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THE CONTACT WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ISSUE - 650, 19 JAN. - 25 JAN. 2016 PH: (905) 671 - 4761

JeM chief Masood Azhar not arrested, not under house arrest, says report Lahore Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar has reportedly neither been arrested not placed under house arrest by Pakistan. Even worse for India is this nugget: the three lower ranking JeM members who have been arrested in Pakistan have not been detained in connection with the Pathankot attack, reports The Indian Express. The newspaper reports that “no FIR had yet been lodged against Azhar. There have been media reports from Pakistan claiming a crackdown is under way against

Jaish-e-Mohammed and its members. However, as yet, there is no authentic and credible proof to suggest that such action has

actually been taken by Pakistan.

Till now, no FIR has been registered against Azhar for Pathankot attack,” a government official told The Indian Express.

The chatter that is surfacing now is that though Pakistan claims it has detained a bunch of JeM people, it has not said under what law or sections they were detained. All India is hanging on to is a Pakistan PMO statement from 13 January which says “considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements reportedly

belonging to Jaish-eMohammed have been apprehended. The offices of the organisation are also being traced and sealed. Further investigations are under way.”

JeM taunts India, Pakistan Reports of Masood Azhar ‘not arrested, not under house arrest’ blend with the JeM’s online propaganda last week when the notionally banned Pakistan-based jihadist group countered claims that its leader Maulana Masood Azhar has been arrested for his alleged role in the terror strike on the India’s Pathankot airbase in the early hours of 1 January 2016. Azhar, chief of JeM, was reportedly in constant touch with the six terrorists who stormed an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on 1 January and killed seven Indian soldiers.

MEA spokesperson, Vikas Swarup India and Pakistan have agreed to linked to the Pathankot incident. reschedule talks between their Based on initial investigations in foreign secretaries, the Indian Pakistan and the information foreign ministry said on provided, several individuals Thursday, while an investigation

into the Pathankot Attack is carried out. Pakistani media has reported that JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and “several individuals” belonging to his dreaded outfit have been arrested in connection with the Pathankot terror attack. Pakistan media said JeM offices were

sealed after India demanded action on the group linking it to the fate of Foreign Secretary-level talks. Some semblance of officialese on the arrest surfaced early on Thursday, with Lt Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch, minister Continued on Page 2

Are Sikhs minority in Punjab?

Supreme Court to adjudicate

UK’s crackdown on the burka Muslim women will have to remove face veil for officials London Muslim women should have to remove the burka when officials need to see their faces for security reasons, David Cameron said today as he announced new initiatives to help tackle extremism in the UK. The Prime Minister said it was reasonable for women to be asked to remove the veil in circumstances where facial identification was important - for example in court and during immigration checks. However

he distanced himself from a French-style all-out ban on such

coverings, which are worn by some Muslim women to protect their modesty. Mr Cameron told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “In our country

people should be free to wear what they like.

“When you are coming into contact either with different institutions or, for instance, you are in court or you need to see someone’s face at the border, then I would always back the authorities or the institutions that have put in place proper and sensible rules. Going for the French approach of banning an item of clothing, I do not think that’s the way we do things Continued on Page 2

NEW DELHI It may sound ridiculous at first blush, but the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine whether Sikhs were a “minority group in homeland Punjab” saying it had far reaching importance and consequences.

A constitution bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur and justices FMI Kalifulla, AK Sikri, S A

Bobde and R Banumathi initially countered the plea by senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi for treating Sikhs as a minority in Punjab by asking, “Can Muslims be treated as minority in Jammu and Kashmir? - whether the group was numerically minority and whether they were dominated Continued on Page 2

Issue - 650 (2) Continued from Page 1 of frontier regions, confirming the kingpin’s arrest.

“Azhar was taken in protective custody to probe the Pathankot attack,” Geo TV quoted Baloch as saying but almost simultaneously, other top officials in Pakistan’s foreign ministry continued to deny knowledge of any such arrest, feeding into JeM’s online barbs.

“Disbelievers and hypocrites across the world are celebrating our arrest,” a statement in Urdu said, “but the arrest never happened,” reports The Indian Express. In its online rant, JeM makes its displeasure of the IndoPak thaw very clear, calling out Pakistan’s government for its “friendship” with Modi, Advani and Vajpayee.

“Even if they happen, what difference will it make? No difference, except one.

Allah willing, there will be more enthusiasm and excitement among people of the faith, and the work of jihad will gather more strength and energy,” the statement, posted Thursday on a Facebook page, said. The Indian Express reports that Jaishe-Mohammed uses this online community to communicate with media

19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

JeM chief Masood Azhar not... and followers.

Azhar warns Pakistan govt Even as news of his “arrest” broke on local television channels Wednesday night, JeM chief Azhar wrote a piece under his pen name Saadi, warning the Pakistan government about the “dangerous road” it is taking.

“The road that the Pakistan government is taking in its crackdown against the JeM is very dangerous for this country and its steps against mosques, madrasas and jihad are a danger to the unity and integrity of Pakistan,” Azhar wrote in the Jaish mouthpiece Al Qalam.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif set up a committee of his top intelligence, army and government officers to investigate India’s allegations after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to him last week, asking for prompt and decisive action on the basis of specific evidence. “Based on the initial investigations in Pakistan, and the information provided, several individuals belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed, have been apprehended. The offices of the organization are also being traced and

sealed.

Further investigations are underway,” a statement from Sharif’s office said.

India, Pakistan reschedule talks, no date yet India and Pakistan have agreed to reschedule talks between their foreign secretaries, the Indian foreign ministry said on Thursday, while an investigation into a deadly attack on a military base in Pathankot is carried out.

India has demanded action against the Pakistanbased JeM that it suspects of carrying out the attack on the Pathankot air base.

Islamabad has held Azhar and other members, sources say. Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said New Delhi welcomed the steps taken

by Pakistan against the militant group, which was also blamed for a 2001 parliament attack that nearly led to a war between the nuclear-armed rivals.

He said the foreign secretaries of the neighbours spoke on the telephone and decided to defer the talks that had been tentatively scheduled for Friday in Islamabad.

The two diplomats agreed to hold the talks aimed at

achieving a thaw in ties in the very near future but no date was announced.

The Pakistani foreign office said a new date had not yet been decided. “We welcome the statement issued by the government of Pakistan yesterday on the investigations into the

Mohammad, or the Army of Mohammad. Pakistan, which India has long accused of backing Islamist militants, promised to investigate who was behind the assault on the air base after India handed over evidence that it said implicated Jaish-e-

Pathankot terrorist attack,” Swarup told reporters. “The statement conveys that considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements linked to the Pathankot incident.” Seven Indian military personnel were killed in the Jan. 2 attack on the base in the northern state of Punjab, which was followed by a raid on an Indian consulate in Afghanistan that has also been linked to Jaish-e-

Mohammad.

Who is Maulana Masood Azhar?

Maulana Masood Azhar was the general secretary of another terror group Harkatul-Ansar (HuA) in 1994 and was on a ‘mission’ in Jammu and Kashmir when he was arrested on 11 February the same year. When he was released, the HuA had been included in the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations which had compelled the outfit to rename itself as the Harkat-

Are Sikhs minority in Punjab?...

Continued from Page 1 by other groups - for declaring a community as minority while taking the state as the geographical entity for such determination.

He said numerical strength of a community within a state should be the criteria and not whether they were dominated by other communities. “A minority community may be affluent and not dominated in a state. This does not mean they can be denied the right to protect and further their cultural and educational rights as a minority group guaranteed under the Constitution,” he said.

Dwivedi said Sikhs were those who owed allegiance to Guru Granth Sahib and were enlisted as voters with Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committe.

“The sub-sects and followers of Dera Sacha Sauda, Radha Soami and similarly placed persons are not considered Sikhs even though they were born to Sikh parents,” he said.

When the bench was deliberating whom to appoint as amicus curiae for assistance in adjudication of this tricky and complex constitutional issue, senior advocate KK Venugopal said it surely presented an issue that had far reaching consequences

for many states. “In Kerala, Christians are in minority but own majority of the educational institutions. If Christian-owned educational institutions turn into minority educational institutions, then it will have a telling effect,” he said and agreed with the bench that former solicitor general T R Andhyarujina would be best suited to discharge duties as amicus curiae in this issue.

The bench issued notice to the ministry of minority affairs and sought its response within four weeks.

It also requested attorney general Mukul Rohatgi and senior advocate Andhyarujina to assist the court in deciding this question. A three-judge bench of the SC on August 8, 2005 had said in Bal Patil case, “It was not in contemplation of the framers of the Constitution to add to the list of religious minorities.

The Constitution, through all its organs, is committed to protect religious, cultural and educational rights of all.

“Articles 25 to 30 guarantee cultural and religious freedoms to both majority and minority groups. Ideal of a democratic society, which has adopted right of equality as its fundamental creed, should be elimination of majority and minority and so called forward and backward classes. “Constitution has

accepted one common citizenship for every Indian regardless of his religion, language, culture or faith.

The only qualification for citizenship is a person’s birth in India. We have to develop such enlightened citizenship where each citizen of whatever religion or language is more concerned about his duties and responsibilities to protect rights of the other group than asserting his own rights.

Since government of India promoting deras like radha soami, nirankaris, drugs.

“The constitutional goal is to develop citizenship in which everyone enjoys full fundamental freedoms of religion, faith and worship and no one is apprehensive of encroachment of his rights by others in minority or majority. If each

minority group feels afraid of the other group, an atmosphere of mutual fear and distrust would be created posing serious threat to the integrity of our nation. “That would sow seeds of multi-nationalism in India. It is, therefore, necessary that Minority Commission should act in a manner so as to prevent generating feelings of multinationalism in various sections of people of Bharat.”

The commission, instead of encouraging claims from different communities for being added to the list of notified minorities under the Act, should suggest ways and means to help create social conditions where the list of notified minorities was gradually reduced and done away with altogether, the SC had said in 2005.

IS brainwashes recruits to kill parents, reveals child soldier In a shocking revelation, a 12-year-old child soldier from Syria’s Raqqa, who was held captive by Islamic State, revealed how militants brainwash children to murder their parents. The child soldier claims that he was asked to kill his own parents while being trained

by ISIS. Nasir, the escapee, told CNN that he was one among 60 children who

were being trained to become suicide bombers.

After finishing their training, they would have then been infiltrated into the Islamic State’s terror base in Raqqa.

ul-Mujahideen (HuM). The Indian Express explains the re-emergence of JeM after years of staying low key.

However, Masood Azhar decided to float the new outfit JeM rather than rejoin his old outfit. He was also reported to have received assistance in setting up the JeM from Pakistan’s InterServices Intelligence (ISI), the then Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and several Sunni sectarian outfits of Pakistan. JeM, like other terrorist outfits in J&K, claims to using violence to force a withdrawal of Indian security forces from the state. The outfit claims that each of its offices in Pakistan would serve as schools of jihad. In its fight against India, he boasted that the outfit would not only “liberate” Kashmir, but also would take control of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Amritsar and Delhi. Masood Azhar, the amir (chief) of the outfit was arrested by Pakistani security forces on December 29, 2001, after pressure from India and other foreign countries following the December 13, 2001 attack on India’s Parliament. However, a three-member Review Board of Lahore High Court ordered on December 14, 2002, that Azhar be released.

UK’s crackdown on the...

Continued from Page 1 in this country, and I do not think that would help.” In 2013 Mr Cameron strongly backed the right of schools, courts and immigration centres to ask Muslim women to remove the traditional Islamic head dress.

He said that there are certain places where women should not be allowed to wear either the niqab, which covers the face except for the eyes , or the full-length burka, which includes a mesh over the eyes. Mr Cameron cited the example of schooling, adding it was “very difficult to teach unless you can look at your pupils in the eye”. The issue has been highly controversial in western Europe, with a backlash in France and Belgium where the full-face veil is banned.

France was the first country to ban the burka in public places in 2010, with anyone leaving their home with their face hidden behind a veil running the risk of a fine.

The law was upheld by the European court of human rights in 2014. three years after a similar ban came into effect in Belgium. Mr Cameron has also said Muslim women must learn basic English or risk being kicked out the country, arguing such a move will

help combat extremism.

Writing in the Times, the Prime Minister said more assertive action is needed to end the “passive tolerance” of practices which he says leave many Muslim women facing discrimination and isolation.

There are 190,000 Muslim women in England who speak little or no English, according to Government estimates. As a result Mr Cameron today launched a £20 million initiative aimed at helping Muslim women with their language skills in an attempt to integrate them into the community.

He said the lack of integration in some Muslim communities had helped to foster extremism and allowed “appalling practices” such as female genital mutilation and forced marriage to take place. The Prime Minister said he would not avoid telling the “hard truths” needed to confront a minority of Muslim men whose “backward attitudes” led them to exert “damaging control” over women in their families.

Issue - 650 (3)

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Issue - 650 (4)

19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

The Shia and Sunni alignment of the Middle East!

As the Shiite-Sunni contest builds up, Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) sees the two main world powers, America and Russia, tilting towards the Shiite bloc of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hizballah versus the Saudi-led lineup of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan. This is exactly the alignment that I’ve been predicting for years, based on my analyses, long before it seemed possible. As I’ve described dozens of times, in the coming Clash of Civilizations world war, the “allies” will be the United States, India, Russia and Iran, while the “axis” will be China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim countries. If you’re an analyst, politician, army general, or college professor whose job depends on knowing what’s going on in the world, you would do much better if you took the time to learn generational theory. Generational theory was first developed in the 1980s-90s by

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William Straus and Neil Howe, who showed how it applied to Britain and America since the 1400s. Here I want to extend their work to include all the nations at all times in history, and it provides such a forecasting methodology that has been almost 100% successful.

Saudi Arabia faces increased social unrest with sudden austerity budget With the price of oil now falling significantly below $30 per barrel and analysts expecting further plunges, the government of Saudi Arabia is facing existential threats from several directions. The most obvious threat is the loss of something like 75% of its income from oil exports. This has forced the Saudi government to adopt an “austerity budget” in 2016, cutting back massively on social spending such as free health care or subsidized gasoline, electricity and other utilities.

Saudi Arabia is deep into a generational crisis era with its last generational crisis war having been the Ibn Saud family’s victory over the Wahhabi Salafists that climaxed in 1925. The outcome of that war was an uneasy peace between the two groups that allowed the Saud family to govern, but the Salafists to maintain much of the social control in the country, including education and the “religion police.” It’s rare for a country to go more than 60 or 70 years without a new generational crisis war, and things really came to a head in 1979 with a major terrorist attack by a Salafist group on the Grand Mosque, shaking the Saudi government to its core. That attack lit the fuse that led to the creation of 9/11 and alQaeda and, more recently, the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL).

The 1979 attack might have been the first step towards a new crisis war, but the Saudi government has been able to hold off the Salafists since 1979 by using their vast oil wealth for immense social spending to prevent social unrest. But now, with the new “austerity budget,” the Salafist groups are threatening the government. When the Saudis executed 47 “terrorists” earlier this month, the government talked about protecting its security. As one progovernment cleric tweeted, the executions were “a message to the world and to criminals that there will be no snuffing out of our principles and no complacency in our security.” However, one of the 47 was a Shia cleric Mohammad Baqir Nimr alNimr, and his execution inflamed Iran, as well as Shias in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Pakistan. After Iranians firebombed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, the two countries severed diplomatic relations. So

SUNNY BAINS

the Saudi government is facing social unrest from both Sunni Salafists and Shias.

Saudi Arabia’s new King, Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, rose to power in January 2015, almost exactly a year ago, after the death of King Abdullah, and there are concerns about a power struggle and possible coup. Debka’s subscriber-only newsletter says there is a risk of a coup because of strong opposition to some of Salman’s policies. The Yemen civil war initiated by the defense minister has reached a stalemate despite Saudi military intervention. The failure to break through to victory has seriously weakened his

position and that of his father, King Salman. The Yemen war is costing the Saudi exchequer an astronomical $1 billion per month, equal to a whole year’s outlay for the Russian intervention in Syria. With oil prices plummeting to below $30 dollars per barrel, Riyadh has had to dip deep into its reserves. In 2015, the Saudis drew some $90-98 billion out, $600 billion total. The oil kingdom, with little experience of having to count pennies, is aghast at its new situation.

The king’s son is drafting a crisis plan for the sale of some 5 percent of Saudi stock in Aramco, the state-owned company that is the world’s largest oil producer and one of the most valuable in the world. The royal family has yet to decide whether the shares will be sold exclusively to Saudis or to foreign investors as well. The possible sale of some of royal-owned lands is also under consideration. ISIS is a growing menace to the kingdom’s security internally from disaffected young Saudi men and externally from Iraq and Yemen.

As the Shiite-Sunni contest builds up, Riyadh sees the two main world powers, America and Russia, tilting towards the Shiite bloc of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hizballah versus the Saudi-led lineup of the United

Studio of Spanish surrealist Joan Miro recreated in London

LONDON Although not bathed in Majorca’s light, a London studio has recreated in minute detail the Mediterranean sunshine island studio of Spanish painter Joan Miro.

Barcelona gallery Mayoral has reproduced the furniture, household items and painting materials found in the studio that inspired the surrealist painter.

“The studio offered Miro a suitable working environment,” said Joan Punyet

Miro, the artist’s grandson who collaborated on the project.

Arab Emirates, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan. With regard to the last item, which I also quoted at the beginning of this article, there is of course a third major world power, and that’s China, and I predict that China will be very much on the side of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the months and years to come.

Pakistan tries to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran Following Saturday’s announcement that sanctions against Iran are being lifted, tensions are continuing to increase between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Tensions turned to hostility earlier this month when Saudi Arabia executed 47 alleged terrorists - 46 Sunnis and one Shia, Mohammad Baqir Nimr al-Nimr, infuriating Iran and Shias because it implied that Shia terrorism is equivalent to Sunni terrorism.

Iranian mobs firebombed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and attacked the consulate in Meshaad. This led to the severance of multiple diplomatic and commercial ties between Iran and several Saudi allies. With sanctions lifted, Iran is now expected to flood the already flooded markets with additional oil.

With the price of oil now well below $30 per barrel, Iran and Saudi Arabia are accusing each other of trying to damage the oil-producing nations.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif visited Saudi Arabia and Iran on a “peace mission” to “normalize” strained relations between the two countries.

