The contact

THE CONTACT WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ISSUE - 630, 1 SEP. - 7 SEP. 2015 PH: (905) 671 - 4761

Taliban admit covering up Omar’s death

Kabul The Taliban on Monday admitted covering up longtime leader Mullah Omar’s death for two years, saying they had wanted to keep it secret until foreign forces ended their fight against the militants. The group confirmed in July that Omar had died without saying when, deepening internal divisions with many insurgents accusing the leadership of keeping them in the dark while issuing statements in his name. The admission of a cover up was buried in a lengthy biography of new Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar

Srinagar, Mumbai among top 5 cities surfing net to track ISIS-related activity NEW DELHI The government may claim a “very limited” influence of Islamic State (ISIS) among Indian Muslims, but that has not kept the curious young from closely following its activities and outreach on social media.

If findings of a national survey by an intelligence agency are any indication, the largest volume of internet traffic related to ISIS is being generated not from urban, IT-savvy centres like Bengaluru and

Hyderabad but mofussil towns like Chinchwad and Unnao, besides smaller cities such as Srinagar and Guwahati. Mumbai is the only metropolis among the top six Indian cities/towns reporting online interest in ISIS, ranking fifth after Srinagar, Guwahati, Chinchwad (a suburb of Pune) and Howrah. Unnao near Kanpur in central UP occupies the sixth position, according to results of the “top-secret” survey accessed exclusively by a newspaper.

The study - findings of which were placed before a meeting of chief secretaries and DGPs of 12 states convened by the home ministry earlier this month to discuss the growing appeal of ISIS concluded that Jammu and Kashmir showed the highest social media activity related to ISIS, followed by Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal. UP had

Continued on Page 6

Indira Gandhi considered military strike on Pak’s nuke sites New York Returning to power in 1980, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had

considered a military strike on Pakistan’s nuclear installations to prevent it from acquiring weapons capabilities, a declassified CIA document has

claimed.

Such a consideration by the then Indian Prime Minister was being made when the US was in an advanced stage of providing its fighter jets F-16 to Pakistan, says the September 8, 1981, document titled ‘India’s Reaction to Nuclear Developments in Pakistan’, which was prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). A redacted version of the 12page document was posted on the CIA website in June this year, according to which the then Indian government Continued on Page 2

more towns/cities than any other state attracting the young to explore ISIS propaganda online. The discreet study of social media activity and internet searches on ISIS covering Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google - across Indian states and towns found that the global terror outfit was generating most interest among those in the age-group Continued on Page 2

Takht Jathedar Expresses Concern over Decline in Sikh Population three children minimum. In a statement issued here, he stated that he had given similar advice to Sikh

couples when the issue was in news before. “At that time, I suggested Sikh couples to have four

children at Sri Anandpur Sahib, but nobody took it seriously”, he said.

Continued on Page 2

2.87 Million indians have no religion

AMRITSAR SAHIB Expressing deep concern over the declining population growth of the Sikhs, Akal Takht Sahib appointed Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh has reiterated his advise to Sikh couples to have

New Delhi There are over 28 lakh (about 2.87 million) people in India who do not subscribe to any religion.

In a country that has given birth to some of the world’s major religions, that’s 0.24 percent of the total population of 1.2 billion, as per the latest estimate given by the 2011 Indian Census. This is the first time that the Indian Census has included

a “non-faith” category.

Interestingly, a majority

(about 57 percent) of those who told census officials that they do not have faith in any organised religion belong to the country’s rural areas. Even though roughly an equal number of men and women said they were atheists, or agnostic, or believed that an “unknown force” exists outside Continued on Page 2

Issue - 630 (2)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

2.87 Million indians don’t....

Continued from Page 1 of religion, a much higher percentage of women appear to have to no faith in religion. According to latest estimates, there are 940 women for every 1000 men in India.

While perhaps it comes as no surprise that one of India’s most populous states - Uttar Pradesh - has the highest number of people (almost six lakh) who don’t identify with a particular faith, interestingly south India’s

Andhra Pradesh is close behind with over four lakh people without a religion. The state has a history of atheism, with the Vijayawada-based Atheist Centre founded as early as pre-Independence in 1940 by Gora (Goparaju Ramachandra Rao) and his wife Saraswathi Gora, who fought against superstitions both during the freedom movement and after Independence and are engaged in the “promotion of atheism as a way of life”.

Takht Jathedar Expresses Concern over Decline...

Continued from Page 1 “Particularly, the sections of Sikhs who reside in other states and feel alienated, should also be taken into consideration so that they don’t think about converting their religion”, he added, citing examples of Sikligar and Vanjare Sikhs from Maharashtra.

Jathedar was referring to the fact that these communities

need to be counted as Sikhs for the sake of census data.

Meanwhile, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) said that trend of going abroad among Sikh youth is also a factor behind declining growth of Sikh population. “Once, any Sikh youth goes abroad for study purpose, he gets settled there forever”, he added.

Srinagar, Mumbai among top 5 cities surfing...

Continued from Page 1 of 16-30 years. Not only do the curious belong to both the genders, but they also come from all walks of life, educational and social backgrounds. The spread of ISIS social media outreach, the recent study found, is largely attributable to the internet which provides a very wide and no-holds barred access to raw material over a very large footprint comprising net-savvy young population in a

exit of some youth to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. While India lags far behind Pakistan and others in access to social mediabased ISIS content, certain parts of the country have shown high interest triggered by the media coverage of four youth from Kalyan, Mumbai, who left the country to join ISIS last year. News reports of one of them having returned home frustrated and another getting killed furthered the interest. Social media-

based material has been a prime mobilizer in J&K, prompting a section of its young to wave ISIS flags during protests. “Overall, ISIS has been successful in evolving a potent internetbased propaganda strategy with social media and multimedia (like YouTube) as effective vehicles ... The spread and effectiveness achieved by ISIS is showing exponential proportions,” a senior intelligence official associated with the study said.

Indira Gandhi considered military strike on...

Continued from Page 1 led by Gandhi in 1981 was concerned about the progress made by Pakistan on its nuclear weapons programme and believed that Islamabad was steps away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The US had the same assessment.

Sikh man named ‘Australian of the Day’ for feeding homeless MELBOURNE An Indian-origin Sikh migrant driver in Australia has been named

developing region like South Asia. In fact, Pakistan took the lead here in providing the largest population of ISIS subscribers, with the spread mostly anchored in its urban centres. A glance at global social media data indicates that West Asia, Iraq, Syria, Emirates region and North East Africa generate the highest volume of ISISrelated traffic from the young. These are followed by anxious populations in certain West European countries that have reported

locals of northern Darwin after he finishes his shift as a cabbie. He cooks up 30 kilogrammes of Indian

energy so they’re happy.

My religion says 10 per cent of income goes toward needy and poor people - no matter (whether) they belong to your religion or any religion,” Singh was quoted as saying by local media. “I do something for homeless people, so they get more energy so they’re happy,” he said. His van carries a signature written as ‘Free Indian food for hungry and needy people, Provide Sikh family.’

‘Australian of the Day’ for cuisine to feed the homeless Commonwealth Bank has feeding the homeless in after his night shift. The free sponsored the Australian

“In the extreme case, if Indian concerns increase over the next two or three months, we believe the conditions could be ripe for a decision by Prime Minister Gandhi to instigate a military confrontation with Pakistan, primarily to provide a framework for destroying Pakistan’s

nuclear facilities,” the then highly sensitive CIA report claimed. At the time of writing of the report, the CIA said Gandhi had not taken any such decision in that regard. According to the report, as Pakistan was in an advanced stage of producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium for

use in nuclear weapons, Gandhi evidently responded to the threat by authorizing Indian nuclear test preparations. “In February (1981), excavation was begun in the Thar desert to permit the underground explosion of an Indian test device on short notice,” the CIA said.

Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa asks Simranjit Singh Mann to contest 2017 Elections from an Allied Platform LUDHIANA Sp e a k i n g c o l l e c t i v e l y Sikh political leaders, Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa asked upon S. Simranjit Singh Mann to consider contesting elections from an “allied platform”.

He asked S. Mann to not field contestants where other Panthik minded Sikhs had been fielded by other P a n t h i k Surat Singh Ji Khalsa. other organizations to organizations. During the S. Simranjit Singh Mann e n s u r e t h a t t h e B J P, Congress and Akali Dal were defeated in Punjab.

Expressing deep concern over the murder of Bapu Ji’s son-in-law Bhai Satwinder Singh Bhola in Chicago, S. Mann said that it is very unfortunate that murder took place at this critical stage of Bapu Surat Singh’s struggle. He meeting, S. Simranjit is the president of the u r g e d t h e A m e r i c a n Singh M a n n S h i r o m a n i A k a l i D a l government to investigate wholeheartedly accepted (Amritsar). S. Mann said the case so that the truth t h e r e q u e s t b y B a p u that he would work with could be brought in front.

Khalsa slams Kejriwal, Sanjay Singh, Chhotepur over his suspension from AAP Darwin for the past three years. Tejinder Pal Singh has dedicated the last Sunday of the month to feed the poor and homeless

lunch that Singh offers comprises chickpeas, rice and vegetarian curry.

“I do something for homeless people, so they get more

of the Year Awards for over 35 years, recognizing extraordinary Australians who have made a big difference to the country.

Indian-origin trader fails to delay extradition bid from UK

An Indian-origin lone trader accused of triggering the 2010 Wall Street “flash crash” which wiped nearly $1 trillion off the value of US shares in minutes has failed in a bid to delay his extradition to America.

Lawyers for Navinder Sarao, 36, had urged

Westminster Magistrates Court on Friday to delay an extradition hearing set for late next month to allow an expert witness more time to prepare a report for his defence. However, district judge Quentin Purdy denied the application and said that the two-day hearing would

not be delayed from starting on September 25.

The judge ruled that the expert evidence was not relevant to any decision to send Sarao to the US, where he could face a jail sentence of up to 380 years, The Times reported.

FATEHGARH SAHIB Reacting over his suspension from the party, AAP MP from Fatehgarh Sahib, Harinder Singh Khalsa stated that him, along with Dr. Dharamvira Gandhi were surprised when they found their pictures missing from the posters displayed at the AAP political conference organised at Baba Bakala on Rakhar Puniya festival today. Khalsa pointed out that only Arvind

Kejriwal, Sanjay Singh, know what type of revolution Chhotepur and five to six party’s Punjab convener unknown persons from Delhi Sucha Singh Chottepur and in-charge of party affairs in the state Sanjay Singh want to bring in the state. The people of Punjab want change as they are fed up with the present political outfits, including the SADBJP combine and Congress. I will figured on the posters. continue to work for the Lashing out at party’s people of my constituency leaders, he said, “I don’t and the state,” he said.

Issue - 630 (3)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Issue - 630 (4)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Gujarat caught in quota cauldron Back in 2007 when Barack Obama was campaigning for the Presidential election, he popularized the word “Bangalored”, as in “my job got Bangalored”. He said jobs should be retained in America, not outsourced to India. This became a hot button issue and caught the imagination of the voters. There was anyway deep resentment about jobs going abroad, even though it made American companies more profitable. After all the corporations were getting twice the work done at half the wages from the software workers in India.

But such is the power of rhetoric and demagoguery that it can distort the true picture completely. The number of unemployed Americans was around 10 million, and the total number of outsourced jobs was around 300,000 max i.e. 3%. But all the unemployed guys focus on the 3%, thinking that there goes “my job”. It was convenient to have a place like Bangalore to focus all your anger and frustration. Even the others, who are employed, but afraid of getting sacked tomorrow, are nervous and hate “Bangalorization” of their jobs.

THE CONTACT STAFF: EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Sunny Bains Lt. Hon. President : Dr. (Prof.) Darshan Singh Executive Editor: Kanwaljit Kaur Bains EDITOR Vinny Bains Foreign Editor: Syed Asif Shahkar (Sweden) Sr. Assistant Editor: Prempal Bajwa Marketing Executive Vinny Bains Special Correspondents: Balkar Chatha France Financial Advisor : Sarabjit Singh Sagoo Photographer: Sandeep Brar 647 294 4948 Head Office: 2-7015 TRANMERE DRIVE, MISSISSAUGA ONTARIO CANADA L5S 1T7 For Advertisement : Call Kanwaljit 416-899-2548 Tel: 905-671-4761 TOLL FREE: 1-888-371-2548 FAX: 1888-982-2818 EMAIL: INFO@AJITWEEKLY.COM

The Contact Weekly and people associated with it are not responsible for any claims made by the advertisers and don’t endorse any product or services advertised in the Contact Weekly. Please consult your lawyer before buying/hiring/ contracting through the ads published in the newspaper. The Contact Weekly is in the business of selling space and claims made by the advertisers are not tested/ confirmed by an independent source.

The truth is that outsourcing actually creates extra GDP and profits in the US, and eventually more productive jobs, since the lower productive (cheaper labor) jobs get outsourced. After Obama won the elections, the “Bangalored” campaign was conveniently forgotten. Indeed the India US bonhomie increased, and Obama is the only serving US President to have visited India twice in four years. This “Bangalored” episode is worth recalling in the context of the anti-quota agitation that is burning in Gujarat. The anger and frustration of the unemployed or underemployed youth is currently focused on the minorities who are “stealing their college seats”. The scheduled castes and tribes’ reservation is as per constitution of India.

So you can’t quarrel against the constitution, and even then you need to amend it. The additional OBC reservation varies from state to state, and is defined by economic or historic backwardness. The reality of the scarcity of “seats” and “jobs” also varies a lot.

The vote-bank politics of postIndependent India has inflated the numbers of those enjoying affirmative action with some states having quotas for as many as 80 per cent of the population. The latest flashpoint came when young energetic Hardik Patel worked his community into frenzy over their perceived marginalization. The fiery mobs have held the prosperous state to ransom for over two days. The Patels have been cheerleaders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-debated ‘Gujarat Model’ of development. “Nine out of 11 diamonds sold across the world are polished in Gujarat,” Modi used to say.

He’d also proudly mention Morbi, a ceramic cluster that took China head-on.

But, growing joblessness in both these sectors, as well as slowdown, is fueling unrest in the Patel community, which has graduated from agriculture to manufacturing.

Patels dominate the diamond and ceramic industry. About 40% of small and medium enterprises in Gujarat are controlled by Patels, who constitute around 15% of the state’s population.

Over the decades, while Patels were moving from farming to manufacturing, their SMEs became the backbone of Gujarat’s industry. Near absence of government jobs during 13 years of Modi rule actually spawned enterprise, with Gujarat consistently registering doubledigit growth. It’s no coincidence that the biggest Patidar rallies over last two months and most violent protests last week took place in diamond hubs of Surat, Bapunagar in Ahmedabad and Amreli.

About 450 small diamond units, mainly doing job-work for medium and big diamond companies, have shut down. Hundreds of others are bleeding and are cutting jobs.

In Amreli, the slowdown in the diamond

Opinion By: SUNNY BAINS

industry was aggravated by recent floods, which devastated agriculture.

Leaders, especially in the opposition camps, are happy that Narendra Modi has an unprecedented crisis at hand in his home state, which is being projected as

an unparalleled model of development in India. The Patel-led agitation, which saw many of his community members die in protests, is now a potent weapon for Modi’s detractors. But in the heat of passion and the riots, the reality might get mightily distorted (like the “Bangalored” phenomenon), so that “reservation” itself becomes a hated word. So even legitimate case for reservation and quotas, as needed for the economically and socially deprived kids, will be rejected. The community known as Patidars with Patel as surname is prosperous by all known yardsticks.

According to one report, 40 per cent of the motels in the United States are owned by this community. Another report said the US census recorded over 175,000 people with Patel as surname. They call the shots in diamond and textile businesses in the state. Given this, it comes as a surprise that they are nursing a grievance that they have not got their due share of the pie.

Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel had a tough time controlling the mobs. His mentor Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to come on TV pleading for peace. His twitter messages alone would not have been sufficient to douse fires. And his detractors are quick to tear into his so-called Gujarat model. The clamor for quotas in jobs and educational institutions is bound to rise with political parties vying with each other in nursing caste constituencies. This competitive politics has wreaked havoc on social fabric and fueled divisions among communities. For the time being, the Supreme Court order capping quotas at 50 per cent should serve as the first principle.

Gujarat has already reservations up to 49.5 per cent. No room to bring more people on board.

Who’s behind Hardik Patel?

The stunning success of the Kranti Rally organized here by Patidar bodies to demand OBC quota, and the violence that followed the arrest of Hardik Patel, convener of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) last week, has surprised all. It’s unlikely that the 22-year-old alone could have mobilized 5 lakh people at the GMDC Ground here on Tuesday. Equally interesting was the way the event was managed - from getting parking for thousands of vehicles to obtaining permissions and mobilizing funds. Hardik’s rise has baffled everyone. He was a member of the Sardar Patel Group (SPG), a Patidar youth body, and president of its Viramgam unit. He was ousted from the post as SPG leader Lalji Patel wasn’t amenable to Hardik promoting his outfit PAAS. Formed only in July, PAAS has shaken Gujarat’s stability, becoming the rallying point for Patels. Many believe bigger forces are at work. Hardik, who graduated with less than 50% marks from Ahmedabad’s Sahajanand College, hails from a middle-class family from Viramgam near Ahmedabad. He helps his father, once a small time BJP leader, run a business in submersible pumps.

Who are those behind this stormy agitation and Hardik? This question has as yet remained unanswered. An audio clip, circulated before the Ahmedabad rally in defence of CM Anandiben Patel, hinted at unknown forces behind the agitation. It urged agitating Patels to realize that a conspiracy had been hatched to destabilize the government. Hardik’s photographs with VHP’s Pravin Togadia, who has a strained relationship with PM Modi and Anandiben, were in circulation. Rumors of Arvind Kejriwal and Nitish Kumar backing Hardik started doing the rounds after he mentioned them in his address. Kumar has publicly supported the Patel movement. Patidars have been associated with religious outfits known to manage huge gatherings in a disciplined manner. That expertise seemed at work in all the Patidar rallies. Rich Patidars hosted those who came for last week’s rally. But the magnitude of the event showed crores were spent for its success.

Pippa Middleton flaunts ‘hot-bod’ in two-piece during Caribbean vacation Washington Pippa Middleton recently flaunted her toned and trim bikini body while paddleboarding during a vacation in the Caribbean. The 31-year-old socialite, accompanied by her brother James Middleton, wore a tiny purple and blue two-piece and flaunted her toned abs and muscular physique while taking on the waves with her sibling, E! Online reports.

This was not the first time when Kate Middleton’s sister showed-off her bikini body, as previously she has flaunted her hot-body in red two-piece.

Issue - 630 (5)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Minecraft inventor hates being a billionaire Stockholm Minecraft inventor Markus Persson claims he’s ‘never felt more isolated’ since selling his company Mojang AB to Microsoft for £1.5 billion. In a series of a downhearted tweets this morning, the Swede spoke

There’s a limit to what you can do. You can’t fly to the moon. You can’t snap your fingers and cause rose bushes to blossom. You can’t consistently predict the winners of horse races or see the numbers that will win the next lottery draw. Or make you-knowwho do you-know-what, just by the force of your will. But there are, still, many things you can do.

You can’t break the rules of nature but in so far as they can be bent by anyone now, they can be bent by you. So bend them with confidence and with sensitivity! !!!

People who make guns have a vested interest in encouraging conflict. If everyone in this world trusted everyone else, there would be no market for weaponry. Doctors need patients, just as much as patients need doctors. Drug companies make a fortune from the medicines they sell. How tempted they must sometimes feel to release a little something into the ether, so that they can offer to sell us the cure for it!

All this may or may not happen but be wary of a potentially unhealthy symbiosis in a key relationship now! !!!

Let a little more time pass.

While it passes, try to remember you are strong, important and powerful.

The fact that you are not getting quite what you think you want from life does not detract from this.

Even the most influential and successful people find themselves falling flat on their face from time to time. And we can hardly say that you are flat on your face. You are not even on your knees; you are just teetering a little on wobbly legs. Steady yourself. A development in your personal life will bring a helpful inspiring revelation. !!!

Even simple films require camera operators, lighting engineers, make-up artists, wardrobe assistants, sound recordists, continuity monitors, writers, directors, producers, researchers, plus caterers to keep them all fed. You must be careful now, not to fear that your personal life is inadequate because it fails to match the standards set by a Hollywood drama. You can’t create an artificial impression, but you can, if you relax, bring forth a very real natural magic. It will yet make you the star of your own highly successful show. !!!

Some habits are hard to break. Some temptations are hard to resist. What’s more, the idea that something is naughty - or shouldn’t be allowed - can inject an activity with a thrill that it might otherwise never offer. One person’s mischief is another’s harmless pleasure. And anyway, who is to say what really does us harm? ‘A little of what you fancy does you good,’ or so they say. It may soon be time to think about drawing a line in your emotional life. But does that mean you have to draw the line right here, right now? !!!

You have got some talking to do, some explaining, some debating and some negotiating. The sooner you start, the further you get, the happier you will grow, and the better off you will become. You know this instinctively, yet you still feel reluctant to set a process in motion. You feel more inclined to let a sleeping dog lie. Wake it up. Get it barking. It is chained up. It cannot attack you. It can, though, draw the attention of someone who is in a position to be of great help to your plans for future success.

of how he disliked his newfound wealth and felt unchallenged and empty.

He wrote: ‘The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance.

‘Hanging out in Ibiza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people, able to do whatever I want, and I’ve never felt more isolated. ‘In Sweden, I will sit around and wait for my friends with

jobs and families to have time to do shit, watching my reflection in the monitor.’

Persson has a personal fortune of around £1billion, according to Forbes estimates. He launched the hit computer game

Minecraft in 2009, in which players can build an entire world using retro-looking blocks. But the 35-yearold said he no longer wanted the ‘responsibility’ of owning such a global success, and sold his development studio Mojang to US giant Microsoft. Last year he said he wanted to ‘stick to small prototypes and interesting challenges’, adding: ‘I’ve become a symbol. ‘I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits.

I can’t be responsible for something this big. It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.’ Like any 35-year-old who has suddenly found himself being one of the richest people in the world, Persson has spent lavishly and partied extravagantly. One family friend who spoke to MailOnline in April said they hoped that he won’t buckle under the pressures of what such fame and fortune can bring.

Divorced after a year of marriage he has blown hundreds of thousands of pounds in the bars, casinos and nightclubs of Las Vegas. Persson has reportedly spent an eyewatering $180,000 [£112,000] in a single night. And to celebrate the sale of 10 million ‘downloads’ of the game he treated the whole staff to a three-day trip of ultimate extravagance to Monte Carlo three years ago.

Whisked away by private jet, employees were driven around in sports cars when they were not drinking champagne and partying aboard a luxury yacht.

Staff were also entitled to share in a £2 million bonus pot.

Britain hosts battle for bog snorkelling world championship

Competitors dressed as goldfish and sharks were among over 100 people vying to become the world bog snorkelling champion at an unusual swimming competition in Wales Sunday. Contestants at the 30th annual World Bog Snorkelling Championships donned masks, snorkels and flippers to swim two lengths of a 55metre peat bog outside Llanwrtyd Wells as quickly as possible. They were cheered on by around 300 spectators who lined up along either side of the murky brown stream running through marshland. Asked what the appeal of bog snorkelling was, one of the event’s organisers, Jen Walsby, said: “I don’t know, I’ve done it myself and it’s cold and brown and you can’t see much. It’s just the madness that comes with it and the challenge.”

Obama renames tallest mountain in North America as ‘Denali’ Washington Meeting the long pending demand of native Americans in Alaska, US President Barack Obama has decided to rename the highest mountain in North America as “Denali” instead of its existing name of “Mt McKinley”.

“This designation recognises the sacred status of Denali to generations of Alaska Natives,” the White House said on eve of Obama’s travel to Alaska where he would formally announce his decision in this regard.

In 1896, a prospector emerged from exploring the mountains of central Alaska and received news that William McKinley had been nominated as a candidate for President of the United States. In a show of support, the prospector declared the tallest peak of the Alaska Range as “Mt McKinley” and the name stuck.

McKinley became the

25th President of the United States, and was tragically assassinated just six months into his second term. “But he never set foot

used across the state today,” the White House said in defence of its decision.

“Today, finalising a process

in Alaska and for centuries, the mountain that rises some 20,000 feet above sea level, the tallest on the North American continent, had been known by another name?Denali,” the White House said.

“Generally believed to be central to the Athabascan creation story, Denali is a site of significant cultural importance to many Alaska Natives.?The name ‘Denali’ has been used for many years and is widely

initiated by the State of Alaska in 1975, President Obama is announcing that the Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell used her authority to rename the mountain as ‘Denali’,” the White House said.

“This name change recognises the sacred status of Denali to many Alaska Natives,” Jewell said. “The name Denali has been official for use by the State of Alaska since 1975, but even more

importantly, the mountain has been known as Denali for generations,” she added.

“With our own sense of reverence for this place, we are officially renaming the mountain Denali in recognition of the traditions of Alaska Natives and the strong support of the people of Alaska,” the Interior Secretary said. Since 1987 and until today, the official name of the mountain in federal publications has been Mount McKinley.

The mountain retained the federally authorised name Mount McKinley, even as the name of the national park was changed in 1980 from Mount McKinley National Park into the new (and larger) area named Denali National Park and Preserve under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Department of Interior said.

Issue - 630 (7)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Disabled woman fights to China, Japan battle to build Indonesia’s first bullet train bring Indian fiance back to UK

JAKARTA China and Japan are locked in an increasingly heated contest to build Indonesia’s first highspeed railway, with the Asian giants sweetening deals and turning up the charm as time runs out to woo Jakarta. The rivalry over this major project is just the latest to flare up as China challenges Japan’s longstanding dominance in Southeast Asia as a key source of infrastructure funding.

Japan, a top-three investor in Indonesia with huge stakes in the automotive and mining sectors, seemed destined to build the high-speed railway until China muscled in with a counter offer earlier this year.

President Joko Widodo stoked the competitive spirit of the two Asian powerhouses as he toured China and Japan in April trying to drum up much-needed investment for a multi-billion dollar overhaul of Indonesia’s ageing infrastructure. In both Beijing and Tokyo, he boarded bullet trains and declared his vision for high-speed rail in Indonesia: a line connecting the sprawling capital Jakarta with Bandung, a mountainfringed city famed for its

universities and IT expertise about 160 kilometres (100 miles) away.If it was a stunt to grab the attention of his hosts, it certainly worked. A steady stream of diplomats and envoys from Tokyo and Beijing have been pouring in since April to pitch the Widodo administration, and Jakarta is enjoying the limelight. “Let them race to invest in Indonesia. It’s good for us,” Luhut Panjaitan, chief political minister and a close aide to Widodo, told AFP. “It’s like a girl wanted by many guys, the girl then can pick whoever she likes.” The line, if completed, will not only slash travel time between Jakarta and Bandung but pave the way for an expanded network linking the capital with Indonesia’s second-largest city Surabaya in East Java. The schmoozing has been ratcheting up ahead of August 31, when Widodo is expected to announce the successful bidder.

