours.Instead the robots would be able to turn up with packages

at times more convenient to homeowners. Mr Shikar said: ‘The Transwheel concept reimagines package distribution

capability. ’Smaller parcels can be handled by a single robot while larger packages will be tagteamed by an appropriate

as a round-the-clock autonomous service carried out by robotic single-wheel drones that work independently and together to ensure timely, efficient delivery.‘Each wheel features a self-balancing gyroscopic system, electric arms, and GPS-driven communication

number of robots that selfconfigure to the package’s unique dimensions.’

Shikar designed the Transwheel robots as part of his final year university project and believes they could work alongside flying drones being developed to carry small packages by Amazon.

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UK spooks kept files on Nobel author Lessing

LONDON Britain’s intelligence services kept tabs on Nobel winning author Doris Lessing during the 1950s, fearing that her communist sympathies had been “fanned almost to the point of fanaticism”, according to archived documents released Friday. The country’s domestic and foreign intelligence agencies amassed files on the author, detailing her visits to East Germany and Cold War Moscow at the invitation of the Union of Soviet Writers. Lessing was a member of the Communist Party in the British colony of Rhodesia - modern-day Zimbabwe - where she grew up with her English parents. The security services found no evidence that she joined the British wing of the party after moving to London in 1949, although she was actually a member between 1951 and 1956.

A 1952 memo from the MI6 foreign intelligence agency described her as “certainly proCommunist, though it is doubtful she is a member of the party.” “Her communist sympathies have been fanned almost to the point of fanaticism by her upbringing in Rhodesia,” it added. “Colonial exploitation is her pet theme... saying that everything black is wonderful and that all men and all things white are vicious.”

Lessing died in 2013, aged 94, and is renowned for her powerful feminist and anti-colonial writing.

Best known for the 1962 novel “The Golden Notebook”, today considered a landmark feminist work, Lessing became the oldest winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007, just shy of her 88th birthday. She penned more than 50 other works ranging from political critiques to science

Zimbabwe park owner charged over illegal hunt

HARARE The game park owner accused of letting an American tourist illegally hunt and kill a lion on his property in Zimbabwe has been charged in connection with the killing and released on bail in Hwange, his lawyer said. The killing of Cecil, a 13-year-old, rare, black-maned lion and a popular tourist attraction, caused global consternation and triggered a major backlash against Africa’s multi-million dollar hunting industry. Honest Ndlovu owns the game park into which Cecil was lured from the adjacent Hwange National Park and shot with a bow and arrow

by American dentist Walter Palmer. A copy of the charge

sheet seen by Reuters said Ndlovu was charged with permitting “a person who is not ordinarily resident in Zimbabwe to hunt the said animal which was not on the hunting quota.”

His lawyer Tonderai Mukuku said Ndlovu denies the charge and was set free on $200 bail. He will return to court on Sept 18. The same Hwange court last week postponed until Sept. 28 the trial of local hunter Theo Bronkhorst.

Bronkhorst, who acted as Palmer’s guide, is accused of failing to prevent Palmer from killing Cecil, who had been fitted with a GPS collar as part of an Oxford University study, and was a favourite with tourists visiting Hwange park.

fiction - many of them inspired by her own experiences of a lonely childhood in Africa and involvement in radical leftist politics. After running away from her second husband and moving to Britain in 1949, she became involved in the British Communist Party, but resigned in 1956 at the time of the Hungarian uprising, which was crushed by Soviet tanks. She had previously been impressed by her visits to Joseph Stalin’s Russia, according to the archives. Information gathered by colonial intelligence services said she spoke of the “superiority of living conditions and educational development in the Soviet Union compared with other European countries and Africa.”

Cameron spotted scoffing chips in economy class travel

London You may think the stresses of life as a prime minister are compensated for by first class travel and fine dining. But the reality - for David Cameron at least - appears to be a little different after he was pictured squashed into an economy class flight stuffing his face with Paprika Pringles. Sitting in the window seat on an Easyjet aircraft, a fellow passenger caught him on camera cramming crisps into his mouth. The user, called Ashleigh, tweeted on Sunday: ‘The prime minister was 3 seats away from me eating paprika Pringles help me’. One user replied: ‘Nice to the PM is an advocate of healthy eating!’

Another user expressed their shock at Mr Cameron flying on a budget airline, posting: ‘How is this even possible? It’s not even First Class! Times must be

hard for the United Kingdom.’

Cameron is believed to have flown back from a family holiday in Portugal to attend VJ day commemorations, before returning to his holiday. Mr Cameron is a regular budget airline traveller, also taking his family on holiday to Faro in Portugal in 2013 and to Ibiza in 2011.

Ed Miliband was also recently spotted on an Easyjet flight with his wife Justine. The couple were flying back from Ibiza to return to the Commons to swear in as an MP. It is not the first time a politican has been ridiculed online after eating in public.