According to a Pakistani officials: “Pakistan is deeply concerned at the recent escalation of tensions between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. ... The purpose of the visit is to mediate and to end the standoff between the two countries.” Pakistan is a mostly Sunni Muslim country with very close ties to Saudi Arabia, including mutual promises of military support when needed.

Pakistan is also thought to have promised the Saudis to provide them with nuclear technology to match Iran’s nuclear technology.

This would seem to mean that Pakistan’s one-sided alliance makes them an unlikely mediator. However, Pakistan can point to the fact that it’s refused to provide military support to the Saudis in their proxy war with Iran in Yemen. Pakistan has diplomatically supported the Saudis in that war, but when called upon by the Saudis to provide troops, they refused, angering the Saudis. Saudi Arabia’s defense minister visited Nawaz Sharif last year, with the objective of getting Pakistan’s support in the conflict with Iran, but he failed to do so. A Pakistani official said: “Our policy is clear. We will stay neutral in the heightening tension between the two Muslim states. Although we condemn Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Saudi Arabia, including its reaction to Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr’s execution, still we will not be part of any military offensive against any country in the region.” There is absolutely no chance whatsoever to “normalize relations” or “end the standoff” between the two countries.

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19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

SpaceX fails to stick ocean landing

Ancient Asian scriptures speak about the Law of Karma. ‘You get back’ they say, ‘what you give out’. True though this is about our relationship with the cosmos, is it not also an astute observation about the way we all relate to each other? Do you now suspect you are now being punished, in your personal life, for something that happened so long ago, it may almost have been in a previous lifetime? Make amends and you can make a difference, vastly improving the here and now of your heart. !!!

We all want to feel we are loved. We all want to feel that we have someone to love. Which of these things do we want more?

Perhaps we feel they are indivisible. We don’t want one without the other, and thus we want both equally. But all things must start somewhere.

Does love begin with loving - or with allowing oneself to be loved? There may be no universal answer, but for now at least, the cosmos suggests you will soon find the answer that is right for you and the one that works most satisfactorily. !!!

No matter how attracted we may be to one another, our mutual involvement won’t prove satisfactory, unless there is a clear line of communication. When two people get along, when they find that they are each on the same wavelength, when they have an almost instant, effortless, rapport, a sense of belonging will naturally bubble up and turn it into any number of other encouraging emotions. Work on improving your understanding of someone. This will either help to heal a wound or

build a bridge. !!!

We think we know how things need to be. We have ideas, ideals, visions and hopes.

Inspiring though these are, we often feel frustrated when these fail to match reality. But reality itself, may have little wrong with it other than the fact that it contrasts with an impossible dream. Might it not be worth trying to feel more relaxed and accepting about the way things are, than to indulge in a less painful comparison with a view of how they should be?

That, in itself, could bring real sunshine to your heart. !!!

Does the cosmos require us to show gratitude and express respect for the power that sets the Earth spinning in the sky?

Many religions insist as much. They teach us to live in fear and awe of a higher power. One has to wonder though, how ‘high’ any power can be if it needs to feed on gestures of subservience.

It is good for us to show appreciation but not for the sake of a Creator. We show it because, when we feel it, we feel better!

Be glad of all that’s good, and you will find even more to be glad of. !!!

We think we know what other people need. Or what they feel. Or what’s happening in their hearts.

They look at us and are similarly inclined to make assumptions. Sometimes, the guesswork proves accurate, but only briefly is that a blessing. If it increases our confidence to the point where we feel sure we know all there is to know about a loved one, then it soon begins to work against us. The secret of success in every aspect of your personal life is simple now. Don’t assume, enquire!

LOS ANGELES SpaceX’s unmanned Falcon 9 rocket broke apart as it tried to land on a floating platform in the Pacific, marking the fourth such failure in the company’s bid to recycle rockets.

However, the primary mission of the launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California went as planned, propelling into orbit a $180 million USFrench satellite called Jason-3 to study sea level rise. “Well, at least the pieces were bigger this time!” Elon Musk, the CEO of the California-based company, wrote on Twitter.

SpaceX is trying to land its rockets back on Earth in order to re-use the parts in the future, trying to make spaceflight cheaper and more sustainable than before.

The firm succeeded in landing its Falcon 9 first stage - the long towering portion of the rocket - on

solid ground at Cape Canaveral, Florida in December. Even though an ocean landing is more difficult, SpaceX wants to perfect the technique because ship landings “are

components are jettisoned into the ocean after launch, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars.

Competitor Blue Origin, headed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, succeeded in

needed for high velocity missions,” Musk tweeted.

“Definitely harder to land on a ship,” he added after the latest foible. “Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that’s also translating and rotating.”

Currently, expensive rocket

landing a suborbital rocket in November. However, no other company has attempted the ocean landing that SpaceX is trying to achieve. In the end, the problem on Sunday was not due to high speed or a turbulent ocean, but came down to a leg on the rocket

that did not lock out as anticipated. “So it tipped over after landing,” Musk said. SpaceX said the rocket landed within 1.3 meters (yards) of the droneship’s center.

There was no hitch in the launch itself, and the blast off at 10:42 am (1842 GMT) of the rocket and satellite went flawlessly. The satellite aims to offer a more precise look at how global warming and sea level rise affect wind speeds and currents as close as 0.6 miles (one kilometer) from shore, whereas past satellites were limited to about 10 times that distance from the coast.

The technology will monitor global sea surface heights, tropical cyclones and help support seasonal and coastal forecasts.

During a five-year mission, its data will also be used to aid fisheries management and research into human impacts on the world’s oceans.

Breed-your-own insect ‘revolution’ for the kitchen VIENNA A seething mass of larvae in the kitchen is not everyone’s cup of tea, particularly for squeamish Westerners. But for two young Austrian entrepreneurs, it’s a food revolution that can help save the planet.

Katharina Unger and Julia Kaisinger, 25 and 28, have developed a device to breed in the comfort of your own home the protein-rich grubs of the meal beetle, to then eat. “With this current design you can make 200500 grams (seven to 18 ounces) of mealworms every week,” Unger told AFP at a recent tasting and fundraising event in Vienna.

“You freeze them and then you make them like any

other type of meat. You can cook them, roast them, make them into burger patties and mix them into sauce for pasta,” she said.

Into the top of the sleek, white “desktop hive” go pupae which then hatch into adults. In the next section, the “loveshack”, the insects mate and their eggs fall into the next layer.

Helped by a controlled microclimate, the eggs hatch into larvae which gradually grow and descend to a drawer at the bottom where, around three centimetres (an inch) long and plump, they are “harvested”. “Our team eats them almost every day,” Unger said, showing off some of her creations Greek salads topped by

toasted grubs, quinoa-and- across Asia, Africa, Latin mealworm meatballs and America and Oceania. The even chocolate (and worm) UN Food and Agriculture

cake. Eating insects entomophagy - is not new.

Humans have been doing so for thousands of years and today they are a common food in many developing countries

Organization (FAO) estimates that insects form part of the traditional diets of at least two billion people, with more than 1,900 species reportedly enjoyed worldwide.

Young people fear losing their jobs to robots MUNICH Four out of ten young people believe machines will be able to do their jobs within a decade, an international survey published on Monday has found.

Nearly half of young workers surveyed in Western countries said their education did not prepare them to do their jobs.

The skills gap is especially pronounced in Europe, according to a poll of 9,000 16- to 25-year-olds in nine of the world’s biggest nations commissioned by Indian business and software services firm Infosys. Almost 80 percent globally said they had to learn new skills not taught

them in school and that rapid China, France, Germany, even 10 years ago, while the technology change - the India and the United States, educational system threat of being overtaken by as well as South Africa, remains wedded to practices initially designed for agrarian societies 300 years ago. “We must transition away from our past; shift the focus from learning what we already know to an education focused on exploring what hasn’t happened yet,” he said in response to the findings. Globally, while almost two-thirds of those queried said they felt positive about their job robots or smart systems - where a smaller sample of prospects, those in required constant learning of 700 was polled. Infosys developing markets Brazil, fresh skills to compensate. Chief Executive Vishal China, India and South The study surveyed around Sikka said technologies Africa were far more 1,000 young people each in have evolved far faster than optimistic than their peers Australia, Brazil, Britain, what was thought possible in developed markets.

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2015 a ‘tipping point’ for climate change PARIS When future generations write the history of humanity’s faltering quest to repair Earth’s climate system, 2015 will have its own chapter.

Nature, along with the usually fractious family of nations, conspired to make it a landmark year: almost certainly the hottest on record for the planet as a whole, and a rare moment of unity when 195 states pledged to curb the carbon pollution that drives global warming.

Whether the December 12 Paris Agreement is the key to our

salvation or too-little-too-late depends on what happens starting now, experts and activists told AFP. “The most compelling thing you can say about Paris is not that it saved the planet, but that it

saved the chance of saving the planet,” said Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots organisation 350.org and an architect of the worldwide movement to divest from fossil fuel companies.

Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, was also chary: “We will only be able to judge whether it is truly a success years, perhaps decades, from now.” But whatever lies ahead, they all agree, the last year has been a “tipping

point” on climate change.

“Paris represented a real sea change in seriousness in coming to grips with the issue,” said Alden Meyer, a veteran climate analyst from the Washingtonbased Union of Concerned

Scientists who has followed the UN process for nearly three decades.

Much of that seriousness was driven by a crescendo of deadly extreme weather and the growing confidence of science in connecting the dots with longterm shifts in climate. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will likely report Wednesday on record-breaking heat in 2015.

They could point to the most powerful hurricane ever registered; freakish, abovefreezing temperatures - if only for a day - at the North Pole in December; or life-threatening droughts in eastern and southern Africa.

Some of that will be chalked up to El Nino, a natural weather pattern that creates havoc along the tropical and southern Pacific Rim every five or six years. But the very fact that this El Nino is the most intense ever measured may itself be a by-product of global warming.

Scientists reported last week that climate change has probably pushed back the next Ice Age by 50,000 years.

That may sound like good news, but more than anything it is a stunning testament to the extent to which human activity - mainly burning fossil fuels - has played havoc with the planet’s thermostat.

outbreak of swine flu also contributed to cash-strapped people staying at home but have risen in each year since.

Tunisia’s tourism industry was badly shaken in March by an attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis, followed by one in June in the resort of Sousse, that killed a total of 59 tourists. These attacks and others in the region came as North African and Middle Eastern countries struggle to regain the trust of holidaymakers scared off by the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the region in 2011.

“We are facing now a global threat,” the head of the UNWTO, Taleb Rifai, told a news conference before appealing for governments to do all they can to boost security.

The UN World Tourism Organisation predicts international tourism arrivals will increase by 4.0 percent during this year.

PARIS The richest one percent of the world’s population now own more than the rest of us combined, aid group Oxfam said Monday, on the eve of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

“Runaway inequality has created a world where 62 people own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population - a figure that has fallen from 388 just five years ago,” the antipoverty agency said in its reported published ahead of the annual gathering of the world’s financial and political elites in Davos.

The report, entitled “An Economy for the 1%”, states that women are disproportionately affected by the global inequality.

“One of the other key trends behind rising inequality set out in Oxfam International’s report is the falling share of national income going to workers in almost all developed and most developing countries... The majority of low paid workers around the world are women.”

Although world leaders have increasingly talked about the need to tackle inequality “the gap between the richest and the rest has widened dramatically in the past 12 months,” Oxfam said.

Oxfam’s prediction, made ahead of last year’s Davos meeting, that the richest one percent

Experts have also come a step closer to concluding that our impact on Earth’s bio-chemical systems has been so massive as to justify the christening of a new geological era.

The “golden spike”, or start date, for the Anthropocene - the “Age of Man” - will probably be the mid-20th century.

What Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka, calls a “greater planetary consciousness” on climate has shown up in business and politics as well.

In the World Economic Forum’s annual survey on global risks over the coming decade, released last week, some 750 experts put “failure

of climate change mitigation and adaptation” at the top of the list for the first time.

“Mitigation” means cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and “adaptation” refers to coping with the consequences of climate change.

In third and fourth position are “water crises” and “large-scale involuntary migration”.

In the business arena, the balance of investment is shifting away from fossil fuels and towards renewables, Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported recently.

Despite tumbling oil and gas prices, global investment in clean energy reached $329 billion (300 billion euros) in 2015, a new record, Bloomberg said.

would soon own more than the rest of us, “actually came true in 2015,” it added. While the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income of the poorest 10 percent has risen by less than $3-a-year in the past quarter of

WEF founder Klaus Shwab has said it “refers to the fusion of technologies across the physical, digital and biological worlds which is creating entirely new capabilities and dramatic impacts on political, social and economic systems.”

Oxfam International Executive

a century, a increase in individuals’ income of less than one cent a year, the report said.

More than 40 heads of state and government will attend the Davos forum which begins late Tuesday and will end on January 23.

Those heading to the Swiss resort town for the high-level annual gathering also include 2,500 “leaders from business and society”, the WEF said in an earlier statement.

Describing the theme - the Fourth Industrial Revolution -

Director Winnie Byanima, who will also attend Davos having cochaired last year’s event, said: “It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world’s population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus.” World leaders’ concerns about the escalating inequality crisis have “so far not translated into concrete action - the world has become a much more unequal place and the trend is accelerating,” she warned.

World tourism numbers 1pc richest own more than hit record 1.18b in 2015 rest of us says Oxfam

MADRID The number of international tourists rose by 4.4 percent worldwide in 2015 to hit a record 1.18 billion despite concerns over terrorism, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation said Monday.

Tourism arrivals were up by 5.0 percent in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas but fell by 8.0 percent in North Africa where nations like Tunisia were hit by terrorist attacks, it said in a statement. It is the sixth consecutive year of above average growth in global tourism since the 2009 economic crisis, the Madrid-based body said. The UN World Tourism Organisation had predicted international tourism arrivals would increase by 3.0-4.0 percent in 2015, after expanding by 4.7 percent in the previous year. Global tourism figures were hard hit by the global financial crisis, declining 4.0 percent in 2009 as an

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Kicking it on the fairway Argentina’s FootGolf World Cup PILAR Soccer-mad Argentina has hosted a novel tournament that featured plenty of footballs but no goals as such: the second-ever FootGolf World Cup. Instead of dribbling, tackling and sliding around getting muddy, FootGolf players boot the football large distances into a hole 53 centimeters (20 inches) wide, in as few kicks as possible. Spectators follow the players around each of the 18 holes over a course complete with flags, slopes and bunkers. Keeping to the golfer-like dress code, they wear harlequinpatterned socks and pristine white shorts and caps.

Said to have been invented in the Netherlands in 2009, the sport has spread worldwide. Players from Australia, Britain, Ireland and the United States joined their Argentine hosts in the tournament in Pilar, a posh suburb of Buenos Aires, that wrapped up at the weekend. The first FootGolf World Cup was held in Hungary in 2012, with 77 players from eight countries. This year, turnout multiplied with 230 players from 26 countries.

“It far surpassed our expectations,” said organizer Javier De

Ancizar, head of the Argentine FootGolf Association. “This was the first tournament we have played with spectator stands, and they were full.”

Argentine Christian Otero was crowned world FootGolf champion on Sunday after topping the players’ table. “I had to win.

I felt a lot of pressure and I am very happy,” Otero said.“This sport is

incredible. There aren’t many sports that have such a lovely setting,” he said, speaking near the green expanse of the upmarket Golf Pilar Club.

A good FootGolf player, he said, “has to have a strong mind, a good touch and cool headedness, because in this game, you make a lot of mistakes and the important thing is to get back into it quickly.”

Charlie Hebdo cartoon featuring drowned Syrian boy causes outcry Lonodn A drawing in French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo suggesting Alan Kurdi, the three-yearold Syrian boy found dead on a Turkish beach last year, would have grown up to be a sex attacker caused outrage online on Thursday. The cartoon depicts two male creatures running after terrified women with the caption: “What would have become of the young Alan if he had grown up? A groper in Germany.”

Sexual assaults on women in Cologne and other German cities on New Year’s Eve, many blamed on migrants, have prompted more than 600 criminal complaints and caused a backlash against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policies on refugees. More than 1 million entered Germany

last year, more than any other European country.

The cartoon was published a week after the

while others argued Charlie Hebdo was keeping to its usual provocative tone to stir

anniversary of attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris which killed 12 people in January last year. The phrase “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”), was swiftly adopted by supporters online. This time, many people on social media said the cartoon was offensive

debate on European attitudes to the migrant crisis. The image of Alan lying face down on a Turkish beach last September appeared around the world and prompted a wave of sympathy for the plight of refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

One brain-dead, six critically ill after French drugs trial Paris A ‘serious accident’ during a drugs trial in France has left one person brain-dead and six hospitalised, Health Minister Marisol Touraine said yesterday.

She said the six had been taking part in a ‘trial of an oral medication being developed by a European laboratory’ in the northwestern city of Rennes. The drug was a

painkiller containing annabinoids, an active ingredient found in cannabis plants.

“A serious accident took place,” the minister said, adding that the study had been halted and all volunteers taking part recalled. The incident occurred on Thursday.

The study was a Phase I clinical trial, in which healthy volunteers take a

Ancient giraffe relative had thick legs, curly horns PARIS An ancient relative of the giraffe was a huge, heavy animal with thick legs, a

built a computerised 3D reconstruction of an animal they said would have stood about 1.8

flat face and massive, curly horns flaring out from its skull, said a study W e d n e s d a y. D u b b e d Sivatherium giganteum, the impressive creature would have been shorter than today’s giraffe, with a less elongated neck, a trio of British scientists wrote in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Using bones dug up in India in the 1830s and now in London’s Natural History Museum, the team

metres (5.9 feet) tall at the shoulder and weighed about 1.2 tonnes.

‘This was a heavy animal with thick legs,’ co-author Christopher Basu told AFP by email.

Added to the large, flattened horns or ‘ossicones’ on the top of the skull, each about 70 centimetres (28 inches) long, it also had two smaller, pointy horns just over the eyes. ‘It would have been an impressive

and strong animal,’ said Basu. ‘It’s face would have looked very different from a giraffe. Giraffe’s have very long, pointed skulls.

Sivatherium had a very short, flattened skull.’