China is not seeking any funding guarantees from the Indonesian government and has promised construction would begin this year, with the network up and running no later than 2019. Beijing recently

showcased its high-speed rail prowess in an exhibition at a plush Jakarta mall, where China’s ambassador to Indonesia likened the project to a child reared by Jakarta and Beijing.“Our number one priority is to ensure the baby’s health and growth, rather than to rush him to make money to support the family,” Xie Feng said, playing down suggestions China’s main motive in this project was profit. Japan’s proposal is slightly more expensive than its rival, and it is only promising trains will hit the tracks in 2021. On the plus side, it has offered a lower interest rate of 0.1 percent, a fraction of the 2.0 percent China has put forward.Japan also has history on its side. The country is famous for its legendary shinkansen, its impressive highspeed network that for decades has whizzed commuters between cities at great speed without a single fatal accident on the rails. China has countered this by arguing it has built 17,000 kilometres of highspeed railway - or 55 percent of the world total - in the 12 years since it began constructing bullet trains.However, a 2011 crash that killed at least 40 people and injured 200 more highlighted what critics say is a tendency to overlook safety in the rush to lay track.

Indonesian officials are aware of Japan’s glowing record in this space, and are wary of elements of Beijing’s pitch. A government source tasked with assessing the two proposals told AFP China’s slowing economy had fostered doubt about whether Beijing could deliver on its ambitious promises.

London A disabled woman who suffers from a genetic disorder has been working tirelessly to bring her Indian fiance back to the UK after he was deported for staying illegally in the country last week. Claire May, 34, met Amit Chawla, 27, while he was in Britain illegally and even gave birth to their daughter Riya in February this year.After Chawla was deported to India earlier this month, May has been working on ways to bring him back using her taxpayer-funded living allowance and disability benefits.

“The benefits I get are mine so it's nobody else's business how I spend them ? and I choose to spend them on him. When Amit got deported, it was the worst day of my life. Just because he was here illegally, it doesn't make our relationship any less real,” she told the 'Daily Mirror'.

“I love him, and can't believe he has been sent away. His home is here with me,” she said.

Punjab-born Chawla lived in the UK illegally for six years after his two-year working holiday visa expired in July 2009.

According to the newspaper, he spent the next three years

taking cash-in-hand cleaning jobs and sleeping on friends' sofas to avoid being caught by UK Home Office.

In September 2012, he met Claire online and the pair struck up a relationship. Claire suffers from Triple X syndrome, which means she was born with an extra chromosome that can cause short-term memory loss, dyslexia and weak muscles.

“Amit and I got chatting online and soon we were talking every day. I thought he was gorgeous, with big dark eyes and a handsome face,” she said.In July 2013, after six months of dating, the couple got engaged. By the following year Claire was pregnant, prompting Chawla to apply for a British residency visa. His application was rejected and after being held in a detention centre, he was deported back to India on August 16.

Claire has now bought tickets for flights to India next month where she plans to marry Chawla and bring him back to the UK on a spouse and marriage visa. “It didn't bother me he was here illegally everyone makes mistakes, and I love him,” she said.

What killed Knut the polar bear? Study offers ‘closure’ PARIS Thrust into the spotlight during his short life, Knut the polar bear’s celebrity has outlived his dramatic drowning in 2011 - as has the medical mystery surrounding his demise.

On Thursday, animal and disease experts said they finally have the answer; the seizure that caused Knut to drown in the pool in his zoo pen, before hundreds of shocked visitors, was triggered by a type of autoimmune disease which causes brain inflammation. “Everyone remembers how he was born, how he was presented to the public, how he lived and then the movement of death, and now... there is some closure. We can actually say this is why he died,” said study co-author Alex Greenwood of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin.

Reported in the journal Scientific Reports, this is the first-ever diagnosis in an animal of NMDAR encephalitis, a

condition that affects about one in 200,000 people each year.

After his birth in December 2006, Knut soon shot to fame with TV crews and adoring crowds flocking to witness his cuddly cuteness.

A series of tragedies further captured the public imagination: Knut’s was abandoned by his mother, his twin died a few days after birth, and the zookeeper who raised him by hand, died in 2008. Knut was reportedly bullied by other bears and thought to suffer from a behavioural disorder that caused him to seek out human attention, throwing tantrums when he was denied an audience.The bear earned the zoo millions of euros, drawing over two million zoo visitors, graced the cover of Vanity Fair magazine and even appeared on German postage stamps. Knut was just four years old when he died. Mourners flocked to his cage, leaving flowers, candles and cards, and a bronze statue dubbed “Knut the Dreamer” was

erected in his memory.

The cause of death was suspected to have been a brain seizure, likely from encephalitis, but the exact trigger has remained a mystery. The brain inflammation can be caused by viral or bacterial infections, or a faulty immune system reaction which causes antibodies, meant to attack intruder microbes, turn on the body instead. The most common non-infectious form of the disease is NMDAR encephalitis. After years of headscratching, investigators had a breakthrough inspiration to test for NMDAR antibodies, and found “high concentrations” in Knut’s cerebrospinal fluid, they said.

In humans, the treatable disease only discovered in 2007, affects mainly young women.

Symptoms generally start with headaches and a high temperature, followed by psychotic episodes like hallucinations and aggression, and finally epileptic seizures. It is often diagnosed in the late

stages but patients react well to treatment - a combination of steroids, blood transfusions and therapy to destroy the errant antibodies.

Knut’s diagnosis should open a new field of research into animal encephalitis, said the team.

“Because treatment options are available in humans that could easily be transferred to animals, the death of many animals,

particularly of conservation concern, from encephalitis in the future may be preventable,” Greenwood said in a telephone conference. Co-author Harald Pruess said he hoped Knut’s high profile would raise awareness of NMDAR encephalitis in humans too presented with initial symptoms, doctors and patients often do not think of testing for the disease.

Issue - 630 (8)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Indian-origin man jailed for sex act in BMW while driving

London A 36-year-old Indian-origin man has been jailed for seven years for causing the death of his girlfriend when he engaged in a sex act with her behind the wheel in his BMW. Minesh Parbat was driving at 60mph when he crashed in West Sussex in March last year.

His girlfriend and mother-oftwo, Lisa Watling, was thrown from the car and the 28-yearold died later in hospital from her injuries.

In the aftermath of the collision, Parbat was discovered by members of the public with his trousers and underwear around his ankles.

Watling was found seriously injured in just a T-shirt and bra. Jailing him at Lewes Crown Court in south east England, Judge Peter Griffiths said: “I'm satisfied that the cause of the accident in which Lisa died was your decision to continue to drive your motor vehicle at a speed approaching but not exceeding 70mph while engaged in some form of sexual activity with your trousers partially down.

“I make it clear that the blame for this tragic accident is

entirely yours.” During the trial, Parbat denied anything sexual had taken place as he drove, adding that he had instead struggled to get Watling off him before crashing.

Parbat later added: “It's got sexual tones, but it wasn't sexual because nothing happened.” He suffered facial injuries in the crash and gave a positive blood test which showed 102 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, the drink-drive limit in Britain being 80 milligrams.

In a statement, Watling's family said: “Our lives have been ripped apart, leaving a wound that will never fully heal.

However, the two real victims are Lisa's children. “They will never have that soft comforting voice they know and love whisper goodnight, safe in the knowledge that when they wake up in the morning she'll be there to greet them.

“As a family we feel relief that some kind of justice has been seen. It feels like a very small step towards gaining a degree of closure.”

India in a fix over 17 nationals in Pakistan prisons New Delhi The Pakistan government has informed New Delhi that 17 Indians have completed their jail terms but they cannot be sent back because they are unable to recall their whereabouts.

New Delhi Hostilities between India and Pakistan have scaled in recent months but the two countries are trying hard to ensure early return of 17 Indians with 'mentally unstable mind' languishing in Pakistani jails.The Pakistan government has informed New Delhi that 17 Indians have completed their jail terms but they cannot be sent back because they are unable to recall their whereabouts.

Failing to get details to establish their background, the Pakistan government informed the Indian High Commission in Islamabad and allowed special consular access to these prisoners hoping to make breakthrough.

“These persons have not been able to disclose any other particulars during the consular access,” the Ministry of External Affairs conveyed to Ministry of Home Affairs.

After getting an update on the matter, the Ministry of External Affairs has forwarded the details of the 17 prisoners to the Ministry of Home Affairs to identify their families and homes in India.

Social media.The Ministry of Home Affairs is now planning to put their pictures on social media, inviting people to identify them.Among the 17, four are women who have been identified as Gullu Jan, Ajmeera, Naqaya and Hasina. The others are Sonu Singh, Surinder Mahto, Prahalad Singh, Silrof Salim, Birju, Raju, Bipla, Rupi Pal, Panwasi Lal, Raju Mahouli, Shyam Sunder,

Ramesh and Raju Rai.The Indian High Commission has sent the pictures of all 17 prisoners to New Delhi to trace their family members. Many of them seem to be old in the pictures provided

by Pakistan. “Other than the pictures and their names we have no other information.

Identifying their families here is a tough task,” said a home ministry official.Even though using social media is an option, an official dealing with the matter said these are sketchy details.

“We are not even sure if their names are correct,” he added.

“These Indians have completed their sentences but due to nonconfirmation of their nationality they could not be repatriated to India,” a home ministry note on these prisoners says.

Officials dealing with the subject believe that return of these Indians to their homeland will have a positive impact on IndoPak relations that have hit a low.

The cancellation of National Security Advisor-level talks between the two countries recently has added to the hostilities in the last one year.Sources said on both sides there are prisoners who after spending long years in jail develop mental illness.There have been instances in the past

Bengal man caught dumping bags with body parts of lover, her child Kolkata A bank manager in West Bengal was arrested on charges of murder on Saturday, after he was caught red-handed while dumping in a river three trolley bags containing body parts of a woman with whom he had an extra-marital affair and her fiveyear-old daughter.Samaresh Sarkar, the 47-year-old manager of a Central Bank of India branch in Durgapur - a town about 170km from Kolkata, dumped the bags in the Hooghly river from a boat in full public view on the suburbs of the state capital. The case, which came at a time the grisly murder of Sheena Bora is in the news, has stunned police.

“Sarkar chopped up the body of the woman into three pieces and kept them in three trolley bags.

We found the upper and lower parts of her body in two bags, but could not find the head of the woman and the body of the child.

We have deployed a team of eight divers to trace it (the third bag),” a senior police official told HT.For his part, Sarkar, a father

of two, told police the woman killed herself and the minor on

Friday after he refused to marry her. Refuting Sarkar's claim, police charged him with sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code. “Sarkar thought he will quietly dump the bodies into a watery grave and

then slip back home as if nothing had happened,” said a police

officer. Sarkar told police the victim was 34-year-old Sucheta Chakraborty, a customer of the branch where he was the manager. He was involved in an affair with Chakraborty, who was separated from her husband.

She lived in Durgapur with her

five-year-old daughter.Sarkar also told police Chakraborty was mounting pressure on him to marry her. Sarkar is married and has two daughters. His family stays in Titagarh in North 24Parganas. Sarkar said when he visited the residence of Chakraborty on Friday afternoon, she demanded that he should marry her without any delay. “He claimed that Chakraborty drowned her daughter in a cistern in a fit of rage and the child died within minutes. When she found that Sarkar was still not ready to marry her, she grabbed a knife and slit her throat. The theory appeared highly unlikely,” a police officer said. Police suspect Sarkar brought the bags by train from Durgapur to Sheoraphuli, and then he hired a porter for Rs 100 who took the bags to the ferry ghat. This is the route he frequently used to return to his home in Titagarh, which is just a train station away from Barrackpore ferry ghat on Kolkata's suburbs.

when such inmates have been repatriated to their respective countries after confirming their nationality.In a reply to a Right To Information application, last year the Indian government had said that there are Indians in Pakistani jails who are mentally ill.In all over 403 Indians, including nearly 350 fishermen as per the recent list provided by Pakistan, are languishing in Pakistani jails for various crimes.

India handed over a list of 278 Pakistani prisoners. These lists were exchanged on July 1, 2015.According to the Agreement on Consular Access signed on May 21, 2008, both countries are required to exchange lists of prisoners in each other's custody twice a year, on January 1 and July 1, respectively.The exchange of lists despite recent tension between the two countries shows that the two sides are fulfilling their bilateral obligations agreed in different times, the spokesman said.

On August 2, Pakistan released 163 Indian fishermen held for violating its territorial waters as a goodwill gesture. On August 7, India repatriated sixteen Pakistani prisoners, whose nationality has been confirmed

by Pakistani authorities.

Beware! 26 cockroaches can live inside your ear Melbourne Yes, you read it rightly!

Cockroaches can easily live inside your ears and not let you know about their existence for a long time. A 19-year-old was horrorstruck when doctors told him that his right ear has been home to 26 cockroaches. Li from Melbourne woke up in the middle of the night after an unbearable pain in his right ear, whatever it could be, it was not expecting insects inside his ear. When he stuck his finger into his right earlobe, he could sense a sensation deep inside. However, when approached his room mate for help, he did not sense anything unusual.But Li couldn’t tolerate the pain and decides to consult a expert to find out the reason only to be panic-stricken. After conducting an endoscopy which is a non-surgical procedure to examine a person, the doctor found out cockroaches inside Li’s ear. Now it wasn’t possible that the insects went inside his earlobe one by one.

Issue - 630 (9)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Africa’s blood diamonds are Dawood's latest biz, intelligence agencies say

NEW DELHI Investigators working to identify underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's offshore assets have stumbled on a startling fact: The fugitive is now in the business of conflict diamonds.In a bid to freeze Dawood's assets and hobble his operations, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval had tasked intelligence agencies to pinpoint the don's businesses. It is widely known that he has interests in real estate, money laundering and illegal financial services like hawala, betting and fake currencies.The sleuths have found that the current focus of the D Company, as Dawood's businesses are called, is to promote and expand the business of conflict diamonds in Africa and Dubai.Conflict diamonds are raw diamonds mined and sold by militants groups in African countries, particularly Angola, Sierra Leone and Congo, to “finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments”. These illegally mined stones are also called blood diamonds for the millions of civilian deaths caused by arms and

ammunition that their sales have procured. They have largely been blacklisted in the diamond markets across the world. Dawood's numerous links to countries such as Zimbabwe and Kenya, among others, have been detailed in a dossier created by the investigators and which has been accessed by TOI. It also describes the manner in which the gangster's syndicate acquires diamonds abroad and smuggles them into Dubai.The dossier talks about a conduit called Rehmat, who appears to be Dawood's pointman in Africa. Rehmat, who uses a mobile phone with an African number, hires African nationals, mostly women and young men, to act as couriers for Dawood's diamonds. Rehmat is known to have tapped the existing couriers to identify those who could carry the diamonds to the don's henchmen in Dubai.The intelligence investigators have established that Dawood has a Dubai-based company called Al Noor Diamonds which, they say, is a front for this illegal trade in blood diamonds.

Delhi exits ‘cruel’ Aurangzeb Road for ‘kind’ Abdul Kalam NEW DELHI From a Mughal emperor to the “Missile Man”, Aurangzeb Road in Lutyens’ Delhi has been renamed as Dr A P J Abdul Kalam Road in honour of the late President.

The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) took the decision at a meeting Friday, just a month after East Delhi BJP MP Maheish Girri proposed the move to “correct the mistakes made in our history”.

On July 31, Girri wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, requesting that the road be renamed. His demand met, Girri said: “Whenever we remember Aurangzeb, we think about cruelty and torture. We do not want to be reminded of that. A P J Abdul Kalam, on the other hand, is known for his love for the nation, his loyalty to the country, his generosity and kindness. We need to correct the mistakes made in our history.” The proposal was finalised after a council discussion that lasted a little over 15 minutes with little dissent. AAP MLA and NDMC member Surinder Singh was among the minority who questioned the choice of road.

“A few council members and I asked why Aurangzeb Road should be renamed. There are other main roads in the capital, such as Shanti Path, which

NGO refuses to allow real ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ to meet Geeta

A Panipat-based advocate, Momin reached Pakistan on August 23 to meet the woman and to initiate the process to unite her with her real parents.

Chandigarh In a major setback to real life Bajrangi Bhaijaan Momin Malik, the Karachi-based Edhi Foundation on Saturday did not allow him to meet the 23-yearold mute and deaf woman Geeta alias Guddi who is believed to be an Indian citizen.

A Panipat-based advocate, Momin reached Pakistan on August 23 to meet the woman and to initiate the process to unite her with her real parents.

He said he approached the NGO authorities on Saturday to get a Rakhi tied by Geeta but the NGO did now allow him to meet the

woman.

“Unfortunately, the official of the Edhi Foundation denied me the permission to meet Geeta on the festival of Rakhsha Bandhan,” Malik said. Malik, however, said that he is determined to unite Geeta with her real parents and has already initiated a legal process in Pakistan.

“I have filed a petition before the District and Sessions judge south and director Human Right, Ahmed Sabha.The court has issued notices to the Pakistan government and the Edhi Foundation to appear before it with a reply on August 31. The court has further ordered to produce Geeta in court and to arrange for sign language expert,” Malik said.

Malik also met human rights

activist Ansar Burney who has ensured all help to him. Besides Burney he also met noted scientist Dr Khalil Chisti in Karachi to seek his help for the noble cause. Malik on August 13 had also approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court to initiate the process from the Indian side.

Geeta lives with Bilqees Edhi, wife of Abdul Sattar Edhi who has founded the Edhi Foundation, which owns the world's largest ambulance service and does a lot of charity work. Geeta had crossed the border when she was 11 years old. She was spotted by Pakistani Rangers who handed her to the Edhi Foundation which has been supporting her from last 12 years.

Geeta's story came to light when Salman Khan-starrer film Bajrangi Bhaijaan hit the screens. A number of couples have staked claim that Geeta was their daughter. Sarabjit Singh's sister Dalbir Kaur had also said that she is keen to adopt Geeta. The Punjab and Haryana High Court has deferred the hearing of a petition seeking direction of the Ministry of External Affairs to bring Geeta back from Pakistan till September 10, 2015.

can be renamed. However, the counter argument was that Aurangzeb Road is an important road. Moreover, although Aurangzeb was a great emperor, he is known for his dictatorial rule and the suppression of his subjects.

Why should we honour such a person,” Singh said.

“Had there been a suggestion

Road.”

Meenakshi Lekhi, BJP MP from New Delhi, maintained that the proposal to rename Aurangzeb Road was pending since December 2014. “We had received requests from people, including residents of the area.

I had written to the council on this. The names which were suggested at that time

on renaming any other road bearing the name of a political leader, either the BJP or Congress or AAP would have raised objections,” he said.

However, INTACH Convenor (Delhi Chapter), A G K Menon called the move “unfortunate”.

“The argument of modifying history by changing the name of a road is rather naïve. While governments, since they are an elected body, have every right to take decisions which include changing names of roads, they should have compelling reasons. You cannot change history or correct history.”

Minutes after the NDMC decision, Kejriwal, who is an NDMC member tweeted, “Congrats. NDMC just now decided to rename Aurangzeb Road to A P J Abdul Kalam

included Dara Shikoh Road and Guru Gobind Singh Road,” she said.

“In May this year, some road signages, including those of Aurangzeb Road, were defaced. I wrote to the council again, raising law and order concerns on the issue. After Kalam’s demise, the proposal to rename the road after him was sent to the council... The proposal was accepted unanimously,” Lekhi said.The proposal note in the NDMC meeting to rename the road reasoned that other roads and areas had been “renamed in the past to honour great men and women.” The note cites changes including Connaught Place and Connaught Circus to Rajeev Chowk and Indira Chowk.

Shiv Sena to award Hindu families having five kids

NEW DELHI Concerned over the falling growth of Hindu population in the recent census figures, the Sena unit has introduced the reward system, district chief of the Shiv Sena, Veenu Lavania said.

The Agra unit of the Shiv Sena has announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh for every Hindu family which has five children.

Concerned over the falling growth of Hindu population in the recent census figures, the Sena

unit has introduced the reward system, district chief of the Shiv Sena, Veenu Lavania said.

Each family that has five kids between 2010 to 2015 will get Rs 2 lakh. The parents will need to furnish birth certificates from the municipal corporation, he added. Shiv Sena has also expressed concern over the growing Muslim population.

They demanded a uniform civil code and an end to the system of “several wives per husband”.

Issue - 630 (10)

Jat Sikh parents looking for suitable match for their , 32 yrs. old son, 5'-10" tall, Canadian born, clean shaven, degree holder, currently working on govt. job.

The girl should be well educated, family oriented, well versed in both cultures. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: bestwishes2016@outlook.com or Call: 647-965-0959 ***630*** Professionally qualified match for Jat Sikh Canadian Citizen only son 28y/5'9", B.B.A and Diploma in Computer Science. Working as a Professional in IT field.

Family well settled in Property business, Sisters Computer Engineers and married. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: matchforlife@hotmail.com or Call: 1- 613-823-8510 *** 630*** Jat Sikh parents looking for suitable match for their Canadian citizen, registered nurse daughter, 27 yrs. old, 5'-2" tall. The boy should be Canadian citizen/resident/professionally employed, vegetarian, non drinker, from well settled Jat Sikh family. Call: 905861-9262 or 647-985-9262 ***630*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their daughter, Canadian born, DOB 1980, 5'-5" tall, University graduate, working in government job, divorced after short marriage. The boy should be Jat Sikh, University educated and raised in Canada. Call: 1604-214-0911 ***630*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their beautiful, smart , 31 year old daughter , holds Chartered Professional Accountant designation and bachelor in economics from University of Toronto and professionally employed in Canada. If interested please response with latest picture and bio-data to: toronto.0454@gmail.com ***630*** Mair Rajput parents invite matrimonial alliance for their handsome son, 25 yrs. old, 5’10” tall, B.Sc. in Airlines Management, Master’s degree in tourism management, IATA qualified, running his own successful business in Ludhiana Punjab, presently in Brampton (Canada) on visitor Visa till Sept.

3, 2015. The girl should be Canadian Immigrant/Citizen with family Values. Boy’s Nanka family is well settled in Canada.

Please email recent picture & bio data to: robin_vr2006 @yahoo.com Or Call: 416-2741512 Or 647-981-8070 ***630*** Ramdasia Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their well settled daughter, 30 yrs. old, 5’3” tall, born and raised in Sweden, MBA degree, beautiful, settled in Job. The boy should be should be Canadian Citizen/immigrant, equally qualified and family oriented. Girls Nanaka parivar is well settled in Canada. Please email recent picture & bio data

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

to: tkaur83@hotmail.com or Call: 647-708-0580 or : 647-761-3313 ***630*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their son, Canadian Citizen, 30 year old, 6’-2” tall, born in India, University degree holder from Canadian University, running his own successful business. The girl should be tall, educated, from good family. Please send your bio-data and picture to: manpreetgill48@yahoo.com or Call: 1-778-344-0303 ***630*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their beautiful and slim daughter, 27 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, American Citizen, holder Master degree in bio-technology currently working in MNC. The boy should be Jatt Sikh, well educated, and professionally employed. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: misskaur510@gmail.com or Call: 1-510-931-9860 ***630*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their son, 36 yrs old, 5'-7" tall, non-drinker, non smoker, wears turban, born and raised in California, University graduate and professionally employed. The girl should be educated, beautiful and family oriented. Please send your biodata & recent pictures to: tsinghg77@yahoo.com *** 630*** Suitable Decent, well educated match for Kesadhari Jat Sikh boy, 29 yrs. old, 6' tall, B.Sc. Agriculture, working as Class1 officer (Punjab Govt.), having honourable land holding near Faridkot. Reputable family settled abroad. Call:1- 604-751-6098 or 011-91-94173-45535 *** 630*** Jat sikh parents seek a suitable alliance for their son, Canadian Citizen, 29 yrs. old., 5’-6” tall, smart, handsome, family oriented, B.Eng and MESc. from Canadian Unversity. The girl should be slim and qualified.

Please send your biodata & recent pictures to: inderpreetsran@gmail.com or call: 647 449 1640 *** 630*** Jatt Sikh Virk family seeking an educated girl match in US, for their son, 29 yrs old, 6' tall, MS Computer Science, Software Engineer in San Francisco.

Please send your bio-data & recent pictures to: simmer.virk@gmail.com or call: 1-619-228-3647 *** 630*** Delhi based Sikh family invites Canadian/American Girl for 39 yrs. old, 6’ tall, unmarried, clean shaven Australian Citizen. Elder brother is well settled in California bay area USA. The boy is willing relocate. Caste & religion no bar.

Please send your bio data & recent picture to: jitsahota@yahoo.com Or Call: 1510-224-7191 ***630*** Parents (Balmiki) invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter 26 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, B.D.S. degree holder, practicing in India, beautiful, fair complexion,

and family oriented. The boy should be professionally qualified with family values caste no bar.

Please email recent picture & bio data to: suresh_chand24@yahoo.ca Or Call: 647-868-1504 Or 011-9198728-10045 ***630*** Jat Sikh Sran parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, born and raised in Sonjose (California), 32 Yrs. old, 5'-6" tall, graduate in Finance and accounting from a reputed University of Sanjose State USA., Professionally employed. The boy should University graduate, Professionally settled, family oriented from California. Bay area preferred. Please email recent picture & bio data to: balwindersran2560@gmail.com Or Call: 1-408-824-5006 Or: 1408-849-1525 ***630*** 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 *** 630*** 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 *** 630*** 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 *** 630*** 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 ***630*** 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 ***630*** 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 *630* 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 *630*** Jatt Sikh family seek a suitable match for their handsome son, 37 yrs. old, 5'-8" tall, California raised, University graduate, Masters degree, professionally employed. The girl should be ready to relocate to california Please call 916-913-5905 *** 630*** 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 *** 630*** 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 ***630*** 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 ***630*** 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: 1604-522-4470 ***630*** 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 ***630*** 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: 647-761-3313 ***630***

I, Shamsher Singh permanent residence of ward no. 11, Badali Road, Kurali, SAS Nagar, Mohali, Punjab, India and presently residing at 32 Goswell St., Brampton, Ont. L6P 3G9, On., Canada, do here by change my name from Shamsher Singh to Shamsher Singh Basanti with immediate effect. All concerned please note. ***630*** I, Gurmeet Kaur permanent residence of ward no. 11, Badali Road, Kurali, SAS Nagar, Mohali, Punjab, India and presently residing at 32 Goswell St., Brampton, Ont. L6P 3G9, On., Canada, do here by change my name from Gurmeet Kaur to Gurmeet Kaur Basanti with immediate effect. All concerned please note. ***630*** We, Shamsher Singh and Gurmeet Kaur permanent residence of ward no. 11, Badali Road, Kurali, SAS Nagar, Mohali, Punjab, India and presently residing at 32 Goswell St., Brampton, Ont. L6P 3G9, On., Canada, do here by change our son’s name from Akashjot Singh to Akashjot Singh Basanti with immediate effect. All concerned please note. ***630*** We, Shamsher Singh and Gurmeet Kaur permanent residence of ward no.11, Badali Road, Kurali, SAS Nagar, Mohali, Punjab, India and presently residing at 32 Goswell St., Brampton, Ont. L6P 3G9, On., Canada, do here by change our daughter’s name from Navjot Kaur to Navjot Singh Basanti with immediate effect.