In what became one of the defining images of the election, Ed Miliband was mocked online after he ate a bacon sandwich.

He leant awkwardly over a plate with his face screwed up as he took mouthfuls of the sandwich.

collector who was trained in landscape painting, Davies completed the work during one of several tours of duty in North America. Until then, much less realistic portrayals of Niagara Falls were created by artists who

a member of the committee that advises the government on art and objects of cultural interest.

“Davies produced three views of Niagara. An East View of the Falls, arguably the most important of the three, is the only

had not been there, based on a written description by Father Louis Hennepin, the European who discovered the falls in 1678.

Arts Council England said Davies’ painting had a strong association with the UK’s history and national life, and was significant in the study of 18 century exploration, scientific and military endeavour. “Most of his work has already left these shores,” said Christopher Wright,

one now remaining in this country,” said Wright.The watercolour previously belonged to late collector Peter Winkworth, who had built an extensive collection of Canadian scenes before his death in 2005.

The decision on the watercolour’s export licence application has been deferred until 18 November, but could be extended until February 2016 if a serious buyer is found.

Export bar placed on first watercolour of Niagara Falls

London The government has taken steps to try and stop a 1762 watercolour of the Niagara Falls from leaving the UK. An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara, the first eyewitness painting of the landmark, was sold to a foreign buyer in April. It has now been placed under a temporary export bar, in the hope a UK buyer match the £151,800 asking price. Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said the artwork helped demonstrate “Britain’s global role in the 18th century”. It was painted by British military artist Captain Thomas Davies, during one of several tours of duty in North America. “This watercolour painting not only provides us with the first glimpse of Niagara Falls, but it also sheds light on Britain’s achievements in 18th century exploration, military and topographical art,” said Mr Vaizey. Captain Davies’ painting was the first accurate, on site painting of the landmark straddling the US and Canadian border, which is now one of the most recognisable views in the world. It was also the earliest depiction of Niagara’s everpresent rainbow. A highlyregarded military artist and

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Both Congress and AAP in Punjab suffer from continuing suspense over leadership ! By Jagtar Singh At the time when the people’s perception about the functioning of the ruling Akali Dal-BJP alliance in Punjab is at its nadir, both the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, the two main challengers to the ruling dispensation, continue to suffer from continuing suspense over leadership.Both Punjab Congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa and his bête noir and Deputy Leader of the Congress Parliamentary party Capt Amarinder Singh, met the high command that comprises Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi the same day with a difference of only a few minutes. Rather when Rahul was meeting Bajwa, his mother was listening to Capt Amarinder Singh in the adjacent room. Rahul joined them later after his meeting with Bajwa was over.

Politics apart, Capt Amarinder Singh is the only Congress leader who has personal rapport with the Gandhi family.Interestingly, both Capt Amarinder Singh and Bajwa returned satisfied but both have not shared any details of their deliberations. From the dharna of the MLAs and ex-MLAs that Capt led in front of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s residence the next day on the issue of sugarcane arrears, it was clear that both the leaders have been signalled to continue with their respective programmes, at least as of now. In case any of them has been given a hint about settling the leadership issue, he is not known to have shared it

with his associates. As such, the suspense continues.Capt Amarinder Singh has given out signals loud and clear by sitting on dharna that he is all set to gear up the party to confront the ruling combine by toiling hard. His dharna lasted more than an hour.

An ex-serviceman, he is known to put in hard labour when needed. One can expect best out of him in the six months leading to the election. But then who so ever is handed over the responsibility to command the party in this crucial battle that has the potential of reviving the Congress at the national level, would need at least six months to restructure and reorganise the faction ridden party which stands vertically divided with majority of the MLAs and ex-MLAs being with the former chief minister.

Bajwa is learnt to have conveyed to his close associates that Rahul has agreed to join him in his padyatra beginning October 2, interpreting it as a positive

signal. But then Capt. Amarinder Singh has returned equally relaxed, despite his criticism that he failed Sonia and Rahul at the crucial juncture during the monsoon session of the Parliament, all the more so as he happens to be the Deputy Leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party. But then he has been saying it openly that he had already conveyed it to Sonia that he was keen to confine himself to the state politics.At the grassroots, the people still have some hope of AAP putting in place an organisational set up that is functional under a leader who has the capacity to command the party in the battle

and is a known face. This in itself is a big problem going by the present faces in the party at the state level.The party teams are already in the state assessing the ground situation and the people’s mood, the modus operandi that the party had adopted in the run up to the Delhi Assembly elections. But then Arvind Kejriwal was the poster boy of the party in Delhi who could convince the people that his government would deliver. His stand on corruption in the power sector has been vindicated by the CAG report.AAP has at least given out that the party would have new organisational structure in not too distant a future with enough time

to implement the action programme targeted to mobilise the people.However, nothing can be said about the Congress high command.

This is further demoralising the party as it is being said that the final decision should not be delayed as the fortunes of the party continue to dip every single day due to factionalism and uncertainty about leadership.