It lived somewhere between the last five million and 12,000 years ago. Related to the giraffe and its cousin the okapi, Sivatherium was possibly the largest ruminant animal - those with multicompartmented stomachs - to ever have lived. The first scientists to study Sivatherium bones misclassified the animal as an archaic link between modern ruminants and a long-extinct relative of elephants and rhinoceroses. For the new study, the skeleton was reconstructed using 26 fossil bones from three individual animals. The ribs, back and pelvis are missing. ‘We estimated what these might look like from giraffe and okapi anatomy - the two living relatives,’ said Basu.

prototype medication to “evaluate the safety of its use, tolerance and pharmacological profile of the molecule,” the minister said.The Paris prosecutor’s office said an investigation had been opened.

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Killer whales risk extinction off Europe

Archaeologists hail find of UK Bronze Age dwellings LONDON Archaeologists said on Tuesday they had discovered what were believed to be the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain, providing an extraordinary insight into prehistoric life from 3,000 years ago. The settlement of large circular wooden houses, built on stilts, collapsed in a fire and plunged into a river where it was preserved in silts leaving them in pristine condition, Historic England said. Discoveries from the dwellings in Whittlesey, in central England, which archaeologists said had been frozen in time and dated from between 1000-800 BC, included pots with food inside and finely woven clothing. “We are learning more about the food our ancestors ate, and the pottery they used to cook and serve it,” Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, said in a statement.

“This site is of international significance and its excavation will transform our understanding of the period.”

Among the finds at the site, about two metres (6.5 ft) below the modern ground surface, are exotic glass beads forming part of a necklace, rare small cups, bowls and jars.

Archaeologists also said that the site was so well preserved that even the footprints of those who lived at the site had been discovered.There are also charred roof timbers clearly visible in one of the houses and the excavation team have speculated that those living at the settlement abandoned it in haste when it caught fire. David Gibson, Archaeological Manager at the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, said they only usually came across a few pits or metal finds at Bronze Age sites. “This time so much more has been preserved - we can actually see everyday life during the Bronze Age in the round,” he said. “It’s prehistoric archaeology in 3D with an unsurpassed finds assemblage in terms of range and quantity.”

France jails man caught with photo of Paris attacker, ammunition

OSLO Killer whales are at risk of extinction off industrialised regions of Europe from poisonous chemicals banned decades ago that are still leaching into the seas, scientists said on Thursday.

The study, which took samples from 1,000 killer whales, dolphins and porpoises, urged tougher rules for disposal of toxic man-made PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl) that were used in paints, electrical equipment and construction until the 1980s. ‘It’s really looking bleak ... We think there is a very high extinction risk for killer whales as a species in industrialised regions of Europe,’ lead author Paul Jepson of the Zoological Society of London, told a telephone news conference.

The study, by scientists in Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Slovenia and Britain, said concentrations of PCBs in the blubber of killer whales off Europe, as well as in striped dolphins and bottlenose dolphins, were among the highest recorded worldwide.

Levels were lower in harbour porpoises, the fourth species covered by the study in the journal Scientific Reports.

Washed into rivers from unsealed storage sites, PCBs contaminate the seabed where they are eaten by creatures such as mussels or crabs that in turn

to drive population declines or suppress population recovery in Europe for many decades to come,’ the experts wrote.

Levels of PCBs in killer whales

get consumed by fish that are food for long-lived predators such as killer whales. PCBs lodge in fat and build up in the blubber of marine mammals. Killer whales, which are black and white, grow to 10 metres long (33 ft) and can live up to 100 years. PCBs can also be passed on to the young in their mothers’ milk.

Killer whales thrive in many parts of the world, from the Arctic to Antarctica, that are further away from sources of pollution.

Without much stronger restrictions, ‘PCBs will continue

off the United States are lower than in Europe, perhaps because Washington banned PCBs in 1979 while Europe lagged, banning them in countries bordering the Mediterranean only in 1987.

The study sampled killer whale populations off the Strait of Gibraltar, Spain’s Canary Islands, Britain and Ireland.

Previous European populations have vanished from industrial regions from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

Malaysia lays down law on fat cops KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia is putting the heat on overweight police officers, warning them to shape up or miss out on promotions amid estimates that nearly 10 percent of the force is obese. A taste for rich foods has made Malaysia the fattest country in Southeast Asia, according to officials and health experts, and the police force has not been spared. Local media have quoted police officials estimating that nearly 11,000 of the country’s 122,000 police officers were ‘obese’.

National police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said Wednesday officers will now have to pass a fitness test before they can rise up the

ranks, and that a new fitness programme has been introduced for overweight cops. Besides limiting their effectiveness as crime fighters, the problem has

led to a ‘high mortality rate caused by diabetes and high blood pressure’ in the corps, Khalid was quoted saying by news portal Malaysiakini.

After Paris attack, London raises number of counter-terror police Paris A French court jailed a man for three years on Friday after police found a photo of key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in his car and a stash of weapons at his home.

Mouez Dridi, a 41-year-old forklift truck driver, told the court in the southern French town of Valence he had the picture of Abdeslam stuck to the sun-visor of his car so that he could identify the jihadist suspect if he saw him and denounce his actions.

Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman who was living in Belgium and who is thought to have played a key logistical role in the November 13 attacks that

killed 130 people in Paris, is still on the run.

Local police had flagged Dridi to the French intelligence agency on December 10 after he was seen praying on a running track near Valence.

Investigators searching his home on December 10 found an arsenal of loaded weapons -- a sub-machine gun, a rifle, a Mauser pistol and “no less than 503 pieces of ammunition”, prosecutor Eric Sandjivy said.

Police also found a sword, a machete and military clothing.

Dridi’s lawyer Sophie Turpin said her client had “no intention of using these weapons; he did not know how to use them”.

Paris Scotland Yard has said it is significantly raising the number of police officers after reassessing its ability to deal with a potential Parislike terror attack in London.The existing number of police officers is being raised by 600, taking the total number of armed officers to 2,800. The number of armed response vehicles is being doubled.

Britain’s current threat level is “severe”, which indicates a terror threat is highly likely. Scotland Yard had initiated a training programme after the 2008 Mumbai attacks.Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service Bernard Hogan-Howe said: “The tragic attacks in Paris reinforced

the vital role that firearms officers would be called upon to play on behalf of all of us, to run forward and confront the deadly threat that such attackers would pose.“In the

days following Paris I asked my firearms team to increase the number of armed response vehicles available on our streets, which we did.

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Pakistani boy cuts off own hand after blasphemy mistake

A 15-year-old Pakistani boy cut off his own hand believing he had committed blasphemy, only to be celebrated by his parents and neighbours for the act, police said on Friday.

Local police chief Nausher Ahmed told AFP how an imam told a gathering at a village mosque that those who love the Prophet Mohammad always say their prayers, then asked who among the crowd had stopped praying.

Mohammad Anwar, 15, raised his hand by mistake after apparently mishearing the question.The crowd swiftly accused him of blasphemy so he went to his house and cut off the hand he had raised, put it on a plate, and presented it to the cleric, the police chief added.The incident took place at a village in Hujra Shah

Muqeem district, some 125 kilometres (77 miles) south of Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, about four days ago, according to the policeman.

Ahmed said that he has seen a video in which the boy is greeted by villagers in the street as his parents proclaim their pride.

No complaint has been made, he said, so no police report has been filed and there will be no investigation.

Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in Pakistan, an Islamic republic of some 200 million, where even unproven allegations frequently stir mob violence and lynchings.

Critics including European governments say the country’s blasphemy laws are often misused to settle personal scores.

Islamic State behind Jakarta terror attacks, says Indonesian Police Islamic State militants launched a gun and bomb assault on Indonesia’s capital on Thursday, police and media said, marking the first assault on the Muslimmajority country by the radical group, but five of the seven people killed were the attackers themselves.

It took security forces about three hours to end the siege near a Starbucks cafe and Sarinah’s, Jakarta’s oldest department store, after a team of around seven militants traded gunfire with police and blew themselves up.

A police officer and a Canadian man were killed in the attack, which - with the attackers - took the death toll to seven.

Seventeen people, including a Dutch man, were wounded.

Two of the militants were taken alive, police said.

“Islamic State fighters carried out an armed attack this morning targeting foreign nationals and the security forces charged with protecting them in the Indonesian capital,” Aamaaq news agency, which is allied to the group, said on its Telegram channel.

Jakarta’s police chief told reporters: “ISIS is behind this attack definitely,” using a common acronym for Islamic State, and he named an

Indonesian militant called Bahrun Naim as the man responsible for plotting it.

The drama played out on the streets and on television

were deployed around the neighbourhood as helicopters buzzed overhead.

After the militants had been overcome, a body still lay on the

screens, with at least six explosions and a gunfight in a movie theatre.

Armoured cars, helicopters “The Starbucks cafe windows are blown out. I see three dead people on the road. There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him,” Reuters photographer Darren Whiteside said as the attack unfolded.

Police responded in force within minutes. Black armoured cars screeched to a halt in front of the Starbucks and sniper teams

street, a shoe nearby among the debris. The city centre’s notoriously jammed roads were largely deserted.

Indonesia has seen attacks by Islamist militants before, but a coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers and gunmen is unprecedented and has echoes of the sieges seen in Mumbai seven years ago and in Paris last November.

The last major militant attacks in Jakarta were in July 2009, with bombs at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels.

The country had been on edge for weeks over the threat posed

by Islamist militants. Counterterrorism police had rounded up about 20 people with suspected links to Islamic State, whose battle lines in Syria and Iraq have included nationals from several Asian countries.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of Chinese Uighurs fighting in Syria, warns Beijing expert There are “many hundreds or thousands” of Chinese Uighurs from the country’s western Xinjiang province involved with the Islamic State (IS) or other groups to wage jihad in Syria, according to a leading Chinese strategic expert who advises the government on its West Asia policy.

The Chinese jihadists, involved “not only with the IS but with other Syrian forces”, posed “a major threat” to China if they returned home, warned Li Shaoxian, a long-term West Asia expert and the Vice President of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a Beijing think-tank with ties to the Ministry of State Security.

“Whether there are Chinese citizens involved in IS, the answer is certainly yes,” he said in an interaction with journalists on Thursday.“I don’t have the specific number but I think there are possibly many hundreds, or thousands, of them. As a researcher I have been following the situation closely. I believe there are quite many Chinese citizens fighting in Syria, not just with the IS but also other forces in Syria, where there are all kinds of groups who have people fighting who are from China.”

China has recently stepped up its diplomatic engagement with Syria, in recent weeks hosting both the Foreign Minister and top officials of the Syrian National

Council representing opposition groups.

Li, who met with representatives from both the Syrian government and the council during their recent Beijing visits, said China was in a “unique” position to play a role in bringing about a political settlement. Referring to the

divergent interests of both the United States and Russia, he said China was “the only major country without selfish interests involved” as Beijing “has no specific agenda.”

Li did not say if the issue of Chinese Uighurs - an ethnic Turkic Muslim minority in China’s western Xinjiang region - in Syria figured prominently during the recent talks, but described the matter as a serious concern for Beijing.

“I believe this will be a major source or threat because if these people come back to the country of origin they could constitute a

considerable threat to the security of the country of origin.”

China says that Uighurs have been travelling to Turkey through Southeast Asia, and Beijing has accused Turkish missions in Southeast Asia of facilitating travel by issuing documents. In July, more than 100 Uighurs

were repatriated from Thailand.

The move was criticised by rights groups who say the Uighurs were no terrorists but merely refugees fleeing persecution in China.

While Beijing labelled them all as separatists who wanted to join jihad, rights groups have pointed out there were women and children among the group, which was detained on return to China.Uighur exile groups say the majority of hundreds of travellers who are leaving China for Southeast Asia are doing so to escape what they describe as religious persecution from the authorities.Li, however, pointed

to a group of Uighurs who carried out a mass knife attack on a railway station in Kunming in south China in March 2014, stabbing 29 people to death.

Chinese authorities said the 8 knife-wielding and apparently trained attackers had tried - and failed - to travel to Southeast Asia and then to West Asia join jihad, before carrying out the attack.

“If you remember the terror attack in Kunming train station, it is very clear these people wanted to travel to another destination via Southeast Asia,” he said. “According to material I have seen, I know that some IS elements are responsible in Southeast Asia to organise these people and bring them to Syria.”Li said media reports of China considering joining Russia in a military role in the conflict were inaccurate, saying China had neither the intention nor capability to play a military role, even if Beijing was stepping up diplomatic engagement.

“First, it is against China’s principle China’s forces overseas are only overseas for peacekeeping and China has contributed a lot to peacekeeping of the UN, but has never contributed military for [other] purposes. And frankly China is not powerful enough, unlike the US or Russia, to send personnel or equipment overseas. China doesn’t have the capabilities to do that, so it is not going to happen,” he said.

Al Qaeda leader threatens Saudi Arabia over mass execution

The leader of Al Qaeda is threatening Saudi Arabia over its mass execution of 47 people, many of whom were tied to the terror group.

Ayman al-Zawahiri delivered the message in a recording earlier this week that was reported by the SITE Intelligence Group today.The seven-minute speech exhorted militants to launch new attacks against the interests of the kingdom’s ruling Al Saud family, which he called a “rotten regime that corrupted your religion.” Al-Zawahiri also offered his condolences to the families of the executed fighters.Saudi Arabia executed the prisoners on Jan. 2. Among them was Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, whose death sparked new tensions between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite power Iran after protesters in the Islamic Republic attacked two of the kingdom’s diplomatic posts.

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Saini Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance from the GTA for their slim, fair, beautiful, 5’2"/ ’83 born daughter, born, raised, educated in Canada, Bachelors in Business Management, and employed in the Finance division of a reputable Canadian company. The boy should be clean shaven, born, raised and educated in Canada & professionally employed. Please email sub2405@gmail.com or call 416-741-0777 *** 651*** Seeking a suitable match for a Canadian born punjabi tonk kshatriya girl, 31 yrs. old, 5'-3'' tall, diploma in accounting & professionally employed. The boy should be indian born Hindu punjabi, age between 32 to 36, tall between 5'-10" to 5'-11", attractive, athletic built, fair complexion, bachelor or master degree. Looking for a match in Punjab India or in Canada.

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19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

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Boy should be in the Medical, Engineering field or a Lawyer.

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Please Call: 1-604-522-4470 ***650*** Jat Sikh parents seeking a match for their Canadian born son, 34 yrs. old, 6’-2” tall, University educated, professionally employed, well paid manager. The girl should be University educated, beautiful with family values. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: tormgr13@gmail.com Or Call: 416-708-1392 ***650*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, born and raised in Canada, 29 yrs. old, 5’-5” tall, working as a teacher in Peel Region Board, beautiful, pretty, well versed in both cultures. The boy should be University graduate, handsome and well

settled. GTA prefered. Please email recent picture and biodata to: sw84asr@hotmail.com ***650*** Well settled Jat Sikh family seek a suitable match for their son, 25 yrs. old, 5’-11” tall, Canadian Citizen, doing Mechanical Engineering & helping in his family business.

The Girl should be from Canada, beautiful, educated & family oriented. Ludhiana Distt. preferred. The Girls on Student Visa/Work Permit/Visitor Visa can be considered. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: mangat289@yahoo.ca Or Call: 647-278-0003 ***650*** Ramgariha family seek a suitable match for their daughter, 25 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, Vegetarian, Canadian Immigrant, M.B.A., family oriented. The boy should be family oriented, Turbaned, Vegetarian, Educated & from Canada. The boy on Student Visa/Work permit/visitor visa can be considered. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: satinder.kaur@hotmail.com Or Call: 647-537-7000 ***650*** Jatt Sikh Brar family seek a suitable match for their son, Canadian PR., Masters in engineering from US and working since 2010 in US., 5'8'’ tall, born Jan 1984 and raised in Malwa Punjab. The girl should be well educated, in engineering or medical profession, from a respectable family with good values. Girl already in US or Canada preferred. Please Send your biodata & recent picture to: brarvancouver@gmail.com or call: 1- 778-552-0246(Canada) or 011-91-98150-85002(Punjab) *** 650*** Canadian citizen Kashyap Rajput Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their clean shaven, handsome, smart Canadian citizen son, Aug 89 born, 5’-7” tall, born in India brought up in Canada, B.Eng, M.Eng, well employed in his own field, The girl should be professionally qualified, beautiful and family oriented, Canadian citizen/PR. Caste no bar.

Please send your bio-data and recent pictures to: nirmaljitsingh1@hotmail.com or call: 647-430-1749. *** 650*** Seeking professionally qualified match for Nai Sikh girl, 83 born, 5’-2" tall, slim, graduate from India, M.B.A from USA , Manager for M.N.C in Noida, applied for Canadian Residency& from a very educated family. Father is retired businessman, American resident. Brother is Dentist in Canada. Please send your biodata and recent pictures to: drchandansingh@hotmail.comor Call 1-204-881-8482 ***650*** Sikh Tonk Kashtria parents seeking a suitable match for their

beautiful daughter, born and raised in Canada, 5’ – 4", well versed in both cultures, family orientated, graduated from University of Toronto, completed MBA with high distinction, Currently holding a wellrespected job in the education field. The boy should be Canadian, well-educated and professionally employed. Caste no bar. GTA preferred. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: rajinder.kareer01@gmail.com or call: 647-407-3478 *** 650*** Ramgariha Sikh family seek a suitable match for their son, 29 yrs. old, 6’ tall, M.B.A. from U.K., living in Canada. The Girl should be Canadian Immigrant or Citizen, educated, beautiful & family oriented. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: r2ravisingh@gmail.com Or Call: 647-461-7129 ***650** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their son, 34 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, born & raised in Canada, well settled in job. The Girl should be beautiful, family oriented, born & raised in Canada.