All concerned please note. ***630***

Issue - 630 (11)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

‘US had 31% of world’s public Verses from Quran helped mass shooters from 1966-2012’ capture Pak militant

The US was the site of 31 percent of the world's public mass shootings from 1966-2012, despite having only 5 percent of the world's population, according to a new study.

According to a research by Adam Lankford, associate professor of criminal justice at The University of Alabama, a combination of American exceptionalism, American gun culture and stressors are potential factors in explaining the commonality of public mass shooters in the US. Previous studies did not include statistics of offenders worldwide, a gap in research that has partly contributed to the assumption that mass shootings are an American problem, the study said.

“Until now, everyone was simply speculating about the relationship between firearms and public mass shootings. My study

provides empirical evidence of a positive association between the two,” Lankford said.Lankford's quantitative assessment of 171 countries relied on multiple sources, including active shooter reports from the New York Police Department and the The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), along with multiple international sources.

He used data of public mass shootings that resulted in the deaths of four or more people and didn't include data of homicides committed during domestic disputes, hostage situations or robberies.

“Public mass shooters in other countries were 3.6 times less likely to have used multiple weapons ? typically multiple guns, but occasionally a gun plus another weapon or weapons ? than those in

the US, where more than half of shooters used at least two weapons,” according to the study.

“The US, Yemen, Switzerland, Finland and Serbia are ranked as the Top 5 countries in firearms owned per capita, according to the 2007 Small Arms Survey, and my study found that all five are ranked in the Top 15 countries in public mass shooters per capita,” Lankford said.

“Given the fact that the US has over 200 million more firearms in circulation than any other country, it's not surprising that our public mass shooters would be more likely to arm themselves with multiple weapons than foreign offenders,” he said.

“I was surprised, however, that the average number of victims killed by each shooter was actually higher in other countries (8.81 victims) than it was in the US (6.87 victims) because so many horrific attacks have occurred here,” he added.

Lankford's paper, “Mass Shooters, Firearms, and Social Strains: A Global Analysis of an Exceptionally American Problem, will be published in a criminological journal in the coming months.

Indian babysitter in US jailed for 14 years for pushing baby to death An Indian national who had worked as a babysitter in Connecticut was sentenced to 14 years in a US federal prison for the death of a 19-month-old boy in her care last year.

An Indian national who had worked as a babysitter in Connecticut was sentenced to 14 years in US federal prison for the death of a 19-month-old boy in her care last year. Kinjal Patel, 29, was sentenced on Wednesday under a plea deal entered in Superior Court in New Haven in which she did not admit guilt but conceded there was enough evidence to secure her conviction.

Under the agreement she will also serve five years' probation for causing the death of Athiyan Sivakumar, who died at Yale-New Haven Hospital in January 2014 of multiple injuries, including a fractured skull. Police

say Patel initially told them that while she was babysitting the boy suffered a head injury after slipping on the floor. She later admitted she

became angry and pushed him in the face, causing him to fall backward and strike his head. The boy died three days later.

The chief state medical examiner's office ruled his death a homicide caused by blunt force trauma with multiple sites of impact.

Patel's lawyer, Kevin Smith, said on Thursday his client “never intended

to hurt the child.”

Patel told police after the toddler would not eat rice and spat in her face, she picked him up and slammed his feet onto the kitchen floor three times, then shook his head back and forth, according to the court documents.

She had been under investigation at the time by the state's Department of Children and Families for an incident a month earlier when the boy was brought to the hospital with cuts on his lip and a bruised chin.Although the boy's parents agreed at that time to stop hiring Patel, They continued using her services. The parents were later arrested for “risk of injury” to the child. Their case is pending. Patel is not a US citizen and federal immigration officials will likely deport her to India upon her release, her lawyer said.

Sajjad and the four other terrorists had crossed over to India from Lachipora in Uri on the night of August 17 after cutting the barbed wire fencing on the LoC. Pakistani militant Sajjad alias Ubaidullah was surrounded by Special Operation Group (SOG) personnel of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, even as four other terrorists had been killed. He later told his interrogators that his accomplice Usman, who was one of those killed, had said “the only way left now is to attain martyrdom”. But the SOG team slowly approached his hiding place and started reciting verses from the Quran. “Even after we had killed the other four militants, Sajjad was putting up resistance.

Some SOG policemen recited verses from the Quran and told the militant that they are also Muslim and will not kill him if he lays down his weapon,’’ said a top police officer who interrogated the arrested militant. “After that he didn’t show any resistance and was

captured.’’ Sajjad and the four other terrorists had crossed over to India from Lachipora in Uri on the night

the 22-year-old revealed that he is a Baloch residing at Muzzaffargarh in Punjab (Pakistan).

of August 17 after cutting the barbed wire fencing on the LoC. He told the investigators the group was led by Abu Tullah, who was also their Ameer. “Tullah was the first one to get killed in the encounter on Wednesday morning, soon after they were intercepted by a joint patrol of the Army and police at Qazinag Dhara area in North Kashmir,’’ Sajjad said during questioning. “Finally, Usman told me that there was no way to escape as the army and police had sealed all routes and the only way left was to attain martyrdom. Soon he (Usman) also got killed,’’ Sajjad said. Sources said

“Before crossing the LoC, this group had spent some time near Muzaffarabad. They had plans to establish a base in North Kashmir’s Rafiabad area,’’ a senior police officer told The Indian Express. He said the militants’ movement was detected soon after they crossed the LoC and an operation was launched by the two units of the Army, Special Operation Group of police and the Special Forces when the terrorists were near Qazinag Dhara area. Sajjad is the second terrorist to be caught alive in less than a month.

Issue - 630 (12)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

High-tech plan in place to save ancient sites from ISIS London A team of digital-age “monuments men” will fightback against the Islamic State's destruction of ancient sites by flooding the Middle East region with cameras and harnessing 3D printing technology to reconstruct the destroyed antiquities, according to a media report.

Archaeologists at Oxford and Harvard will flood the region with 3D cameras in a plan to create a full digital record of every threatened artefact.

If the treasures they photograph are destroyed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the academics will harness 3D printing technology to reconstruct them in the same style as the original antiquities, The Times reported.

The plan has come to light after the obliteration by ISIS of the 2,000-year-old temple of Baal Shamin in Palmyra in Syria this week, the latest action in the worst spate of archaeological

destruction since the Second World War. In a letter from the Oxford-based Institute for Digital Archaeology, which conceived the 2 million

possible”.

The institute, working with the heritage body UNESCO, aims to gather five million images of antiquities, from sprawling

pounds project, the group said it aimed to “flood the Middle East with thousands of low-cost 3D cameras and enlist local partners to photograph as many items of historical significance as

Mesopotamian palaces to handfuls of coins and pottery, by the end of the year.In a race against the bulldozers and sledgehammers of ISIS, it plans to compile 20 million pictures of objects before 2017.“Palmyra is rapidly becoming the symbol of ISIS' cultural iconoclasm,” Roger Michel, the institute's director, was quoted as saying.

“If ISIS is permitted to wipe the slate clean and rewrite the

US declares Aziz Haqqani global terrorist

history of a region that defined global aesthetic and political sensibilities, we will collectively suffer a costly and irreversible defeat. But there is hope. By placing the record of our past in the digital realm, it will lie for ever beyond the reach of vandals and terrorists,” he said.

Recent attacks on holy sites began in March 2001 when Taliban fighters in Afghanistan destroyed two statues of Buddha carved into the hills of Bamiyan.

From the end of next month the Institute for Digital Archaeology will distribute hundreds of internet-enabled 3D cameras through archaeology networks in Iraq. It plans to expand into Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan and Turkey.

To provide a complete record, each object will need to be photographed from several angles. The information can then be uploaded to an open-source database online.

The plan is reminiscent of the George Clooney film “The Monuments Men” in which a team of experts were sent into Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. However, in the real plan experts will flood parts of the Middle East with 3D cameras.

British mother feared on way to Syria with 4 children

London Scotland Yard fear a missing British Muslim mother and her four children, including a fouryear-old son, may be travelling to Syria, where dreaded militant outfit Islamic State has occupied large swathes of land.Zahera Tariq, 33, was last seen in Walthamstow, east London, on Tuesday, and is thought to have left the country via London City Airport.Tariq and her four children were reported missing by a family member the next day, the Metropolitan Police said.CCTV images of the family prior to their departure to Amsterdam have been released.Commander Richard Walton, of the Met's counter-terrorism command, said her relatives were “extremely worried”.“We are concerned about Zahera and her four children and we are doing all we can to work with our partners and colleagues both here and abroad to try and locate them and make sure they are all safe and well,” Walton added.However, he said there was “no current information” to suggest Tariq had already reached Syria.

US teen jailed more than 11 years for Islamic State conviction

Washington Abdul Aziz Haqqani, a top leader of Pakistan-based dreaded Haqqani network, has been named as a 'Specially Designated Global Terrorist' by the US.Abdul Aziz Haqqani, a top leader of Pakistan-based dreaded Haqqani network, has been named as a 'Specially Designated Global Terrorist' by the US for his involvement in planning and carrying out attacks against Afghanistan.

Following his inclusion in the 'Specially Designated Global Terrorist' list, Aziz Haqqani comes under the ambit of US sanctions, which prohibits any US national from maintaining any relationship with him and seizure of all his assets, if any, in the US.Aziz Haqqani assumed the leadership role of the al Qaedalinked Haqqani network after the death of his brother Badruddin Haqqani.In August last year, the US had announced a reward of up to USD 5 million for information leading to the location of Aziz.

Aziz Haqqani is a senior member of the Haqqani Network and brother of Haqqani Network leader Sirajuddin Haqqani.

For several years, he has been involved in planning and carrying out improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against Afghan government targets, and assumed responsibility for all major Haqqani Network attacks after the death of his brother, Badruddin Haqqani, the State Department said.

The Department of State designated the Haqqani Network as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in September 2012.

The Haqqani Network has planned and carried out a number of significant kidnappings and attacks against US interests in Afghanistan, as well as Afghan government and civilian targets.

The group is also blamed for several deadly attacks against Indian interests in Afghanistan including the 2008 bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul that killed 58 people.

In June this year, Afghanistan's intelligence agency has arrested a group of Haqqani network militants who plotted terror attack from Pakistan on a popular guest house here that killed 14 people, including four Indians.

Washington A tech-savvy US teenager from Virginia was sentenced to 11 years and four months in prison on Friday for conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State extremist group.

Ali Shukri Amin, 17, from the small town of Manassas an hour’s drive from Washington DC, will be subject to a lifetime of supervised release and monitoring of his Internet activities.

He is thought to be the first minor convicted in the United States of providing material aid to the extremist group, which has declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.The prolific Twitter user, who sent more than 7,000 messages on the site in support of IS, pleaded guilty in June.Under the Twitter handle @Amreekiwitness, he provided IS supporters with instructions on using the virtual currency Bitcoin to conceal financial donations to the radical Islamist group and the best way to encrypt their online exchanges.He also offered guidance to sympathizers seeking to travel to Syria to fight with IS, including another Virginia teen, Reza Niknejad, who traveled to Syria to join IS in January.Niknejad, 18, was charged in June with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiring to provide material support to IS and conspiring to kill and injure

people abroad.US prosecutors welcomed the sentence.Assistant attorney general John Carlin said “more and more” IS propaganda is seeping into American

providing material aid to IS.In Florida, a 27-year-old Kenyan was sentenced to 15 years for conspiring to support Al-Qaeda, and its affiliates in Syria and Somalia, Al-Nusra Front and the

communities “reaching those who are most vulnerable.“The Department of Justice will continue to use all tools to disrupt the threats that ISIL poses,” he said, using an alternative acronym for the group.Those who use social media to support IS would be “prosecuted with no less vigilance” than those who take up arms for the group, said US attorney Dana Boente.Amin’s lawyer, Joseph Flood, had described his client as a stellar student from a good family who was outraged by rights abuses under Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

When Amin pleaded guilty, Flood said he was the first minor convicted in the United States of

Shebab, prosecutors said Friday.Mohamed Hussain Said, who pleaded guilty in May, received wire transfers from a coconspirator destined for Shebab and recruited experienced Shebab fighters to fight in Syria.US prosecutors said he also tried to recruit others for attacks inside the United States.

On Thursday, another man was arrested in Arizona and charged with providing material support to IS for allegedly helping a New York college student travel to Syria to train for jihad. The head of the FBI, James Comey, told lawmakers last month that upwards of 200 Americans have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria to join IS.

Issue - 630 (13)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

IS struggle to make progress in Taliban bastion Afghanistan Khogyani The Islamic State group had ambitious plans for Afghanistan, but Taliban resistance, US drone strikes, and a society less scarred by sectarianism mean the extremists have so far failed to repeat their Middle Eastern breakthrough.The jihadist group, which controls large areas of Syria and Iraq, has been trying for months to establish itself in Afghanistan’s eastern badlands, challenging the Taliban on their own turf.

Its franchise in the war-torn country has managed to recruit disaffected Taliban fighters, as the fractious Afghan militant movement wrestles with a bitter power transition.But the loss of senior commanders in drone strikes and the group’s signature brutality, which repels many Afghans, has helped stem its advance.

Frequent clashes and firefights with Taliban insurgents have also

hampered its bid to capture significant territory. “In Iraq and Syria, you might say (IS) are in stage six or seven or eight,” top US military officer General Martin Dempsey said last month.

“In Libya, they are in stage three or four, and in Afghanistan they are in stage one or two.”

His views are echoed by other NATO officials who say that IS in Afghanistan are not yet capable of

carrying out the sort of coordinated operations they are conducting in Iraq and Syria, although the potential exists for them to evolve into a bigger threat.Some Taliban insurgents, particularly in the restive eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar, have adopted the IS flag to rebrand themselves as a more lethal force as NATO troops depart after 14 years of war.The risk of

Pakistan bans Islamic State,

US issues travel advisory

Islamabad Pakistan has banned the Islamic State militant group that has overrun vast stretches of Iraq and Syria after repeatedly denying the dreaded outfit's presence within its territory.“The Islamic State or Daesh has been banned

in Pakistan,” an interior ministry official said on Saturday. The decision was taken on recommendation of the Foreign Office, which regularly updates the Pakistan government about international militant groups banned by the

United Nations. Banners and graffiti in support of Islamic State (IS), also known as Daesh in Arabic, have often appeared in Pakistan but the government has until now rejected its presence inside the country.

However, the official said the outfit has been declared a proscribed entity.The group -- which is banned under a UN sanctions regime -- is believed to have gained a foothold in the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.The brutal organisation has made major inroads into Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan, overtaking its weaker contenders, the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

ISIS Destroys Part Of Another Ancient Temple In Palmyra, Monitor Says

BEIRUT The hardline Islamic State group has destroyed part of an ancient temple in Syria's Palmyra city, a group monitoring the conflict said on Sunday.

The militants targeted the Temple of Bel,

a Roman-era structure in the central desert city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It is the second temple Islamic State has targeted in Palmyra this month. The group detonated explosives in the ancient Baal Shamin temple on Aug. 25, an act that cultural agency UNESCO has called a war crime aimed at wiping out a symbol of Syria's diverse cultural heritage.

The extent of the damage at the Temple of Bel was not known, the Observatory said, citing its contacts on the ground.

Activists on social media also reported the destruction at the temple, one of Palmyra's most important structures.

defections grew after the July announcement of Mullah Omar’s demise, with many angry Taliban fighters accusing the leadership of covering up the supremo’s death for two years.Some top cadres including Omar’s son and brother have refused to pledge allegiance to new leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, saying the process to select him was rushed and even biased.

“The Taliban have no redeeming features,” said Mullah Mirwaïs, a former Taliban militant who is now an IS commander in the Kajaki district in the southern province of Helmand.

Michael Kugelman, Afghanistan expert at the Washingtonbased Woodrow Wilson

International Center for Scholars, said Islamic State is “flavour of the month right now. It has a dramatic appeal to a lot of alienated militants.” But the Taliban are attempting to counter that, with an aggressive drive north from their southern and eastern strongholds, as well as a wave of fatal bombings in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Experts say the escalating violence demonstrates Mullah Mansour’s bid to boost his image within the Taliban, which could halt the defections to IS.“The Taliban remain a formidable fighting force.

It’s in a position to fight back and push back against IS inroads,” Kugelman said. “The Taliban has been able to keep IS at bay in eastern Afghanistan.”US drone strikes in recent weeks have also dealt a significant blow to IS in Afghanistan, killing dozens of suspected cadres, including the group’s AfghanistanPakistan regional chief Hafiz Saeed.NATO spokesman Colonel Brian Tribus said IS is an “operationally emergent” group but the Taliban pose a “greater threat” to the Afghan government and foreign forces.Crucially, beyond the battlefield the

Taliban have been far more successful than IS in attracting the support of local Afghans.“Daesh (IS) militants are cruel they kill without reason,” explained a resident of the volatile district of Achin in eastern Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan. The Taliban, who have themselves often been accused of savagery during their 14-year insurgency, are seeking to appear as a bulwark against IS’s rein of brutality and as a legitimate group waging an Islamic war.Earlier this month the Taliban condemned a “horrific” video that apparently showed IS fighters blowing up bound and blindfolded Afghan prisoners with explosives.

“This un-Islamic act... can never be justified,” the Taliban said.One other reason IS have struggled to gain a firmer foothold in Afghanistan, Kugelman said, is because of the lack of a deeply sectarian environment.“It’s sharp sectarian divides that IS is exploiting in Iraq and Syria,” he said. “IS simply cannot use any sort of sectarian divide as traction to gain a foothold in the region. You simply don’t have a sharp divide in Afghanistan.”

Issue - 630 (14)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Patels bust Modi's favourite Gujarat model ! By Amulya Ganguli Nothing shows more starkly the distortions that have vitiated the policy of reservations as the agitation by the financially and politically influential Patel community in Gujarat for inclusion in the backwardcaste category to avail of the quota system in the allocation of government jobs and educational opportunities.

Behind their quest for safety in the reserved categories is the evident failure of the muchvaunted 'Gujarat model' of development which was touted

by Narendra Modi as the panacea for the entire country.

Yet, since the preference for reservations is a throwback to the days of scarcity during the licence-permit-control raj, the latest upsurge shows that little has changed in the economy.

The scourge of joblessness remains as potent under the pro-market dispensation as it was under the controlled economy.

Even then, there is something odd about an enterprising community like the Patels wanting the government to act as their nanny, as it were. The OBC (Other Backward Class) of the Hindi belt, too, comprised dominant groups in the countryside when they secured 27 percent reservations for themselves in 1990.

But unlike the Patels, they occupied a lowly position socially. As B.P. Mandal, a former chief minister of Bihar and author of the Mandal commission report

recommending 27 percent reservation, said, he was not allowed as a school student to eat with his upper caste companions by the Brahmin principal.

Mandal was discriminated against although he belonged to a wealthy landowning family.

But the Patels or Patidars - the word means the same as zamindars - never experienced such social disadvantages. Not surprisingly, they were part of the anti-reservation movements in Gujarat in the late 1970s and early 1980s directed against the Congress-led state government's KHAM vote bank comprising Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims.

It is strange, therefore, that the Patels of the Patel-motel fame - they run a large number of roadside hotels across the US - should now want to take a step back into the backward caste category.

Such a regressive outlook is all the more curious because the Patels, like most Gujaratis, are known for their entrepreneurship. For them to seek reservations in government establishments cannot be easily explained when the country has opted for a pro-market economy with its emphasis on the private sector.

The role of the government and the public sector is therefore expected to shrink in the coming years. As such, it makes little point to seek employment in these sectors.

Similarly, seeking admission via reservations in government schools and colleges doesn't

not expanding fast enough to make up for the reduction of government jobs. Besides, the

make any sense because of the preference of parents now to admit their children in Englishmedium private schools as these are believed to be better able to prepare the students to face the challenges of a globalized environment.

In a way, the agitation by the Patels for OBC status is similar to the one by the Gujjars of Rajasthan who wanted a relegation from their existing backward caste category to a Scheduled Tribe (ST) classification since the recognition of Jats as OBCs in the state eroded the availability of reserved jobs.

This kind of a backward march is the result of dwindling employment opportunities at a time when the private sector is

Gujarat model may be more hype than reality.

Till now, the failures of this model have been noted by Amartya Sen and other Leftists in social sectors such as infant mortality, whose rate is as high as 60.9 per 1,000 children in Gujarat against 16.2 in Kerala.

Moreover, the percentage of people below the poverty line in Gujarat is 31.6 against 19.6 in Kerala.But the latest disturbances point to failures in the commercial segment as well with the small and medium enterprises not faring well and the capital-intensive industries not creating enough jobs.

While the phenomenon of jobless growth where robots replace humans on the shop floor is one aspect of the scene

Conversions, drugs reason for declining population says Sikh diaspora

TORONTO Sikh leaders in North America blame conversions, drugs and migration for the decline in the growth rate of Sikh population in India from 1.9 percent to 1.7 percent as per the 2011 census.

“While Punjab leaders are promoting their family businesses, the youth has sunk in drugs. So what do you expect from drug addicts?” asked Toronto-based Sikh leader Nachhattar Singh Chohan. Chohan, who heads the Indian Trucking Association in Canada, said: “Yes, migration from Punjab to the West is one reason.

But the bigger factor is that people are abandoning Sikhism and joining various ‘deras’ in Punjab.

The SGPC has failed the Sikhs.” Vancouver-based community activist Balwant Sanghera said: “First and foremost reason for declining Sikh

population is the migration from Punjab to the West. Second, there is growing awareness to have smaller families.”

Shrinking land holdings in Punjab are also forcing people to have fewer children to avoid further division of land among

Dharma in Western Hemisphere, said the Sikh population is declining because people are “not adhering to the Sikh code of conduct and leaving Sikhism to join various ‘deras’ due to poor leadership and discrimination against

siblings.

“Finally, drugs are taking their toll on the Punjab youth. The drugs are reported to be causing impotence amongst boys, resulting in fewer births,” Sanghera said.

Los Angeles-based Bhai Satpal Singh Kohli, the ambassador of Sikh

Dalits and poor Sikhs in Punjab.”

He too said Sikhs were migrating for better opportunities. “Moreover, the trend is that Sikhs are increasingly marrying out of their religion.

So the majority of their children now end up not being Sikhs,” he added.

Kohli welcomes the directive of the Akal Takht jathedar to each Sikh family to have four children. “But more importantly, Sikhs need not select family planning for a male child and stop female foeticide.”

Yuba city-based Jasbir Kang blames the destruction of the economy of rural Punjab for the migration of Sikhs to foreign lands. “Events and after-affects of 1984 had serious impact on the Sikh psyche... Sikhs never committed suicides until the last two decades.

People have lost their pride and self-respect,” Kang said.

He added that Sikhs are converting to other religions as the clergy has failed to address the “issues of caste divisions, drug abuse and failure the issues of gender gap. If moms lose respect for faith, then children will not follow it either. We are at a crossroads”.

in Gujarat, another is how reservations have come to be viewed as the panacea for such situations, especially when those searching for jobs or educational opportunities find their prospects blocked not by deserving individuals but by beneficiaries of allotted quotas where castes are the passwords.

In a system where the accident of birth trumps merit, the demand by the leader of the Gujarat agitators, 22-year-old Hardik Patel, that either the provision of all facilities be determined by caste or that the system should be thrown open to all will appear justifiable.

Arguably, the gross misuse of reservations by myopic politicians intent on catering for particular support groups has led to this volatile situation. The worst example of such misuse is how the Supreme Court's directive on excluding the creamy layer or the successful beneficiaries from the quota system has been negated by a constant upward revision of the criteria for such exclusion by the ruling politicians.

For Modi, the fire in his backyard is the most worrisome of the problems which he faces. And there are many - an economy which refuses to look up, the imbroglio over pension for ex-servicemen and an agitation in the Film and Television Institute of India which underlines the government's insensitivity to matters of popular culture.

Indian-origin girl wins Miss Teen Canada pageant

TORONTO An Indian-origin teenager has won the ‘Miss Teen Canada Petite Globe 2015’ pageant held in Toronto recently, a media report said.

Arshpreet Chahal, 15, of Vancouver was crowned champion at the national finals held at the Richmond Hill Centre of Performing Arts in Toronto last week, the Voice Online reported. Seventy girls contested in the pageant that was held in Toronto from August 12 to 23.

Prior to the national finals, the contestants took part in many promotional activities. The Class 9 student at Vancouver’s John Oliver Secondary School was chosen a national finalist in December last year.

Arshpreet said that winning the title was not easy.

“It required hard work and maximum effort,” she was

quoted as saying. “Her favourite subject is English. She plans on pursuing her dream of

being a lawyer and she loves animals,” the official website of the pageant was quoted as saying.

“She plays basketball, soccer, and field hockey and is working as a freelance model. Her hobbies include reading, writing and travelling,” the website added.

Issue 630 (15)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

An action thriller without thrills Direction: Kabir Khan Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Katrina Kaif, Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub.

Ratings: 2 Stars In 2013, Bollywood imagined an idyllic world where RAW agents turned superheroes and nabbed Dawood Ibrahim in Pakistan and brought him to India. That was Nikhil Advani’s D-Day, which saw India avenge for the 1993 blasts in Bombay. Earlier this year, we had Akshay

Kumar, Anupam Kher and company heading to Saudi Arabia and returning back with a most wanted Maulana. This time around, we have a one-man army in Daniyal Khan (Saif Ali Khan) who is on a mission

to get justice for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008.

Director Kabir Khan, who in his last super hit film told audiences that we should make peace with our otherwise favourite worst neighbour, does a complete U-turn and has made a film that says that Pakistan, the land of cutie pies like Munni, also holds baddies who have orchestrated terror attacks on India. It explains why Pakistan has banned the film. In doing so, they have saved their citizens

from watching a dull film which tries too hard to be a spy action thriller.

Trouble with Phantom is that for a film which tackles the grave issue of killing the masterminds of 26/ 11 attacks, it is hard to

take it seriously. A chunk of the blame lies in the casting. You just can’t find yourself rooting for Saif Ali Khan, who fails to pass the test of an awe-inspiring, charismatic, daredevil spy.

It doesn’t help that he carries a monotonous look throughout the film no matter what circumstance he finds himself in. Giving him good company in the bad acting department is Katrina Kaif who gets to tear up a little towards the end so that the audiences can too. They won’t.

In Phantom, Samit Mishra (Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub), an ordinary officer working for RAW convinces three of his colleagues to go ahead with a plan to eliminate the four biggest perpetrators of the attacks which killed 166 and brought the city to a standstill. They take it upon themselves to find the most enigmatic man for the duty. Enter Daniyal Khan, a disgraced, aloof army officer with the worst fake beard ever, who agrees to be the James Bond so as to win back his lost honour. He is the right fit, we are told, because nobody cares about him.

That’s what ends up happening in the film too because Khan’s Daniyal doesn’t just lack flair but also has absolutely no abil-

ity to be deceptive. Also nobody in the government is informed about this Zero Dark Thirty-like operation because you know they won’t agree to it.