Both the parties need faces that are capable and acceptable but then this is what poses the biggest problem. Both the parties suffer from the crisis of lack of new strong leaders. The Congress might have to fall back on time tested leaders.

people who has a stroke dies as a result, and those who survive are often left with long-term problems such as slurred speech or memory lapses.During the initial stage of a stroke, approximately two million brain cells die every minute, so the faster the oxygen supply can be restored, the more of the brain can be saved.For ischaemic stroke, the main treatment is thrombolytic or clot-busting drugs. These can clear the blockage, restoring oxygen and blood flow to the brain. But for a haemorrhagic stroke, patients need treatment that allows the blood to clot. As a result, the type of stroke a patient is having needs to be determined very quickly. Currently, this involves a CT or MRI scan in hospital, which can take hours and means a loss of precious time.The new device looks like a space-age cycling helmet, covering the upper part of the head, above the eyes. It was developed by Medfield Diagnostics, a spin-off from Chalmers University, Sweden and emits microwaves that go through the brain tissue where they scatter.The way signals break up is detected by a control unit which processes them and produces a graphic which illustrates visually whether the stroke is caused by a clot or a bleed.

Santiago Chilean astronomer Maritza Soto has discovered a planet three times as large as Jupiter orbiting a red giant star larger than the Sun and located some 290 million light years from Earth.

A doctoral student in Sciences at the University of Chile, Soto told EFE on Wednesday she worked for eight months using two telescopes at the La Silla observatory, 600 km north of Santiago.

Last November, Soto, 25, discovered the planet now bearing the designation HD110014b. Her work has now been published in a journal of the London Royal Astronomical Society.

The discovery of planets orbiting red giant stars is “rare”, with only five such planets located around stars of that kind to date, she told EFE. HD110014b orbits its star at a distance about six-tenths the distance from the Sun to the Earth, about at the distance that Venus circles the Sun. “It’s like imagining a planet three times bigger than Jupiter with the orbit of Venus around the Sun,” she said, adding that the red giant star is about twice the size of the Sun. Another planet had already been discovered orbiting the star and now Soto’s work has added a second planet to that solar system.

Helmet can diagnose strokes in 10 minutes Planet 3 times as large as Jupiter discovered

Stockholm A new hi-tech helmet could be a lifesaver for stroke patients as it dramatically cuts diagnosis time to just ten minutes, so treatment to reduce brain damage can begin much earlier.The device is now being tested in two clinical trials involving more than 500 people at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden and, according to a report from the NHS National Institute for Health Research, there are plans for the helmet to be introduced to the NHS later this year.They could be used in ambulances by paramedics and the appropriate drug treatment started before the patient arrives at hospital without the need for time-

consuming scans. The helmet device, which uses microwave technology, can distinguish between the two types of stroke - those caused by a clot and those caused by a bleed. The difference is significant because the treatment varies. Stroke is the third most common cause of death in the UK, and the leading cause of neurological disability as the reduction of blood supply and oxygen causes irreparable brain damage.Roughly 85 per cent of strokes are caused by a clot that obstructs blood flow, known as ischaemic stroke: the remainder are haemorrhagic, caused by bleeds in the brain as a result of a weakened artery or vein bursting.Around one in four

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Water wars are a myth, says expert Obama back from vacation STOCKHOLM The doom and gloom predictions of increasing battles around the world over water are a myth, with only a handful of disagreements over shared waters leading to armed conflict, an expert said.

Competition over water has often been cited as having a potential for turning into conflicts between countries fighting to secure the limited resource.

While water is fundamental to development and national security and can contribute to hostile situations, “very few” disagreements have led to conflict, said Therese Sjomander Magnusson of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI). “It is a myth that water leads to war,” Sjomander Magnusson, SIWI’s director of transboundary water management, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation late on Sunday on the sidelines of a global water conference in

Stockholm.

She said that over the last 50 years, there have been more than 1,800 interactions on transboundary basins - including both con-

flict and cooperation.

“Only seven disputes have involved violence,” she said. “During the same time, more than 200 agreements and treaties on transboundary waters have been signed.”

According to a United Nations report published in March, the world faces a 40 percent shortfall in wa-

ter supplies in 15 years due to urbanisation, population growth and increasing demand for water for food production, energy and industry. Even though

population growth and climate change have led to disagreements over water, conflicts were more common on national levels such as between pastoralists and farmers than between countries, Sjomander Magnusson said. In fact, she said, many governments are looking into dialogue and

cooperation when it comes to water, rather than sending armies against each other.

“In an insecure world that we are facing right now, with many unstable situations, what we’ve seen over and over again is how governments are eager to position themselves as a stable countries open to cooperation,” Sjomander Magnusson said.

One unlikely example in which water issues have led to cooperation is discussions between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories over the Jordan River, which runs along their borders, she said. “This is the only platform where these countries have met for the past couple of years.”