Call : 1-604-671-0002 ***650*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 33 yrs. old, 6’ tall, handsome, non-drinker, non-veg., turbaned, born & educated in U.K., Canadian Citizen, Working with a Law Agency. The Girl should be 2630 yrs. old, 5’-5” tall & above, beautiful, fair, slim, professionally educated, with good family values, Canadian Citizen or Immigrant. Please send your biodata & recent picture to : p.s.grewal@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-905-257-7858 ***650*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their daughter, 36 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall, beautiful, innocently divorced, Canadian Citizen, well versed in both cultures, professionally employed in Toronto. The boy should be family oriented and from a respectable Jat Sikh family from Canada/ America. Please send your biodata & recent picture to: torontomatrimonial@gmail.com Or Call : 416-509-5012 Or : 416-418-5151 ***650*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their daughter, 23 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, Canadian Immigrant, working as a medical administrative assistant in B.C., beautiful, slim, very fair. The boy should be professionally qualified & employed in Canada. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to : rc_2016@hotmail.com ***650*** Jat Sikh gill parents seek a suitable match for their son, 27 yrs. old, 6’-1" tall, educated, living in india. The girl should be American/Canadian immigrant or citizen, family oriented, well versed in both cultures, family is well settled in U.S.A.. Please

respond with latest picture and bio-data to: pammigrewal15@yahoo.com or call: 1-559-871-7920 ***650*** Saini Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their Son well settled turbaned son, 1980 born, 5’-9” tall, born & raised in Canada, well versed in both cultures, family oriented, Charted Professional Accountant designation & Professionally Employed. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: js764299@gmail.com Or Call : 647-669-3006 ***650*** Jat Sikh parents seek a matrimonial alliance for their Canadian born & raised daughter, 31 yrs. old, 5’-8” tall, slim, fair complextion, bachelor’s in human resources, working full time in G.T.A. The boy should be well establed in business or Job, atleast 5’-11” plus tall turbaned not a issue. Preferably in G.T.A..Please send your biodata & recent picture to: rana22ji@outlook.com Or Call/Text : 647-631-3282 ***650*** Jat Sikh parents seeking a suitable match for their daughter, born and raised in Canada, born in 1986, 5’-7” tall, Master’s degree in Physiotherapy, well settled in job in Onterio, well versed in both cultures. The boy should be Canadian well educated and professionally employed. GTA preferred. Please email recent picture & bio-data to: sanjog60@hotmail.comOr Call: 1-204-881-7405 ***650*** Tonk Kashtriya parents seeking a suitable match for their Canadian Citizen daughter, 28 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, CGA, B.Com working in govt. job. The boy should be well educated and professionally settled. Caste no bar. Toronto based family is prefered. Please send your biodata & recent picture to: singhjag_@hotmail.com Or Call: 416-722-9771 ***650*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their well settled daughter, DOB 1981, 5’-6” tall, born and raised in Canada, well versed in both cultures, family oriented, chartered professional accountant designation and professionally employed in senior management position. The boy should be well educated with family values.

Please Call: 647-298-9665 ***650*** Jat Sikh family seeking a suitable match for their son, 41 yrs. old, 6’ tall Turbaned, B.Sc. Computer Science degree, professionally employed, non- drinker, nonsmoker. The girl should be beautiful, Well educated, between 30-38 yrs. old, not lets than 5”3’ tall, Candian Immigrants or citizen. Please email recent picture & bio-data to : sks10@hotmail.ca Or Call : 1604-807-8121 ***650***

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19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Hafiz Saeed spews venom again, says India, Indonesia blocks radical websites Israel within range of Pak nuke weapons after deadly militant attack in capital

Addressing a rally, Mumb a i attack mastermind and Jammat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed said India and Israel are within the range of Pakistan nuclear weapons.Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Lashkar chief said that the prime minister is setting the Army officers in Jammu and Kashmir.He even targeted Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by saying that he couldn’t put forward the Islamabad case towards US president Barack Obama. Earlier, putting its weight behind the banned Jaish-eMohammad, JuD chief Hafiz Saeed chided Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government for

detaining Jaish chief and activists in connection with the Pathankot terror attack.

Addressing the sermon, Saeed had said that the Pakistan government is taking action against JeM to “please” India.

“The arrests are regrettable as the Nawaz government is only doing so to please Modi sarkar (government). The arrests

will only encourage the Indian government to put further pressure on Pakistan to backtrack it’s stance on Kashmir,” he said.

Saeed further said the Pakistani government is ignoring “national interest” for the sake of its friendship with India. Saeed even targeted External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her trip to Pakistan by saying that when she came to India, they were six items on the agenda out of which top three were targeting Jammatud-Dawa.The words of hatred comes at a time when Pakistan is making all tall promises of tracking down on terror.

district, which killed seven people including five

and several social media accounts on Saturday after a deadly gun and bomb attack claimed by Islamic State rocked the capital earlier in the week.

Authorities said several accounts had been found on social networking website Facebook expressing support for Thursday’s attack in Jakarta’s commercial

militants, and injured around 30 others.

The brazenness of the assault, which lasted several hours, suggested a new brand of militancy in a country where low-level strikes on police are common.“We are monitoring many websites and public complaints about this,” said Ismail Cawidu, a public relations official at the

Malaysia arrests suspected IS militant with weapons in Kuala Lumpur Malaysian police said on Saturday they had arrested a suspected militant with weapons and documents related to the Islamic State group at a train station in the capital Kuala Lumpur.Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said in a tweet that the man

was arrested on Friday at a station in Jelatik, close to the centre of the city.No further details were immediately available.

Police were expected to release more details later in the day.Malaysia has been on high alert since bomb and gun attacks in

Top Afghan cop accuses Pakistan’s ISI of backing Islamic State

A top Afghan police official has accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency and other elements in the region of backing the Islamic State.Fazel Ahmad Sherzad, the police chief of Nangarhar province, made the allegation close on the heels of an attack on the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad that was claimed by the IS.Seven Afghan security personnel were killed in Wednesday’s attack carried out by a group of terrorists, including a suicide bomber.

“Daesh militants are supported by regional countries, especially Pakistan, but government forces are investigating the attack on the Pakistani

Indonesia shut down at least 11 radical websites

consulate,” Sherzad was quoted as saying by Tolo News channel.

Sherzad described the attack on the Pakistani mission as worrying and accused the ISI of helping the Islamic State.

Officials of the Nangarhar provincial council questioned how the attackers had the infiltrated the heavily guarded zone where the Pakistani mission is located. They said it was surprising that militants managed to enter a so-called safe area.

The Jalalabad strike was the first insurgent attack on a Pakistani mission in Afghanistan.

“I don’t know how the attackers entered the consulate despite there being many checkpoints

near the consulate,” said Sohrab Qadiri, a provincial council member.

Amid a surge in the activities of the Islamic State in Nangarhar, residents have criticised the government and security forces for not tackling the group that has carried out several attacks since its emergence in Afghanistan last year.

Afghanistan has for long accused the ISI of backing and funding militant groups in the country to pursue its strategic objectives.

Political analyst Jawed Kohistani told Tolo: “There are groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan that do not see peace and security in their interest and they want to achieve their interests through insecurity.”

neighbouring Indonesia’s capital city on Thursday.

Security has been beefed up security in public areas and the country is taking extra measures to secure border areas fearing inflitration of terrorists.

communications ministry.The government had also sent letters to social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Telegram requesting that radical material be immediately blocked or taken down, Cawidu said.The alleged mastermind behind this week’s attack, an Indonesian citizen fighting with IS in Syria, is believed to have used social media extensively to share his beliefs about Islamic State and communicate with contacts in Indonesia using blog posts and mobile messaging apps.

Police said late on Friday that two of the attackers had been identified as raids continued across the country to track down any other militants in the networks they belonged to.

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Musharraf acquitted in murder case of Baloch nationalist Akbar Bugti

Karachi Pakistan’s former president General Pervez Musharraf has been acquitted in the murder case of former Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti by an anti-terrorism court in Quetta on Monday.

According to the Dawn, the court also rejected the request

by Nawabzada Jamil Akbar Bugti, a son of late Bugti, to order exhumation of the body of his father to confirm that the body buried in Dera Bugti was that of his father.

Former provincial home minister Mir Shoaib Nosherwani and former federal interior minister Aftab Sherpao were also acquitted by the

court.

Bugti was killed in an operation in Balochistan’s rugged mountains of Taratani in Kohlu district on August 26, 2006.

Bugti’s son Nawabzada Jamil Akbar Bugti had nominated former President Pervez Musharraf, former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, former Governor Balochistan Owais Ahmed Ghani, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao and others in the murder of his father.

Bugti had led an armed campaign to press for provincial autonomy and a greater share of profits from Balochistan’s natural resources.

US launches probe into cyber penetrations Washington US officials have ordered an investigation into claims China hacked a robotics research firm developing secretive military gadgets.

At least one China-backed cyberspy operation has stolen data from British firm QinetiQ, a Pentagon contractor. The USChina Economic and Security Review Commission has now issued an urgent call for analysts to write an unclassified report on China’s current industrial and military robotics capabilities - and where they came from.

‘The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (hereafter ‘the Commission’) invites submission of proposals to provide a one-time unclassified report on China’s industrial and military robotics development,’ the request says.It asks for an investigation into ‘what areas is China already ahead of the United States in the use or development of robotics with military applications? What U.S. or other dual-use robotics technologies have likely been acquired by China through technology transfers or cyber penetrations?’The commission

People don’t understand information they take in California In a world of email and social media, speed reading could be the answer to the always on generation’s prayers.

However, researchers studying the techniques and apps

available say they don’t work.

The looked at decades of research - and concluded speed readers don’t remember what they read. ‘Examining decades’ worth of research on the science of reading, a team of psychological scientists finds little evidence to support speed reading as a shortcut to understanding and remembering large volumes of written content in a short period of time,’ they said.

‘Speed reading training courses have been around for decades, and there has been a recent surge in the number of speed reading technologies

that have been introduced to the consumer market,’ said Elizabeth Schotter, a psychological scientist at the University of California, San Diego and one of the authors of the report.

‘We wanted to take a close look at the science behind reading to help people make informed decisions about whether to believe the claims put forth by companies promoting speed reading technologies and training courses.’The report, published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that that there are no magic shortcuts when it comes to reading more quickly while still fully understanding what we’ve read.‘The available scientific evidence demonstrates that there is a trade-off between speed and accuracy as readers

spend less time on the material, they necessarily will have a poorer understanding of it,’ explains Schotter.

Reading is a complex dance among various visual and mental processes, and research shows that skilled readers already read quickly, averaging 200 to 400 words per minute. Some speed reading technologies claim to offer an additional boost by eliminating the need to make eye movements by presenting words rapidly in the center of a computer screen or mobile device, with each new word replacing the previous word.

The problem, Schotter and colleagues find, is that eye movements account for no more than 10% of the overall time we spend reading, and eliminating the ability to go back and reread previous words and sentences tends to make overall comprehension worse, not better.

The biggest obstacle, science shows, isn’t our vision but rather our ability to recognize words and process how they combine to make meaningful sentences.

‘So-called solutions that emphasize speeding up the input without making the language easier to understand will have limited efficacy,’ says Schotter. While some may claim prodigious speed reading skills, these claims typically don’t hold up when put to the test.

also intends to gauge the chances China’s automation efforts could eclipse comparable Pentagon initiatives, including ‘Offset,’ a Defense Department research initiative meant to ‘offset’

‘The qualitative and quantitative nature of the transfer of United States production activities to the People’s Republic of China, including the relocation of manufacturing, advanced

technological advances made by adversaries, according to Defence One.It follows claims that between 2007 and 2009, attackers tied to the People’s Liberation Army allegedly hacked a QinetiQ specialist who worked on embedded software in microchips that control the company’s military robots, Bloomberg reported, citing investigations by security firms Terremark and HBGary. The Chinese military later showcased a bomb disposal robot in April 2012 that resembled QinetiQ’s Dragon Runner.The report will focus on

technology and intellectual property, and research and development facilities, the impact of such transfers on the national security of the United States (including the dependence of the national security industrial base of the United States on imports from China), the economic security of the United States, and employment in the United States, and the adequacy of United States export control laws in relation to the People’s Republic of China.’

Experts on course to unravel secrets of Egypt pyramids

CAIRO Experts revealed Sunday new findings at two of Egypt’s famed pyramids, boosting efforts to unravel whether the ancient world’s iconic monuments contain secret chambers.

For the past three months a team of researchers from Egypt, France, Canada and Japan have been scanning four pyramids with thermal cameras to see if they contain unknown structures or cavities.

Operation ScanPyramids began on October 25 to search for hidden rooms inside Khufu also known as the Great Pyramid and Khafre in Giza and the Bent and Red pyramids in Dahshur, all south of Cairo.

The project is expected to continue until the end of 2016, and applies a mix of infrared thermography, muon radiography imaging and 3D reconstruction all of which the researchers say are non-invasive and nondestructive techniques. On

Sunday, experts revealed new findings on some of the limestone blocks that make up the western flank of the Red pyramid and northern flank of Khufu.

“There is a clear separation of temperature on the west face of Red pyramid. The bottom is colder than the top,” Matthieu Klein of Canada’s Laval University told a news conference. “It’s interesting. We have no answers yet... Could it be because of the wind? Maybe, but it’s interesting,” he said, adding that the difference in temperature was of three to six degrees Celsius.

A video projection of the data recorded by the thermal cameras showed hues of red on the blocks where heat was detected and blue and magenta for the cooler ones. Klein said two anomalies were also located on the northern flank of Khufu, where experts have previously found similar “points of interest” on the monument’s eastern face.

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Edusports survey reveals alarming fitness levels of punjab school children 6th Annual Health and Fitness Survey by EduSports, reveals worrying fitness levels in schools. The study covered 1, 48,054 students in the age group of 7 and 17 years. The study spans 245 schools in 87 cities and 26 states.

The fitness parameters that were measured included sprint capacity, flexibility, lower and upper body strength, abdominal strength and Body mass Index (BMI).

Between boys and girls; 60% girls were found to have healthier BMI scores compared to 54% boys. However all children were found equally unfit in terms of their BMI scores.

The survey further reveals that global recommendations on physical activity for children aged 5-17 years calls for atleast sixty minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity every day.

“I don’t think the physical education system is strong in schools. There needs to be more awareness about the

benefits of physical fitness and activity in parents as well as students. Most students attend sports classes begrudgingly,” said Rajni Bahad, a school principal, Patiala.To test the impact of increased playtime on

fitness levels, EduSports surveyed 1, 10,076 children from 245 schools across 87 cities.

Some of the schools offered 3 and more PE periods while some offered 2 periods a week.

It was found that schools which gave more than 3 PE periods produced fitter kids who fared better on fitness parameters mentioned previously.

Surinder Singh, a physical education teacher, said otherwise, “Sports periods are enough. We have 2 periods per

Gurmeet Ram Rahim in trouble for dressing up like Lord Vishnu

Chandigarh Days after the controversial arrest of comedian Kiku Sharda for imitating Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh on a television show, the All India Hindu Federation has filed a complaint against the selfproclaimed godman for dressing up as Lord Vishnu in a video.

“A day before yesterday, a video of Gurmeet Ram Rahim had come to my mobile through social media. In the video, he is seen dressing up as Lord Vishnu. That hurt my feelings,” All India Hindu Federation chief Nishant Sharma told ANI.The

complaint has been registered in the Zirakpur Police Station and an investigation is underway. Nishant, however, said the case has not yet been filed by the police.“We called a meeting. Today we are going to meet the DGP and if the complaint is still not filed then we will approach the court,” Nishant said.

“We have always worked to carry forward the ideology of sanatan dharm and we will continue to do so,” he added.

He also said they have requested that a case should be filed against the self-styled godman for hurting religious sentiments.

week for a class. We even take boys of higher classes to play cricket in a bigger ground of our sister school.”

The survey says that kids who undergo a structured sports program are fitter. EduSports studied 23,889 kids from 80 schools who had gone through a structured and age appropriate sports programme over 24 months. The results were compared with schools running a general sports program. It was seen that

schools which followed structured play showed significant improvement across fitness parameters compared to schools which ran a genera sports program.

“I took physical education as a subject just because it’s easier to get marks in board exams. I didn’t even play anything during the sports period in my school,” said Arshnoor Singh, a student of class 11th.

According to Mr.Saumil Majumdar, CEO and Co-

founder, EduSports, “This landmark survey, which is in its 6th year, is an eye opener for parents and schools who must come together to challenge the increasing levels of inactivity and sedentary lifestyles among school children. Research also shows that children who are active have greater attention spans and perform better academically, making it a win-win situation for all.”

By Nihareekaa Kaur

Activists challenge political parties for issue-based engagement CHANDIGARH At a time when established political parties in Punjab, as well as the new comer Aam Aadmi Party, are fast moving into electoral top gear, a number of intellectuals, academicians and activists today challenged the political players for a broadbased engagement and underlined the need for identifying issues, coming up with solutions and presenting a route map to the people of Punjab.

“Intellectuals in Punjab, be they academicians, activists, trade unionists or other inspired people who want things to change, must actually discuss, thrash out and draft skeletal issues before 2017 Assembly elections in the state. We need a counteragenda since the politics pursued by political parties is increasingly issue-less, irrespective of their claims to be elected representatives,” Dr S S Johl, a leading expert on agro-economy, urged the state’s think tanks and all other stakeholders.Organised under the banner of Pind BachaoPunjab Bachao (Save VillageSave Punjab), speakers at the seminar, including Dr S S Gill, economist, CRRID; Dr Harshinder Kaur, women, health and child rights activist; Giani Kewal Singh, a former Sikh cleric and now a social worker; Dr Piare Lal Garg, former registrar, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences

and activist; and Gurmit Palahi, social activist working on rural development models underscored the need to engage with all political forces, while maintaining that it was all the more important for new political players to address

politicians,” he said.

Amid calls by many at the seminar to “do something practical” and popular exhortations that intellectuals must lead instead of politicians, it was left to senior journalist Hamir Singh to point out that

these issues. Dr Sucha Singh Gill said political parties must be forced to present complete truth about the state of the economy. He also spoke about the ingenious ways in which large scale tax evasion was happening in the corporate sector. Speaking about massive unemployment, he said the very fact that the Punjab government has now announced recruitment of 1.13 lakh government employees was proof enough of artificially suppressed job opportunities.

“These unemployed then become grist for the mill for unscrupulous politicians, and end up in a quagmire of drugs, liquor and muscle power wielded by the same

the need was to redefine politics, make it people centric, shift the focus back to village, and understand the issues of farming, dalits, women and other marginalised sections.

“Notwithstanding the slogancentric imagery of Punjab being a prosperous state and Punjabis being the best people, the fact is that Punjab is facing a bankruptcy not just on economic and social fronts but also on intellectual and political fronts,” many speakers said at the seminar, held at Kisan Bhawan, Chandigarh.

Samuel John, film and theater activist, and his life partner and fellow traveller Jaswinder, stressed the need to put dalit issues in the forefront.

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Russia prison chief arrested for ‘stealing 50km road’

MOSCOW Russia on Wednesday detained a senior prison service official on suspicion of stealing a 50kilometre (31 mile) stretch of public road, investigators said.