So begins Daniyal Khan’s globetrotting killing spree which sees him go from some snowy place in India to London to Chicago to Beirut to what is supposed to be Syria and finally to what they want viewers to believe is Pakistan. Khan gets a little help from Katrina Kaif, who here is named Nawaz, which we think is

perhaps Kabir Khan wishing he could have cast the talented Nawazuddin Siddiqui in this film and given it some compelling thespian drama. Nawaz, we are told, works for Darkwater, an outfit which through the course of this film shuttles from being the American security consulting firm Blackwater and Doctors without Borderslike humanitarian organisation. Daniyal Khan moves from one destination to another with such ease that he may as well be a

mutant with superpowers.

Alas nothing in Saif Ali Khan’s demeanour or performance convinces so.

The second, slightly better edited half largely unfolds in Pakistan where Daniyal and Nawaz have an elaborate plan to knock off not one but two most wanted men, one of them being Hafiz Saeed who in the film goes by Haaris Saeed.

The execution strategy in Pakistan is a tad more credible and thereby engaging than the ones carried out before.

doors of the teleporter machine, which makes an alarming amount of light and sound? How about the childhood sequence that has two very uncomfort-

able-looking kids handling some very serious stuff?

How about the wise old Black man who calls everybody “son” (and never anybody daughter) and has

taken all from a Kosovo orphan to a delusional adult who has locked himself in with symphonies and served jail time under his wings? And then there

is the chewing-gum munching corporate honcho/government collaborator played by the always creepy Tim Blake Nelson.

The Fantastic 4 are young, right out of school Star cast: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B Jordan, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell Director: Josh Trank Ratings: 2 Stars When Fantastic 4 becomes Fant4stic, you do know the reboot you are getting. Yes, they are younger, right out of school.

But brilliant as they are talking teleportation from 5th grade and listening to Portishead while figuring out pattern recognition — they want us to believe that the only reason they go looking for “another dimension”, is to find “resources to save the Earth”. For how can our planet be saved otherwise from its greedy, corrupt, bad and alwaysfighting big governments?

And so when they step into a machine to be transported to that other dimension and return with their superpowers, they stomp their feet petulantly at the very same governments trying to use them “as tool”. Yet, when it comes down to it, the Fantastic Four and the villain Doom leave at least two planets badly scarred, with the government having no hand in it at all. But that’s the larger picture. How about the smaller ones?

Like Kate Mara stepping in for Jessica Alba, or Michael B Jordan for Chris Evans? Especially when the older two are still fresh in our memory? How about the story that never travels too far from the

Issue 630 (16)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

I am on a small break says Ileana D’Cruz She has not signed on any project post her last outing Happy Ending and the actress Ileana D’Cruz says she is on a break and will return soon to the silver screen with a significant role.

The 27-year-old Barfi! star said she is not happy with the film offers and have been rejecting them. “I am on a little break because I wanted to do something different. The kind of offers that were coming on my way were not something which I wanted to do. So, I thought I should wait for a while. There is something interesting in the pipeline right now but it is not yet confirmed,” Ileana told .

The Mumbai-born actress, who was in the capital recently to launch an online shopping portal Royzez.com, said she has been busy exploring photography.

“Couple of months ago, I purchased a camera. I completely prefer online shopping because it is just more convenient. It is nice to have everything under one portal. And I think my latest buy camera is one of my best online purchase. I love photography. I love taking pictures of kids because they are the best models,” said the actress, who unlike her contemporaries is not a fan of selfies.

Ileana started her showbiz career with Tamil films and got a dream launch in Bollywood opposite Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra in Anurag Basu’s much-

Soha Ali Khan-starrer screened in Toronto National Award-winning director Shivaji Lotan Patil’s film 31st October, starring Soha Ali Khan and Vir Das, was screened at the Sikh International Film Festival Toronto (SIFFT) as part of its three-day celebration of Sikh stories and storytellers. 31st October, a film based on the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the events that followed, was screened on Saturday at the Rose Theatre, Brampton,” read the festival’s official site sikhfoundationcanada.com. The movie is said to be a true life story of a Sikh family in 1984. “We begin the film with Indira Gandhi’s assassination and we show how a family survives. People have died, become drug addicts, and

we have a widows’ colony. The impact of 1984 has been disastrous and permanent. By making this film, I am not inviting controversy or stirring a debate, but I want people to realise that such acts should not be be repeated,” said the film’s producer Harry Sachdeva.

acclaimed Barfi! followed by Phata Poster Nikla Hero, Main Tera Hero and Happy Ending.

But her last outing as a young romantic novelist in Happy Ending, also starring Saif Ali Khan, failed to register at the box-office.

“Whenever I do a film, I do it with a conviction that it will be accepted by the audience.

That’s how I choose my films too. I felt ‘Happy Ending’ will also do well. I really don’t know what didn’t work. Everyone has a different liking,” she said.

Ileana also denied the reports that she is starring opposite Shah Rukh Khan, whom she shares her birthday with, in Yash Raj Films’ next venture Fan. “No I am not a part of ‘Fan’, There is a misunderstanding among people that I am a part of ‘Fan’ but I was a never a part of that.”

Despite her shares of highs and lows, the actress said she is happy that her career has shaped up well.

“My journey has been amazing.

It’s something which I got by chance. I love that how it took me so far without being planned anything. It has been a mixture of luck and hardwork. I just feel lucky to have got so many amazing opportunities that have come my way. I am very happy with the way my career has shaped up,” she said. When asked has she bid adieu to her down south, Ileana said, “I would love to do films in south. There is a certain kind of comfort there. There is a familiarity because I know the people there. I recently attended Chiranjeevi ji’s birthday. it was just amazing meeting them after so long.

Women are treated badly in Bollywood says Kangana Ranaut

Kangana Ranaut is easily among the topmost names in the list of success stories in the last decade in Bollywood, if such a list were to be drawn out. The actor has had to face rock-bottom humiliation when her films didn’t work. People had only the wrong things to say about this small town girl from Mandi, Himachal Pradesh; the stranger who spoke in a certain way, dressed in a certain way.

Now, she’s tasting success of the kind that’s difficult to come by. Two National Awards down the line, and even after being the highest paid female actor in Bollywood, Kangana is not ready to accept the tight-lippedness that many of her contemporaries in Bollywood are so known for. Ahead of the release of her upcoming film, Nikhil Advani’s Katti Batti, the Queen star opens up about her straightforward attitude, her frustrations and more in this ‘honest’ interview. Excerpts: ‘Struggler of the century’, who doesn’t want to be a ‘role model’. And you have a balanced take on the love-hate relationship with your audience. You believe that the audience can turn their back on you any single day. Honesty is something that you’ve mostly been known for.

Does it come at a cost, especially in an industry that is known for its

diplomatic stance? Not really... especially when you don’t know you can be any other way than being honest. I don’t know if honesty is my forte. I think that that’s how everyone should be. But...

I don’t know; it’s good for me. I’m honest to people and they are honest to me. It works for me. And I think somewhere people have accepted the fact that I do my own thing, I say what I feel like. I think that works for me, and that works for people as well.

Katti Batti comes at a time when Kangana the actor is on cloud nine career wise. Two National Awards, the success of Tanu Weds Manu Returns: You symbolise all that a new actor could possibly look up to, say five years after entering the industry.

How does it feel? It feels amazing. I feel when I was struggling, I was in a place where, you know... women were not respected. My attitude was very much like if I had to project my frustration, my evilness, so I might as well do it when I’m at my weakest. And I’ve been a victim of that sort of frustration on many occasions. I felt that if they had respect for the top actress of today; if they knew that today she’s this way, but tomorrow she might become a Kangana, and she will then choose not to work with me, right?

Issue 630 (17)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Zendaya Coleman hits back at Twitter trolls against parents Model-actress Zendaya Coleman says she would “pray” for those people, who called her parents

“ugly” on micro-blogging site Twitter. The 18-yearold Disney starlet was left shocked after people made disparaging remarks about the appearance of her mother Claire Stoermer and father

Kazembe Ajamu and in response she wrote a heartfelt message about how proud she is of her family, reported Female First.

One Twitter user originally shared a picture of the star with her parents and wrote, “they made a gorgeous ass child lol (sic)” and another replied saying: “her parents really ugly I really would cry (sic).”

Zendaya tweeted, “First I’m gonna pray for you.

While you’re so concerned about what my parents look like, please know that these are two of the most selfless people in the world. “They have chosen to spend their entire life, not worried about trivial things such as looks and insulting people’s parents on Twitter, but instead became educators who have dedicated their lives to teaching, cultivating and filling young shallow mind (one of the most important yet underpaid jobs we have).”

Bradley Cooper, Irina Shayk ‘getting stronger’

Hollywood superstar Bradley Cooper and model girlfriend Irina Shayk’s relationship has reportedly got “stronger” after their holiday in Capri, Italy.

Cooper, 40, and Shayk, 29, who started dating in May post his split from long-term girlfriend Suki Waterhouse could not be “happier” after their recent trip, reported Female First. A source close to the couple said, “Bradley and Irina couldn’t be in a happier place in their relationship. They have gotten to know all of the little things about each other during this trip to Italy. “Their attraction for each other just keeps on getting stronger and they always want to be in each other’s corner.”

The American Sniper star and the Russian beauty quietly checked out of the island’s luxurious JK Place hotel on August 23 but made no attempt their affection while soaking up the sun in recent days.

An eyewitness told, “They were always together. They were all smiles and kisses. They were living life to the fullest. There was that end of summer, end of holiday look on their faces. Not exactly sadness, but a realisation that the carefree last few days were over and that

it was time to go back home, back to work - that sort of thing.”

Despite preparing to resume their hectic careers, friends close to the couple believe they will not have a problem making time to see each other. “Communication is key with them.

So even when busy season hits for them, they plan on making sure their relationship just keeps building and staying connected as much as they can,” the insider said.

Not enough female driven stories Confidence is beautiful says in Hollywood says Diablo Cody Jennifer Lawrence

Oscar-winning scriptwriter Diablo Cody feels it is hard to push for femaledriven stories in Hollywood where the lead is not “necessarily sympathetic or bubbly”. “Obviously there’s a situation in Hollywood, where there is not enough recognition for female writers, female directors or femaledriven stories. It’s nice to be well known and to have people recognize what I’ve worked on, but what’s still hard for me, every time, is convincing people to make a film with a female lead who isn’t necessarily sympathetic or bubbly. And that’s hard,” Cody said at the recent Summer of Sony event in Cancun, Mexico.

The scriptwriter-producer, 37, said while there are

popular actors who can play grey parts and be still loved by the audience, it is not the same for female stars. “That’s where the problem really seems to be, is the idea of like how

do we embrace a female scoundrel? It’s so easy for people to love Jack Nicholson or Warren Beatty in a certain type of role, but it’s harder for them to embrace Meryl Streep. So that’s what I’ve run into,” she said.

While Cody’s award-winning script Juno revolved around a teenager tackling her unplanned pregnancy, Ricky And The Flash is about a rockstar mother trying to reconnect with her resentful children.

Directed by Academy award-winner Jonathan Demme, the film throws up interesting questions about the conflict women face in juggling their career and family.

Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence thinks “confidence” in a person is beautiful. The 25-year-old Hunger Games star believes one can only look good if they feel good, reported Us magazine. “Ultimately, it’s confidence that makes someone sexy and beautiful... When you feel amazing, it really shows,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence, however, admits it is impossible for her to look perfect on red carpet without her “pit crew”.

“I think it’s important to give a hairstylist and make-up artist enough time. I’m always doing the nails at the same time. My dad calls (the team) ‘pit crew’.” Lawrence, who is not a part of social media,

understands its importance for her generation. “Even though I don’t engage in social media, it’s been a huge part of letting our generation realise that they have a voice and you can get it out to the world,” she said.

Issue 630 (18)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Vietnam grants amnesty to more than 18,000 prisoners Hanoi Vietnam has granted amnesty to more than 18,000 prisoners to mark the 70th anniversary of its independence from France. Giang Son, deputy chairman of the President’s Office, told a news conference Friday that 18,539 inmates were granted amnesty under two directives signed by President Truong Tan Sang. They

will be released from prisons starting Monday. He

says the amnesty reflects a tradition for mercy in

Vietnam as well as the government’s clemency policy.

Officials said there were 34 foreigners are among those to be released 16 from China, six from Malaysia, six from Laos and two from Australia.

More than 63,000 prisoners had been given early release under presidential amnesties since 2009, according to government figures.

Over 70 bodies found in Hungarian truck Vienna The decomposing bodies of over 70 suspected migrants were found in an abandoned truck with a Hungarian licence plate on the border with Austria, Austrian officials said on Friday.

Authorities had initially estimated that between 20 to 50 people died in the vehicle equipped with refrigeration, BBC reported.

But the toll turned out to be higher.

Police discovered the bod-

ies on Thursday morning after being sent to investigate the dumped vehicle on the A4 motorway heading

towards Vienna.

Police said it appeared that those in the vehicle had been dead for one-and-a-

half to two days. Their nationality was not immediately known.

The victims were probably already dead when the vehicle entered Austria from Hungary, the authorities said.

The truck had the logo of a Slovakian poultry company, Hyza, which said it no longer owned the vehicle but the buyers had not removed the branding.

The truck left the Hungarian capital Budapest on Wednesday morning.

Former teacher jailed for secretly filming over 100 students in UK

London A 53-year-old former teacher has been jailed for nearly four years for secretly filming over 100 teenage students taking shower at a private boarding school in the UK - totalling more than 2,500 hours of footage - filmed over a period of 16 years.

Jonathan ThomsonGlover, pleaded guilty to 36 counts of making, taking and possessing indecent images of 120 children aged between 12 and 17 over a 16 year period while at Clifton College, Bristol. He was jailed for three years and nine months by Judge David Ticehurst at Taunton Crown Court yesterday.

“You are the author of your own misfortune and there can be little sympathy for you. It is impossible to calculate the harm and damage you may have caused to those who trusted you or were in your care,” the judge said.

Police found more than 300 video tapes from Jonathan’s house that included more than 2,500 hours of footage, the Independent reported. The German teacher used holidays to fix cameras into the walls ‘ linking them to video recorders back in his private quarters to record intimate moments of students in shower and in their bedrooms.

Issue 630 (19)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Us asks india, pakistan Seven Indians on Forbes Asia’s list of philanthropists to resUme dialogUe Washington Decrying a Pakistani official’s reported remark about use of nuclear weapons against India, US has urged the two countries to continue to work together with constructive dialogue to resolve their long

wants the two nations to continue to work together with constructive dialogue to resolve their issues.”

“And we understand that there are issues longstanding,” he said. “But that’s what really needs to happen, is sitting

standing issues.

“Obviously, what we want to see are the tensions decrease,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday when asked about a Pakistani official’s reported threat to use tactical weapons against India.

“And speculation about the potential use of nuclear weapons certainly isn’t doing anything to help decrease tensions, if in fact those comments were made,” he said.

What Secretary of State John Kerry, Kirby recalled, “has said repeatedly is that he

down, dialogue, cooperation, talking through these things, and trying to work through some meaningful solutions.”

Asked to comment on a new report by two US think tanks that Pakistan may have about 350 nuclear weapons in a decade or so, Kirby said he did not have a specific update regarding any talks with Pakistan on the nuclear issue.

“Obviously, these kinds of matters are matters we discuss with Pakistani leaders on a routine basis,” he said. “But I don’t have specific talks to talk to you about today.”

The US, Kirby said, was still “digesting” the think tank report.

“This is something, obviously, that we continue to focus on, I would say consistent with the President’s (Barack Obama) vision of a world without nuclear weapons.”

“Obviously, we continue to urge all nuclear-capable states, including Pakistan, to exercise restraint regarding furthering their nuclear capabilities,” he said.

The spokesman also praised India’s constructive role in Afghanistan and said the US would like other countries including China to play a similar role there.

“We want Afghanistan to be a good neighbour in the region, and they have many neighbours, and China and India are some of them,” Kirby said.

“And India has played a constructive role over the last several years inside Afghanistan, and we would look to other nations like China to do the same.” “I think everybody in the international community could benefit from an Afghanistan that is secure and stable and prosperous,” Kirby said.

“And our message to the other partners is the same as it’s always been, which is we want to make sure that we’re all pulling on the same oars here to get Afghanistan to that better future.”

India - the only external threat says Pakistan military Islamabad Pakistan military has told a parliamentary committee that India is the only external threat to the country and the situation with regard to ties

The military officials shared the perceived threat with members of the Senate that India had over the last couple of years purchased weapons worth USD 100 billion, 80 per

was volatile in the wake of the suspended Indo-Pak dialogue.

The Senate defence committee led by Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed yesterday visited military’s Joint Staff Headquarters in Rawalpindi, where it was briefed by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Rashad Mahmood and his team.

cent of which were Pakistanspecific, the Dawn reported.

The Indian army’s ‘shopping spree’, it was said, was continuing and over the next five years it would be buying weapons worth another USD 100 billion.

India, which is the world’s second largest arms importer, has more than doubled its

military spending over the last decade. Delhi’s defence budget for this year was USD 40.07 billion, the paper said.

This requires a continuous evaluation of the situation and upgradation of the response mechanism, the members were told.

The committee was also informed that the situation was volatile in view of the suspended dialogue between India and Pakistan and the absence of any conflict resolution mechanism. They were also informed on how the Joint Staff Headquarters worked as a higher defence organisation and Strategic Plans Division, which is the custodian of the nuclear programme.

Talking about the non-traditional security challenges, the military officials said threats in cyberspace were posing a major challenge and urged the government to establish an Inter-Services Cyber Command to combat cyber-attacks and cyber-warfare.

Washington Seven Indians feature in Forbes Asia’s ninth annual Heroes of Philanthropy list, highlighting some of the region’s most noteworthy givers from 13 countries across Asia Pacific.

Among them is Kerela-born entrepreneur Sunny Varkey, who in June this year pledged at least half his estimated $2.25 billion dollar fortune to charity as part of the Bill Gates and Warren Buffet-led Giving Pledge initiative.

Besides Dubaibased Varkey, whose GEMS Education runs 70 private schools in 14 countries, the list features six other Indians.

Four of Infosys’s cofounders Senapathy Gopalakrishnan, Nandan Nilekani, S.D. Shibulal and Mohandas Pai - feature on the list for their independent contributions to the fields of health and education.

Their funding has helped projects which include medical research, education, children who live in poverty and care for the elderly, Forbes said.

The fifth Infosys co-founder, NR Narayana Murthy, is represented on the list by his son Rohan for donating $5.2 million to Harvard University Press for the promotion of ancient Indian literary classics.

The other Indians on the list are London-based brothers Suresh and Mahesh Ramakrishnan, founders of Whitcomb & Shaftesbury tailors on London’s

Saville Row. The brothers have spent nearly $3 million to train more than 4,000 people in tailoring over the past decade in India.

Beneficiaries include fishermen hurt by the 2004 tsunami as well as destitute and abused women.

For the first time, the list features a philanthropist from Nepal. Billionaire Binod K. Chaudhary has been supporting rebuilding efforts in the country ever since the April earthquake.

He has pledged $2.5 million for the rebuilding of homes and schools in the Himalayan nation.

,VVXH

:HE RI OLHV FORVHV

7KH FODLP RI ,QGUDQL 0XNHUMHD WKH ZLIH RI 6WDU 79¶V IRUPHU &(2 3HWHU 0XNHUMHD WKDW KHU GDXJKWHU 6KHHQD %RUD KDG JRQH WR WKH 86 VHHPV WR KDYH IDOOHQ IODW ,QGUDQL LV FXUUHQWO\ EHLQJ JULOOHG E\ 0XPEDL 3ROLFH LQ FRQQHFWLRQ ZLWK WKH NLGQDSFXP PXUGHU RI 6KHHQD RQ $SULO :KHQ WKH LQYHVWLJDWRUV SROLFH VRXUFHV VDLG DVNHG KHU KRZ %RUD FRXOG JR WR WKH 86 ZKHQ KHU SDVVSRUW ZDV ZLWK 3HWHU¶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³5DKXO RU DQ\ RWKHU ER\IULHQG RI 6KHHQD PXVW KDYH NLOOHG KHU ´

$Q RIILFHU VDLG WKDW ,QGUDQL WULHG KDUG WR PRYH WKH EXFN RI VXVSHFW RQ KHU VRQ 0LNKDLO RU 5DKXO EXW FRXOGQ¶W SURYLGH DQ\ UHDVRQLQJ WR EDFN KHU FODLP 2IILFHUV LQWHUURJDWLQJ ,QGUDQL DOOHJHG WKDW VKH KDV EHHQ FODLPLQJ WKDW 6KHHQD OHIW IRU WKH 86 D GD\ DIWHU WKH WZR PHW RQ $SULO RYHU FRIIHH ,QGUDQL DOVR VDLG WKDW VKH KDG FDOOHG 6KHHQD DQG DVNHG KHU WR PHHW QHDU 1DWLRQDO &ROOHJH LQ %DQGUD EXW GURSSHG KHU EDFN DW WKH VDPH VSRW DIWHU DQ KRXU ,QGUDQL¶V H[ KXVEDQG 6DQMHHY .KDQQD WROG LQWHUURJDWRUV WKDW ,QGUDQL ZDV LQ WRXFK ZLWK KLP DQG LW ZDV VKH ZKR DVNHG KLP WR FRPH WR 0XPEDL +H FODLPV KH FDPH WR 0XPEDL

RQ $SULO EXW E\ WKHQ ,QGUDQL KDG DOUHDG\ NLOOHG 6KHHQD .KDQQD DOVR FODLPHG WKDW LW ZDV KH ZKR VWRSSHG ,QGUDQL IURP NLOOLQJ 0LNKDLO 6RXUFHV VDLG .KDQQD FRQIHVVHG WR KLV LQYROYHPHQW LQ GLVSRVLQJ RI WKH ERG\ DQG FODLPHG WKDW KH JRW LQYROYHG DV ,QGUDQL WROG KLP WKDW LI 6KHHQD PDUULHG 5DKXO WKHQ WKHLU GDXJKWHU 9LGKLH¶V OLIH ZRXOG EH UXLQHG DV WKHUH ZRXOG EH PRUH SHRSOH WR DVN IRU WKH SURSHUW\ VKDUH %XW GULYHU 6K\DPYDU WROG SROLFH WKDW 6DQMHHY .KDQQD ZDV LQ WKH FDU ZKHQ WKH PXUGHU WRRN SODFH DQG DOVR KHOSHG LQ GLVSRVLQJ RI WKH ERG\ ,QGUDQL .KDQQD DQG GULYHU 6K\DPYDU

DUH LQ SROLFH FXVWRG\ DQG DUH EHLQJ LQWHUURJDWHG WR JHW IXUWKHU OHDGV WR XQUDYHO WKH P\VWHU\ EHKLQG 6KHHQD¶V NLOOLQJ 7KH SROLFH FODLP WKDW WKDW WKHUH LV DOUHDG\ VWURQJ HYLGHQFH DJDLQVW ,QGUDQL DQG .KDQQD 7KH FRQILUPDWLRQ RI WKHLU ORFDWLRQ DW WKH VFHQH RI FULPH WKURXJK WKHLU FDOO GDWD UHFRUGV FRUURERUDWH WKH GULYHU¶V VWDWHPHQW JLYHQ WR WKH SROLFH 3ROLFH FODLPV ,QGUDQL UHDFKHG 0XPEDL RQ $SULO DQG WKH IROORZLQJ GD\ VKH DOOHJHGO\ NLOOHG 6KHHQD $IWHU GLVSRVLQJ RI WKH ERG\ RQ $SULO VKH ZHQW WR .RONDWD ZLWK 6DQMHHY .KDQQD )HZ GD\V ODWHU VKH OHIW IRU /RQGRQ

9LOODJHU KHOSV 0XPEDL SROLFH UHFRYHU 6KHHQD·V UHPDLQV

*DQHVK 'KHQH

7KH 0XPEDL SROLFH KDYH D ORW WR WKDQN *DQHVK 'KHQH D YLOODJH RIILFLDO LQ 3HQ WHKVLO RI 5DLJDG GLVWULFW IRU KHOSLQJ WKHP ORFDWH WKH VSRW ZKHUH 6KHHQD ZDV DOOHJHGO\ EXULHG LQ $ WHDP RI SROLFH IRUHQVLF H[SHUWV DQG YLOODJHUV KDG RQ )ULGD\ H[KXPHG VNHOHWDO UHPDLQV DIWHU 'KHQH LGHQWLILHG WKH H[DFW VSRW ZKHUH 6KHHQD¶V ERG\ ZDV DOOHJHGO\ GXPSHG LQ WKH IRUHVWV WKUHH \HDUV DJR (DUO\ WKH WHDP RI RIILFHUV DQG IRUHQVLF H[SHUWV IURP 0XPEDL KDG UHDFKHG *DJRGH %XGUXN YLOODJH LQ 3HQ WHVKLO DQG GLJJLQJ KDG VWDUWHG DURXQG DP 7KH\ OHDUQW RI *DQHVK 'KHQH RI +HWHYQH YLOODJH ZKR ZDV SUHVHQW ZKHQ WKH ERG\ ZDV IRXQG DW WKH FULPH VFHQH

RQ 0D\ DQG DOVR ZKHQ LW ZDV OLPLWV RI YLOODJH KH PDNHV LPPHGLDWH UHSRUW WR WKH SROLFH VWDWLRQ DQG UHQGHUV ODWHU EXULHG WKHUH E\ WKH SROLFH WKH QHFHVVDU\ KHOS WR WKH SROLFH RIILFHU WR VDPH GD\ 'KHQH ZKR KDV EHHQ 3ROLFH 3DWLO GHWHFW WKH RIIHQGHU VLQFH UHPHPEHUHG WKDW WKH ERG\ $IWHU SDFNLQJ WKH VNHOHWDO UHPDLQV LQ ZDV EXULHG QHDU D PDQJR WUHH LQ SODVWLF EDJV WKH WHDP OHIW IRU 0XPEDL ZKLFK KHOSHG LGHQWLI\ WKH VSRW DQG OHG DW DURXQG SP RQ )ULGD\ WKH WHDP WKHUH ³:H KDYH UHFRYHUHG VNHOHWDO UHPDLQV RI 6KHHQD %RUD :H $URXQG QRRQ KDYLQJ GXJ *DQHVK 'KHQH MXVW D FRXSOH RI IHHW LQWR ZLOO EH GLVSDWFKLQJ WKH UHPHPEHUHG WKDW WKH JURXQG WKH WHDP VDZ KHU ERG\ ZDV EXULHG UHPDLQV IRU D '1$ WHVW ´ D SRUWLRQ RI WKH VNHOHWRQ QHDU D PDQJR WUHH LQ 0XPEDL 3ROLFH $V SHU WKH %RPED\ 9LOODJH &RPPLVVLRQHU 5DNHVK DQG KHOSHG 0DULD KDG VDLG RQ )ULGD\ 3ROLFH $FW D 3ROLFH 3DWLO LV FRSV LGHQWLI\ WKH GLUHFWO\ VXERUGLQDWH WR WKH 6KHHQD¶V PRWKHU ,QGUDQL VSRW 3ROLFH GHSDUWPHQW DQG WKH 0XNKHUMHH LV DOOHJHG WR KDYH NLOOHG KHU DORQJ ZLWK KHU GULYHU 5DL WDOXND PDJLVWUDWH ,Q FDVH D FULPH LV FRPPLWWHG LQ WKH DQG H[ KXVEDQG 6DQMHHY .KDQQD