She said data sharing has been a sensitive topic in international water negotiations, but is becoming fundamental as countries cope with the effects of climate change.

Apple recalls some iPhone 6 Plus models over blurry photos New York Apple Inc is recalling a limited number iPhone 6 Plus phones due to faulty back cameras that take blurry photos.

The affected phones were mostly sold in a 4-month period between September 2014 and January 2015, Apple said on its website.

The company, whose shares were set to open at their lowest this year on Monday, said a small component in the affected 6 Plus’s iSight back camera may fail.

Apple said it would replace the phone free of charge if the iSight camera takes

blurry photos and falls into a particular serial number range. Eligible serial numbers can be checked on Apple’s website. iSight’s

Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) feature works by taking four individual shots and combining them into a single image.

Sydney It’s long been thought that chillies can help us lose weight. Now, new research found the fiery food can

tant receptors in the stomach that signal fullness, Australian researchers found. But eating chilli peppers can activate the stom-

late a receptor called potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) channel protein. This receptor triggers the process described above, where the stomach stretches and signal to the body it is full. The new study’s findings back up previous work which found this receptor can stop obesity associated with a high-fat diet. Professor Amanda Page, of the University of Adelaide, who carried out the research, said: ‘The stomach stretches when it is full, which activates nerves in the stomach to tell the body that it has had enough food.

‘We found that this activation is regulated through hot chilli pepper or TRPV1 receptors. ‘It is known from previous studies that capsaicin, found in hot chillies, reduces food intake in humans.’

It uses the phone’s A8 chip, gyroscope and M8 motion coprocessor to measure motion data and provide precise lens movement, and was designed specifically to compensate for shaking hands.

The faults were initially reported last year on Apple support forums.

month in New York.

He is also facing a stiff battle against Republicans in Congress over the nuclear accord signed between Iran and world powers in July.

Congress is due to vote in the coming weeks on the deal aimed to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief.

Republican lawmakers are united in opposing the Iran deal, and Congress is expected to pass a resolution of disapproval in September.

Obama is certain to veto the resolution, and he would need just one third of members in each chamber to back him to ram the deal through.

According to a CNN/ORC poll published Thursday, most Americans (56 percent) say Congress should reject the agreement.

Obama is due to kick off his week with a stop in Las Vegas on Monday to deliver remarks at the National Clean Energy Summit.

tionship, but living on a train enables me to see him all the time,’ she told German TV station SWR about her decision. ‘I really feel at home on trains, and can visit so many more friends and cities.

due to the rising interest in her blog, she will be publishing an English version ‘very soon’.

The nomad does, however, admit that sleeping on the train can be difficult at times and she only ever

It’s like being on vacation all the time,’ she added in an interview with The Washington Post.

Leonie, who studies on the train, has also started a blog called Wherever You Go There You Are documenting her journey - and she’s basing her dissertation on her experience.

Leonie told FEMAIL that

manages to squeeze in the ‘odd nap’ because of the noise and worries over the safety of her backpack.

The student, who stays with her boyfriend, mother, grandmother or friends when she isn’t on board, added: ‘I want to inspire people to question their habits and the things they consider to be normal.

Girl gives up rented flat to live on a train

Chilli can help you lose weight

help us feel full, stopping us from overeating and piling on the pounds. The stomach stretches when it is full, activating nerves to tell the body it has had enough food. However a high fat diet impairs impor-

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama returned to Washington late Sunday after spending two weeks vacationing on the posh island of Martha’s Vineyard with his family.

Air Force One landed at 6:42 pm (2242 GMT) at Andrews Air Force Base just outside Washington.

Obama, his wife Michelle and their daughters Malia, 17, and Sasha, 14, then boarded the presidential helicopter Marine One, arriving about 20 minutes later.

Obama spent his last day on the Atlantic seaside retreat in Massachusetts playing golf, his favorite vacation activity, having played about every other day during his stay. The US president, whose term ends in a little more than 500 days, is gearing up for a hefty workload in September.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pope Francis will visit, and the UN General Assembly gathering of world leaders will take place at the end of the

ach to stretch and release the ‘full-feeling’ signals, stopping a person from overeating, they said. It has previously been found that capsaicin - the compound in chilli which gives it its heat - is able to stimu-

Berlin As anyone who has ever rented a property knows all too well, dealing with landlords is no mean feat. One woman became so fed up of renting that she took matters into her own hands. Following a dispute with her landlord, Leonie Müller, 23, from Stuttgart, Germany, gave up her permanent abode to live on a train.

From her entire wardrobe and laptop to wash bag and textbooks, student Leonie carries everything she owns on the train with her.

Leonie, who washes in the train’s bathroom, buys a £240 monthly season ticket to travel on any train, which is slightly cheaper than the £290-a-month rent she was paying.