Alexander Protopopov oversaw the dismantling of a concrete highway and sold off the slabs as prison service chief in the far northern Komi region, the Investigative Committee said in a statement. The road, which was made up of over 7,000 reinforced concrete slabs, was ‘dismantled and driven away’ over the period of more than a year, between 2014 and 2015.

The concrete slabs were subsequently used by a commercial company which also sold them on for a profit, investigators said.

Protopopov, now acting deputy chief of the national prison service, faces charges of misappropriating of state property while using his

official position, which could lead to 10 years in jail. While heading Komi region’s prison service from 2010 to 2015, Protopopov won awards, including a medal for creating ‘spiritual unity,’ according to the prison service’s website.

Other prison service officials participated in the scheme, pretending to dispose of waste, with one arrested so far, prosecutors said earlier.

Investigators said the scheme had cost the Russian Federation over six million rubles ($79,000/ 73,000 euros). Road construction is one of the most corrupt sectors in Russia, with costs much higher than on comparable projects in other countries.

The construction of a mountain road for the Sochi Winter Olympic Games cost about $8 billion, with Russian media claiming it would cost the same to slather the 48kilometre stretch with black caviar.

Turkmenistan takes cigarettes off shelves ASHGABAT Turkmenistan’s authorities have forced shops to stop selling cigarettes, traders in Ashgabat said Thursday, after its president urged citizens to kick the habit. State antinarcotics officials ‘came to our shop recently and forced us to remove cigarettes from the shelves, threatening us with huge fines,’ said Bairam Saryev, the 34year-old owner of a small store in the capital.

Saryev’s shop was one of those targeted in a wave of raids in the isolated Central Asian country after President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov slammed the country’s anti-smoking strategy at a televised government meeting on January 5.

Berdymukhamedov threatened to dismiss the chief of the anti-narcotics

As many as 13,196 people said they wanted to “move away” Japan, which ranked as the least popular neighbouring country. The other countries they would prefer to not neighbour were Philippines (11,671), Vietnam (11,620), North Korea (11,024), India (10,416), Afghanistan (8,506) and Indonesia (8,167), the newspaper said.Among their favoured neighbours which they would prefer to share borders with, Pakistan ranked the highest (11,831), followed by Kazakhstan, Nepal and Tajikistan.

China and Pakistan in fact do not share borders, with

sweeping move has resulted in already high prices for a pack of cigarettes doubling on the street from around 25 manat to 50 manat (over $14), Vepa said. ‘Because

called Vepa. The ban on cigarette sales has not been officially announced or published by the government. But 24-yearold Vepa said that the fine for violating the ban amounted to ‘10 (average) monthly salaries.’The

of the high price, sales of single cigarettes are growing, for about 2 manat apiece,’ he said.

Berdymukhamedov, who took the helm of the Caspian nation in 2006, has presided over a crackdown on smokers.Turkmenistan is

now the country with the lowest percentage of smokers in the world, according to the World Health Organisation. Only eight percent of the population in Turkmenistan smokes, WHO chief Margaret Chan said last year, calling it ‘the lowest national indicator in the world.’ The country’s previous president Saparmurat Niyazov was a chain smoker who quit in 2000 after heart surgery and subsequently signed an anti-smoking decree.

Gradually stricter measures have been phased in since then, including a hike in excise taxes for tobacco in 2011 and a ban on smoking in public areas in 2013.

These measures had already made cigarettes in Turkmenistan more expensive than in any other country in the ex-Soviet region.

1,500-year-old wooden foot found in Austria VIENNA Archeologists in Austria said Thursday they had found what they believe to be Europe’s oldest prosthetic implant in the shape of a wooden foot dating from the sixth century.The discovery was made in the grave of a man missing his left foot and ankle at Hemmaberg in southern Austria. Instead at the end of his leg was an iron ring and remnants of a clump of wood and leather. ‘He appears to

Chinese Internet users prefer Pak to India as neighbour

Beijing An online survey by a government-run newspaper in Beijing has found that more Chinese Internet users prefer Pakistan as a neighbour than India, while Japan ranked as the least popular neighbouring country.The survey of 2 lakh Internet users by the Global Times, a tabloid known for its hard-line nationalistic views, asked Chinese “netizens” to rank their favourite neighbouring countries, as well as to vote on which country they would choose as an ideal neighbour if they could “play God” and redraw global borders.

agency.’Since then, owners of kiosks and shops have only sold cigarettes under the counter and ‘only to regular customers and friends,’ said one Ashgabat kiosk trader

China sharing a border with Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). Sweden was voted as the most ideal neighbour that Chinese Internet users would choose to have if they could redraw the map of the world, with 9,776 votes, followed by New Zealand, Germany, the Maldives, Singapore, Norway and Thailand.

While Chinese scholars told the paper the survey reflected China’s bilateral relations and its territorial disputes, its validity was questioned by independent Chinese media experts.

The 2 lakh internet users cast their vote on the Chinese website of the Global Times, which has a fan following for its hard-line and nationalist views. For this reason, suggested one Beijing media professor, the Partycontrolled newspaper’s surveys are usually to be taken “with a few grains of salt” as they “often reflect government views on most issues”.

have got over the loss of his foot and lived for two more years at least with this implant, and walking pretty well,’ Sabine Ladstaetter from the Austrian Archeological Institute (OeAI) told AFP. The skeleton of what appears to have been a high-ranking Frankish

figure was discovered in 2013, but it is only now that the ‘very, very surprising findings’ about the foot have emerged, she said.‘The infection risk alone would have been extremely high, which shows how good the medical treatment was.

And don’t forget this was

at the edge of the civilised world in the sixth century,’ Ladstaetter said. Until pagan Slavs arrived in the 7th century, Hemmaberg was the most important Christian pilgrimage site north of the Alps containing six churches. It was rediscovered in the early 20th century.

Issue 650 (15)

19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Nothing rescues this Juhi Chawla, Shabana Azmi film Star Cast: Shabana Azmi, Juhi Chawla, Divya Dutta, Arya Babbar, Zarina Wahab, Jackie Shroff, Rishi Kapoor Director : Jayant Gilatar Ratng: 2 Stars

That education should not be a business is some-

thing we all believe in. We also know just exactly how much the lure of filthy lucre has driven teaching, the noblest profession, into a corner : the ‘good’ teachers who want to selflessly impart knowledge are getting scarcer, and the ‘bad’

guys with calculators and power point presentations

are taking over.

It is a subject that deserves a great deal of attention, but not in the way ‘Chalk N’ Duster’ does it.

The treatment is amateurish in the extreme, reducing the conflict to good teachers vs greedy gobblers of money and fame.

Kantaben School, run by the just principal (Zarina Wahab) sees a hostile take-over by a ‘desi’ scheming Cruela De Viltype togged out in designer saris and a permanent snarl ( Dutta). The teachers who are there because they love what they do, especially the middle-aged maths teacher (Shabana Azmi) and the younger, chirpier teacher of science (Juhi Chawla) and the other likeminded people are left

stranded. The rest of it pans out exactly as we expect it to, minus subtleties or nuance, plus heavyhanded sanctimony.

Which is a pity, because these are all good actresses, and it is so difficult to have women in a film doing something meaningful, other than singing and dancing and playing second fiddle. In the second half, both Chawla and

Azmi’s characters get the chance to be emotional and tug at our heartstrings. When they are on screen, we stay watching even when the situations and dialogues are wincemaking. Dutta, who is usually so reliable, is reduced to a one-dimensional evil schemer. And Chaddha shows up as a bustling crusading TV journalist who goes where the cause is,

both on the street and in the studio.

Rajkumar Hirani’s ‘Munnabhai MBBS’ still remains the go-to film on how the educational system is going down the drain, and what we can do to save it. But nothing rescues this one, not Jackie Shroff nor Rishi Kapoor (in bit parts), nor the sprightly ladies, despite their game attempts.

Quentin Tarantino’s film is an indulgence Directed by Quentin Tarantino Starring Samuel L Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walter Goggins, Demian Bechir, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth Ratng: 4 Stars T 187 minutes, The Hateful Eight is an indulgence.

But few do indulgence better than Quentin Tarantino.

Here the film, unfurled as “chapters”, feels like an actual short story for a cold winter day. Each time someone enters a room from a blizzard, you can imagine reading the anxious occupants shout those instructions out to “nail the broken door shut”.

They speak together and over each other, like people

one has known before thrown together by circumstances. Earlier, four of them share an uncomfortable but never uninteresting ride on a stagecoach straining under the tension within and the snow without. Again, it is a delayed introduction and you can’t wait to see what happens when the four do get off.

Add to that the breathtaking landscape of this western shot entirely in snow, and the music to which the horses plough through the cold, and it is cinema of the ambition that few do better than Tarantino.

The director even chooses 70 mm film format and then decides to go entirely indoors, locking the characters together in a haberdashery that becomes al-

most as familiar as the rest of the characters by the time The Hateful Eight gets around to its ending. Note the use of the word haberdashery, as each of its corners, bottles, fireplace, chairs, bed and particularly the coffee pot get a life of their own.

If only the rest of the Tarantino film lived up to its smashing first hour and a half, or the pre-interval. If this period is Tarantino at his best, where plausible and implausible effortlessly hold up each other, the second half brings out the worst of the director with the characters, dialogues

and the gratuitous violence there, one suspects, more for his benefit. The violence is the most disappointing, whether directed at the film’s only woman protagonist or not. Never one to shy away from blood and gore, Tarantino knows the value of it as a catharsis, making you revel in it sometimes against your better judgment.

Here, there is none of that.

One imagines where the eight hateful ones from Tarantino’s pen are headed from the start, and so once that question is out of the way though the film is described as a mystery,

there is little of that it is really about how they reach there, and while it is expectedly not pretty, it is unexpectedly too unwholesome.

There is a sense that the overriding idea is the aftermath of the American Civil War, and the wounds it has left behind. And while there is a constant mention of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to Samuel Jackson’s Major Marquis Warren, and a mention of John Wilkes Booth, the north-south divide is more a plot ploy than a serious examination of the racial divide. The N-

word though is freely used as often as in the better Django Unchained, to lesser purpose enough for it to lose its potency.

The eight comprise firstly the two bounty hunters, John Ruth (Russells) and Warren. Ruth captures his bounties alive, and waits around to watch the law hang them. Warren only gets them back dead, and in one of those typical touches of ridiculousness of a Tarantino film, when he hitches a ride on Ruth’s wagon wheel to get out of the snow blizzard, the three bodies he is hauling are strapped onto its roof.

Issue 650 (16)

19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

When Helen Body shaming is disrespectful wanted to says Parineeti Chopra ‘murder’ Divya Dutta

Divya Dutta says yesteryear diva Helen wanted to murder her for playing a negative role in the educational drama ‘Chalk N Duster’.

“It was everyone’s reaction... people wanted me to be nicer (on screen). But now, they feel like hating and beating me up. Yesterday, Helen aunty gave me a sweet compliment saying that she wants to murder me,” Divya said at a screening of the film on Friday.

“The reaction for this film... If more people hate me, I’ll like it. Some are terming me as a devil, while some are calling me Cinderella’s stepsister. So, it is a different kind of response for me.

Bollywood star Parineeti Chopra, who stunned fans and industry insiders with her new fit-avatar, says it is disrespectful when people shame women for their body type.

The 27-year-old actress feels no one has the right to comment on how people look or how fit they are.

“This (body shaming) will soon become a past. Everything comes in phases. If you yourself are not comfortable about your body, do something about it. If you are comfortable, let it be. Other people have no right to comment anyway,” Parineeti said in an interview.

The “Kill Dill” actress, however, said as she is a part of the film industry, viewers have a certain right to comment about how she looks or act in a respectful manner.

“In our industry, because we put ourself to that kind of feedback where people have the right to tell us what they like they don’t like.

The way I look, dress or act. You are ticket buyers you have the right to say it. “With respect if you tell somebody what you think, it is fine.

But body shaming is disrespectful and illiterate of somebody.”

Parineeti says she took time to lose weight, which was achieved without sticking to a “particular” diet. “I cannot keep myself to a particular diet. I eat what I want, when I want

and try to keep it as healthy as I can. I used to think weight loss happens quickly, but it has taken a lot if time. There is no secret to it.” She also gives credit to her daily routine of exercising for achieving her new look.

“I do martial arts mostly.

But if I am bored, or my body is aching, I swim or go the gym. I can sometimes be doing cardio on the treadmill, kick boxing, stretching, dance, whatever I feel like. I just make sure I have something to do everyday but no particular set routine,” she said.

I keep rat repellant in my car says Nimrat Kaur

Actress Nimrat Kaur says she keeps rat repellent in her car to protect her vehicle.

“I always keep a rat repellent in my car because in Mumbai, rats are used to getting into the engines of these expensive cars.

Someone told me about it and also that they chew the wiring of the car,” Nimrat said on the show “Yaar Mera Superstar”, which airs on Zoom.

The actress, who is gearing up for the release of her forthcoming film “Airlift”, says she doesn’t “want to take a chance, I take precautions”, read a statement.

This was Katrina Kaif’s answer on being asked about split with boyfriend Katrina Kaif and Ranbir Kapoor have supposedly broken up over ‘unresolved differences’, several tabloids went to press with the news a couple of days ago.

When news broke that Katrina and Ranbir had broken up and Ranbir had moved out of their Carter Road, Mumbai penthouse, Katrina was in Delhi addressing the media regarding her upcoming film Fitoor.

When she was asked about the reported breakup, a glare from Katrina was what it took to silence the people in attendance. Fitoor director Abhishek Kapoor had to intervene and divert the topic of discussion during that January 15 presser at a restaurant in Delhi.

Later that evening, when Katrina was asked the same by a reporter from NDTV, the Phantom actor’s response was, “It is better to not speak about (my) personal life.”

Kaif went on to say, “Many times, you want to come out and speak your heart openly and just want to say exactly what you feel at the moment. But from my personal experience, it is

you want your respect to come from your work.

That’s what should be out there.”

Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif have been in a relationship for several years, before their

better to not speak much about your personal life and speak about your profession.

Try and let your work speak for itself because at the end of the day, that’s what you want your identity to be, and

reported parting of ways a few days ago. As recently as on Christmas 2015, the usually camera-shy-together couple Ranbir and Katrina shed all inhibitions and smiled and waved at the lenses.

Issue 650 (17)

19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Alan Rickman, Professor Snape of the Harry Potter film series, passes away at 69

A pall of gloom descended on Harry Potter fans on January 14 evening as news broke that Alan Rickman, Professor Snape of the famous film series, passed away. The British stage and film star was 69. He was battling cancer, reported The Guardian.

The actor passed away in London, his family confirmed.

Rickman, one of the most-loved British actors of both theatre and screen, shot to fame after his portrayal of the terrorist mastermind Hans Gruber in the 1988 film Die Hard.

In 2001, when Chris Columbus’s film adaptation of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone hit the screens, Rickman was seen in the role of

Professor Severus Snape. With his curtains of black, greasy hair and the arched nose, Alan Rickman immortalised his Professor Snape, the much-hated Potionsmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

As the series progressed, on film, Alan Rickman found Harry Potter fans rooting for his character, Severus Snape, who laid down his life for Harry Potter and his mother Lily.

Rickman, whose role as Hans Gruber landed two days after he moved to Los Angeles in 1987, had said that he never wanted to act in Die Hard. In an interview to The Guardian, Rickman had said, “I didn’t know anything about LA. I didn’t know anything about the film business ... I’d never

made a film before, but I was extremely cheap.”

And once he was done reading the script, Rickman had thought, “What the hell is this?

I’m not doing an action movie.” That action movie finally became Rickman’s ticket to fame in Hollywood.

A year after the turn of the millennium, Rickman’s Professor Snape appeared on the big screen. Ever since, the actor has been most known for his role as the Hogwarts Potionsmaster.

“Actors are agents of change,” Rickman had said, “A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.”

Rickman sure knew how to do that.

Took training in martial arts for ‘X-men Apocalypse’ says Olivia Munn Actress Olivia Munn trained for six hours a day for her role in the new ‘X-men’ movie.

The ‘Mortdecai’ star, who plays Psylocke in “X-Men: Apocalypse”, said she did not like the idea of having to work out for the film, reported Contactmusic.

“The beginning of the movie I do look different. If you watch the movie from the beginning to my fight scene, I lost, like, 12 pounds, because when I started I was like, ‘I’m the relateable actress, I can eat whatever...’

“But then I started training for, like, six or seven hours a day - martial arts and sword training - so that I could become as lethal as I could, and I needed to feel as confident as Psylocke as I could. So six or seven hours a day for, like, two months (I trained) and then I lost 12 pounds.”

Munn, 35, who is dating buff sportsman Aaron Rodgers, admits she likes the way she feels now she has a toned physique: “I feel very strong and it’s an awesome feeling.”

Miley Cyrus to be more I’ll take my new conservative off stage nickname says

Jennifer Lopez

Singer-actress Miley Cyrus has reportedly promised actor Liam Hemsworth that she will curb her outrageous image.

According to a source, Cyrus, who is known for her provocative and flamboyant stage wear, has reconciled with her former fiance and has vowed to dress more conservatively when she’s not working, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

“When they split, Miley went into overdrive partying and being provocative. Liam is quite

conservative so it felt like she was reclaiming her own identity,” the source told Grazia magazine.

“Now she feels she has nothing left to prove.

While she’s still going to push the envelope when it comes to videos and touring, she’s been explaining to Liam that it’s not necessarily who she is behind the scenes. “She’s grown her pixie crop out and let her natural brunette roots show, and started wearing slightly more reserved outfits,” the source added.

Singer-actress Jennifer Lopez loves her new nickname “Slay Lo”. The 46-year-old has been turning heads on the red carpet so far at the awards season, with some incredible ensembles. Her outfit choices have earned her a new moniker - one that the mother-of-two is more than happy with, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

Asked what she thought about the nickname, Lopez told entertainment website HipHollywood.com: “I’ll take it”.

Lopez currently stars as a single mother and detective Harlee Santos alongside Ray Liotta in TV show “Shades of Blue” - a part she knew she wanted as soon as she read the script.

The police procedural series tells the story of Harlee getting involved in a FBI anti-corruption probe.

“When I read it, it made me feeling something, it made me feel something right away. And I know if it makes me feel something then it’s going to make other people feel something,” Lopez said.

Issue 650 (18)

19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Hilarious! Burglar calls police for help to escape owner’s wrath This seems funny but that’s exactly what happened! A burglar who was so frightened by the wrath of a pizza store owner that he locked himself inside a toilet and called the police for help.