Issue 630 (21)

LQ RQ ,QGUDQL

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015 6HS 6HS

3ROLFH EORZ WKH OLG RII KHU QHZ SDVVSRUW FODLP

5DLJDG SROLFH EHJLQ SUREH LQ KXVK XS

,QGUDQL 0XNHUMHD 6DQMHHY .KDQQD LQ PDVN DQG WKH GULYHU ZLOO EH WDNHQ WR 5DLJDG WR UHFUHDWH WKH FULPH VFHQH

7KH IRFXV LQ WKH KLJK SURILOH 6KHHQD %RUD PXUGHU FDVH KDV QRZ VKLIWHG WR WKH IRUHQVLF DQDO\VLV RI WKH VNHOHWDO UHPDLQV IRXQG LQ 5DLJDG GLVWULFW ZKHUH KHU ERG\ ZDV DOOHJHGO\ GXPSHG WKUHH \HDUV DJR ³:H KDYH VHQW WKH ERQHV DQG RWKHU VNHOHWDO UHPDLQV IRU IRUHQVLF DQDO\VLV DQG DUH DZDLWLQJ UHSRUW ´ D SROLFH RIILFLDO VDLG -- +RVSLWDO KDG \HVWHUGD\ KDQGHG RYHU WR .KDU SROLFH D IHZ ERQHV LW KDG UHFHLYHG IURP 5DLJDG 3ROLFH LQ 3ROLFH DUH DOVR SURELQJ 0LNKDLO %RUD¶V FODLP WKDW MXVW KRXUV EHIRUH ,QGUDQL DQG 6DQMHHY .KDQQD PHW 6KHHQD %RUD RQ $SULO DQG WRRN KHU IRU ZKDW ZRXOG EH WKH ODVW GULYH RI KHU OLIH ,QGUDQL

,QYHVWLJDWRUV VHQG VNHOHWDO UHPDLQV IRU IRUHQVLF WHVW KDG DOVR DOOHJHGO\ GUXJJHG KHU VRQ 0LNKDLO 0LNKDLO KDV FODLPHG WKDW RQ WKH SUHWH[W RI GLVFXVVLQJ D SURSHUW\ GHDO KH ZDV JLYHQ D VSLNHG GULQN LQ KLV KRWHO URRP LQ :RUOL E\ ,QGUDQL DQG 6DQMHHY ZKR WKHQ OHIW WR PHHW DQG PXUGHU 6KHHQD %\ WKH WLPH WKH\ FDPH EDFN WKH VXVSLFLRXV JURJJ\

0LNKDLO KDG IOHG 6DQMHHY .KDQQD WKH IRUPHU KXVEDQG RI ,QGUDQL 0XNKHUMHD DUUHVWHG LQ FRQQHFWLRQ ZLWK WKH 6KHHQD %RUD PXUGHU FDVH KDV FRQIHVVHG WR KLV FRPSOLFLW\ 0XPEDL 3ROLFH FKLHI 5DNHVK 0DULD WROG UHSRUWHUV KHUH ODWH ODVW QLJKW

7KH WZLVWV WKDW WKH 6KHHQD %RUD PXUGHU FDVH WRRN RQ :HGQHVGD\ ZRXOG FRQIRXQG HYHQ WKH PRVW LQJHQLRXV FULPH ZULWHU $ \RXQJ ZRPDQ JRHV PLVVLQJ IURP 0XPEDL LQ +HU FKDUUHG ERG\ SDUWV DUH GLVFRYHUHG WKUHH \HDUV ODWHU NP IURP 0XPEDL LQ D 5DLJDG IRUHVW :KHQ WKH ORFDO SROLFH DUUHVW D PDQ IRU LOOHJDO SRVVHVVLRQ RI D SLVWRO WKH YLFWLP¶V HOGHU VLVWHU WXUQV RXW WR EH KHU DOOHJHG PXUGHUHU DQG WKHUH DUH KLQWV RI KRQRXU NLOOLQJ DQG LQFHVW $V VNHOHWRQV WXPEOH RXW LQ WKH GULYHU¶V LQWHUURJDWLRQ D PLJKW\ PHGLD EDURQ DQG KLV JODPRURXV ZLIH EHFRPH WKH FHQWUH RI D PHGLD VWRUP ,W GRHV QRW VWRS WKHUH 6KHHQD %RUD ZKR ZDV LQLWLDOO\ EHOLHYHG WR EH WKH VLVWHU RI H[ 6WDU ,QGLD &(2 3HWHU 0XNHUMHD¶V ZLIH ,QGUDQL WXUQV RXW WR EH KHU GDXJKWHU 0XNHUMHD¶V VHFRQG ZLIH ,QGUDQL QRZ IDFHV WKH FKDUJH RI VWUDQJOLQJ 6KHHQD WR GHDWK DQG EXUQLQJ KHU ERG\ DIWHU GRXVLQJ KHU ZLWK SHWURO ,QGUDQL KDG DOOHJHGO\ LQWURGXFHG 6KHHQD LQ 0XPEDL VRFLDO FLUFOHV DV KHU VLVWHU %XW 6KHHQD ZDV DFWXDOO\ KHU GDXJKWHU IURP DQ HDUOLHU SDUWQHUVKLS 0LNKDLO %RUD ,QGUDQL¶V VRQ DQG 6KHHQD¶V EURWKHU FDPH RQ 79 RQ :HGQHVGD\ DQG

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¶V UHSRUW ZDV ILOHG DW WKH .KDU SROLFH VWDWLRQ DIWHU VKH GLVDSSHDUHG $QRWKHU $FFLGHQW 'HDWK 5HSRUW $'5 ZDV ILOHG DW 5DLJDG¶V 3HQ 3ROLFH 6WDWLRQ DURXQG WKH VDPH WLPH DERXW D FKDUUHG IHPDOH ERG\ ZDV GLVFRYHUHG 5DL OHG WKH 0XPEDL SROLFH WR WKH VLWH ZKHUH WKH ERG\ SDUWV ZHUH IRXQG LQ

Issue 630 (22)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Father of murdered US reporter calls for gun control Washington The father of reporter Alison Parker, who was shot to death on Wednesday along with her cameraman while doing a live news piece, said on Thursday that he will not rest until the US has a way to keep weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people.

“I’m not going to rest until I see something happen. We’ve got to have our legislators and congressmen step up to the plate and stop being cowards about this,” Andy Parker told CNN, saying in several other interviews that people who are mentally unstable must be prevented from obtaining guns Alison Parker, 24, worked for CBS affiliate WDBJ7 and was killed at 6:45 a.m. on Wednesday along with 27-yearold cameraman Adam Ward by a disgruntled former workmate, Vester Lee Flanagan, known on air as Bryce Williams, while she was doing a live report at the Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Virginia, a rural town about 350 km southwest of

Washington.

Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce who was being interviewed by Parker, was wounded in the shooting, WDBJ7 re-

sensible laws so that crazy people can’t get guns. It can’t be that hard,” said the reporter’s father. In his statements to the media, Andy Parker rhetorically asked how many times more we were going to

ported. Flanagan, who had been fired by the station two years ago, fled after the shooting and remained at large for more than five hours until he finally shot himself after being cornered by the authorities.

He died later in a Virginia hospital.

“I’m for the second amendment but there has to be a way to force politicians that are cowards and in the pockets of the NRA to come to grips and have

have incidents like this one before lawmakers take action to try and prevent shootings by mentally unstable people.

He noted a number of shootings and massacres over the past several years by mentally unstable people, including the one at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20 children died and after which President Barack Obama began pressuring legislators to approve more

restrictive gun control laws. Obama’s efforts so far have been unsuccessful and on Wednesday the White House insisted that it was urgent for Congress to act with “common sense” to reduce gun violence in the country.

In a Thursday press conference outside the television channel, the station’s general manager, Jeffrey A. Marks, said that Flanagan, an African-American, worked from WDBJ7 from March 2012 and February 2013, and when he was fired he became enraged and had to be escorted from the building by police.

The gunman sent a 23page fax to ABC News after the shooting, a video of which he had posted online, to justify his anger, which he said had been “building steadily” due to alleged cases of racial discrimination and sexual harassment, for which he had filed a lawsuit against the network, although it is not known whether that was the motive for the shooting.

State to acquire Dr. Ambedkar’s London house in two days

London Ending months of uncertainty, the state sealed the deal to acquire a threestorey bungalow in London on Thursday. The ‘exchange of contract’ between the state government and the owner of the three-storey bungalow in London, where B R Ambedkar had lived as a student in the 1920s, will take place on Friday.

Speaking about the final process, Minister of State for Social Justice Dilip Kamble said, “The Indian High Commission in London will exchange contracts with the owner of the house by tomorrow afternoon. Once that is completed, the state government will pay money within the next two days after which the house will be ours,” said Kamble.

The state government, in January, announced the decision to acquire the 2,050 sq feet bungalow for Rs 31 crore and to preserve it as a memorial of

Ambedkar, the iconic Dalit leader who headed the Constitution drafting committee. The actual purchase was, however, delayed because of bureaucratic hurdles.

Channel claimed to buy Earlier, a Marathi TV news channel had claimed that it was in talks with a UK firm for buying the London house. Ravindra Ambekar, chief editor of Mi Marathi channel had said, “Associate Director, Goldschmidt and Howland (estate agent) in London, Adam French, has asked us to come up with an offer for the house.” He added, “We had contacted him expressing the channel’s interest in buying the house as we noticed that the state government was not expediting the process to acquire it,” he said. Putting the claims to rest Kamble said that the government had already paid a token amount of R3 crore 10 lakh to the owner.

Issue 630 (23)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Indian woman to serve 14 years in jail for death of toddler New York A 29-year-old Indian woman will serve 14 years in prison in the US after she was found guilty for the death of a child in her care.

Kinjal Patel pleaded under the Alford doctrine, in which a defendant does not admit guilt but concedes that there is enough evidence for conviction at trial, a report in the New haven Register said.

Patel was found guilty by court in the death of 19month old Athiyan Sivakumar, who died last year in January, three days after he sustained injuries while under her care.

Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford will impose a 20-year sentence at sentencing in October, to be suspended after Patel serves 14 years.

She will also serve five years’ probation. Patel’s

attorney Kevin Smith said that since she is not a US citizen, she will be deported to India after she completes her sentence.

The office of the chief state medical examiner ruled the child¿s death a homicide and that the cause of

death was blunt-force trauma with multiple sites of impact. Sivakumar¿s parents also face charges in the case.

His father Sivakumar Mani, 35, and mother Thenmozhi Rajendran, 26, have been charged with risk of injury

Outpacing India, Pakistan could have world’s 3rd largest nuclear arsenal in decade

Pakistan is on course to having about 350 nuclear weapons in about a decade, the world’s thirdlargest stockpile after the US and Russia and twice that of India, two major American think-tanks said on Thursday Washington: Far outpacing India in the development of nuclear warheads, Pakistan could have at least 350 nuclear weapons within a decade, making it the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, according to a new report.

Pakistan may be building 20 nuclear warheads annually, according to the report by two American think tanks, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Stimson Centre.

Analysts estimate Pakistan currently has 120 nuclear heads while India has around 100, the Washington Post said in a despatch from Islamabad ahead of the report’s release Thursday.

But in the coming years, Islamabad’s advantage could grow dramatically because it has a large stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be used to quickly produce low-yield nuclear devices, it said.

India has far larger stockpiles of plutonium, which is needed to produce high-yield warheads, than Pakistan does.

But the report as cited by the Post said India appears to be using most of its plutonium to produce domestic energy.

Pakistan could have at least 350 nuclear weapons within five to 10 years, the report concluded. It then would probably possess more nuclear weapons than any country except the US and Russia, which each have thousands of the bombs.

“The growth path of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, enabled by existing infrastructure, goes well beyond the assurances of credible minimal deter-

rence provided by Pakistani officials and analysts after testing nuclear devices,” the report said.

France has about 300 warheads and Britain has about 215, according to the Federation of American Scientists cited by the Post. China has approximately 250.

Pakistan is believed to use plutonium as well as highly-enriched uranium to create nuclear warheads, according to the report written by Toby Dalton, co-director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Policy Programme, and Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Stimson Centre.

“We assume, maybe correctly, maybe inaccurately, with the fuel coming out of the four reactors, they are processing it as rapidly as possible to get the plutonium out,” Dalton was quoted as saying by the Post.

India views nuclear weapons “as a political tool, a prestige item, not something you use on a battlefield”, Krepon said.

On the other hand, in Pakistan, nuclear weapons are seen as “things you have to be willing to use” to guarantee stability, he said.

to a child and interfering with an officer.

The report said they were charged because they allegedly lied to detectives about what happened the night their boy was injured.

Rajendran allegedly told police initially that she was

taking care of her son when she noticed his breathing was abnormal.

Then she reportedly said he had fallen while reaching for a doorknob.

Mani backed up his wife’s “abnormal breathing” story. Smith said there was “zero intent” on her part to harm the child.

“This was a horrible, tragic accident, probably due to her lack of experience with small children and not knowing how to handle these types of situations,” Smith said.

“The physical evidence (if the case had come to trial) would not show a plan or thought on her part. It was just split-second reactions with unintended but tragic consequences,” he said.

Smith said Patel accepted the plea proposal because “the risk of conviction at trial was great. The prob-

ability of a high sentence (more than with the plea deal) was overwhelming.”

Police have said the toddler had been brought to the hospital in December 2013 also because of facial injuries. Hospital officials notified staffers at the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) that it was a possible riskof-injury case.

A subsequent DCF investigation led to the finding the boy had also been under Patel care on that day in December. His parents then signed an agreement with DCF barring them from using baby sitters until DCF assessed the December incident.

Patel’s lawyer said she could have received a sentence of up to 30 years if she had gone to trial and convicted on first-degree manslaughter and risk of injury.

Fir against Vinod kambli, wiFe For allegedly misbehaVing with maid

An FIR has been registered against former Indian cricketer Vinod Kambli and his wife following a complaint filed by the couple’s domestic help, police said today.

The Bandra Police filed the FIR yesterday against 43year-old Kambli and his wife after the complaint by their maid, who alleged that the couple was not paying proper wages to her and when she asked for it, they misbehaved with her, a police officer said.

“Yesterday, a woman Soni Sarsal (30) made a complaint at Bandra Police Station against Vinod Kambli and his wife Andrea that

they had not allowed her to return home and wrongfully confined for three days when she asked them for the wages,” Mumbai Police spokesperson Dhananjay Kulkarni said.

“They would beat me and would not let me rest all day. They would abuse me. Kambli would slap me after getting drunk. He would wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me to serve him alcohol.

They also took away my phone,” Soni told ANI. She also accused Kambli of threatening to kill her.

“I thought of complaining earlier, but they would threaten to burn my house

and to kill me,” she added.

In this regard, a case under IPC sections 343 (wrongful confinement), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) has been registered at Bandra Police Station, he said.

An officer at Bandra Police Station said they may call Vinod and his wife after ascertaining a few missing links in her statement.

To a question whether they would issue a summon to the couple, he declined to comment.

Issue 630 (24)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Get ready! Fun and fortune could be yours this week. A sassy alignment reveals that you’ll be eager to enjoy yourself and move outside your comfort zone, too. Your desire for something different could entice you to move in new circles midweek. The chance to meet with folks who are truly on your wavelength could be positively heartwarming.

Expect the unexpected, especially if you’ve been quietly hoping for a minor miracle. This week’s alignment may bring just that. In addition, your intuition and dreams could play an important part in making that happen. Pay attention to any vivid nighttime reveries, especially those that seem to have a haunting quality come morning.

Your social scene has plenty of snap, crackle, and pop. Key influences encourage you to be proactive about networking and exploring new social options. One encounter on Tuesday could bring news or information that makes a difference to your day. Don’t be tempted to jump too quickly into a sizzling romance on Wednesday, as it may not be what you think.

There could be good news concerning jobs and money, especially earlier in the week. A positive blend of energies hints that there’s an opportunity for a new contract, promotion, or perhaps small windfall. Grab it quickly whatever it is, as it may not be around for long. You’ll find you can’t please everyone, especially on Wednesday.

The more you’re willing try new things, the more doors will open for you. If you have a strong desire to travel or study, this is the time to do it. Your enthusiasm will help you succeed. A fortunate blend of energies on Tuesday could bring positive news that gives you the confidence to go for it. Even so, you’ll need to balance an urge for adventure with the willingness.

If you’re willing to act on an intuitive hunch, it could pay off financially. Where joint finances are concerned, you may need to make one or two big payments and keep things running smoothly. The temptation to spend impulsively could throw a wrench in the works, so think carefully before you do.

Later, you’ll benefit by making a decision rather than hoping for the best.

Relationships sizzle whether you’re looking for new love or already involved. This week you may connect with someone a little bit special and know that there’s potential mileage here. If this is the case, it’s up to you to work your magic. At the same time, your emotional equilibrium could be upset by someone with a disruptive influence.

You’re in a prime position to make the most of a job opportunity or chance for greater exposure for your business. A delightful aspect early on could be the catalyst that sees you forging ahead, but grab it while you can. A midweek communication snafu at work might temporarily derail a project, needing patience to see things through.

Feelings of positivity can give you a boost this week, particularly when it comes to romance and leisure options. A spark of inspiration could ignite passions between you and another, and this meeting could have a quality that marks it as special. Even so, you’ll need your freedom and a chance to do your own thing even if it means someone’s temporarily put out as a result.

The temptation to splurge is apparent, so go easy if you notice an urge to spend impulsively. There’s plenty of activity at home as stirring energies encourage you to remove clutter, redecorate, or do some serious DIY. This can be a good time to invest in your place or a family project that will bring a return in cash or memories.

This could be a very conversational week.

Shared information and opportunities could enhance your luck and that of others. Bright ideas sparkle with potential, so you might find yourself drawn to collaborate with a likeminded someone. There’s room for romance, too, as a special alignment can bring an upbeat encounter your way.

Money matters continue to be of interest.

A positive alignment on Tuesday hints that you could get a small windfall, the chance of a pay raise, or even a lucrative contract. If you’re changing jobs, there’s a chance your income will go up as a result. Money could come in and go out just as quickly, so put the brakes on your spending.

Issue 630 (25)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Technology Google launches YouTube Gaming to take on Amazon-owned Twitch

YouTube on Wednesday strode into an arena dominated by Amazonowned Twitch, with the launch of a service tailored

for the hot trend of video game play as a spectator sport. The rollout of YouTube Gaming marked the public debut of an

online venue where video game lovers can find commentary, live play, ondemand snippets and more. YouTube Gaming

Soon, flexible touch-sensitive skin sensors to operate mobile devices Washington A team of computer scientists is developing flexible sensors that turn

skin into a touchsensitive interaction space for mobile devices.

Scientists from Saarbrucken in collaboration with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed touch-sensitive stickers made from flexible silicone and electrically conducting sensors that can be worn on the skin.

The stickers can act as an input space that receives and executes commands and thus controls mobile devices.

Depending on the type of skin sticker used, applying pressure to the

sticker could, for example, answer an incoming call or adjust the volume of a music player.

Researcher Martin Weigel said that the stickers allow people to enlarge the input space accessible to the user as they can be attached practically anywhere on the body. The ‘iSkin’ approach enables the human body to become more closely connected to technology.

Users can also design their iSkin patches on a computer beforehand to suit their individual tastes.

Weigel added that a simple graphics program is all you need. One sticker, for instance, is based on musical notation, while another is circular in shape like an LP. The silicone

used to fabricate the sensor patches makes them flexible and stretchable. This makes them easier to use in an everyday environment. The music player can simply be rolled up and put in a pocket, explains researcher Jurgen Steimle. They are also skin-friendly, as they are attached to the skin with a biocompatible, medical-grade adhesive. Users can therefore decide where they want to position the sensor patch and how long they want to wear it.

In addition to controlling music or phone calls, the iSkin technology could be used for many other applications.

For example, a keyboard sticker could be used to type and send messages. Currently the sensor stickers are connected via cable to a computer system.

According to Steimle, inbuilt microchips may in future allow the skinworn sensor patches to communicate wirelessly with other mobile devices.

had been in a test phase since it was shown off at an Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) extravaganza in June. “As promised, and after some excellent road-testing by thousands of dedicated gaming fans, YouTube Gaming is now available,” YouTube engineering manager Frank Petterson said in a blog post.

“Blending gaming videos and live streams, YouTube Gaming brings you closer to the games, gamers, and culture that matter to you.”

An English-language website at gaming.Youtube.Com was being rolled out in countries where YouTube is available, according to Petterson. He said that a YouTube Gaming application was being made available in Britain and the United States for mobile devices powered by Apple or Android software, with more countries to be added “soon.” “Having a destination where you can get all the gaming content you care about is really important,” Ryan Wyatt, YouTube’s head of gaming partnerships, told AFP at E3 while showing off the online venue for live or ondemand video focused on gaming.

Twitter to hire more women next year

Micro-blogging site Twitter has made its diversity goals for 2016 public, announcing that it will hire more women at various levels to bridge the gender gap.

According to the diversity goals posted in a Twitter blog on Friday, the representation of women will be increased to 35 percent across the spectrum.

Twitter, which has 4,100 employees globally, said it plans to boost hiring of women in technical jobs to 16 percent. It will hire more women in leadership roles - at 25 percent - and increase the representation of underrepresented minorities overall to 11 percent. In a blog post, Janet Van Huysse, Twitter’s vice president of diversity and inclusion, wrote that it is

important to define what these changes will yield a year from now.

“We want the makeup of our company to reflect the vast range of people who use Twitter. Doing so will help us build a product to better serve people around the world,” Huysse commented.

“While we are already been working towards internal diversity goals at different levels of the company, I’m very pleased to report that we are now setting company-wide diversity goals - and we’re sharing them publicly,” she added.

She continued: “If our aim is to build a company we can really be proud of - one that’s more inclusive and diverse - we need to make sure it’s a great place for both new and current employees to work and to grow”.

Should Facebook, Twitter reconsider autoplay feature?

British MPs have urged social networking sites Twitter and Facebook to reconsider autoplaying videos following an incident where a US reporter along with her cameraman were shot to death while doing a live broadcast, a media report said Friday. Many users were confronted with the video without choosing to when it was shared into their feeds - where the killer is seen shooting at his two colleagues - thanks to autoplay feature, BBC reported. A parliamentary group has suggested that the firms should ensure that users are warned about graphic content before it plays. The chair of the cross-party Parliamentary Internet,

Communications and Technology Forum (Pictfor), Matt Warman, said that both social media

and families it’s important to make sure thata users know what they’re about to see and have a reasonable

sites should automatically sift for such content. “Social media, just like traditional media, should consider how shocking other content can be, and make sure consumers are warned appropriately,” Warman said. “For victims, friends

opportunity to stop it,” Warman, a Conservative Party member, added. He said that while users can change their own settings to stop videos auto-playing, Facebook and Twitter “need to be aware that one size does not fit all”.

Issue 630 (26)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Virginia gunman described himself as ‘human powder keg’ Washington The man who shot TV reporter Alison Parker along with her colleague cameraman Adam Ward live on air was one of their ex-colleagues who was fired from the news station due to “poor performance.”

Following the shooting, Flanagan was pursued by police and shot himself.

Flanagan, who used the name Bryce Williams when reporting, was fired by the station after years of poor performance during which he became aggressive towards fellow colleagues and “always sought to play the race card”.

23-page suicide note Following the attack, he posted films of the shooting and faxed a 23-page ‘manifesto’ to ABC News seemingly detailing his reasons behind the killing and expressing admiration for other mass shooters such as the Virginia Tech killer, Seung-Hui Cho. In one of his tweets, he wrote that he was angry at Ward for reporting him to HR when the pair had only worked together once, but these new reports suggest another possible motive for the slaying.

Human powder keg The fax stated that he was a “human powder keg”. The channel received a 23-page fax detailing his motivations for the attack.

In the fax, which the writer referred to as a ‘Suicide Note for Friends and Family,’ he said that he was enraged by the raciallymotivated shooting at a Charleston church this

past June that killed nine black churchgoers. The fax also claimed that his colleagues had discriminated against him for being black and gay.

“The church shooting was the tipping point... but my anger has been building steadily. I’ve been a human powder keg for a while… just waiting to go BOOM!!!” the fax read.

Flanagan’s family apologised to the victims, telling reporters his actions were “a shock to everyone”.

Station manager Jeff Marks said that Flanagan was an “unhappy man” who had to be escorted from the WDBJ7 building after being dismissed in 2013.

Flanagan’s history Flanagan was hired by WDBJ7 in March 2012 and was known on air by his professional name, Bryce Williams. Within a few weeks, colleagues were complaining of “feeling threatened or uncomfortable” while working with him.

The memos, relesed by the company to the cops for investigation, highlighted “heated confrontations” with camera operators and producers in front of guests while covering stories.

By July 2012, the firm was requiring him to contact the Health Advocate, the staff assistance programme, or face being sacked.

Vassiliki Thanou becomes first female Greek PM

Athens Greece’s Supreme Court Chief Judge Vassiliki Thanou was on Thursday appointed to head the transitional government that will lead the country to snap general elections.

Thanou becoming the country’s first female prime minister. Born in the central Greek city of Chalkida in 1950, Thanou graduated from the Athens University’s faculty of law and continued her postgraduate studies in European Law at Sorbonne University in France, Xinhua reported. She entered the judiciary body in 1975 and since then has been promoted to several significant posts. Thanou, who has served as Supreme Court judge since 2008, was promoted to Supreme Court Vice President in 2014 and finally,

became head of the Supreme Court on July 1 this year. She was the second woman serving as Supreme Court president. According to BBC, President Prokopis Pavlopoulos named Thanou after efforts to form a coalition failed.

Last week, Alex Tsipras resigned as prime minister to seek a new mandate for office. Elections are expected to be scheduled for 20 or 27 September.

Thanou’s appointment ends a week of fruitless negotiations as opposition party leaders tried unsuccessfully to form a government. Tsipras stepped down as prime minister and called early elections after 25 of his MPs quit Syriza over the bailout he agreed with European creditors and formed the left-wing Popular Unity party.

Issue - 630 (27)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

World’s largest tennis-ball mosaic created in the US A giant record-breaking mosaic consisting of over 10,000 tennis balls has been created to commemorate the 84th birth anniversary of Chinmoy Kumar Ghose

New York A giant record-breaking mosaic consisting of over 10,000 tennis balls has been created to commemorate the 84th birth anniversary of Indian spiritual leader Chinmoy Kumar Ghose.

City-based Ashrita Furman, who holds the most Guinness Records at the same time (currently 195), worked with 20 friends to create the world's largest tennis ball mosaic.

With the creation, the 60-yearold health food store manager set the Guinness World Record for the world's largest tennis ball mosaic in honour of the meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy.

The mosaic consists of 10,084 tennis balls in white, greenyellow, orange and pink fixed on boards.

The ball composition shows a tennis player in action and has

a length of 29 feet and 9.5 inches and a width of 15 feet and 4 inches.