The Tübingen University student is also in a relationship with a man in Cologne, so it suits her to live on the 190mph train and travel between his home, her mother’s home in Berlin and her university. ‘Normally, we would have to have a long-distance rela-

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C02 melted Ice Age glaciers PARIS Greenhouse gases were the driving force behind global glacier retreat at the end of the last Ice Age, echoing current climate change, according to a study published Friday.

More than 11,000 years later, the researchers say, global warming is on track to wipe out 80-90 percent of remaining glaciers within a few hundred years unless carbon dioxide emissions are held in check. Such an outcome would push sea level rise and rob hundreds of millions of people in Asia and South America of a critical source of water.

Using new techniques to resolve an old debate, researchers showed that it was a 55 percent increase of CO2 in the atmosphere -- from 180 to 280 parts per million (ppm) -- over some 7,000 years that melted the world's glaciers to a level that remained stable until the start of our industrial era. Higher levels of green house gasses, such as CO2, trap more of the Sun's heat on

Earth causing global temperatures to rise. Up to now, scientists disagreed on the cause of Ice Age glacier decline, with some attributing it mainly to solar radiation and regional influences such as ice

sheets and ocean currents. A team of scientists led by Jeremy Shakun of Boston College re-examined the ages of more than 1,100 previously studied glacial boulders by measuring a particular isotope -- Beryllium-10 -- produced by exposure to cosmic rays. They compared their findings, the most accurate so far, to the timing of the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,

data gleaned from ice bubbles trapped in ice cores. The results were unequivocal. "The only factor that explains glaciers melting all around the world in unison during the end of the Ice Age is the rise in

greenhouse gases," said Shakun. Scientists are still not sure what triggered the gradual release of CO2 into the atmosphere starting 19,000 years ago, or exactly where it came from. "It's fair to say that the reason CO2 went up and down over the Ice Ages is one of the biggest palaeoclimate mysteries out there," Shakun said by email. The most likely scenario, according to co-au-

thor Peter Clark of Oregon State University is that huge quantities of carbon bubbled up from the sea. "The carbon was likely released because of changes in the ocean and its circulation that were triggered by changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun," he wrote in an email exchange.

The impact of greenhouse gas emissions on glaciers today, both scientists say, is similar to the Ice Age endgame, except that -- after 10,000 years of relative stability -- the process is happening fifty times faster. "Just in the past 150 years, CO2 levels have surged from 280 to about 400 ppm, far higher than was required to put an end to the last Ice Age," said Shakun. And even under the most optimistic scenarios for slashing carbon pollution, he added, those levels will increase by at least another 20 percent, though how long it will take is unclear.

Australians set stargazing record

SYDNEY An Australian university said Saturday it had set a world record for the most people stargazing from one place, with hundreds of professional and amateur astronomers turning to the heavens.

Organiser Brad Tucker said more than 1,800 people were officially counted as having taken part in the event at the Australian National University campus in Canberra on Friday evening, after initially forecast poor weather held off.

"It was cloudy... and right around the time we needed to set the record,

the clouds parted and we could see the moon," Tucker, from the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, told AFP. All those who took part were using telescopes, binoculars or some other device with a high-power lens to study the night sky for 10 minutes at the same time.

Tucker said the event demonstrated that when it came to astronomy, "every one can do it". The ANU said representatives from Guinness World Records declared the new record of 1,869, which was well above the previous record of 640 people at a single site.

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Health Know how tomatoes can be dangerous for you

As someone very correctly put it, “Knowledge is knowing that Tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

Tomatoes are considered staple for most dishes. If not in its solid form, it becomes more or less visible in its other forms like various sauces, juice, pickle, puree, etc., or generally used as a base for many dishes.

Approximately 7500

varieties of the red juicy fruit are grown which are used for diverse purposes.

Tomatoes used for the sandwich making purposes are known as the Beefsteak tomatoes.

Plum, paste or pear tomatoes are used for making sauces and pastes, whereas, Cherry and grape tomatoes are specifically put in salads.

Tomatoes are an essential part of a healthy diet. They

20-minute walk cuts heart failure risk

help you meet your daily vegetable consumption, which is 2 to 3 cups as recommended by the US Department of Agriculture.

The USDA recommends that red and orange vegetables, such as tomatoes, make up only 4 to 6 cups of your weekly vegetable intake in order to provide variety and the required amounts of essential nutrients.

Most people are wellversed with the benefits of eating tomatoes like it reduces risk of cancer, prevents heart diseases, purifies blood and removes toxins, lowers bad cholesterol levels, improves eyesight, et al.

However, many of you might not be aware of the dangers of eating too much of tomatoes.

While tomatoes are broadly harmless, they can cause dietary impediments for some people. Tomatoes are naturally high in acid, which can cause heartburn for those with gastroesophageal reflux disease, also known as GERD. People with a food

intolerance to tomatoes may have difficulty digesting large quantities of tomato, and canned tomatoes can contain high levels of sodium, which may also cause health complications.