The incident took place in the Swedish city of Uppsala.

On breaking into the restaurant around 3 am, the burglar received a rude shock when a loud alarm went off and alerted the owner.

A frightened burglar in Sweden called police on Tuesday after hiding in the toilets of a pizzeria to

escape the wrath of its owner, police said.

“I put on a shirt, trousers and shoes and I ran,” media report quoted the

owner, who lived nearby, as saying.

The burglar who was accompanied by his associates, couldn’t manage to escape as the owner immediately arrived at the scene and began fighting.

The police have rescued two burglars who were hiding inside the premises.

This was the third burglary attempt at the sore in the past two years, AFP reported citing the owner.

Tokyo restaurateur pays Rs 78 lakh for a bluefin tuna fish President of sushi restaurant chain Sushi Zanmai, Kiyoshi Kimura holds a long fish knife as he poses with a 200-kilogram bluefin tuna at his main restaurant near Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market yesterday.

Kimura paid more than

$117,000 (Rs 78 lakh) for the giant fish as Tokyo’s

Tsukiji fish market held its last New Year auction.

Bluefin an endangered species is usually the most expensive fish available at Tsukiji, the biggest fish and wholesale seafood market in the world.

Bird droppings block Rome road

Rome seals off roads that are caked with droppings from migratory birds, which binged on olives, making it too slippery for pedestrians and traffic Rome: Authorities in Rome were forced to close roads for cleaning after heavy weekend rainfall made streets and pavements covered in bird droppings too slippery for pedestrians and traffic.

The downpour washed the guano deposited by

millions of migratory starlings from trees onto the streets. The result was a slimy fungal mush that led to car and motorcycle accidents.

Concerned for the safety of citizens, city authorities closed several roads on the banks of Tiber river for most of Saturday while workers attempted to hose the streets back into a safe state.

Starlings swarming above Rome’s historic buildings are one of the iconic sights

of the capital, but dealing with their excrement is a perennial problem for the city.

This season, efforts to stop them congregating in the plane trees lining the Tiber got a late start because of budget cutbacks.

The starlings’ excrement creates a particularly slick mess because the little black birds spend their time in Italy gorging on olives on the outskirts of Rome.

Issue 650 (19)

19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Richest 62 have same wealth as poorest half of world Showing a sharp rise in income inequality in India and other countries, a new survey on Monday said the wealth of 62 richest persons globally now equals that of the poorest half of the world’s population.

Besides, there are just nine women among the world’s 62 richest persons, whose total wealth has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to

USD 1.76 trillion since 2010.

The study, titled ‘An Economy for the 1 per cent’ and conducted by rights group Oxfam, also showed that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010, a drop of 41 per cent.

This has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period.

Released here ahead of the five-day World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting beginning tomorrow, the survey showed that the number of people whose wealth is equal

to that of the poorest half of the world’s population stood at 388 in 2010.

Since then, it has been continuously declining and stood at 177 in the year 2011, 159 in 2012, 92 in 2013 and 80 in 2014.

Talking about the income inequality in various countries, the study cited that India’s top IT firm CEO makes 416 times the salary of a typical em-

ployee there, while that of the largest cigarette manufacturer gets 439 times the median staff salary.

It also said that 46 per cent of billionaires in India have made their fortunes from sectors that depend upon market power, influence or preferential access to licensing.

At the same time, the report praised regulatory efforts in India mandating greater disclosures in this regard.

“Lawmakers in India passed a disclosure mandate in 2013 which requires CEO pay ratios to be made public, an important step towards inform-

ing the public about the level of inequality within companies,” it said.

The report also highlighted that patient groups, other civil society organisations and the government in India have challenged the influence of big global pharma players, prioritising access to medicines for citizens.

Oxfam called for urgent action to tackle the extreme inequality saying it “threatens to undermine the progress made in tackling poverty during the last quarter of a century”.

It also called for an end to the era of tax havens which has seen the increasing use of offshore centers by rich individuals and companies to avoid paying taxes.

Globally, it is estimated that a total of USD 7.6 trillion of individuals’ wealth sits offshore. If tax were paid on the income that this wealth generates, an extra USD 190 billion would be available to governments every year.

Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, who was WEF Annual Meeting’s Co-Chair last year and is also attending the 2016 summit, said it is “unacceptable that the poorest half of the world’s population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus”.

Taiwan gets first female President as China-friendly party loses A former law professor on Saturday was elected as Taiwan’s first female president, handing a landslide defeat to the China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) which pur-

China, while the KMT’s Eric Chu admitted defeat garnering 30 per cent, with two-third of all polling stations reporting results by Saturday evening. China regards Tai-

sued closer economic ties with the mainland over 8 years in office. Tsai Ing-wen, 59, won around 60 per cent of the vote for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has been less enthusiastic about economic integration with

wan, an island of 23 million, as a “breakaway” province, although China and Taiwan have been ruled separately since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, when the KMT, losing to the Communist Party of China, fled to Taiwan. Outgo-

ing KMT President Ma Yingjeou fostered closer economic ties with the mainland, with a landmark economic framework agreement boosting trade ties.

Ma in 2015 held a historic meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore the first ever meeting between the heads of China and Taiwan - reflecting a warming of ties.

However, perceptions among many sections in Taiwan that the benefits were not being shared - and largely profited elites - led to growing disenchantment, culminating in “Sunflower movement” protests by students last year calling for revising what they described as opaque trade deals. Fears of Taiwan’s identity being eroded as it fell into China’s economic orbit have also risen. Only around two dozen countries - many of which are small island states - maintain diplomatic ties amid China’s growing global clout.

Your Facebook photos could be used to promote online porn Sharing cool photographs on Facebook is always fun unless you are targeted by groups who are running social media pages to promote online sex chats or any other pornographic content.

An investigation led by Mail Today revealed that thousands of pictures were being copied from accounts of girls on Facebook and then morphed to be used for promoting pornographic content.

The newspaper also revealed that a group of ethical hackers have started a war against this explicit social media pages in India and have reportedly taken down many accounts that were coping pictures and misusing them.

These vicious groups are also equipped with cameras and smartphones and are using them to click pictures of girls at public places and then sending them to administrators for further use.

The investigation quoted experts who said that more than 40 percent female users on Facebook are victims of such crime in the country.

“This is the biggest online threat we face today. Criminals are copying and saving pictures of female users on social media. They are using pictures of attractive women to entice users to connect on sex chats. There are several such active pages, but cops are barely doing anything to take them down,” cyber crime expert Kislay Choudhary, who has worked with

Delhi and Noida Police in several cases, was quoted as saying to Mail Today.

HOW DOES IT WORK? 1) First these groups copy or download pictures of female users from social media websites 2) Then they create fake profiles and pages by either morphing the

pictures or use the original to entice people 3) While more often than not these pages are created for fun but some users are using them to entice an internet user to paid sex chat or use it to extort money from girls 4) Administrators are given the pictures to help them go viral According to the report filed, such offences was just a way of getting back at the partner for a jilted lover but criminals are now using stolen pictures of girls to lure users to paid sex websites or extort money from them. The newspaper, as a part of the investigation, also spoke to white-hat hackers known Kerala Cyber Warriors who told the paper that they have hacked at least 70 Facebook accounts and other pages running sex chats.

Issue 650 (20)

The Indian Air Force station in Pathankot was attacked on January 2. Counter-terror operations continued for five days.

By ABHISHEK BHALLA Parliament attack mastermind Afzal Guru’s hanging has breathed life into Pakistan terror group Jaish-eMohammed (JeM), Indian intelligence sources have told.

JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar is apparently using it as a tool to motivate acts of terror against India.

Masood has been making fiery speeches seeking revenge for Guru’s hanging, recent intelligence inputs indicate.

Guru was hanged in Delhi’s Tihar jail in February 2013, after which JeM formed the Afzal Guru Squad, a crack fidayeen team with the sole objective of avenging

$)=$/ +$1*,1* )8(/6 -H0 his death.

Within months, fresh waves of terrorists started crossing the border and attacking security forces.

JeM, which espoused the Kashmiri separatist cause, has its roots in Bhawalpur in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

It was formed in 2000 after a split in Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.

The majority of those who broke away joined Masood Azhar. The terrorists who carried out the Pathankot attack are also suspected to be from the Afzal Guru Squad.

Sources said the Pakistan phone numbers that the terrorists dialled had been traced to JeM leaders. These calls were made using the phone of a taxi driver,

Ikagar Singh. Singh was killed by the terrorists, who later attacked the Air Force base.

Security agencies feel that Azhar and his brother Abdul Rauf Asghar were the Pathankot masterminds.

The brothers were also the brains behind the IC-814 hijack. Azhar and two other terrorists, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, were released by India after an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu was high-jacked and taken to Kandahar in 1999.

According to Indian intelligence agencies, JeM has risen in the last couple of years, replacing the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) which has been facing heat from across the world.

“After Guru’s hanging, JeM is raising its head again and are getting a push from the Pakistan army,” said a top South Block official.

There was a clampdown on JeM after they attacked former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in 2002. That was when Lashkar-

e-Taiba came to the frontline of Pakistansponsored jihad.

Intelligence reports say that not just the Pathankot attack but several other attacks on security forces over the last two years can be attributed to the Afzal Guru Squad.

In all these attacks, the method was similar - terrorists in army fatigues crossed the border and targeted security forces.

The first such attack happened in September 2013, in Samba, Jammu, when

terrorists attacked a police station and an army camp. Nine such attacks have been carried out since, believed to be the handiwork of the Afzal Guru Squad.

This and many other attacks that followed carried the JeM’s imprint (in some cases, the bags carried by the attackers had JeM printed on them), sources said.

Investigators are trying to establish similarities between the attack in Pathankot and earlier ones.

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19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

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Even as the Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan scheduled to be held in February were mutually deferred, the two countries ensured that the Pathankot terror attack does not derail their engagement as India welcomed the proposed visit of a Pakistan investigation team.

The detention of about a dozen members of Jaishe-Mohammad (JeM), said to be behind the attack, was also welcomed by India as an important and positive first step, although it emphasised that it wanted action on the ground.

In a break from the past, the two governments appeared to have coordinated their strategy with Islamabad not going into denial mode with regard to the involvement of Pakistani elements in the attack, and apprehending JeM members.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary spoke to each other on Thursday, when it was agreed that their meeting would be rescheduled.

In a significant decision, India has decided to allow the visit of a Pakistani Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the attack and offered all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters that the statement issued by the Pakistan government on Wednesday on investigations into the Pathankot attack conveyed

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has also approached the Punjab Police, asking them to share details of the terror strike at Dina Nagar in Gurdaspur district on July 27 last year after investigators found similarities with the Pathankot attack.

It is suspected that three heavily-armed militants in army fatigues, who infiltrated from Pakistan, took the same route to enter India last year. The terrorists sprayed bullets on a moving bus and stormed a police station in Dina Nagar, killing eight, including a superintendent of police. All three were shot. There are also striking similarities between Pathankot attack and the police station strike in Samba, as also the attack on an army camp in Kathua in March.

Inputs indicate that JeM is planning more Pathnakot-like attacks. Sources said India had told Pakistan that they must to go after these groups.

“It has been communicated to Pakistan that it must launch a massive offensive against terror groups targeting India, as they did after the Peshawar school attack, and only then can bilateral relations improve,” said a senior government official requesting anonymity.

that considerable progress has been made in the probe against terrorist elements linked to the strike.

“The action taken against JeM is an important and positive first step. We also note that the government of Pakistan considering to send a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the Pathankot terror attack,” he said.

Reports of detention of JeM chief Masood Azhar widely carried by the Pakistani media and picked up by the Indian press, were not confirmed by New Delhi as there was no official communication on it from Pakistan.

“We are looking for the credible and comprehensive action to bring all the perpetrators of Pathankot terror attack to justice,” Swarup said.

Government officials also said there was no information whether a criminal case was registered against JeM and its members including Masood Azhar.

Sources said that since Pakistan has announced that several individuals belonging to JeM have been apprehended, it should also disclose under which law it has started the probe or detained the suspects.

India has given to Pakistan information on certain mobile numbers which were used by the handlers of the six terrorists who stormed the sensitive air base in Punjab. There is no information on the identity of the owners of those numbers, they said.

3DNLVWDQ VHDOV -H0 VHPLQDU\ DIWHU UDLG QHDU ERUGHU Pakistani authorities on Thursday raided and sealed a religious seminary operated by the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in Sialkot town near the Indian border, officials said. The latest raid came after several JeM activists were arrested following leads provided by India over the alleged involvement of the outfit in the Pathankot airbase attack.

The raid was launched by Punjab’s Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), one of its officials said.

“No arrest was made but some books, CDs and copies of national identity cards of some suspects were confiscated,” he added. The madrassa was also sealed after a thorough search.

Pakistan has promised India tough action against anyone found guilty of involvement in the Pathankot attack. In a pre-dawn terror strike on January 2, a group of heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists, suspected of belonging to the JeM, attacked the Air Force base in Punjab and

killed seven Indian security personnel.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday chaired a high-level meeting which was told that offices of JeM were being traced and sealed.

Also on Wednesday, Pakistani media

reported that JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and several individuals belonging to his dreaded outfit have been detained after India demanded action.

However, the reports of Azhar’s detention turned out to be false.

India and Pakistan on Thursday announced that they have agreed for a short deferment of the crucial Foreign Secretary-level talks.

Meanwhile, former military dictator Pervez Musharraf has warned India against engaging in any mischief against Pakistan in the backdrop of Pathankot terror attack, saying his country can inflict retaliatory measures that will always haunt India. “In case India perpetrates something wrong against Pakistan, we will give such a fitting response that will always haunt India,” Musharraf was quoted as saying by SAMAA TV. He said India should refrain from embarking on any mischief against Pakistan, it said. Musharraf’s remarks came in the backdrop of the terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot by suspected terrorists affiliated to the dreaded Jaish-e-Mohammad group based in Pakistan. The attack killed seven Indian security personnel.

Issue 650 (22)

19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Most college students use smartphones in classroom Most college students surf the internet, check social media, send texts and even play games on their smartphones while in the classroom, a new study reveals. “During the typical four years they’re in college classrooms, an average student may be distracted for two-thirds of a year,”

said Barney McCoy, associate professor at the University of NebraskaLincoln in the US. Boredom was the top reason students gave for turning to their digital devices during class, the findings showed. Faculty and students need to change their practices to adapt to the reality of phones and other digital devices, the

study indicated.

“The study intends that instructors might benefit from learning and experimenting with new ways to engage college students in classroom activities,” suggested McCoy. According to the survey of 675 students in 26 states, students checked their phones and other digital devices in

class more than 11 times a day, on an average. It’s not just a quick glance to see if someone’s trying to reach them. Students in the study estimated that, on an average, they spend 20 percent of their classroom time using digital devices for activities unrelated to class -- mostly texting but also emailing, web-surfing, checking so-

cial media and even playing games, the researchers said.

“It’s their desire to be connected and not wanting to miss a message,” McCoy explained.

Nearly 30 percent believed they could use their digital devices without distracting from their learning, the study showed. Around 13 percent said the benefits of using digital devices for non-class purposes outweighed the classroom distractions they caused. More than 11 percent of the respondents said they could not stop themselves from using digital devices.

Acknowledging the cost of monitoring digital devices, the students admitted that they don’t pay attention and hence miss the important instructions. They added that their grades suffer and that their professors can haul them out. Yet most respondents indicated they can’t or won’t change their behaviour, the researchers noted in the study published online in the Journal of Media Education.

US school expels 2 for bomb threat from Muslim pupil’s email A US school expelled two students after they allegedly sent a “bomb threat” to about 600 current and former students from the email account of a Muslim pupil.

The subject line of the mail sent out by the two students of the high-performing Washington Latin Public Charter School said ‘Bomb’ and the email appeared to come from a Muslim student’s account.

The message was in fact written by two pranksters, school officials were quoted as saying by the Washington Post.

The two boys, both high school seniors at school, were expelled for threatening violence, head of school Martha Cutts was quoted as saying.

“I was never really worried that it was a real threat, but you have to obviously take those things very seriously. It can be very unsettling for students to open an email and read that,” Cutts said.

The email was sent on Wednesday, and it was

short, “Friday there will be big boom.” The incident at Washington Latin was a case not of hacking but of opportunistic identity fraud, Cutts said.

The accused students opened a laptop during

tion, it was not difficult to figure out who was to blame.

Muslim student is fine, Cutts said, and received a lot of support from other students.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokes-

class time and discovered that a previous user -- a student who happened to be Muslim -- had failed to sign out of his school email account.

They sent the short email to students in grades eight and above, as well as two classes of alumni, Cutts said.

School administrators quickly were able to figure out which laptop had sent the message and where that laptop was located when the email was sent.

Armed with that informa-

person for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said CAIR has seen an increase in bullying of Muslim students in recent years. He said the email should be considered antiMuslim bullying and a hate crime.

The two boys were expelled, and Cutts said that whenever she has had to expel a student, she speaks to the school to explain -- without mentioning names -- what happened and what the consequences were.

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19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

New UK English test may hit spouses of Indian migrants Spouses of Indian and other non-EU migrants may have to pass another English language barrier in Britain from October to test if they have “improved” their language skills, Prime Minister David Cameron announced on Monday.

Passing a test such as IELTS is already a requirement for a spouse visa.

Cameron announced spouses will be tested again after arrival to check whether they have “improved” their knowledge of the language. The plans are expected to face much opposition.

He said: “After two-and-half years they should be improving their English and we will be testing them.

We will bring this in in October and it will apply to people who have come in on a spousal visa recently and they will be tested.”

Asked on BBC Radio whether migrant spouses would be asked to leave if they failed, he said that was possible as “people

coming to our country have responsibilities too”.

“They can’t guarantee they will be able to stay, because under our rules you have to be able to speak a basic level of English to come into the country as

English is improving. You can’t guarantee you can stay if you are not improving your language.”

Cameron made the announcement as part of a new focus on thousands of Muslim women of Paki-

Muslim communities and announced plans to encourage them to learn English to integrate into British society.

“We must take on the minority of men who perpetuate these backward atti-

a husband or wife,” he said.

“We made that change already, and we are now going to toughen that up, so halfway through the fiveyear spousal settlement there will be another opportunity to make sure your

stani and Bangladeshi origin who lack English skills.