Furman surpassed the previous record of a 2,732 tennis balls mosaic, which was created by Tennis Emirates in Dubai a year ago.Furman credited Chinmoy for inspiring him and the world to “find more joy and peace in our hearts”.

Given that the spiritual leader was an avid tennis player, Furman said he came up with the idea to create the tennis ball mosaic.

Furman has been breaking Guinness World Records since 1979, including building the world's largest tennis racket.

Born in 1931, Chinmoy moved to the US in 1964 after spending almost two decades at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry.

Smartphone growth creating etiquette challenges

WASHINGTON It’s OK to use your smartphone walking down the street or on public transportation. But not at a family dinner. And definitely not in church. Users of mobile devices are struggling to find the rules of the road for how and when to use the devices around others, but a survey out Wednesday shows a surprising consensus.

The Pew Research Center found 77 percent of Americans polled felt it was acceptable to use a smartphone while strolling down the street. Three-fourths also said it was OK on public transit or while waiting in line at the store.

But 88 percent said a family dinner was not an appropriate place for phone use and most said the same about a meeting (94 percent), the movie theater (95 percent) and a place of worship (96 percent). But survey respondents did not always practice what they preached.

Eighty-nine percent said they used their phone during a social gathering - 61 percent to read a text message or email, 58 percent to take a photo or video, 52 percent to receive a call, and 25 percent to surf the web, for example.Etiquette has become a challenge as more people keep their smartphones on and with them at all times, Pew noted.

Pew found 92 percent of US adults now have a cellphone of some kind, with two-thirds owning a smartphone. Some 90 percent of them say that their phone is always with them. Thirty-one percent said they never turn their

One billion people used facebook in a day

SAN FRANCISCO Facebook has boasted of a new benchmark in its seemingly

just the beginning of connecting the whole world.” Zuckerberg also posted a video dedicated

inexorable march to Internet ubiquity: a billion people used the social network in a single day.

“We just passed an important milestone,” chief executive and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg declared in a post on his Facebook page. “On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family.”“When we talk about our financials, we use average numbers, but this is different,” Zuckerberg added.

“This was the first time we reached this milestone, and it’s

to the achievement.In its earnings update last month, Facebook said monthly active users surged 13 percent from a year ago to 1.49 billion. The number of mobile active users rose to 1.31 billion. Facebook on Thursday also said it is building new technology that video creators can use to guard against their works being copied at the social network without permission. “This technology is tailored to our platform and will allow these creators to identify matches of their videos on Facebook across pages,

profiles, groups, and geographies,” a blog post said.

“Our matching tool will evaluate millions of video uploads quickly and accurately, and when matches are surfaced, publishers will be able to report them to us for removal.”

Facebook planned to soon begin testing the new matching technology with a select group of partners, including media companies.The California-based social network said that it has got word from some publishers that videos are sometimes uploaded to Facebook without permission in a practice referred to as “freebooting.”

Facebook is already using an Audible Magic system that uses audio “fingerprinting” to identify and block copyrighted videos from making it onto the social network without proper authorization. “We want creators to get credit for the videos that they own,” Facebook said. “To address this, we have been exploring ways to enhance our rights management tools to better empower creators to control how their videos are shared on Facebook.”

phone off and 45 percent say they rarely turn it off. This ‘always-on’ reality has disrupted longstanding social norms about when it is appropriate for people to shift their

with others using their device.

Some 23 percent of cellphone owners say that when they are in public spaces they use their device to avoid interacting with

attention away from their physical conversations and interactions with others, and towards digital encounters with people and information that are enabled by their mobile phone,” said Lee Rainie, Pew’s director of Internet research.“These are issues with important social consequences.

Norms of etiquette are not just small-scale social niceties. They affect fundamental human interactions and the character of public spaces.” The survey found that conduct which might have been considered rude in the past is now gaining acceptance.

Two-thirds of cell owners frequently or occasionally look up information about where they are going or how to get there, and 70 percent coordinate get-togethers

others.The survey found younger adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are most tolerant of public mobile device usage. Ninety percent of this group said phone use on public transportation is acceptable compared with 54 percent of people 65 and older.

This group is also most likely to use their cellphone in public spaces, the survey found. But Rainie noted that “Americans of all ages generally trend in the same direction about when it is okay or not to use cells in public settings.”

He said that fully public venues are viewed by all age groups as generally acceptable places to use a phone but that “usage in quiet or more intimate settings is mostly frowned upon by all.”

Canadian rapper Drake, Serena Williams spotted kissing in restaurant

Los Angeles Canadian rapper Drake and Serena Williams were spotted kissing in a restaurant over the weekend.

The 28-year-old rapper and tennis player, 33, were photographed at a restaurant in Cincinnati on Sunday evening, reported TMZ.The pics show Drake and Williams enjoying dinner together before sharing a kiss and a hug.

The pair had a private room at the back of the restaurant but the curtains were not quite

closed shut so it was fairly easy for other patrons to see in to the room.

They may have been celebrating Williams' victory at the WTA Tournament in Cincinnati earlier in the day. Drake was there to cheer on Williams and was also photographed at the tournament.

Rumours concerning the nature of Drake and Williams' relationship began in July when the “Take care” hitmaker was spotted filming Williams on at Wimbledon.

Issue - 630 (28)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Two people may have committed suicide after Ashley Madison hack At least two people may have committed suicide following the hacking of the Ashley Madison cheating website, Toronto police said on Monday, warning of a ripple effect that includes scams and extortion of clients desperate to stop the exposure of their infidelity.

Toronto At least two people may have committed suicide following the hacking of the Ashley Madison cheating website, Toronto police said on Monday, warning of a ripple effect that includes scams and extortion of clients desperate to stop the exposure of their infidelity.

Avid Life Media Inc, the parent company of the website, is offering a C$500,000 ($379,132) reward to catch the hackers.

In addition to the exposure of the Ashley Madison accounts of as many as 37 million users, the attack on the dating website for married people has sparked extortion attempts and at least two unconfirmed suicides, Toronto Police Acting Staff Superintendent Bryce Evans told a news conference.

The data dump contained email addresses of U.S. government officials, UK civil servants, and workers at European and North

American corporations, taking already deep-seated fears about Internet security and data protection to a new level.

“Your actions are illegal and will not be tolerated. This is your wake-up call,” Evans said, addressing the so-called “Impact Team” hackers directly during the news conference.

“To the hacking community who engage in discussions on the dark web and who no doubt have information that could assist this

investigation, we're also appealing to you to do the right thing,” Evans said. “You know the Impact Team has crossed the line. Do the right thing and reach out to us.”

Police declined to provide any more details on the apparent suicides, saying they received unconfirmed reports on Monday morning.“The social impact behind this (hacking) - we're talking about families. We're talking about their children, we're

Virginia TV journalists shot dead live on air, suspect shoots self Virginia Two television journalists were shot and killed in Virginia on Wednesday morning while conducting a live interview, and authorities said the suspect appeared to be a disgruntled current or former employee of the TV station.Police pursued the suspect and in the late morning,

an ABC local affiliate and CNN reported the suspected shooter had shot himself, but it was not known if he was dead or alive. The suspect was identified as Vester Flanagan, 41, according to a dispatcher for the Augusta County, Virginia, Sheriff's Department.After the shooting of the journalists, someone claiming to have filmed it posted video online that appeared to be from shooter's vantage point. The videos were posted to a Twitter account and on Facebook but were removed shortly afterward.

One video clearly showed a handgun as the person filming approached the woman reporter.

The shooting occurred at about 6:45 a.m. EDT (1045 GMT) during an interview being broadcast live

from Bridgewater Plaza, a Smith Mountain Lake recreation site with restaurants, shops, boating and arcades and holiday rentals.

The area is in the south-central part of the state, about 120 miles (190 km) from the capital of Richmond.The journalists were filming an interview for the morning news show of CBS affiliate

WDBJ7 in Roanoke, Virginia. In the broadcast, shots were heard and the reporter and the person being interviewed screamed and ducked for cover. The reporter Alison Parker, 24, and the cameraman, Adam Ward, 27, died in the incident, WDBJ7 said.

The woman being interviewed was wounded.Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe said in interview on Washington radio station WTOP that the suspected shooter had been identified as a disgruntled current or former station employee.The Franklin County Sheriff's Office has taken the lead on apprehending the suspect, with help from state police and others, McAuliffe told WTOP. “Heartbroken over senseless murders today in Smith Mountain

Lake,” McAuliffe said on Twitter.

Asked on CNN if the station had been targeted or had been threatened, WDBJ7 President and General Manager Jeff Marks said, “Every now and then you get a crazy email or something and we'll look into it. Nothing of this nature than any of us could recall.”

He said the interview was to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of Smith Mountain Lake, and the woman being interviewed was from the local chamber of commerce. She had been talking about the anniversary and tourism.“We don't make a secret of where we report from, we may start now,” Marks said.There was no word yet from the hospital on the condition of the woman, identified as Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce. The station's broadcast showed Parker interviewing Gardner about the lake and tourism development in the area. Gunshots erupted, and as Ward fell his camera hit the ground but kept running. An image caught on camera showed what appeared to be a man in dark clothing facing the camera with a weapon in his right hand.

The station said on its website that both the dead journalists were from the region.Parker grew up in Martinsville and attended Patrick Henry Community College and James Madison University, while Ward graduated from Salem High School and Virginia Tech, the station said.

talking about their wives, we're talking about their male partners,” Evans told reporters.

“It's going to have impacts on their lives. We're now going to have hate crimes that are a result of this. There are so many things that are happening. The reality is ... this is not the fun and games that has been portrayed.”

The investigation into the hacking has broadened to

include international law enforcement, with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security joining last week. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Canadian federal and provincial police are also assisting.

Evans also said the hacking has spawned online scams that fraudulently claim to be able to protect Ashley Madison clients' data for a fee.

People are also attempting to extort Ashley Madison clients by threatening to send evidence of their membership directly to friends, family or colleagues, Evans said.In a sign of Ashley Madison's deepening woes following the breach, lawyers last week launched a class-action lawsuit seeking some $760 million in damages on behalf of Canadians whose information was leaked.Evans said Avid Life first became aware of the breach on July 12, when several employees booted up their computers and received a message from the infiltrators accompanied by the playing of rock group AC/DC's “Thunderstruck.”The company went to police several days later, he said, while the hackers went public on July 20.

Using smartphones at night may disrupt sleep in teens

Washington Even an hour of night-time light exposure from tablets or smartphones can significantly disrupt sleep in teenagers.

Even an hour of night-time light exposure from tablets or smartphones can significantly disrupt sleep in teenagers, a new study has warned.

The research found that the sleep biology of boys and girls aged 9 to 15 who were in the earlier stages of puberty were especially sensitive to light at night compared to older teens.

In lab experiments, an hour of nighttime light exposure suppressed their production of the sleep-timing hormone melatonin significantly more than the same light exposure did for teens aged 11 to 16 who were farther into puberty.

The brighter the light in the experiments, the more melatonin was suppressed.

Among 38 children in early to middle puberty an hour of 15 lux of light (dim mood lighting) suppressed melatonin by 9.2 per cent, 150 lux (normal room

light) reduced it by 26 per cent, and 500 lux (as bright as in a supermarket) reduced it by 36.9 per cent.

The 29 teens in the late or postpuberty stage were also affected, but not as much.

Exposure to 15 lux did not suppress melatonin at all, 150 lux reduced it 12.5 per cent, and 500 lux reduced it by 23.9 per cent.

The effects were the same for boys and girls, researchers said. “Small amounts of light at night, such as light from screens, can be enough to affect sleep patterns,” said study senior author Mary Carskadon, professor of psychiatry and human behaviour in the Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

“Students who have tablets or TVs or computers ? even an 'oldschool' flashlight under the covers to read ? are pushing their circadian clocks to a later timing. This makes it harder to go to sleep and wake up at times early the next morning for school,” said Carskadon.

Issue - 630 (29)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

38 girls die in crash on way to Swaziland beauty pageant Mbabane A road accident in Swaziland killed 38 girls and seriously injured 20 others who had been on their way to a traditional ceremony where King Mswati III can choose a new wife, prodemocracy activists reported.

The accident happened Friday night when their open truck smashed into a car on the road between the tiny kingdom’s two main cities, Mbabane and Manzini, en route to the traditional Reed Dance, activists said.“A total of 38 young girls have been pronounced dead, with more than 20 others

seriously injured,” said Lucky Lukhele, a spokesman for the Swaziland Solidarity Network which campaigns for democracy in the landlocked kingdom within South Africa.

“The girls were in an open truck which hit a sedan car stopped

on the road,” Lukhele told AFP. The Reed Dance, due to be held Monday, is a beauty pageant that attracts tens of thousands of young virgins who dance before the polygamist king, who can select one of them as a new wife.

Mswati, Africa’s last absolute monarch, chose his 14th wife at

The bongs are wrong on London’s Big Ben

LONDON The most famous clock in the world is wrong: the bongs of London’s Big Ben have been mysteriously running fast over the past fortnight, clocksmiths admitted Tuesday. The Great Clock that towers over the British parliament can be out by up to six seconds, with its keepers admitting the cherished national icon is “a little temperamental” at 156 years old.Over the past

two weeks, the early bongs have messed up BBC domestic and world radio transmissions that broadcast the hour chimes live.

The Houses of Parliament’s three dedicated clocksmiths have tried to rectify the problem, but are somewhat mystified as to why it has swung so far out of step. “The error started building up and went slightly unnoticed over a weekend,” clocksmith Ian Westworth told BBC radio.

Italian base jumper dies in Swiss Alps stunt GENEVA A 46-year-old Italian plunged to his death in the Swiss Alps Thursday after crashing onto rocks during a BASE jump, the second such accident in Switzerland in under a year, police said. BASE jumping, or wingsuit jumping, is an extreme sport that involves freefalling off a cliff, bridge or another type of platform before activating a parachute. The man was accompanied by two other

jumpers on the escapade in Gastern valley in the central canton of Berne. He was the last

to jump into the abyss and “crashed onto a rocky ledge,” local police said.

the celebration in 2013.

Mswati said the girls’ deaths were a “tragedy in the nation”.

“I would like to assure the parents who have lost their loved ones that the nation will support them through and through,” said the monarch, speaking on the sidelines of a trade fair in Manzini.

“Also those in hospitals, should the need arise for further treatment they will be taken to other hospitals to ensure no further loss of life.”

Police confirmed there had been “fatalities” but declined to specify the toll, with police spokesman Khulekani Mamba saying: “We won’t be giving out any information because the maidens were on royal duty, so there are certain protocols to be followed before such information can be divulged to the public.”

Local media gave varying tolls on Saturday morning, with government newspaper The Observer reporting hundreds of injuries and the Swazi News saying seven people had been killed, six of them girls.

News of the accident has not been broadcast on public television and journalists were blocked from photographing the crash scene, a local journalist told AFP. Mswati III has ruled Swaziland as an absolute monarch since his father’s death in 1982.

Ex-NOTW editor Rebekah Brooks may rejoin Murdoch empire

London Brooks had quit as chief executive in 2011 at the height of the scandal involving the hacking of phone voice mails by journalists though she was later cleared at the trial last year.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is believed to be in talks with former ‘News of the World’ editor Rebekah Brooks for her return as chief of its UK division four years after she had quit amid the phone-hacking scandal, a newspaper reported.

Brooks had quit as chief executive in 2011 at the height of the scandal involving the hacking of phone voice mails by journalists though she was later cleared at the trial last year. Her re-appointment could be confirmed by next month, ‘The Financial Times’ reported. Evan Harris, joint executive director of campaign group Hacked Off, said the appointment would show News Corp has no regard for the

feelings of the victims of phonehacking. “There’s a gall to just carry on appointing someone who- yes she’s entitled to her verdict of not guilty- but she achieved that with a defence of incompetence; she didn’t know what was happening, and yet she’s coming back. It’s astonishing,” he said. The FT said a return could be perceived as a “slight triumph” for Brooks, but some former colleagues might not welcome it. Brooks, 47, had said after being acquitted of all charges following a 138-day trial that she felt “vindicated”. Her former colleague, Andy Coulson, another former ‘News of the World’ editor, was jailed after being convicted of conspiracy to intercept phone voicemails of several people including crime victims and celebrities. The ‘News of the World’ is the subject of a police probe into the phone hacking called Operation Weeting.

Acapulco cliff divers can’t forget feeling of flying ACAPULCO Cliff divers in Acapulco say they never forget their first time: the leap into the void, the feeling of flying, the shock of hitting the water at high speed.

Across the generations, whole families of divers have earned their living wowing tourists from around the world with the 35meter (115-foot) plunge off La Quebrada, the rock face that looms above the Mexican resort city’s Pacific coast.

But the seemingly fearless daredevils who keep this eightdecade tradition alive now face a new kind of risk: their livelihoods are under threat from a wave of violence sweeping Acapulco and scaring away tourists. Nearly 500 people have been killed so far this year as drug cartels wage war in the city.

The bloodshed has taken a toll on the tourism industry. A decade ago, 150 cruise ships a year visited Acapulco. Today, the number has fallen to around 10. That is worrying for the 62 full-time cliff divers who make their living at La Quebrada. “The tourists need to come back,” said Monico Ramirez, a 62year-old retired diver whose son and grandson now carry the flame.

The violence doesn’t threaten anyone not caught up in the drug trade, Ramirez insisted.

“It’s mainly a settling of

Several mass graves have been found on its outskirts, and the leader of one of the groups searching for the 43 missing

scores,” he said. Guerrero, the state where Acapulco is located, has had a year of terrible press. The state made headlines over the shocking disappearance of 43 students in September last year.

Prosecutors say the students were abducted by corrupt police in the city of Iguala, three hours inland from Acapulco, and handed over to a drug gang that killed them and burned their bodies.Acapulco has had its share of bad publicity, too.

students was shot dead just outside the city earlier this month.The unrest spells bad news for the divers, whose salaries come from the admission fees tourists pay to watch them, plus tips and sales of food, drinks and souvenirs.

The work pays about $550 a month, according to Ramirez, and comes with health benefits, professional training and one day off per week - a great job for a country where more than 55 million people live in poverty.

Issue - 630 (30)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

In first, headscarf-wearing Thai elephant kills keeper, runs off with 3 Chinese on its back woman named minister in Turkey BANGKOK An elephant in northern Thailand went berserk Wednesday, killing his “mahout” keeper before running off into the jungle with three terrified Chinese tourists still on his back, police said.

“The mahout who was killed was Karen and he was not familiar with the elephant. They (the tourists) are safe now,” Colonel Thawatchai Thepboon, police commander of Mae Wang district in Chiang Mai province, told AFP. The Karen is an ethnic minority common in northern Thailand. Police said the incident took place at 9.30am (0230 GMT) as a Chinese family of three - a father, mother and a young child - took a ride on the

back of a male elephant. Rides are a popular and lucrative tourist activity but many animal rights groups say it is cruel and stressful for the pachyderms.

The elephant had not taken easily to his new keeper and

turned on him suddenly, goring him to death, Channel 3 reported.

The channel broadcast footage of the three frightened tourists being led back to camp still on the elephant’s back once it had been calmed down by other mahouts and their rides.

Thailand’s roughly 4,000 domesticated elephants outnumber an estimated 2,500 remaining in the wild.Domestic elephants in Thailand - where the pachyderm is a national symbol

China rocket parts hit villager’s home

BEIJING Debris from a rocket carrying a Chinese satellite into orbit crashed into a villager’s home minutes after the launch, local police and media reports said.

The parts plummeted to earth with a huge roar in Xunyang county in the northern province of Shaanxi, news portal Sina said on a social media account, citing local sources. No casualties were reported, it added. Pictures showed a man standing beside what appeared to be a rocket nozzle as tall as him, in front of a cracked wall and with pieces of broken bricks on the ground. Another image showed a large hole in a redtiled roof. In a post on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo, Xunyang police said the machinery was part of a rocket’s

propulsion system and called on local residents “not to panic”. A Long March-4 rocket carrying a remote sensing satellite - which is to be used for experiments, land surveys, crop yield estimates and disaster prevention - was launched into space from neighbouring Shanxi province nine minutes before the impact, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Beijing views its ambitious, military-run, multi-billion-dollar space programme as a symbol of the country’s progress, but it is not unknown for pieces of it to plunge through villagers’ roofs. In 2013, debris from a rocket carrying China’s first moon rover plummeted to earth more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the launch site, crashing into two homes.

- have been used en masse in the tourist trade since they found themselves unemployed in 1989 when logging was banned.

Accidents are not unheard of. In June an elephant killed a Thai man and injured another as they were eating dinner at a beachside restaurant. The pair had been talking to the animal’s mahout when it suddenly flipped.

Rights groups have documented the more unscrupulous mahouts using controversial techniques to crush the animal’s spirit or severely overworking their rides to make more money.

“Elephants work every day, of every month, basically 365 days per year,” Edwin Wiek, a campaigner from Wildlife Friends of Thailand told AFP. “If you had to do the same, you would get stressed. It is the same for elephants. At some point they become crazy and we can’t control them.” The accident comes as Thailand’s tourism industry reels from last week’s bombing of a religious shrine in Bangkok, an attack that killed 20 people, mostly ethnic Chinese devotees from across Asia.

Ankara For the first time in the history of Turkey, a Muslim but secular country, a woman who wears an Islamic headscarf has been named as a government minister.

Aysen Gurcan, a 52-year-old academic, was appointed Friday to be the minister in charge of family and social policies in the provisional government of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu that will run the country until November 1 elections.

The mother of three is also a member of the board of the Foundation for Youth and Education (TURGEV), of which Bilal Erdogan, a son of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is an

executive.The NGO was at the centre of a corruption scandal involving Erdogan, who was then prime minister, as well as his family and political entourage.

Over the past two years, the Turkish government has lifted bans on women and girls wearing headscarves in schools and state institutions, moves denounced by opponents as undermining the basis of the country’s secular society.

Erdogan, who co-founded the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), called new elections after Davutoglu failed to form a coalition government with the opposition after June polls.

‘Dead’ teenager wakes up one day after being buried alive Honduras A ‘dead’ teenager woke up in her coffin and screamed for help one day after she was buried - but died again before desperate relatives could save her.

Footage has emerged showing grieving family members breaking through the concrete tomb from where Neysi Perez, 16, had been heard ‘banging and screaming’.

Relatives who removed the girl’s corpse found that the glass viewing window on her coffin had been smashed and the tips of her fingers were bruised. But despite efforts to revive her medics found no signs of life and she was later returned to the cemetery and reburied in the same mausoleum. Perez, who was three months pregnant, reportedly fell unconscious after waking up in the night to use the outside toilet at her home in La

Entrada, western Honduras.

It was believed she may have collapsed in an apparent panic attack after hearing a burst of gunfire. But when the teenager started foaming at the mouth her religious parents called the local

Japanese toilet giant flipping open lid on new museum TOKYO Japan’s leading toilet giant opens a new museum this week dedicated to a century of lavatories, from its first water flushing model to the most cutting edge version with odour-neutralisers and variable water jets.

The museum operated

by TOTO - best known for its bidet-equipped Washlet series - opens its doors on Friday in the southwestern city of Kitakyushu, where the company is based. High-tech

toilets, common in Japan, regularly win praise from foreign tourists and celebrities as the

epitome of Japanese know-how - a contraption that offers both comforting warmth and a frighteningly accurate bidet jet.

priest believing she had become possessed by an evil spirit.

Relatives told how the priest tried to exorcise her, but she later became lifeless and was rushed to hospital, where three hours later doctors declared her dead.

Perez was buried in the wedding dress she had recently used to get married.A day after her funeral, her husband Rudy Gonzales was visiting her grave at the La Entrada General Cemetery when he heard banging and muffled screams from inside the concrete tomb and raised the alarm. The footage shows desperate family members breaking through the concrete block tomb with a sledgehammer, before bringing out and opening up Ms Perez’s coffin to try to revive her.

Gozales told local TV news Primer Impacto: ‘I was heartbroken because my sweetheart had been taken so suddenly from me. I wanted to be near to her.

Issue - 630 (31)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Smart solar palm trees power Wi-Fi, phones in Dubai DUBAI A new species of palm tree has started sprouting around Dubai.

But instead of producing dates, the fronds of the Smart Palm harness the sun’s energy to allow people to look up city information, access Wi-Fi, and charge their phones, all for free.

Topped with nine leaf-shaped

photovoltaic modules, a sixmeter-tall Smart Palm can generate around 7.2 kilowatt hours per day, enough to operate without ever drawing off the grid.

The two prototype palms that have already been installed - one at a beach near the Burj Al Arab hotel and other at centrally located Zabeel Park - each carry a Wi-Fi hotspot, eight charging stations for phones and tablets, and a touch-screen panel giving local details on things like

weather and transportation.

The company behind the device, Dubai-based D Idea, says connectivity is just the start of the Smart Palm’s potential.

“Subsequent Smart Palms will have ATM machines and utility bill payment services,” said CEO Viktor Nelepa. “Our team has also started to find new ways in

which the Smart Palm can support other forms of sustainable generation, specifically through air and water purification modules.”

Over the next 12 months, D Idea plans to install 103 Smart Palms across the city of Dubai. The next generation of the device, due to be launched in September, will be created by 3D printer and have a different design. Made from a combination of fiber-reinforced plastic and concrete, the new

Nigeria shuts down churches over noisy worship

LAGOS Authorities in Nigeria’s financial capital Lagos have shut down churches across the city after a glut of complaints over noisy worship. The chaotic megacity’s environmental protection department said it had sealed off 22 premises on Wednesday after receiving dozens of calls a day, according to local newspaper reports. Neighbours of one church - Jesus Our Lord Divine Catholic Prayer Ministry said they were constantly disturbed by a congregation of mainly pregnant women, young mothers and their children.

“On my phone alone, I get 20 SMS on a daily basis,” said Adebola Shabi, head of the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency, according to

the national daily New Telegraph.

“In the next five years, if there is no stringent policy on the siting of religious houses, there will be problem.” Constant noise - from the the thumping beats of loud music, the beep of car horns and the noise of generator engines is the soundtrack to Lagos life and is seen by many as part of its charm.

But residents are complaining in unprecedented numbers that they can barely hear themselves think among the churches and mosques where giant loudspeakers pump out religious messages and music. Officials receive around 50 telephone calls and 20 text messages a day complaining about noise, mostly from churches, the New Telegraph said.

Smart Palms will also be better able to withstand Dubai’s tropical desert climate.

“The device will not only look attractive, but would counter the extreme weather conditions,” Nelepa said. Nelepa would not say how much the palms cost, but said the project is receiving funding from the Dubai Municipality. The company plans to turn to advertising and branding to meet future costs, he said.

According to Nelepa, the Smart Palm project is one of several initiatives that are part of Dubai’s push to create a greener economy. Its Smart City plan, Green Economy Initiative, and the United Arab Emirates’ declaration of 2015 as the “Year of Innovation” all aim to make Dubai one of the world’s most connected and increasingly sustainable cities within the next few years.

Earlier in 2015, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority announced it was tripling its target share of renewables in Dubai’s energy mix from 5 percent to 15 percent by 2030.