Disadvantages of Tomatoes: 1. The tomato leaf is UNSAFE. In large amounts, tomato leaves can cause poisoning, which apart from other symptoms, can also be fatal.

2. Acid reflux, also called heartburn or gastroesophageal disease, occurs when stomach acid regurgitates into the oesophagus, creating a burning feeling. Acid reflux can occur when you eat high-acid foods, such as tomatoes.

3. Tomato intolerance can result from consuming small to large amounts of tomatoes, which can cause digestive trouble such as stomach pains and gas. The symptoms of tomato intolerance may vary from person to person, and in mild cases, symptoms may not result unless large amounts of tomato are eaten, either raw or cooked.

Health benefits of Why sitting for long hoursmulberry! is bad for you!

We all know that sitting for long hours is harmful for health, but most of us spend the bulk of our day in offices glued to the the screens for hours.

Research has shown that remaining seated for too long is bad for health, regardless of how much exercise you do.

Excessive sitting has also been linked to being overweight and obese.

A lot of studies have also indicated that people who spend more than six hours sitting each day are at higher risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Sitting for long periods of time can negatively impact our brain - as this slows the flow of oxygen

and blood to our brains, suppressing our ability to think clearly.

Useful tips and measures But, if you do have to sit for long periods of time for work, make sure that you maintain correct posture and sit up straight. Note that poor posture can damage the back and shoulder muscles as well.

Avoid slumping forward at work to stare at your computer screen as this puts tremendous strain on the neck.

Try getting up from the sit and walk around your office for a few minutes.

Doing this will keep the blood flowing while allowing your brain and muscles to function properly.

Instant oatmeal breakfast curbs appetite at lunch Moderate amount of physical activity, particularly walking and bicycling, can significantly lower the risk of heart failure, says a study.

The participants who had the lowest levels of physical activity had a 47 percent higher risk of heart failure while those with highest levels had 51 percent higher risk than men with a median level.

When analysing the different types of physical activity, the study found that walking or bicycling for 20 minutes per day was associated with the largest risk reduction.

“We found that recent activity may be more

important for heart failure protection than past physical activity levels. The first incidence of heart failure in men was also later for those who actively walked or bicycled 20 minutes each day,” said study co-author Andrea Bellavia from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

When enrolling in the study, participants from two counties in Sweden completed a questionnaire about their level of activity at work, home, walking or bicycling, and exercise in the year prior at an average of 60 years old and retrospectively at 30 years old.

Having a hearty portion of instant oatmeal for breakfast enhances satiety and feelings of fullness, thereby helping you eat less at lunch, new research has found.

A bowl of instant oatmeal helps curb food intake at lunch better than a leading oat-based, cold cereal even when each bowl provided the same number of calories, the findings showed.

The researchers found that a 250-calorie instant oatmeal serving (with an additional 113 calories of skim milk) enhanced satiety and feelings of fullness, reduced the desire to eat and led to lower caloric intake at lunch, compared to a 250-calorie serving of cold, oat-based

cereal, also served with an additional 113 calories of

intake four hours postbreakfast, we found that

skim milk.

“The satiety benefits of instant oatmeal alone were important findings,” said lead author Candida Rebello from Louisiana State University in the US. “When we took it a step further and evaluated the

after consuming instant oatmeal, the participants chose to eat significantly less at lunch compared to those who ate the oatbased, cold cereal,” Rebello noted. After an analysis of the types of fibre in each cereal, the researchers

suspected that the higher level of the polysaccharides beta-glucan in the instant oatmeal contributed to its satiating effect over the oat-based, cold cereal.

The processing of the cold cereal might lead to changes in the oat fibre that reduced its ability to enhance satiety, the researchers noted.

Researchers presented the participants with a lunch meal of their choice - turkey, ham, roast beef or vegetable patty sandwiches and a caloriefree or calorie-containing beverage, alongside potato crisps and cookies. The lunches offered ranged from 2,600 to 2,800 calories and participants were told to “eat to satisfaction”.

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Eat hot chillies daily to stay in shape Ladies, beware of alcohol!

If you love to include chillies in your diet, you have another healthy reason to do so. According to a study, consumption of hot chillies can prevent

overeating via an action on nerves in the stomach, thus curbing obesity in chilli lovers.

Researchers from University of Adelaide discovered that a high-fat diet may impair important hot chilli receptors located in the stomach that signal

fullness.

The stomach stretches when it is full, which activates nerves in the

stomach to tell the body that it has had enough food.

“We found that this activation is regulated through hot chilli pepper or

TRPV1 receptors in the stomach,” said associate professor Amanda Page from University of

HealtH benefits of drinking red wine!

Often we tend to think that red wine being an alcoholic drink, it is harmful for health but in contrast, it has many benefits which is good for health. Red wine is a type of wine made from dark-coloured

grape.

The colour of red wine is intense violet, typical of young wines, through to

brick red for mature wines and brown for older red wines. So, one should always have a glass of red wine to lead a healthy life.