His remarks, including a link to extremism, sparked much criticism.

Declaring that the days of “passive tolerance” were over, Cameron criticised discrimination of woman in

tudes and exert such damaging control over their wives, sisters and daughters. And we must never again allow passive tolerance to prevent us from telling the hard truths,” he wrote in The Times.

Cameron specifically iden-

This man pedaled his way to Sweden to unite with his lover People are hitch-hiking all around the world, hitting the road for travelling countries, thanks to the motor-able roads and fa-

cilities the modern era provides.

But this man, pedaled across continents just to be with the girl he loved and that too in 1978!

Dr Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia of Odisha fell in love with a Swedish girl named Charlotte Von Schedvin during her visit to India. After hearing about Mahanandia’s skills, Charlotte came to India to get a portrait made from him.

Who knew they would actually fall in love. The couple got married and Charlotte took the Indian name Charulata.

But, the Shakespearean tragedy fell on the couple and in 1975, Charlotte had to go back to Sweden.

Mahanandia could not accompany her because he wanted to complete his studies. Moreover, he lacked the funds to go abroad.

After spending several years trying to earn enough money to visit his lover he still failed. But after struggling so much, he decided to sell all his be-

longings and buy a bicycle.

In 1978, he planned to pedal his way to unite with his lover. It took him four months and three weeks to complete the journey, during which his bicycle broke down.

Facebook user Satyanarayan Parti shared Mahanandia’s story on his Facebook page which has gone viral.

“Those were the days when not many countries required visa for travelling. Upon reaching, he was questioned by Swedish immigration officers who were amazed to see a man who had come from India riding a bicycle. Mahanandia told them the reason behind his visit and produced photographs of his marriage with Charlotte,” wrote Parti.

Today, Mahanandia has been married for 40 years with two kids and is working Odiya Cultural Ambassador of India to Sweden. The village that once shunned him way because of his ‘‘lower caste’ now welcomes him.

Swedish government even made a documentary to immortalize their love story.

They say every girl needs a Romeo and not a Hamlet, Charlotte really found her Romeo!

tified those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin in the article and followed it up with interviews and public announcements later in the day.

Cameron also linked Muslim women and their lack of English with terrorism, but critics promptly reminded him it was unfair since most Britons who went to Syria had a good knowledge of English and education.

“Consider this: new figures show that some 190,000 British Muslim women — or 22 per cent — speak little or no English despite many having lived here for decades. 40,000 of these women speak no English at all. So it’s no surprise that 60 per cent of women of a Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage are economically inactive,” he wrote.

Cameron added: “It is time to change our approach.

We will never truly build One Nation unless we are more assertive about our liberal values, clearer about

the expectations we place on those who come to live here and build our country together, and more creative and generous in the work we do to break down barriers…(We) will review the role of religious councils, including Sharia councils.”

As his remarks drew sharp reaction from former Conservative party chairperson Sayeeda Warsi, the Ramadhan Foundation said Cameron and his government were “once again using British Muslims as a political football to score cheap points to appear tough”.

It said in a statement: “There are three million Muslims in this country and the prime minister chooses to focus on a very small minority of extremists when clearly the majority of British Muslims reject extremism…This was a right-wing, neo-con prime minister delivering more of the same disgraceful stereotyping of British Muslims.”

Indian-origin doctor in US arrested after deaths of 36 patients

An Indian-origin psychiatrist dubbed “Dr Death” by police was arrested in Georgia state last week after 36 of his patients died over a period of time, 12 from alleged overdose of medicines.

Dr Narendra Nagareddy, the psychiatrist, was arrested on Thursday in a raid at his offices in Clayton county, Georgia and home by over 40 federal agents, including those from DEA. “He’s a psychiatrist in Jonesboro who has been overprescribing opiates and benzodiazepine, and the last several years has had a multitude of overdoses and overdose deaths,” Clayton County police chief Mike Register told a local TV news station WSB-TV Channel 2 News.

“People come to this person for help, and instead of getting help, they’re met with deadly consequences … If the allegations are true, he is Dr Death, no doubt about it.”

Not much else could be found about Dr Nagareddy.

He received his license in 1999, according to local news media reports.

“He’s charged with prescribing pain medication, which is outside his profession as a psychiatrist and not for a legitimate purpose for the patient,” Clayton County district attorney Tracy Graham Lawson has said.

Ruth Carr, a local resident, told WSB-TV her daughter Audrey Austin was under Dr Nagareddy’s treatment.

The news outlet said citing legal documents that

Austin had an office visit with Dr Nagareddy on February 20 and overdosed the next day. Austin was a mother of two boys.

The time period or cause of deaths attributed to Nagareddy couldn’t be ascertained from available accounts and statements. When asked by a a WBS-TV reporter, “Was he (the doctor) responsible for anyone’s death?”, attorney Steven Frey said, “We don’t believe so, no… I have had several calls from the medical community showing their full support for him, so I expect that they will continue to do so and we will vigorously defend him.” It was not immediately clear if Frey is representing Dr Nagareddy.

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You’ll need to navigate through what could be a tricky week. Mercury’s retrograde phase from Monday could cause delays, which means your best-laid plans could come to nothing. Rather than fret and fume, use this opportunity to research your options and get more information. Avoid manipulative and pushy people on Thursday and Friday.

Money matters could be subject to delays. You may have to roll with the punches, particularly if unexpected expenses show up or a payment doesn’t materialize. Even so, this might set you thinking about ways to improve matters and get your money working harder for you.

On Thursday a rather intense influence might mean you see a side of someone you've never noticed before.

Restlessness and a desire to flee the real world may be stirring within you. Yet, because of Mercury’s retrograde phase starting Monday, quick decisions could likely cause trouble. If in doubt, a chat with a good friend can help you make the best choice. Some people may seem more aloof or distant than usual. Try not to take this personally, as it could be a different matter in a few days.

News may arrive out of the blue involving a friend or relative who needs your help and support. A focus on your spiritual sector suggests you may be called upon to sacrifice time and energy in order to boost another’s spirits. There could be further obstacles to overcome on Thursday and Friday this week. A patient approach can help you avoid strain and struggle.

The relationship planets are mainly feisty but fun, encouraging you to relax in good company. But Saturn’s presence in your pleasure and romance sector suggests a tendency to conserve your time and energy. This is just as well, as Mercury enters its retrograde phase on Monday, which could coincide with a lull in your social life.

Regarding goals and personal ambitions, Mercury’s retrograde phase, along with other stubborn influences, suggests progress could come to a halt. However, this can bring just the chance you need to rethink your plans.

Such delays can expose weaknesses that might not otherwise show up. Regarding romance, someone with a jealous streak could try to jeopardize a new relationship.

If you can iron out a family disagreement or handle a difference of opinion, then the week ahead has much to offer. There may be one or two issues to circumnavigate, and these are likely to involve other people’s stubborn mindset.

There will be more than enough to keep you happily occupied once the Sun dances into Gemini on Thursday.

Don’t let anyone rush you into making a decision or commitment before you’re ready. As Mercury turns retrograde it’s essential to read the fine print of a contract or legal document before you sign.

Someone may be feeling extra sensitive, making you feel like you’re walking on eggshells. In this situation it pays to be honest rather than tolerate someone.

Cultivating a taste for the novel or exotic in people and ideas can open you up to wonderful new experiences. Explore opportunities that can help further your interests and expand your horizons.

Mercury turns retrograde on Monday, for about three weeks, leading to delays and mixed messages. Think twice before signing important documents.

With wit, charm, and a cheerful outlook you somehow manage to say the most difficult things and get away with it. With Venus happily ensconced in your relationship sector, it’s a good time to convince someone that you’re the right candidate for a job or new relationship.

However, it might not be all clear sailing this week.

A surprise may be in store this week and it could be due to Mercury’s retrograde influence. There’s a chance you’ll bump into someone you once knew or hear from an old college or work pal. It might also be wise to check on those you haven’t seen in a while and offer support should they need it. Romantic opportunities seem plentiful.

Someone may share a secret that alters how you view a situation. In this instance it affects you in a good way.

As Mercury turns retrograde from Monday, for about three weeks, expect disruptions and delays at home. A guest may cancel or a party may not proceed as planned. You might have to contend with obstacles.

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19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Technology Facebook’s COO Sandberg donates $31 million to charity After Facebook CEO and his wife making a pledge in December to give away 99 percent of their stock over their lifetime, the social networking giant’s COO Sheryl Sandberg has decided to donate $31 million in Facebook stock to charity, the media reported on Friday.

She donated 290,000 shares of Facebook stock at “a market value of roughly $31 million” to various charities, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission document. The shares were

technically transferred to the Sheryl Sandberg Philanthropy Fund.

The majority of the $31 million donation will go to women’s empowerment

groups and Lean In, a nonprofit founded by Sandberg to help support women in the workplace, recode.net reported.

She also plans to give

money to education groups and anti-poverty efforts.

In December, Zuckerberg and Chan promised that they would give away their money “during our lives” through wealth charitable donations, private investment and promotion of government-policy reform.

Meanwhile, Facebook said in a securities filing Zuckerberg has planned to give away “no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock each year for the next three years.”

US woman sues Twitter for helping IS spread globally A Florida-based woman has filed a lawsuit against the micro-blogging site Twitter, accusing the firm of supporting the global spread of Islamic State (IS)

jected the lawsuit’s claims.

“While we believe the lawsuit is without merit, we are deeply saddened to hear of this family’s terrible loss,” a Twitter spokesper-

countable not only to governments looking to contain terrorist speech online, but also liable to families affected by that activity,” wired.com report

“The updated language emphasises that Twitter will not tolerate behaviour intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user’s voice. As always, we embrace and encourage diverse opinions and beliefs but we will continue to take action on accounts that cross the line into abuse,” she posted.

Beware! Your boss can now snoop on your private chats

Employees in Europe now need to be careful when they use their office computer because employers can check their workers’ online private chats.

Under a new ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), companies can snoop on employees’ private messages on email and messaging services within work hours, reports News.com.au.

The judges handed down their decision which will bind all countries that have ratified the European Convention on Human Rights, which includes Britain.

Against a background of rising privacy concerns throughout Europe and the US, this ruling can be used as a reference point in future cases involving employees and their rights in the digital world while at work.

The ruling from Europe’s top rights court comes in a case involving a Romanian engineer fired in 2007 after his company found out he was using Yahoo Messenger to chat with his brother and girlfriend during working hours, on his business computer.

Parents spend more time on Facebook than non-parents

by enabling its followers to recruit on its social media platform.

According to a report in wired.com, Tamara Fields, whose husband was killed in a lone wolf terrorist attack in Amman, Jordan, in November last year, has sued Twitter for damages.

“Without Twitter,” the explosive growth of IS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” she wrote in her lawsuit.

“Twitter has knowingly permitted IS to spread propaganda and recruit members, she added.

Twitter, however, has re-

son was quoted as saying in a statement.

“Like people around the world, we are horrified by the atrocities perpetrated by extremist groups and their ripple effects on the Internet. Violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear,” the spokesperson added.

Fields, however, is also urging the court to enter an order declaring that Twitter has violated the Anti-Terrorism Act. “If Fields wins, this could be a precedent-setting lawsuit, making Twitter ac-

said.

Last month, the Turkish government fined Twitter $50,000 for refusing to remove what it considers “terrorist propaganda.”

In a fresh bid to combat abusive behaviour, Twitter announced last month that it is revising its rules to tackle hateful conduct including spreading of terror messages online.

“We believe that protection from abuse and harassment is a vital part of empowering people to freely express themselves on Twitter,” Megan Cristina, director, trust and safety at Twitter, had posted in a blog.

Mobile devices have become vital tools for parents and they spend 1.3 times more time on Facebook than non-parents, a study

by Facebook IQ said.

“Having a child changes everything, including parents’ relationship with their mobile phones. Moms’ and dads’ mobile phones have become their lifeline to managing schedules, keeping tabs on teens and sharing their kids’ key milestones,” Facebook IQ said in a blog post on Monday.

“By observing behaviour on Facebook, we see that parents overindex on mobile usage. In fact, parents globally spend 1.3X more time on Facebook mobile than non-parents,” the blog added.

The social network’s research arm interviewed parents aged 25 through 65 in eight markets -- Australia, Brazil, Canada,

Germany, Mexico, Spain, Britain and the US and analysed Facebook and Instagram data with the help of Ipsos MediaCT and Sound Research. Millennial

to more information than their parents did. While, 70 percent of millennial parents said they are more informed than their parents were, 76 percent of baby

parents (aged 18 through 34) were 30 percent more likely than baby boomer parents (50 through 65) to use their mobile devices to make more informed purchase decisions, the study noted. According to the study, 83 percent of parents said they have access

boomers said they gained access to the Internet and mobile devices at later stages in life.

Interestingly, more than 50 percent of parents said their child or children have more impact on purchasing decisions than they did while growing up.

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19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

British sperm donor fathers 800 children; one child every week!

Jordan’s queen hits back at Charlie Hebdo over cartoon of drowned Syria boy Aylan Kurdi Jordan’s Queen Rania has hit back at a cartoon in French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo depicting drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi as a grown-up committing sexual harassment in Germany.

The cartoon shows a pervert chasing a woman, with the caption asking: “What would have become of small Aylan if he grew up?”

It refers to the multiple acts of sexual assault blamed on migrants on

New Year’s Eve. In response Queen Rania

picting the little boy lying face down on the beach

posted a cartoon on Facebook and Twitter by Jordan’s Osama Hajjaj de-

alongside an older child with a backpack and finally a doctor.

This chronological compilation of Snape’s journey will leave you teary-eyed A Briton, who has been a sperm donor for the past 16 years, claimed that he has fathered 800 children over the past one-and-a-half decade.

“I’d like to get the world record ever, make sure noone’s going to break it, get as many as possible,” NDTV quoted Simon Watson as saying.

“Usually one a week pops out. I reckon I’ve got about 800 so far, so within four

years I’d like to crack 1,000,” he said.

Incredible! This 41-yearold may just be the world’s most prolific sperm donor.

Watson now sells his sperm on the Facebook.

He charges 50 pounds for his “magic potion”.

Watson also gets his regular tests and posts the results on his Facebook page.

“I’ve got kids all the way

from Spain to Taiwan, so many countries,” he told BBC. Watson has three children of his own from two marriages, and he started donating sperm soon after his first marriage ended.

He said that he has no plans on stopping, as long as “everything still works”.

“I’ve got children all over the world now, and the parents are always so grateful,” he added.

Social media is flooded with mournful posts after British actor Alan Rickman unexpectedly died battling cancer on 14th January, 2016. Famous for his role as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter film series, the virtual world shared melancholic posts over the loss of the man who added meaning to the word ‘always’.

While there are some muggles who consider him a ‘villain’, potter-heads including Harry Potter can

vouch that Snape was perhaps the bravest wizard ever!

Many among the cast of

Harry Potter have paid tribute to Alan, even author J K Rowling offered her condolences to his family.

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19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Don’t believe Netaji died in plane crash, must Indian’s tax on samosas sparks row probe Russian angle, says Mamata Banerjee West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wants the truth behind the mysterious death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose to be revealed. Months after declassifying files related to the freedom fighter, Mamata has

once again raked up the issue, saying that the Russian angle must be probed into Netaji’s death.Mamata told India Today Television that the theory claiming Netaji died in an air crash appears to be dodgy.

“I don’t believe Netaji died in air crash. If he had died in the crash then why would his family be snooped even after independence? I think the Russia angle needs to be probed. Was there any discussion with the

Russian administration after we declassified the files. I think India must take it up with Russia,” Mamata said.“Today people are demanding answers and it has to be honoured. I am not a historian. But I am a common

Indian students walk barefoot on broken glass

About 70 Indian students walked barefoot over broken glass in an apparent bid to overcome exam phobia and stage fright, sparking a probe into the unusual character-building exercise.

Children as young as 12 took part in the ceremony on Wednesday intended to boost their mental health at a private coaching centre in the western state of Gujarat. Video footage, picked up

by TV channels, shows students slowly stepping along about a metre-long line of thick, broken glass.

There were no injuries reported from the incident. ‘We have ordered a probe into the incident where a private tutor is instructing students to walk on broken glass,’ state education minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama told reporters on Wednesday.

Rakesh Patel, who runs the coaching centre in the city of Vadodara, defended the exercise, saying ‘there is a science behind it’.

‘This will remove fear and disbelief from the students’ minds,’ he told reporters. ‘This workshop was held to get rid of the problems of kids related to stage fear, exam phobia among others,’ he said. Parents were also asked to take part in the ceremony. Hitesh Panchal, who did the walk along with his 12year-old son, said he was initially horrified at the idea.

‘But once you undergo the demonstration, your confidence level increases,’ Panchal told reporters. ‘After my son, two girls also got the courage to walk on the glass pieces.’

In 2010, a private school in Gujarat also came under fire for making students walk over burning coals and broken glass to boost their confidence. Firewalking has existed as a religious ritual in many cultures for thousands of years. It has gained some popularity in Western countries as a teambuilding exercise and alternative health remedy.

citizen. The mystery of Netaji’s last days must be solved,” she added.The West Bengal CM also questioned why Indian agencies didn’t conduct any DNA test on the ashes kept in Renkoji temple Tokyo, Japan. The ashes are said to be of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

“Was DNA test performed on the ashes present at Renkoji temple? Did Netaji actually visit Russia after his disappearance?

If he did, how long did he stay, what happened to him. We want the truth about Netaji to be found out. We will ensure the truth is unveiled. It is a national shame,” Mamata said.The demands for declassification of secret files have been growing lately, especially after the Mamata Banerjee government, last year, declassified 64 files which were in its possession.In October, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that he will request foreign governments to declassify files on Netaji available with them. “Will also request foreign governments to declassify files on Netaji available with them. Shall begin this with Russia in December,” he had tweeted.

One of India’s poorest states has said it will impose a ‘luxury tax’ on samosas - one of the country’s most popular snacks - sparking widespread outrage.

The Bihar government announced plans this week for the new levy to offset an anticipated plunge in the state’s revenues when a ban on alcohol sales comes into force in April.

Cosmetics, perfumes and some sweets were also among the ‘luxury’ items to be taxed at 13.5 percent, but the decision to include the much-loved pastry snack was met with bafflement on social media. ‘Weird tax alert!

Ready for samosa politics?’