Meanwhile, the city has already re-launched Al Khazan Park as the first Dubai park to run completely on solar power and is moving ahead with plans to build the Desert Rose, a sustainable city for a population of 160,000.

Boy accidentally damages $1.5m Italian painting

TAIPEI A 12-year-old boy accidentally punched a hole through a $1.5 million centuries-old Italian oil painting when he tripped and fell into the piece during an exhibition in Taiwan.

The painting, entitled “Flowers”

by Italian artist Paolo Porpora, dates back to the 1600s and is part of a collection of 55 artworks on show in the country’s capital.

Video footage released by the organisers shows the boy on Sunday trip over a platform in front of the artwork and then brace himself against the painting to break his fall. He then looks around helplessly before walking away.

“The child fell and pressed onto the painting, putting a fistsized tear in it,” an employee at TST Art of Discovery, which organised The Face of

Leonardo exhibition in Taipei, told AFP.The organisers have decided not to seek damages from the boy’s family, according to Central News Agency. The painting was restored on site Monday and is now back on exhibition.

A self-portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci worth 200 million euros ($231 million) is also being exhibited at the show, according to the exhibition’s website. Other museum accidents include when a British man in 2006 smashed a set of 300-year-old Chinese vases after tripping over his shoelaces at a museum in Cambridge.

Las Vegas gaming tycoon Steve Wynn that same year accidentally poked his elbow through the canvas of a Picasso painting he had just sold for $139m.

Egypt sentences 3 Al-Jazeera reporters to 3 years in prison Cairo An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced three Al-Jazeera English journalists to three years in prison, the last twist in a longrunning trial criticised worldwide by press freedom advocates and human rights activists.

The case against Canadian national Mohammed Fahmy, Australian journalist Peter Greste and Egyptian producer Baher Mohammed embroiled their journalism into the wider conflict between Egypt and Qatar following the 2013 military ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

It wasn't immediately clear how the sentence would affect the three men. Greste, deported in February, spoke to Al-Jazeera from Sydney and criticised the verdict. Mostefa Souag, AlJazeera English acting directorgeneral, also criticised the verdict, saying it “'defies logic and common sense.”

“The whole case has been heavily politicised and has not been conducted in a free and fair manner,” Souag said in a statement.“There is no evidence proving that our colleagues in any way fabricated news or aided and abetted terrorist organisations and at no point during the long drawn out retrial

did any of the unfounded allegations stand up to scrutiny.”

The case began in December 2013, when Egyptian security forces raided the upscale hotel suite used by Al-Jazeera at the time to report from Egypt.

Al-Jazeera and the journalists have denied the allegations, saying they were simply reporting the news. However, Doha has been a strong supporter of the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in the

Authorities arrested Fahmy, Greste and Mohammed, later charging them with allegedly being part of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, which authorities have declared a terrorist organisation, and airing falsified footage intended to damage national security.Since Morsi's ouster, Egypt has cracked down heavily on his supporters, and the journalists were accused of being mouthpieces for the Brotherhood.

greater Mideast.At trial, prosecutors used news clips about an animal hospital with donkeys and horses, and another about Christian life in Egypt, as evidence they broke the law. Defence lawyers and even the judge dismissed the videos as irrelevant.Nonetheless, the three men were convicted on June 23, 2014, with Greste and Fahmy sentenced to seven years in prison and Mohammed to 10 years.

Issue - 630 (32)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Nelson Mandela’s grandson appears in court on rape charges

Johannesburg A grandson of Nelson Mandela accused of raping a 15-year-old girl appeared in a South African

court on Friday where a judge will decide whether he will be granted bail. Members of the Mandela family were in the cramped courtroom where Mbuso Mandela, 24, appeared.

He has been in police custody since his arrest on Saturday.

According to South African law, due to the seriousness of the charge, his defense attorneys

will have to present evidence to support his release on bail.

The rape allegedly took place in a toilet at a restaurant in Greenside, a Johannesburg suburb, on Aug. 7, police said.

Earlier this week, the teenager’s family accused Winnie Madikizela-Mandela of trying to derail the complaint, a family spokesman said.

Madikizela-Mandela, the late Mandela’s divorced wife, sent her bodyguard to the 15-year-old girl’s home, where he posed as a police officer, the spokesman said.

Madikizela-Mandela also met with the family, where she promised to ask the provincial police commissioner to handle the case and said her family would also hold a press conference, the spokesman said.

See why this McDonald worker is attracting attention London This woman who looks like a doll has been attracting a lot of customers to her branch of McDonald’s. What other reason can there be for a sudden increase in the people visiting McDonald’s other than a new happy meal or an attractive scheme? But a McDonald’s branch in Taiwan has been getting customers for a very different reason.A worker in McDonald’s is attracting more customers to her branch in Taiwan. The rush at the fast-food chain in the city of Kaohsiung is not because of the marketing efforts but solely owing to this woman’s looks.RainDog, a

blogger, spotted - Hsu Wei-han - the worker, and posted her pictures online. Since then many people have visited her branch to catch a glimpse of her. The reason behind this celebrity like attention is her doll-like beauty.

Wei-han is also known as ‘Weiwei’ or ‘Haitun’- dolphin in Chinese. This young girl who wears a pink shirt and heels to work has 29,000 followers on Instagram. Her selfies are a hit amongst her followers. The blogger has provided immense fame to the worker as his post received more than 6,000 likes.

She has been labelled as the “cutest McDonald’s goddess in Taiwanese history”.

‘Rainbow Grandpa’ saving Taiwan village with art TAICHUNG Huang Yung-fu greets visitors to his village in central Taiwan with paint-stained hands and shoes spattered with flecks of colour, a sign of the daily artistic labour that has seen him singlehandedly stave off the developers’ bulldozers.

At 93 years old, the former soldier still gets up at 3am every day to spend four hours daubing the walls of the small settlement with colourful figures, from birds and animals to celebrity singers and sportsmen.

Known as ‘Rainbow Grandpa’, Huang’s artwork has kept the village safe as the surrounding area has been flattened. He walks with a slight limp and rolls up his trouser leg to reveal a bandaged knee - bruised from spending too much time kneeling on the ground to paint, he says. But Huang is determined to continue adding to the vibrant murals that decorate the walls and pathways of the military dependents’ village as a way to ensure its survival.

“We had a letter five years ago saying the government wanted to knock it down to build something new. They said we could take some money or move to a different house,” said Huang, dapper in a navy flat cap and gold Chinese-style high-collared shirt.

“But I didn’t want to move. This is the only real home I’ve ever known in Taiwan.” The settlement in the Nantun district of Taichung City once comprised 1,200 homes for veterans and their families.But as the decades-old accommodation became run-down, developers

Millennium sequel author wrote in ‘manic depressive’ state STOCKHOLM David Lagercrantz wrote the highly-anticipated sequel to Stieg Larsson’s best-selling Millennium crime trilogy in a manic depressive state, he told reporters on Wednesday, the eve of the book’s launch.“I’ve been terrified ... and I used to say that I was bipolar, manic depressive all the time and I think it was kind of a good thing to write” in this condition, he said. “The Girl in the Spider’s Web”, which goes on sale in 25 countries on Thursday and in the United States on September 1, picks up the trail of tattooed computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist.“I was not the easiest person to live with because I was thinking about it all the time. I’m scared to death that I won’t live up to” Stieg Larsson, who created the trilogy but died suddenly of a heart attack in 2004 at age 50, before the series gained global fame.

Larsson’s three Millennium books, published in

2005-2007, have sold 80 million copies worldwide and have been made into Swedish and Hollywood movies. Lagercrantz, who gesticulates wildly while speaking and is fond of superlatives, was visibly anxious

about how his book will be received. “This was the passion of my life and now you can judge if I succeeded, but God I did my best,” he said. Publishing house Norstedts said the Swedish journalist, who penned football star Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s official biography, was the perfect choice to write the sequel. He has a “special talent for depicting the

world of others,” said Norstedts head Eva Gedin, who edited both Larsson’s and Lagercrantz’s Millennium books. She insisted the sequel “is David Lagercrantz’s book, not a copycat” of Larsson’s trilogy. The writing of the book has been shrouded in secrecy to prevent leaks about the plot.

Only a few people have read it so far.

Media interviews with Lagercrantz ahead of Thursday’s launch have been subjected to rigorous confidentiality agreements, angering some outlets, including a Danish daily which has boycotted Lagercrantz because its literary critic was not allowed to read the book before interviewing him. Despite all the precautions, a newspaper kiosk at Stockholm’s central station put the book up for sale on Wednesday, a day early, before being ordered by Norstedts to remove it.

snapped up the land and residents were offered Tw$2 million ($61,000) compensation

area’s leading tourist attractions, pulling in more than a million visitors annually, mostly from

or new housing. Huang has lived there for 37 years, staying even after his neighbours abandoned their homes and only 11 houses remained. That’s when he decided to paint. “I was the only person left in the village and I was bored,” he said. “My father taught me how to paint when I was five years old, but I hadn’t done it since I was a child. “The first thing I painted was a bird inside my house.” Huang decorated the interior of his twobedroom bungalow, then the outer walls and the neighbouring homes which were standing empty. The ever-expanding artwork became a parade of dogs, cats, planes and his favourite celebrities, including kung fu legend Bruce Lee. When local university students discovered Huang’s work they launched a campaign to save the village and four years ago the authorities agreed it should be preserved. Now it is one of the

Asia.“The government has promised me they will keep this house and this village,” said Huang. “I was so happy and thankful.” Officials say they are seeking to make the “Rainbow Village” a designated cultural area. “Tourism is one of the reasons to keep it, but the main reason is that veterans’ villages are very special to Taiwan,” says Huang Ming-heng, chief secretary of Taichung’s cultural affairs bureau. “Unfortunately most of them have been knocked down, so it’s important to keep this historical memory.”

On a scorching Tuesday morning, tourists of all ages take selfies in front of the murals. “I think they are amazing graphics - this place should be preserved,” said Hsiao Chi, 19, a student from Taipei. “The colour and the drawings are very special,” added Ivy Ng, 30, from Hong Kong, who was visiting Taichung with her family.

Micro-sensors stuck to honey bees to help solve mass deaths

SYDNEY Australian scientists revealed Tuesday they are using microsensors attached to honey bees as part of a global push to understand the key factors driving a worldwide population decline of the pollinators. There has been a sharp plunge in the population of honey bees, which pollinate about 70 percent of global crops, or one-third of food that humans eat including fruits and vegetables, raising fears over food security. Researchers have said the falling hive numbers were caused by threats such as the sudden death of millions of adult insects in beehives - known as “colony collapse disorder” - a

blood-sucking mite called Varroa, pesticides and climate change.

“The micro-sensors that we are using help us to ask different questions that we couldn’t ask before because we’ve never really been able to quantify the behaviour of bees both out in the environment and in their hives,” Gary Fitt from Australia’s national science agency CSIRO told AFP. The sensors, 2.5 millimetres (0.1 inches) in width and breadth and weighing 5.4 milligrams (0.0002 ounces) lighter than pollen that bees collect - are glued to the back of European honey bees.

Sophisticated data collection receptors are also built into hives.

Issue - 630 (33)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Young hopefuls in race to be first black African in space

LAGOS In half a century of space travel more than 500 people have glimpsed the Earth from the unique vantage point of the cosmos, yet no black African has been among them.

Now a Nigerian and two South Africans are in a race to become the first after being shortlisted in a global talent search to send a “young icon of the future” into the heavens. The winner will undergo intense training, experiencing extreme G-forces and weightlessness before taking off in American developer XCOR’s Lynx spacecraft, on a voyage loosely envisaged for next year.

Among the three is Freeman Osonuga, who is competing with 30 hopefuls shortlisted for the Rising Star Programme run by talent agency Kruger Cowne and the One Young World charity, both based in London. “It feels great, being on the verge of making history. And to be in a position to inspire a generation and the continent,” said Osonuga, a doctor at a teaching hospital in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city.

“It would be a rare opportunity to be a beacon of hope to the continent, that truly we can literally reach for the stars and fulfil our potential.” Osonuga,

Russia launches Proton rocket with British satellite

MOSCOW Russia has successfully launched a Proton rocket with a British satellite in the first such launch since an engine failure in May resulted in a Mexican satellite being destroyed.

A Proton-M rocket carrying an Inmarsat-5 F3 communications satellite launched from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1144 GMT as scheduled, Russia’s space agency said.

“The launch went as planned,” spokesman for the Russian space agency Roscosmos Igor Burenkov told AFP. “All the systems operated remarkably well.” The launch is

crucial for Inmarsat, Britain’s biggest satellite operator, which said that together with two other satellites, it will create “the world’s first globally available, high-speed mobile broadband service, delivered through a single provider.”

A similar rocket carrying a Mexican satellite fell back to earth on May 16 after suffering an engine malfunction in one of a series of embarrassing failures for Russia’s troubled space programme.

The state-run Khrunichev Centre spacecraft manufacturer said the failure was due to a construction flaw in one of the engines.

who grew up in poverty in the southeastern state of Ogun, the youngest of six children, is no stranger to risk.

The 30-year-old returned in May from six months in Sierra Leone as part of the African Union’s Ebola response team, for which he was given the country’s Meritorious Service Award. He acknowledges the danger in which he placed himself but maintains that “every effort to save fellow human lives” is worth the potential pitfalls. “My risktaking ventures aren’t just for pleasure or fun, but for humanitarian purposes,” said the medic, who told AFP he had always wanted to experience weightlessness.

XCOR offers one-hour flights for $95,000 (84,000 euros) on a shuttle that takes off from the Mojave Desert in California. It has already sold hundreds of tickets, although it has yet to start commercial trips. Its Lynx Mark II spacecraft is capable of carrying a pilot and a passenger over the 100-kilometre (62-mile) limit known as the Karman line the border between the atmosphere and outer space.

The Rising Star shortlist will be whittled down to three finalists

who will deliver a 15-minute speech on any subject to an audience of 1,300 from 196 countries at the One Young World Summit in Bangkok in November. A panel of judges will then decide which candidate most deserves the journey of a lifetime and the right to call themselves an astronaut. Nono Cele, 28, a leading Johannesburg-based sports broadcasting producer and director, is another of the contenders and told AFP the idea of being the first black African in space “gives me goose bumps”.

“My background, my country, my struggles and my mistakes have all told me that these things are not possible for a person like me - black, female and South African,” she said. “So, to even stand a chance at such greatness only validates that passion in me that my life is meaningful. My life is valuable.

And most importantly, I can make a difference.” Cele is joined

by Tshepo Seloane, 25, from South Africa’s northern province of Gauteng, an adviser to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and a campaigner on a variety of youth issues.

Quite when any of the hopefuls would actually reach space is subject to the vagaries hi-tech engineering and the timetable for their flights remains as up in the air as they hope to be. A fourth contender in the race, part-time South African DJ Mandla Maseko, landed a coveted seat in in 2013 to join one of the Lynx Mark II flights. He was due to fly this year after winning a competition organised by the US-based AXE Apollo Space Academy but no firm plans for his trip have yet been made public.

Although the stated programme for the “Rising Star” winner is to board a flight in 2016, progress had been slower than expected on developing the spacecraft.

Plans for an operational vehicle by 2010 slipped first to early 2012 and then to 2015.

Meanwhile XCOR says on its website it only expects to start the Lynx Mark I testing phase which will last up to 18 months towards the end of 2015. A representative of Maseko, who calls himself “The Afronaut”, told AFP his flight had been rescheduled for “early 2016” while XCOR did not respond to requests for comment.

BUNOL Thousands of half-naked revellers pelted each other with tomatoes on Wednesday in the town of Bunol in eastern Spain, bathing the streets with red goo in the annual “Tomatina” battle.

A string of trucks laden with 170 tonnes of tomatoes rolled through the town’s narrow streets, as teams on board distributed their load to surrounding crowds for people to throw at each other during the hour-long festivities.

The iconic fiesta - which celebrates its 70th anniversary and is billed at “the world’s biggest food fight” - has become a major draw for foreigners, in particular from Britain, Japan and the United States.The bang of fireworks set off the bedlam at 11 am. Revellers jammed shoulder-to-shoulder, many wearing just bathing suits, bent down to pick up tomatoes from the ground to throw while others lay in the pulp. “I am going to go three months without eating tomatoes, I’m disgusted but it doesn’t matter,” a Spanish woman in her 20s, who wore a red T-shirt and whose hair was covered in scarlet mush, told

reporters. One young man could be seen using a plastic pail to scoop up red pulp from the

Japanese for example are very reserved, solemn, and transform themselves when they come

streets and pour it over the heads of others. Bunol city hall estimates that only one-fifth of the roughly 22,000 participants this year are from Spain. Mayor Rafael Perez said the event had become so succesful by allowing anyone participating to let off steam.

“There are countries where maybe people have a harder time expressing their feelings,” he told Spanish radio. “The

here,” he added. Bunol officials estimate that ten percent of the participants come from Japan.Organisers recommend revellers squish the tomatoes before throwing them - “the hit will be less painful” - wear old clothes and use goggles to protect their eyes from the fruit’s acid. This was the third year nonresident participants were charged 10 euros ($11.50) to take part.

Annual tomato battle paints streets of Spanish town red

Hong Kong diamond thief swapped stone for fake HONG KONG A thief swapped a $220,000 diamond with a fake at a luxury jewellery store in Hong Kong, police said Saturday, as the city wrestles with an uptick in shop theft. The diamond, valued at around HK$1.7 million ($219,000),

was taken by a man in his 30s on Friday from a store in Hong Kong’s Central financial district, police said. “From CCTV footage, it was found that a man posing as a customer arrived at the shop and picked out one of the items and then was suspected to have

swapped the diamond with a fake,” a police statement said.

The fake diamond was discovered by one of the store’s employees, who reported the case to the police. No arrests have been made. Shop theft in Hong Kong is up by over 15 percent in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2014, with

4,961 cases reported, according to police statistics. In January, Hong Kong police said they were hunting a girl aged between 12 and 14-years-old over the theft of a diamond necklace worth more than HK$36 million from a jewellery store.

Issue - 630 (34)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Akali Dal and BJP allies in drug smuggling necessitating CBI probe says Bajwa

CHANDIGARH The Punjab Congress President Mr Partap Singh Bajwa today said the ruling Akali Dal and BJP were allies too in all sorts of crimes including drug smuggling which necessitated High Court monitored CBI inquiry as the issue concerned the future of the state.

He said the latest case was the arrest of Ferozepur BJP leader

Jarnail Singh Nimana and his associates by the Rajasthan police from whom opium was recovered. Earlier, the several associates of the state BJP President Mr Kamal Sharma have appeared in cases of smuggling, fake licences, fake currency and currency and these people including even his PA. “The BJP has suddenly stopped

raking up the drug smuggling issue as its leaders are equally involved in this despicable conspiracy against the Punjabis.

The Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi and the BJP chief Mr Amit Shah should speak up as Punjab is a border state and it is too well known that drug money all over the world is siphoned off into terrorist activities too. Punjab has already suffered for more than a decade. It is for this reason that the Congress has been demanding court monitored CBI probe”, he added.

Mr Bajwa said both the Chief Minister Mr Parkash Singh Badal and the Deputy Chief Minister Mr Sukhbir Singh Badal have been in denial mode. However, they had not reacted to the naming of the Information and Public Relations Minister Mr Bikram Singh Majithia by the enforcement directorate investigating officer in the drug racket Mr Naranjan Singh for his transfer to Kolkata as he had questioned the latter in the money laundering case related to drug smuggling. The PPCC chief questioned the so called morality being preached by Mr Modi, Mr Shah and other BJP and the RSS leaders while at the ground level, the party was no different with its leaders equally involved in such activities. Lashing out at Mr Majithia, Mr Bajwa asked him since when had he turned into Congress high command deciding whether he would continue as

India to attract Indian nurses who are being forced to return from UK NEW DELHI Indian nurses, who may soon have to pack their bags and leave Britain due to changing immigration rules already has a job waiting for them in India. The

Union health ministry has offered to take in nurses on contractual basis under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) which means they would get paid much more than what their counterparts get being part of government hospitals. There is a shortage of 2.4 million nurses in India. A new immigration policy in UK which intends to cap the number of migrants living in UK will lead to almost 7,000 overseas nurses being sent home by 2020. In an interview

to TOI on the side lines of the Call to Action Summit, C K Mishra, additional secretary in the ministry said “In reality, doctors are paid higher in the private sector but nurses have

higher pay in the public sector.

Britain’s loss will be our gain.

We have a lot of space to absorb them. We will soon start becoming proactive in getting them back to India”. “If they work under the NRHM, we can play around with their salaries and give them a decent pay,” Mishra added. The ministry has already broken the upper ceiling when it comes to paying specialists willing to work in rural areas under the NRHM. States have been told to pay as

much as required to ensure specialist doctors work in villages and can be retained.

According to Mishra, specialists who were earlier paid around Rs 60,000 are now drawing nearly Rs 2 lakhs a month for working in villages. “We have already empowered the states to give whatever it takes to financially encourage specialists to work in rural settings,” Mishra who is also director of the National Health Mission added. Under new rules in UK, up to 3,365 nurses currently working in the Britain may have to leave the country from 2017 as a direct result of the 2012 immigration changes. If levels of recruitment stay the same, by 2020, 6,620 nurses will be impacted, majority of which will be from India according to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

The new rules say that a nurse can stay in the UK only if she or he earns a minimum of £35,000 a year - which is the salary of a senior nurse. This is a position that the majority of nurses would not reach within six years.

What experts find silly is that the NHS has already spent over £20 million recruiting the 3,365 nurses already working in the UK who may have to return home because they are unlikely to meet the income threshold.

PPCC chief or not. He reminded the Revenue Minister that he carried taint of allegation of his involvement in drug smuggling.He said in case these allegations were false, Mr Majithia should have sit on fast to prove his innocence but be lacked moral courage. He should have resigned rather than facing continued humiliation at every level, even

from the Chief Minister Mr Parkash Singh Badal. He referred to the full page ad inserted by the BJP in the newspapers on April 30, 2014 in which Mr Narendra Modi promised to root out the drug menace from the state. He said that ad itself was a proof of drug mafia operating in Punjab but that was never rebutted by the Badal government.

Village Mann to contribute in saving environment,electricity & money

The Mann village of Sri Muktsar Sahib district will be contributing its bit in saving our environment, electricity as well as money as the government has decided to give two LED bulbs to each household, besides its streetlights have been lit by solar power. This village has been adopted by Union Minister Mrs Harsimrat Kaur Badal under the Sansad Aadarsh Gram Yojana.

It is pertinent to mention that with the use of LED bulbs, the village

residents will be able to save electricity worth Rs 8.5 lakh per annum and each household would save around Rs 1,624 per annum.

The Deputy Commissioner further informed that village Mann has been adopted by Union Food Processing Minister Mrs Harsimrat Kaur Badal under Sansad Aadarsh Gram Yojana.

With a cost of Rs 5 lakh, PEDA has installed 50 solar powered streetlights in the village.

TORONTO Two men who died in a jet-ski accident were identified as an Indo-Canadian businessman and his friend, a media report said on Saturday. Emergency workers were called to the shores of the Fraser river on Thursday after a commercial vessel captain spotted two men - later identified as realtor-builder Salinder Burmy and Ramanjit “Bunty” Bachra The Link newspaper reported. The Richmond Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirmed that two men in their 50s were pulled unresponsive from the water and were later pronounced dead.

According to police, both the men had head injuries and were found floating in the water near a jet ski. Police suspect that speed and lighting could have been factors that led to the incident. Burmy’s LinkedIn profile lists him as president and CEO at Presidio Land Development Corp. Under the business categories were land assembly, land development, investments and project marketing, the report said.

Burmy also supported social causes, including education, human rights and poverty alleviation.

Two Indo-Canadians killed in jet-ski accident

Issue 630 (35)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Dhoni appreciates cultural Sania receives Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award In the backdrop of two le- championship in Beijing receive it personally.” thankful to God and the value among Indian gal cases, 16 and wrestler Babita Kumari Top shuttler and China members of the selection and five is in the US for the World Open winner K. Srikanth committee. It shows their Americans in New Jersey sportspersons coaches were among championship. Rower wanted to soak in the at- faith in me and motivates Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni appreciated the Indian Americans for

the way they have inculcated Indian values and cultural ethos among their kids, despite being in foreign land for long. He was felicitated by the members of Bihar-Jharkhand Association of North America (BJANA) in New Jersey on Sunday. Accompanied by his wife Sakshi Dhoni and his friend, former deputy chief minister of Jharkhand Sudesh Mahto, Dhoni spent quality time with the kids of Indian families and shared his experiences.

Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s footprint, Mahto, the Ajsu Party chief, that partners BJP led alliance government in Jharkhand, extended invitation to the Indian Americans to come to Jharkhand and invest. He

said that Jharkhand has been a land with immense potential in terms of mineral, natural and human resources and can emerge as a developed state soon.

The programme was organised at Siddhi Vinayak temple, being constructed by BJANA in New Jersey which is yet to be opened to the public.

Both accompanied by their wives, Dhoni and Mahto offered prayers at the temple and had a discussion with chairman of the temple committee, Avinash Gupta.

Dhoni expressed happiness over the support that he and his team enjoys across globe while playing cricket, from the people of Indian origin.

“Keep supporting us, we have a good team and all are in good form, we will keep doing well,” Mahato quoted Dhoni as saying while interacting with the gathering of over 200 people at the temple.

Mahato told TOI that Dhoni did not interact with media persons there but was open to interactions with the Indian families, particularly the kids.

those who were honoured at the National Sports and Adventure Awards ceremony in the Durbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhawan here on Saturday. Tennis ace Sania Mirza was conferred the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award even as the Karnataka High Court sought clarifications from the Union Sports Ministry following a petition from Paralympian H.N. Girisha challenging the Ministry’s decision.

Sania, a multiple Grand Slam champion, is the second tennis player to get the honour and the first to receive the award from President Pranab Mukherjee. Predictably, Sania, who flew in ahead of the US Open, was the most sought-after sportsperson of the evening. The event lost some sheen as five out of 17 selected for the Arjuna Award could not be present due to international assignments and other compulsions. Boxer Mandeep Jangra is taking part in the Asian boxing championship in Bangkok, cricketer Rohit Sharma is playing a Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo, athlete M.R. Poovamma is participating in the World athletics

David Warner eyes elusive World T20 title Pugnacious opener David Warner has set his sights on the one major trophy that has eluded Australia since its inception in 2007. The

World T20 2016 will be played in India and Warner feels his teammates should be accustomed to the conditions, having played a lot of IPL. “I think going to In-

dia, there’s no excuse for conditions. All the players have played there before (and) played IPL there.

Whatever team is selected

that will be the right team for those conditions,” Warner was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph.

Warner, who was a part of Australia’s World Cup 2015

win Down Under, feels 2016’s showpiece event could be his team’s best chance to add their first T20 World title to their trophy cabinet. “I really do think this could be one of our best chances to win the T20 WC,” he added. “We’ve probably played more (in India) than we have at home in the Twenty20 format.” Warner, a proven talent and an extremely valuable asset in the shortest format of the game, has pointed towards the lack of playing consistently with the same unit for a long period of time as the reason for Australia’s inability to clinch a major trophy in the shortest format of the game.