Prevents cancer: Drinking red wine lowers the risk of breast cancer in women

and it contains guercetin which prevents lung cancer.

Lowers heart disease: Red

wine is good for heart as it contains antioxidants, flavonoids and saponins which reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Prevents tooth decay: Red wine is good for teeth because the polyphenols found in it reduces gum inflammation and prevents gum diseases. So one should drink red wine to have strong and pearly white teeth.

Healthy Skin: Consuming red wine makes our skin healthy because of its rich antioxidant content which is essential for our body.

Antioxidants also slow aging and reduces fine lines and wrinkles.

Now, measure if your favourite restaurant is fattening you up Afraid that dining at your favourite eatery may be

adding kilos to your body? Now you can measure it.

Developed by Cornell

Food and Brand Lab researchers, The

Restaurant Scorecard for Healthier Dining can be used by diners and restaurant managers alike

to identify changes that can be made to promote healthy eating behaviours without undermining revenue. Lead researcher Brian Wansink, PhD, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and author of the new book, Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life, said that restaurant managers want people to leave feeling good, and the scorecards could help identify potential improvements that would make diners leave feeling both satisfied and healthy.

Adelaide`s school of medicine.

The team also found that TRPV1 receptors can be disrupted in high fat dietinduced obesity.

It is known from previous studies that capsaicin, found in hot chillies, reduces food intake in humans.

“We discover that deletion of TRPV1 receptors dampens the response of gastric nerves to stretch resulting in a delayed feeling of fullness and the consumption of more food,” Page explained.

Therefore, part of the effect of capsaicin on food intake may be mediated via the stomach.

“It is exciting that we now know that the consumption of capsaicin may be able to prevent overeating through an action on nerves in the stomach,” added Dr Stephen Kentish, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) fellow from University of Adelaide.

The next stage of research will involve investigation of the mechanisms behind TRPV1 receptor activation with the aim of developing a more palatable therapy.

“We will also do further work to determine why a high-fat diet de-sensitises TRPV1 receptors and investigate if we can reverse the damage,” he concluded.

Alcohol consumption by young women may result in unexpected, unintended and unsafe sexual encounters, says a study led by an Indianorigin researcher.

Links between alcohol consumption and risky sexual encounters are not new, said investigators, but this study identifies the disconnect between what young women have in mind when they drink and have sex and what really happens.

“The idea behind our study was to first unveil what women expect to happen, and then uncover what consequences really occur,” said lead researcher Geetanjali Chander, associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

“The results should help challenge unrealistic expectations and develop

better interventions that lead to safer experiences,” said Chander.

Chander and her colleagues conducted indepth interviews with 20 African-American women attending a Baltimore clinic that treats sexually transmitted diseases.

All study participants reported binge drinking in the past six months or engaging in intercourse while under the influence of alcohol.

Five major unexpected sexual events happened with substantial frequency as revealed by the participants - sex with new partners; alternative sexual activities, including anal sex and “rough” sex; unprotected sex; blacked-out sex or sex occurring during alcoholrelated amnesia; and rape.

A cup of cranberries daily can fight off colon cancer too Not just four cups of coffee, as new research suggested this week, just a daily cup-full of the cranberry super fruit can also combat colon cancer.

To reach this conclusion, researchers fed cranberry extracts to mice with colon cancer and found that their tumours diminished in size and number.

Identifying the therapeutic molecules in the fruit could lead to a better understanding of its anti-cancer potential, they said.

“Colon cancer may offer a particularly good target for a dietary treatment. Cranberry extracts may also afford protection toward other cancers,” said Catherine Neto from University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Neto and colleagues found that chemicals derived from cranberry

extracts could selectively kill off colon tumour cells in laboratory dishes.

This is approximately equivalent to a cup a

colon as digestion proceeds,” she added.

However, she is not sure someone could get the same benefits from juice which lacks some of the

day of cranberries if you were a human instead of a mouse,” “We have identified several compounds in cranberry extracts over the years that seemed promising, but we’ve always wanted to look at what happens with the compounds in an animal model of cancer,” Neto noted.

“Cranberry constituents and metabolites should be bioavailable to the

components in the skin of the cranberry.

Neto is now looking deeper into the cranberry to see if she can isolate individual components responsible for its anti-cancer properties.

The team were set to describe their approach at the national meeting and exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Boston this week.

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Juicy Roasted Chicken

baked Honey Mustard CHiCken Ingredients: 6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves salt and pepper to taste 1/2 cup honey 1/2 cup prepared mustard 1 teaspoon dried basil 1 teaspoon paprika 1/2 teaspoon dried parsley Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Sprinkle chicken breasts with salt and pepper to taste, and place in a lightly greased 9x13 inch baking dish. In a small bowl, combine the honey, mustard, basil, paprika, and parsley. Mix well. Pour 1/2 of this mixture over the chicken, and brush to cover.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.