Sawarn Singh was the

mosphere. “Being at the

also among the absentees. World Championship medal-winning wrestler Bajrang said the Arjuna Award meant a lot to him.

“This is a huge morale booster for me as it comes before the World Championships and in an Olympic year. You can guess how important this is for me because I have changed my schedule for the World Championship to ensure I

Rashtrapati Bhawan is an amazing experience. It is something you can only feel and experience… My most important target now is to do well in upcoming events because if I do well in all tournaments I will be up there (in rankings) and get selected for the Olympics.” Commonwealth Games gold-winning weightlifter S. Sathish Kumar was excited. “I am

me to do even better.” Ace shooter Jitu Rai was also delighted. “This is a big honour for me.

There is a difference between winning medals and bagging such prestigious awards. It will motivate me.” Boxing coach Swatantara Raj Singh said, “When I applied for the award previously, every time I wrote ‘Training the boxers is my lifetime achievement.’ Finally I got it.” Dhyan Chand awardee S.P. Misra said, “This was unexpected. I am really happy.”

The ceremony was a memorable event for the city of Hyderabad. Apart from Sania, shuttler K. Srikanth, roller-skater Anup Kumar Yama (Arjuna), former Davis Cup captain S.P. Misra (Dhyan Chand) and Sports Coaching Foundation (Rashtriya Khel Protsahan) of the city were honoured for their contributions.

our nations with non-violence and non-co-operation as their weapons which have inspired the world, to adopt and achieve their goals in a peaceful manner.

‘We dedicate this trophy to Mahatma and Madiba, the guiding souls of our nations.’

Cricket South Africa chief executive Haroon Lorgat added: ‘For the people of both our countries there is no greater duty than to uphold the ideals of both Mahatma

Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

‘As cricket loving people we must fight hard to win on the field of play but never forget to do battle in the spirit of these two great men.

‘Naming all future bilateral series between our two countries after Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela is eternal news for our people and cricketers and I would like to thank the Nelson Mandela Foundation for their support.’

BCCI, CSA announce Mahatma Gandhi-Nelson Mandela series

All future bilateral series between India and South Africa will be named after Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, the boards have announced.

South Africa’s trip to India in October will be the inaugural Mahatma GandhiNelson Mandela Series, with the winner of the fourmatch Test section being awarded the Freedom Trophy.

Jagmohan Dalmiya, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, said: ‘The struggle for freedom has been the common thread between our countries.

‘Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela liberated

Issue 630 (36)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Heartbroken Obama calls for gun control, Trump says no Washington As a heartbroken President Barack Obama renewed a call for gun control in the wake of the killing of two journalists on live TV, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump instead favoured addressing mental health issues.

“It breaks my heart every time when you read about or hear about these kind of incidents,” the presi-

dent told an ABC affiliate after the shooting of a television reporter and a cameraman in Virginia

Wednesday.

“What we know is that the number of people who die from gun-related incidents around this country dwarfs any deaths that happen through terrorism,” Obama said.

“We’re willing to spend trillions of dollars to prevent terrorist activities, but we haven’t been willing, so far at least, to impose some common sense gun safety measures that could save some lives.”

Discussing how Republican controlled Congress is “bottlenecked” on gun control, Obama praised the cities and state legislatures who have taken action and said: “My hope is that public pressure continues to grow.”

But Trump Thursday opposed tightening gun laws saying: “This isn’t a gun

problem, this is a mental problem.”

“It’s not a question of the laws, it’s really the people,” Trump told CNN. Calling the gunman a “very sick man,” he said mental illness is “a massive problem” in the US. He suggested more resources should be devoted to addressing mental health -- hoping to prevent shootings like the one in Virginia, which he called “really, very sad”.

Gun control advocates once again pressed for reforms with Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton backing reaffirmed Obama’s plea for “common sense” gun legislation.

“We are smart enough -compassionate enough -to figure out how to balance legitimate Second Amendment rights with preventive measures,” she

tweeted Thursday.

But Trump insisted Thursday that changes in the US gun laws were not the solution needed, saying he is “a very strong Second Amendment person”.

A powerful gun lobby has foiled Obama’s efforts to tighten gun laws, leading him to describe it as the greatest source of frustration during his time in office.

Commenting on Wednesday’s tragedy, the New York Times hit the nail on the head saying: “There are too many guns, and too little national will to do anything about them.”

Now, young visitor accidentally breaks ancient artifact at Israel museum

Jerusalem Israel’s leading museum said yesterday that a young visitor accidentally bumped into a display case and broke an ancient glass artifact, but later changed its account and said the cause of the mishap was unclear. The museum official Ran Lior initially said a girl inadvertently broke the artifact but declined to identify her. The item, a gold-glass base of a 4th century Roman funerary vessel, broke along a previously repaired

crack. He said yesterday that the museum has restored the item and returned it to the display.

The artifact includes a Latin inscription and a depiction of a Christian couple with their children. It is one of some 300 ancient Roman and Near Eastern artifacts donated to the museum this year by Robert and Renee Belfer.

The artifacts are on public display for the first time.

Lior declined to discuss the “poor girl” who broke the artifact this week.

Issue 630 (37)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Health HigH-salt diet may boost immune response

High-salt diet is bad for health, say numerous studies, but a significant research now reveals that dietary salt could have a biological advantage defending the body against invading bacteria.

They found that a highsalt diet increased sodium accumulation in the skin of mice, thereby boosting their immune response to a skin-infecting parasite.

The findings suggest that dietary salt could have therapeutic potential to promote host defence against microbial infections.

Till now, high-salt is clearly known to be detrimental for cardiovascular diseases and stroke.

“Our study challenges this one-sided view and suggests that increasing salt accumulation at the site of infections might be an ancient strategy to ward off infections, long

before antibiotics were invented,” explained first study author Jonathan Jantsch, microbiologist at Universitatsklinikum Regensburg and

Universitat Regensburg in Germany.

A clue to this mystery came when the team noticed an unusually high amount of sodium in the infected skin of mice that had been bitten by cage mates. Intrigued by this observation, they examined the link between infection and salt accumulation in the skin.

Stressed? Start colouring to reduce anxiety

Are you unable to cope with stress? Well, its time you start colouring, as it can help reduce stress and anxiety. Many book stores, departmental chains and even airport gift shops are selling colouring books for adults as a way to destress, relax and calm the mind and body, the Ottawa Citizen reports.

The goofy cartoon characters are now replaced with busy, complex designs and inspiring titles, such as ‘Color Me Happy,’ ‘Color Me Calm’ and ‘Color Me Stress Free.’ Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford’s

first book, ‘Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Colouring Book,’ is an art therapy book for grown-ups, which is quickly catching on and is one of Amazon’s bestsellers. Bahram Olfati, vice-president of print for Indigo/Chapters, said colouring books were absolutely flying off the shelves, and were one of the most in-demand items at their store. Olfati added that many of their customers appreciated colouring books as a new creative outlet, while others set aside time for colouring as a way to destress after a long day.

The team found that infected areas in patients with bacterial skin infections also showed remarkably high salt accumulation. Moreover, experiments in mice showed that a high-salt diet boosted the activity of

immune cells called macrophages, thereby promoting the healing of feet that were infected with a protozoan parasite.

The researchers, however, urge caution over the potential health benefits of a high-salt diet.

“Due to the overwhelming clinical studies

demonstrating that high dietary salt is detrimental to hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, we feel that at present our data does not justify recommendations on high dietary salt in the general population,” Jantsch commented. “Nevertheless, in situations where endogenous accumulation of salt to sites of infection is insufficient, supplementation of salt might be a therapeutic option,” he emphasised.

Moving forward, the researchers will examine how salt accumulates in the skin and triggers immune responses and why salt accumulates in the skin of ageing adults.

“We also think that local application of high-saltcontaining wound dressings and the development of other saltboosting antimicrobial therapies might bear therapeutic potential,” the authors concluded.

Health benefits Childhood obesityofat peakmulberry! in US, Canada

A new study has revealed that childhood obesity is at record levels in the United States and Canada. The study also found that childhood obesity rates are higher in the US than in Canada, Global News reported. In the study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used information from the 1970s and the early 2000s. They found that the commonness of the condition in the United States had outpaced Canada.

However, comparing the most current data to numbers from the early-to-mid

2000s showed only a slight increase in childhood obesity rates in both countries. The study stated that obese children could experience immediate health consequences such as psycho-social stress, elevated blood pressure and cholesterol, and abnormal glucose tolerance. In the last few decades, the report indicated that the prevalence of adult obesity had increased in both countries. The results stated that obesity rates for children aged three to six was the same in both countries.

Simple ways to get relief from period cramps!

We all deal with period cramps which make our lives hell during that time of the month. Even though we take medicines, it just provides short-term relief.

Besides, consuming too many medicines is just not good for health.

But we surely can rely on some simple ways which brings temporary yet considerable relief from the agonizing pain.

Here are some simple ways to get relief from cramps: Have a cup of chamomile tea Always have a cup of chamomile tea when you are having menstrual cramps and stomach aches, as it will give you relief from the pain.

Chamomile helps to ease out the pain as it works as

an anti-inflammatory agent in the stomach and relaxes the smooth muscles of the upper digestive track.

Use hot water bag Using hot water bag while having menstrual cramps is useful as the heat reduces the pain and helps to loosen and relax muscles. Put the hot water bag on your belly

until the time the pain reduces. The warmth on the belly will give you relief from the dreadful pain and discomfort.

Have warm lemon water One should have a glass of warm lemon water during period as it reduces the agonizing pain. It also

keeps you hydrated which keeps the system flushed and running smoothly.

Have a cup of ginger root tea Sipping on a cup of Ginger root tea will ease you from period cramps as ginger contains chemicals called gingerols and shogaols which relaxes smooth muscle that lines the intestinal track. Ginger root is also great for relieving nausea.

Drink lots of water It may sound odd but drinking lots of water during period reduces pain.

Drinking water helps avoid painful bloating during menstruation. But drinking warm or hot water is more effective as hot liquids increase blood flow and may relax cramped muscles.

Issue 630 (38)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Psychology research is often questionable

Scientific studies about how people act or think can rarely be replicated by outside experts, said a study Thursday that raised new questions about the seriousness of psychology research. A team of 270 scientists tried reproducing 100 psychology and social science studies that had been published in three top peer-reviewed US journals in 2008. Just 39 percent came out with same results as the initial reports, said the findings in the journal Science. The study topics ranged from people’s social lives and interactions with others to research involving perception, attention and memory. No medical therapies were called into question as a result of the study, although a separate effort is underway to evaluate cancer biology studies. “It’s important to note that this somewhat disappointing outcome does not speak directly to the validity or the falsity of the theories,” said Gilbert Chin, a psychologist and senior editor at the journal Science. “What it does say is that we should be less confident about many of the original experimental results.” Study co-author Brian Nosek from the University of Virginia said the research shows the need for scientists to continually question themselves. “A scientific claim doesn’t become

believable because of the status or authority of the person that generated it,” Nosek told reporters.

“Credibility of the claim depends in part on the repeatability of its

supporting evidence,” he told reporters. Problems can arise when scientists cherry-pick their data to include only what is deemed “significant,” or when study sizes are so small that false negatives or false positives arise.

Nosek said scientists are also under pressure to publish their research regularly and in top journals, and the process can lead to a skewed picture.

“Not everything we do gets published. Novel, positive and tidy results are more

broad scale, then the published literature may become more beautiful than the reality.” Some experts said the problem may be even worse that the current study suggested.

John Ioannidis, a biologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, told Science magazine that he suspects about 25 percent of psychology papers would hold up under scrutiny, about the same “as what we see in many biomedical disciplines,” he was quoted as saying. One

study author who participated in the project as both a reviewer and reviewee was E.J. Masicampo, assistant professor at Wake Forest College in North Carolina.

He was part of a team that was able to replicate a study that found people who are faced with a confrontational task, like having to play a violent video game, prefer to listen to angry music and think about negative experiences beforehand.

But when outside researchers tried to replicate Masicampo’s own study - which hypothesized that a sugary drink can help college students do better at making a complicated decision - they were not successful.

Masicampo expressed no bitterness, chalking up the differences to geographical factors, and stressing that the experiment showed how complicated it can be to do a high-quality replication of a study.

“As an original author whose work was being replicated, I felt like my research was being treated in the best way possible,” he said.

There are ways to fix the process so that findings are more likely to hold up under scrutiny, according to Dorothy Bishop, professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford.

They are said to be the ‘windows to our souls’.

Looking your friends and loved ones in the eye, you can gauge their mood and the emotions they are feeling.

But taking a more critical look can reveal a host of underlying potential health problems.

Stubborn dark circles sweeping to your cheeks, and red, pain stained bloodshot eyes are something most people will be familiar with.

And while the i m m e d i a t e assumption we jump to is a lack of sleep, nutritionists tell MailOnline that dark circles and bloodshot eyes can be a sign of anaemia, food intolerances and serious eye conditions, such as glaucoma. Furthermore, if the whites of your eyes appear yellow, experts warn it can be a sign of the potentially fatal liver disease, hepatitis as well as jaundice and liver dysfunction. Here we reveal the five seemingly harmless ways your eyes can reveal underlying health conditions. Dark circles under the eyes are one of the most common eye issues that women struggle with. We are all aware that lack of

reduce obesity or to be completely cured. There are simple home remedies which can give you an absolute cure from obesity.

1. Let’s start with what we always start our day with – breakfast. That’s right.

Breakfast is the most

lunch & dinner, eating 4-5 more small meals spaced 2-3 hours apart during the day increases the metabolic rate of the body.

3. Spices like ginger, cinnamon, black pepper etc. are good for losing weight. Drink ginger tea 2-

lifestyle risk factor and not a true medical condition.

For the study, the researchers analyzed heart scans and physical activity records of more than 2,000 adults living in Dallas and found each hour of sedentary time per day on average was associated with a 14 percent increase in coronary artery calcification burden. “I think the study offers a promising message.

Reducing the amount of time you sit by even an hour. The researchers also used a motion-tracking device called an accelerometer to measure how long participants were sedentary and how much they exercised.

Keeping a strict eye on your weight is imperative in these times. Generally, problems start to rise in the late twenties when there is lack of physical activity. Lethargic habits begin to develop and the individual loses his interest in healthy activities.

Stress related to professional and personal lives takes a toll making it difficult to keep vigil on one’s health which later can lead to obesity.

A lot of medical and cosmetic assistance is available these days to tackle obesity. Not to mention the exorbitant costs involved and their side effects don’t exactly make things easier. But there are also many natural ways to control your weight that you can apply. Tackling obesity is not too tough.

You don’t need to subscribe to expensive treatments to

important meal of the day and provides a steady stream of energy all through the day. This, in turn, prevents unhealthy snacking.

2. Stop nibbling and snacking between meals.

Train yourself to have less food. Instead of eating only 2 meals during the day like

3 times a day. A few cups of natural green tea is also a good remedy for obesity.

4. Two teaspoons of lime juice added to lukewarm water also helps in shedding those extra kilos.

Have it frequently. You can also drink a glass of boiled water daily after every meal.

likely to survive peer review and this can lead to publication biases that leave out negative results and studies that do not fit the story that we have,” he said. “If this occurs on a

Excess sitting ups heart attack risk

The findings of the study are scheduled for presentation at the American College of Cardiology’s 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego. Coronary artery disease is a very common type of heart disease and the leading cause of death in the United States. The researchers did not find any association between coronary artery calcification and the amount of exercise a person gets, adding that too much sitting might have a greater impact than exercising. “It’s clear that exercise is important to reduce your cardiovascular

risk and improve your fitness level,” said Jacquelyn Kulinski, M.D., assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the study’s lead author. “But this study suggests that reducing how much you sit every day may represent a more novel, companion strategy (in addition to exercise) to help reduce your cardiovascular risk.”

Some earlier studies had linked excess sitting with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and early death. The phenomenon has been dubbed “sitting disease,” though it is a

Eyes tells your health sleep is perhaps the most obvious culprit. And we’ve all experienced the mad rush the morning after a late night, applying thick concealer to try and mask exhaustion.

On average, sleep experts agree, seven or eight hours a night of good quality sleep is best. And that should be enough to erase the dark circles. But, nutritionists warn, if sleep isn’t enough to help, it could indicate a series of other health issues. ‘If you’re confident that you’re getting enough sleep but are still feeling excessively tired, which can be a symptom of both these conditions, and the dark circles just won’t go, then see your doctor to get tested for both of these conditions.’

Often replenishing your iron levels can help anaemia.

Some natural ways to keep those extra kilos at bay!

Issue 630 (39)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Cabbage roll Casserole Ingredients 2 pounds ground beef 1 cup chopped onion 1 (29 ounce) can tomato sauce 3 1/2 pounds chopped cabbage 1 cup uncooked white rice 1 teaspoon salt 2 (14 ounce) cans beef broth Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

In a large skillet, brown beef in oil over medium high heat until redness is gone.

Drain off fat.

In a large mixing bowl combine the onion, tomato sauce, cabbage, rice and salt. Add meat and mix all together. Pour mixture into a 9x13 inch baking dish. Pour broth over oven, covered, for 1 hour. Stir, replace meat mixture and bake in the preheated cover and bake for another 30 minutes.

Buffalo Style Chicken Pizza Ingredients: 3 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cooked and cubed 2 tablespoons butter, melted 1 (2 ounce) bottle hot sauce 1 (8 ounce) bottle blue cheese salad dressing 1 (16 inch) prepared pizza crust 1 (8 ounce) package shredded mozzarella cheese Directions: Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

In a medium bowl combine the cubed chicken, melted butter and hot sauce.

Mix well. Spread whole bottle of salad dressing over crust, then top with chicken mixture and sprinkle with shredded cheese.

Marinated Flank Steak

Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients: 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1/3 cup soy sauce 1/4 cup red wine vinegar 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard 2 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 1/2 pounds flank steak Directions: In a medium bowl, mix the oil, soy sauce, vinegar, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, garlic, and ground black pepper. Place meat in a shallow glass dish. Pour marinade over the steak, turning meat to coat thoroughly. Cover, and refrigerate for 6 hours. Preheat grill for medium-high heat. Oil the grill grate. Place steaks on the grill, and discard the marinade.

Ingredients: 1 pound ground beef 1/2 cup uncooked long grain white rice 1 cup water 6 green bell peppers 2 (8 ounce) cans tomato sauce 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder 1/4 teaspoon onion powder salt and pepper to taste 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place the rice and water in a saucepan, and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat, cover, and cook 20 minutes. In a skillet over medium heat, cook the beef until evenly browned.

Remove and discard the tops, seeds, and membranes of the bell peppers.

Arrange peppers in a baking dish with

Grill meat for 5 minutes per side, or to desired doneness.

the hollowed sides facing upward. (Slice the bottoms of the peppers if necessary so that they will stand upright.) In a bowl, mix the browned beef, cooked rice, 1 can tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. Spoon an equal amount of the mixture into each hollowed pepper. Mix the remaining tomato sauce and Italian seasoning in a bowl, and pour over the stuffed peppers. Bake 1 hour in the preheated oven, basting with sauce every 15 minutes, until the peppers are tender.

Carnitas

broCColi CHiCken divan Ingredients: 1 pound chopped fresh broccoli 1 1/2 cups cubed, cooked chicken meat, 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of broccoli soup 1/3 cup milk, 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese, 1 tablespoon butter, melted, 2 tablespoons dried bread crumbs Directions: Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Place the broccoli in a saucepan with enough water to cover.

Bring to a boil, and cook 5 minutes, or until tender. Drain. Place the cooked broccoli in a 9 inch pie plate. Top with the chicken. In a bowl, mix the soup and milk, and pour over the chicken.

Sprinkle with Cheddar cheese. Mix the

Bake in preheated oven until crust is golden brown and cheese is bubbly, about 5 to 10 minutes. Let set a few minutes before slicing, and serve.

melted butter with the bread crumbs, and sprinkle over the cheese. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, or until bubbly and lightly brown.

Ingredients: 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon garlic powder 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1/2 teaspoon crumbled dried oregano 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 (4 pound) boneless pork shoulder roast, 2 bay leaves 2 cups chicken broth Directions: Mix together salt, garlic powder, cumin, oregano, coriander, and cinnamon in a bowl. Coat pork with the spice mixture.

Place the bay leaves in the bottom of a slow cooker and place the pork on top.

Pour the chicken broth around the sides of the pork, being careful not to rinse off the spice mixture. Cover and cook on Low until the pork shreds easily with a fork, about 10 hours. Turn the meat

after it has cooked for 5 hours. When the pork is tender, remove from slow cooker, and shred with two forks. Use cooking liquid as needed to moisten the meat.

Issue 630 (40)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Issue - 630 (6)

1 Sep. - 7 Sep. 2015

Musharraf could be back as head of new Pak party

Lahore Pakistan’s former military dictator Pervez Musharraf could soon stage a political comeback as head of a new party combining all factions of the Muslim League except the ruling PML-N of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, ahead of local body elections.

Efforts have been intensified to form the party ? United Muslim League - after uniting all factions of Muslim League except Sharif’s PML-N. PML-Q President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain yesterday held a meeting with 72-yearold Musharraf, head of All Pakistan Muslim League at his residence in Karachi and agreed to merge all factions except PML-N to form a “new look party”. “I met with General Musharraf, PMLFunctional chief Pir Pagara Sibghatullah

Shah Rashidi and former Sindh chief minister Syed Ghaus Ali Shah, who was once a close aide of Sharif. They all are unanimous on formation of the United Muslim League,” Hussain told reporters. He said efforts are also on to take all those Muslim League leaders and workers on board who are not happy with the policies of the Sharif brothers - Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif. The new party is likely to be formed before local body elections scheduled to be held by the end of the year. There has been a feeling in all Muslim League factions except PML-N, that they should be united and form a new political force to challenge the PML-N and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. They believe that under Musharraf’s leadership all the Muslim League factions can perform well.

Taliban admit covering up Omar’s...

Continued from Page 1 Mansour, apparently published to boost his image and quell the growing internal rancour over his appointment.

Posted on the Taliban website in five languages, the biography acknowledged that Omar died in April 2013 - as was first claimed by Afghan intelligence. “Several key members of the supreme leading council of the Islamic Emirate (Taliban) and authentic religious scholars together decided

Indian-origin teen plans to sue NYPD after judge tosses case

on concealing the tragic news of passing away of (Omar)... and keep this

between the mujahideen and foreign invaders who... had announced that at the

secret limited to the very few colleagues who were already informed of this incorrigible loss,” said the biography, which ran to nearly 5,000 words. “One of the main reasons behind this decision was... that 2013 was considered the final year of power testing

end of 2014, all military operations by foreign troops would be concluded.” NATO ended its combat mission in Afghanistan last December and pulled out the bulk of its troops, although a 13,000-strong residual force remains for

training and counterterrorism operations.

Omar, dead or alive, was seen as a unifying figurehead who observers say kept the fractious movement from splintering as the rival Islamic State group began making inroads into Afghanistan.

The Taliban had continued as recently as July to release official statements in the name of Omar, lionised as a “commander of the faithful” who commanded the loyalties of militants across the region.

But they apparently came under pressure to confirm his death after the Afghan spy agency said he died two years ago in a Karachi hospital.

Afghan Taliban publish Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s biography An Indian-origin teen, arrested for playing music from his phone on a subway platform here, plans to sue the NYPD after a judge quashed the criminal case, a media report said on Monday. Yadram Singh, 18, arrested for playing music from his phone on a subway platform on June 13 plans to sue the New York Police Department (NYPD) after a judge tossed the criminal case days later, the New York Daily News reported.

Kabul The Afghan Taliban have published a biography of their new leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour as hundreds of insurgents meet to resolve a dispute over his appointment following the death of figurehead Mullah Mohammad Omar.

The detailed biography, emailed on Monday to journalists in five languages, offers the story of Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who now leads the Taliban in its fight against the

Afghan government.

Mansour was named as the Taliban’s leader last month after the Afghan government revealed that Mullah Omar died in 2013.

But family of Mullah Omar objected, saying the vote to elect Mansour was not representative of the group, sparking an internal power struggle.

Thai police charge foreign man over Bangkok bombing, likely to be ‘Turkish national’ Bangkok Thai police on Saturday charged a foreign man over last week’s deadly Bangkok bombing, the first arrest connected to an attack that has rattled the juntarun kingdom and damaged its tourist-haven reputation.

The man was arrested after a morning raid on an apartment in Nong Chok district on the eastern outskirts of the capital by security forces who allegedly found him with bomb-making equipment linked to the 17 August blast, which killed 20 people and wounded scores more.

A senior military official told AFP he believed the suspect was a “Turkish national” but Thai police have not yet confirmed his nationality.

“We believe that the suspect was involved with the bombing” at the Erawan shrine, national police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said on a live televised broadcast Saturday evening.

He added that the foreign man was also involved in a blast the day after that bombing near a

popular tourist pier, which sent people scurrying but caused no injuries.

The suspect, now in military custody, has been charged with the “illegal possession of bombmaking materials” and was found with multiple passports, Prawut said in the broadcast.

Photographs of a lightly bearded man sitting with his hands behind his back, Turkish passports wrapped in rubber bands and the photo passport page of a 28-year-old Turkish national named Adem Karadag were also shown on screen.Police did not specify the suspect’s nationality or name. But Colonel Banphot Phunphien, spokesman of Thailand’s Internal Security Operations Command, told AFP the man was a “Turkish national” adding that authorities were working to “verify his nationality” with the Turkish embassy.For days Thai police have been searching for a believed network behind the attacks, focusing on a prime suspect, described as a foreign man, who was captured on security footage

wearing a yellow t-shirt and leaving a bag at the shrine moments before the blast.But authorities have not yet said whether they believe the suspect now detained is the

those found at the two bombing sites, he added.Police chief Somyot Poompanmoung told reporters the suspect was motivated by a “personal feud” and that international terrorism

same as the man seen in this video footage.In earlier comments on Thai broadcaster Channel 3, Prawut said the “clothes and bomb-making materials” found in the accused’s room were linked to both recent blasts.“The ball bearing is the same size” as

was “unlikely”. He did not elaborate further.The attack on the Hindu shrine in Bangkok last week has raised anxieties in the vibrant city and dealt a fresh blow to the kingdom’s reputation as a welcoming and safe travel destination.

The majority of those killed were

ethnic Chinese worshippers from across Asia, who flocked to the shrine in the belief that prayers there bring good fortune.Investigators have said the attack was clearly aimed at damaging the tourism industry but insist that Chinese tourists -- who visit Thailand in larger numbers than any other nationality -- were not singled out.Earlier this week Thai police said they were not ready to exclude any possibility about who was behind the attack.But speculation had grown over involvement by China’s ethnic Uighur Muslim minority -- or their co-religious sympathisers -- following Thailand’s forced repatriation of more than 100 Uighur refugees last month to an uncertain fate in China.

The sudden repatriation of the Turkic-speaking group, among dozens detained in the kingdom for illegal entry last year after presenting themselves to police as Turkish, triggered fury in Istanbul with Bangkok’s consulate there stormed by protesters.