Turn chicken pieces over and brush with

the remaining 1/2 of the honey mustard mixture. Bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear. Let cool 10 minutes before serving.

American Lasagna Ingredients: 1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef 1 onion, chopped, 2 cloves garlic, minced, 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil, 1 teaspoon dried oregano 2 tablespoons brown sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 (29 ounce) can diced tomatoes 2 (6 ounce) cans tomato paste 12 dry lasagna noodles 2 eggs, beaten, 1 pint part-skim ricotta cheese, 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, 2 tablespoons dried parsley, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 pound mozzarella cheese, shredded, 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese Directions: In a skillet over medium heat, brown ground beef, onion and garlic; drain fat.

Mix in basil, oregano, brown sugar, 1 1/ 2 teaspoons salt, diced tomatoes and

Bake uncovered 1 hour and 15 minutes in the preheated oven, to a minimum internal temperature of 180 degrees F (82 degrees C). Remove from heat, and baste with melted margarine and drippings.

Cover with aluminum foil, and allow to rest about 30 minutes before serving.

Lime Chicken Soft Tacos

tomato paste. Simmer for 30 to 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil.

Add lasagna noodles, and cook for 5 to 8 minutes, or until al dente; drain. Lay noodles flat on towels, and blot dry. In a medium bowl, mix together eggs, ricotta, Parmesan cheese, parsley and 1 teaspoon salt. Layer 1/3 of the lasagna noodles in the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish. Cover noodles with 1/2 ricotta mixture, 1/2 of the mozzarella cheese and 1/3 of the sauce. Repeat. Top with remaining noodles and sauce. Sprinkle additional Parmesan cheese over the top. Bake in the preheated oven 30 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

Ingredients: 1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast meat - cubed 1/8 cup red wine vinegar 1/2 lime, juiced, 1 teaspoon white sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper 2 green onions, chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 teaspoon dried oregano 10 (6 inch) flour tortillas 1 tomato, diced 1/4 cup shredded lettuce 1/4 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese, 1/4 cup salsa Directions: Saute chicken in a medium saucepan over medium high heat for about 20

minutes. Add vinegar, lime juice, sugar, salt, pepper, green onion, garlic and oregano. Simmer for an extra 10 minutes.

Heat an iron skillet over medium heat.

Place a tortilla in the pan, warm, and turn over to heat the other side. Repeat with remaining tortillas. Serve lime chicken mixture in warm tortillas topped with tomato, lettuce, cheese and salsa.

Chicken Enchiladas

ginger glazed MaHi Ingredients: 3 tablespoons honey 3 tablespoons soy sauce 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger root 1 clove garlic, crushed or to taste 2 teaspoons olive oil 4 (6 ounce) mahi mahi fillets salt and pepper to taste 1 tablespoon vegetable oil Directions: In a shallow glass dish, stir together the honey, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, ginger, garlic and olive oil. Season fish fillets with salt and pepper, and place them into the dish. If the fillets have skin on them, place them skin side down. Cover, and refrigerate for 20 minutes to marinate.

Ingredients: 1 (3 pound) whole chicken, giblets removed salt and black pepper to taste 1 tablespoon onion powder, or to taste 1/2 cup margarine, divided 1 stalk celery, leaves removed Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Place chicken in a roasting pan, and season generously inside and out with salt and pepper. Sprinkle inside and out with onion powder. Place 3 tablespoons margarine in the chicken cavity. Arrange dollops of the remaining margarine around the chicken's exterior. Cut the celery into 3 or 4 pieces, and place in the chicken cavity.

Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Remove fish from the dish, and reserve marinade. Fry fish for 4 to 6 minutes on each side, turning only once, until fish flakes easily with a fork.

Remove fillets to a serving platter and keep warm. Pour reserved marinade into the skillet, and heat over medium heat until the mixture reduces to a glaze consistently. Spoon glaze over fish, and serve immediately.

Ingredients: 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves 1 onion, chopped 1/2 pint sour cream 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese 1 tablespoon dried parsley 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper 1/2 teaspoon salt (optional) 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce 1/2 cup water 1 tablespoon chili powder 1/3 cup chopped green bell pepper 1 clove garlic, minced 8 (10 inch) flour tortillas 1 (12 ounce) jar taco sauce 3/4 cup shredded Cheddar cheese Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). In a medium, non-stick skil-

let over medium heat, cook chicken until no longer pink and juices run clear. Drain excess fat. Cube the chicken and return it to the skillet. Add the onion, sour cream, Cheddar cheese, parsley, oregano and ground black pepper. Heat until cheese melts. Stir in salt, tomato sauce, water, chili powder, green pepper and garlic. Roll even amounts of the mixture in the tortillas. Arrange in a 9x13 inch baking dish.

Cover with taco sauce and 3/4 cup Cheddar cheese. Bake uncovered in the preheated oven 20 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before serving.

Issue 629 (40)

25 Aug. - 31 Aug. 2015