Twitter user Shruti Malhotra wrote, while Azeem Shaikh posted: ‘Eh? Please leave the humble #samosa alone.’

Opposition politicians in the eastern state, which is also one of India’s most populous, warned the tax would hurt ordinary people.

‘This is a foolish, anti-people idea that will hurt the masses,’ Devesh Kumar, spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar, told AFP. ‘Besides exposing the state’s precarious financial situation, a luxury tax on popular snacks like samosas and kachoris also exposes a lack of ideas,’ he said.The row recalls the 2012 controversy over Britain’s plan to extend levies on takeaway food to Cornish pasties and other hot snacks. The government was forced to back down after a public outcry over what became known as the ‘pasty tax’.

Your tandoori tadka makes Delhi air toxic Is it the beginning of the end for coal-fired tandoors in Delhi’s hotels and dhabas used for making rotis, naans, kulchey and tikkas the traditional way?

Even as the Delhi government claims its odd-even car formula was a success and plans a “much improved” second phase, the smoke and ash-emitting tandoors have come under scanner for causing pollution.

Close on the heels of an IITKanpur report to the Supreme Court which termed the emissions from tandoors in nearly 9,000 hotels and eateries across the Capital as a major source of pollution and suggested to the Delhi government to ask them to convert to electric or gas-based appliances, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has also supported the idea.“There are approximately 9,000 hotels/restaurants in the city of Delhi, which use coal (mostly in tandoors). The Particulate Matter (PM) emission in the form of fly ash from this source is large and contributes to air pollution.

It is proposed that all restaurants of sitting capacity more than 10 should not use coal and shift to electric or gas-based appliances”, said the IIT study which had been commissioned by the Delhi government in 2012.

Coal and fly ash together contribute the highest to PM10 and PM2.5 during summers3,493kg/day out of the total 37,171 kg/day of PM 10, and 1,758kg/day out of 18,369 kg/ day of PM 2.5, says the IIT study.

Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director of the CSE says: “The idea is welcome and we support it. But it is possible

commercial activities, diesel generators and tandoors in restaurants are the most prevailing sources for air pollution

only by improving access to clean fuel like liberalising grant of LPG licences and providing various other subsidies. Owners of most of the eateries like dhabas are poor and it is a question of their livelihood if tandoors are banned. So they should get assistance to convert their medium of cooking to gas or electricity.”

Lawyer Gaurav Bansal, who specialises in environmental cases, said: “Ban on tandoors and conversion to electricity and gas stoves is a good idea. But the big question is whether it is practicable given that both cooking gas and electricity are short in supply. The only solution is popularising the use of renewable energy like solar energy. The Delhi government has already said it will grant subsidy for those willing to install the solar apparatus.”

The IIT-K report said under

in the city.

“The details of the hotels and restaurants were obtained from the DPCC (Delhi Pollution Control Committee) and related websites.

During the field survey, it was observed that hotels, restaurants, etc use coal as fuel in tandoors.

The average consumption of coal in tandoor based on survey was 30 kg/day. The total number of hotel and restaurant enterprise was 36,099 (Delhi Statistical Hand Book, 2014). We assume that 25% of these enterprises use tandoor for food preparation,” the report stated. According to the report, coal and fly ash are the largest contributors to PM 10 and PM 2.5 in the summers.

Of the 37,171 kg/day and 18,369 kg/day of PM 10 and PM 2.5, the report shows 3,493 kg/day and 1,758 kg/day of the same particulate matter is from hotel and restaurant emissions.

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19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Mumbai man heckled out of cinema hall for sitting during national anthem Mumbai man heckled out of cinema hall for sitting during national anthem A resident of Kandivali, a western suburb of Mumbai, had a taste of a script gone awry when he was heckled out of a suburban cinema hall for refusing to stand up for the national anthem played before the screening.

While the 26-year-old, Neeraj Pandey, and his friends were peacefully ushered out of the theatre in Goregaon by a manager, the incident sparked a little melee, with some people taking his side and getting into a verbal duel with those asking them to leave.

The police have recorded Pandey’s statement and are willing to lodge a complaint if he approaches them.In November, a few people were told to leave a cinema hall in Kurla, a central suburb, after they refused to stand up for the national anthem. Pandey, an aspiring poet and scriptwriter, had gone to a theatre in Goregaon with two friends for a Tuesday afternoon show of the film Wazir.

“A few seconds before the national anthem began, a couple of people behind me asked why I was still sitting,”

he said. “Soon, a few others joined in and started shouting; they said I was disrespecting the national anthem and asked me to leave.”

Before Pandey could respond,

another group sprang to his defence, saying there was no reason why he should leave the hall when he had paid for the tickets. “The two groups soon started fighting. It was bizarre,” Pandey said. He said the theatre management gave him tickets for the same movie for the following day. He watched the film on Wednesday, but took caution: “I waited outside

Video of woman beating mother-in-law goes viral

the hall during the national anthem to avoid any controversy. I walked in only afterward. This is what I will do in future.”

Pandey said he did not stand up since he “did not feel like it”. “I have the liberty to do so,” he contended. “There have been a few occasions earlier that I did not stand up for the anthem but didn’t face any problem.” He said forcing others to stand up for the national anthem is acting under a false sense of patriotism.

The man from Bihar, who moved to Mumbai about eight or nine months ago after living in Bengaluru and Delhi, said he does not want to be portrayed as either a victim or as a hero. “I don’t want to gain mileage.

I am just glad that people came to my support. I am told some lawyers are in the process of drafting a PIL to get rid of this rule of playing the national anthem before screening of each movie. I want to be part of this move,” he said.

Varun Grover, writer-lyricist of Masaan and Gangs of Wasseypur, among others, said Pandey is working on a couple of scripts and has had his poems published in a collection last year. DCP, Zone XII, M Ram Kumar said, “Pandey came to the police station, we recorded his statement and let him go.”

Pathankot attack: NIA to put Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh under lie detector test

As part of its investigations in the Pathankot terror attack, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) hopes to make Punjab Police SP Salwinder Singh undergo a polygraph, or liedetection, test next week to check whether he is speaking the truth.

Allegedly kidnapped by terrorists before the attack, Singh was questioned for the fifth consecutive day Friday at the NIA headquarters in the Capital.

“We will seek court orders for his polygraph test,” an NIA officer said.

Even as the agency probes how the attack was carried out, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar met Friday, along with top officers from their departments, and discussed “takeaways” from the Pathankot incident, officials said.

They discussed steps to strengthen prevention, detection and thwarting of such attacks in future. Upgrading intelligence and technology to foil terror

attacks was one of the key issues discussed, according to information.

It was decided that a security audit will be carried out for all vulnerable stations — of the armed forces, paramilitary forces, and the police.

According to a Home Ministry release, the ministers appreciated work done by both the intelligence agencies, in giving advance warning of the attack, and the security agencies, who effectively met the challenge and minimised possible damage.

The need to have a better media communication strategy was also discussed in the meeting. It was decided that in case of such attacks in future, the media is “best briefed by authorised persons on the spot”.

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi, Defence Secretary G Mohan Kumar and senior officers from both ministries took part in the meeting.

Majithia files defamation suit against AAP’s Sanjay Singh for ‘drug trader’ remark

A video secretly filmed by an Indian man - apparently showing his wife beating his elderly mother - has gone viral and led police to arrest the wife. Suspecting his wife of regularly abusing the 70year-old, Sandeep Jain installed a CCTV camera in his mother’s bedroom, telling police he intended to catch Sangeeta Jain red-handed.

The minute-long video shows Raj Rani Jain wrapped in a quilt in bed when a woman attacks her, hitting her repeatedly and dragging her by her hair. Sangeeta Jain was arrested after her husband complained to police Monday in Bijnor district in Uttar Pradesh state. Raj Rani Jain told reporters in hospital her daughter-in-law slapped her and hit her with stones. “She was

abusing me throughout the assault,” she said. Police have begun an investigation following the release of the video, which sparked anger on social media, with many demanding the accused woman be severely punished.

“We have recovered the video and questioned the woman. She will remain in custody,” Dharm Veer Singh, a senior police officer in Bijnor, told AFP. “There is a history of violence between the accused woman and her inlaws. We will find out the truth,” he said. Sangeeta denies the allegations, claiming the video is fabricated and accusing her husband of trying to frame her.

She has also filed a domestic violence case against her in-laws and the couple are seeking a divorce.

Punjab’s Revenue and Public Relations Minister Bikram Singh Majithia on Tuesday filed a defamation suit against Aam Aadmi Party national spokesperson Sanjay Singh in the Ludhiana court of judicial magistrate Bikramjit Singh.

Majithia claimed that he was defamed by Sanjay who called him a “drug trader”, and said “when AAP will come to power, it will put corrupt Majithia in jail.”

Speaking to The Indian Express, Majithia said that “not he but Sanjay Singh will now be in the jail.”

“Using my fundamental right, I will ensure that this AAP leader who has come from Uttar Pradesh is unable to go back to UP. He will go to jail now. On what basis he called me a drug trader? What their leader and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal is doing on national level, these people are doing it in Punjab. They throw mud on everyone and then walk away as if nothing. But now, it is my responsibility to ensure that this parachute guy, who has landed from UP, next lands in jail after legal process,” said Majithia to IE. Majithia said that his lawyer Bir

Singh Sobti will be producing the newspaper clippings of December 28 when these remarks were made by Sanjay Singh during Jor Mela political conference at Fatehgarh Sahib.

says drug trader, the only who is protecting drug business in Punjab. Not once but I will say it 1,000 times that he is the kingpin of the mafia operating in Punjab. Its none of his business

Asked only why he is being targeted on drugs issue, Majitha said, “It is bankruptcy of their thought process. In Jagdish Bhola drug case, my name has been cleared by the court. All investigations have proved I am not guilty. Who is Sanjay Singh to defame me then?”

Sanjay Singh, meanwhile, said that ‘Majithia should stop diluting issue with UP-Punjab divide.“Google Majithia and it

if I come from UP or wherever. It is a cheap tact to kill the issue.

He cannot suppress our voice with a defamation suit. We are not scared. He is the same guy who used abusive language in Vidhan Sabha and now he is alleging defamation,” Sanjay said.

A criminal suit has been filed under sections 499 and 500 of IPC and the case is scheduled for next hearing on January 15.

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Meanwhile, ‘love story’ that starts in Mumbai, ends in Pakistan jail For over three years, Fauzia Ansari had been desperately trying to trace her son who went missing in Pakistan while searching for a girl he fell in love with over the Internet. On Thursday, this Mumbai school teacher woke up to the news that her son was in the custody of the Pakistani army.

By evening, she had confirmed the news through her lawyer in Pakistan: the Lahore High Court had been informed that Nehal Hamid Ansari faced a courtmartial on unspecified charges.

As night fell, it was still not clear why the management graduate was being court-martialled, but a tearful Fauzia finally said, “At least, he is alive.”

As Indian officials confirmed in Delhi that they would “be seeking information and consular access from Pakistan in the next few days”, Fauzia sat at the dining table of their rented fourth-floor apartment in Versova, staring vacantly at the neatly labelled files and folders with documents and photos of her son.

Then, flipping through one of those folders, she said, “It’s been over three years... now there is

some closure. Even if he is in military custody, we know he has done nothing wrong and hope he gets a favourable sentence.”

Ansari, then 27, left home on November 5, 2012, claiming he was headed to Afghanistan in search of a job. But his family later came to know from officials and associates that he was in love with a woman from the Kohat region of western Pakistan, and had decided to cross over to prevent her marriage with another man.

According to police, Ansari was allegedly convinced by friends and contacts in Pakistan that he could enter the country easily from Afghanistan. Indian High Commission officials in Pakistan believed he had been arrested by local officials for entering the country illegally.

On Thursday, the Dawn website reported that Pakistan’s deputy attorney general Mussaratullah Khan had informed court that “the defence ministry had informed him that the missing man... was in the army’s custody and was being court-martialled”.

“The bench later disposed of the habeas corpus petition filed by

Rampaging elephants force Myanmar villagers to tree-top refuge

TAIK KYI Pushed from their forest home by encroaching farm land, wild elephants are driving fearful villagers in a Myanmar township to seek refuge in tree houses while the animals storm their rice paddies looking for food.

The elephants have trampled crops, destroyed homes and even, villagers say, killed people in their path - forcing families in Kyat Chuang to build new shelters made of wood and bamboo on higher ground. “We have had to move our huts into the trees, so we are safe,” explained San Lwin, who dashes several metres up a tree to his thatch-roofed shelter when the elephants are near.

Villagers in Kyat Chaung, a farming community 100 kilometres north of Yangon, told AFP they yearned for the days before the elephant rampages started three years ago. Now they scamper up home-made bamboo ladders to their elevated huts whenever they hear the thundering sound of elephant feet, which is

usually several times a week.

“We want them to be taken away ... so we can live peacefully,” said Than Shin, a 57-year-old farmer. Spurred by the loss of their forest habitats, the elephants, and villagers they have been terrorising, are some of the casualties of Myanmar’s alarming rate of deforestation, one of the fastest in the region.

The country lost almost 20 percent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2010, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Experts say the chief drivers of forest loss are logging and large-scale land concessions for commercial agriculture handed out under decades of opaque junta rule. Myanmar’s population of wild Asian elephants is thought to be one of the largest in the region, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

But the endangered species is increasingly threatened by habitat loss, a thirst for ivory, and traffickers who smuggle the animals into Thailand for the tourist industry.

the detainee’s mother, Fauzia Ansari, observing that the petition had become infructuous...” the report stated.

Fauzia and her husband Hamid,

was sent to a girl identified as ‘Saba’, stating that he was with Attubhai. When I went through his Facebook pages I learnt about his friendship with a few

a lawyer, said they are now trying to obtain more information on their son’s case Ansari’s brother is a doctor.

Asked about her son’s disappearance, Fauzia said, “We last spoke to him on November 10, 2012, when he told us that he would be returning soon as the visit to Afghanistan was not fruitful. However, after November 15, when his phone was not reachable, we lodged a complaint at the Versova police station. I then saw his emails and Facebook pages. The last email

Pakistani nationals. The police probe revealed that the email was sent from Pakistan. This confirmed that my son’s last location was in Pakistan. I tried calling his Facebook friends but they never spoke to us.”

Fauzia said she filed the writ of Habeas Corpus in April 2014 with help “from Abdul Rauf Rohilla, district governor of the Pakistan Rotary Club Midtown”.

“I also got in touch with a Pakistan-based journalist who travelled to the area from where my son had gone missing. She

spoke to the people who he had befriended over Facebook. She also met the father of the woman for whom my son travelled to Pakistan. The father told her that his daughter was married to another person but refused to share her contact details,” she said.

Fauzia added that she also suspected “a conspiracy” surrounding her son’s case, claiming that the journalist’s family had informed her that she had been missing since last August.

The Ansaris said they now hope the government would pursue the case with Pakistan. “I would be able to see my son in flesh and blood,” said Hamid.

Breaking down, Fauzia added, “At least give us a visa to travel to Pakistan to see our son. We have applied for a visa more than 20 times but we don’t even know if they even processed our requests.” Hamid and Fauzia said their son’s case has taken a severe toll on their lives and not just in the Rs 20 lakh they’ve spent so far on “fees to Pakistani lawyers and the numerous rounds made to Delhi”.

Nepal’s deposed king has not paid electricity dues for 10 years Kathmandu Nepal’s last monarch Gyanendra Shah has not paid his electricity dues for the last 10 years, the state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority said on Wednesday. Gyanendra, after vacating the Narayan Hiti Royal Palace here in 2008, has been living in Nagarjuna Palace, a royal property on the northern outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley.

He has not been paying the electricity dues for the Nagarjuna Palace which he has been occupying since he left the Narayan Hiti royal palace, a Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) official said.

NEA assistant director Mukunda Man Chitrakar, who looks after auditing at the NEA, told media persons here that the staff at Nagarjuna Palace have repeatedly refused to acknowledge any letter sent

by NEA raising the isue of unpaid power dues. The NEA, he said, has run up a loss of Rs.7 million in the last 10 years.

After the staff refused to receive NEA’s letters, the electricity authority knocked the doors of Nirmal Niwas, another palace in Kathmandu in which Gyanendra used to live as former royal highness until the infamous royal massacre in Nepal in 2001.

Sagar Raj Timilsina, Gyanendra’s personal secretary, reportedly told the

NEA officials that the liability comes under the Prime Minister’s Office not the Nagarjuna Palace. Until 2008, the PMO used to pay all the bills and tariffs incurred to the palaces belonging to the royals.

According to the Electricity Act, if a consumer fails to pay electricity bills for two months, his/her power connection will be cut and if any consumer continuously fails to pay bills for another six month, a ban will be placed on sale of his/her private properties like land and house for the next three generations.

Asked why had the NEA failed to cut the connection to the Nagarjuna Palace or impose a ban on selling of property as per the electricity act, Chitrakar said that since Gyanendra was a respected national and former head of the state, they did not initiate action against him.

“Instead of taking action against him, we decided to collect the tariff, if possible,” he added. The staff at Nagarjuna Palace told the

NEA officials that all properties of the formal royals had been nationalised since 2008 after Gyanendra vacated the Narayan Hiti palace.

“So, it is the duty of the government to pay the bills,” the Nagarjuna Palace staff were reported to have told NEA officials. Nepal has started to nationalise the properties of former royals after the Himalayan nation declared itself a republican state in 2008.

A dedicated Office of the Nepal Trust is handling the properties of the former royals, including Gyanendra, and bringing them under its ambit. The Office of the Trust responded to a letter sent by the NEA that Nagarjuna Palace is being used by Gyanendra for his private purpose and is not owned by the government.

This has paved the way for NEA to knock the door of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). “We are writing to PMO soon in this respect,” Chitrakar said.

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Chilean architect wins Pritzker Prize NEW YORK Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena won the prestigious 2016 Pritzker Prize Wednesday, earning praise for ‘powerful’ designs that address key social and economic challenges of the 21st century. ‘Innovative and inspiring, he shows how

architecture at its best can improve people’s lives,’ said Tom Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, which awards the prize. The 48-year-old Aravena, who is based in Santiago, will receive the $100,000 award and bronze medallion at a ceremony

at UN headquarters in New York on April 4. He is the 41st Pritzker laureate, and only the fourth from Latin America. The Pritzker jury highlighted Aravena’s work at ELEMENTAL, a Santiago architectural group that focuses on projects of public interest and social impact. The group calls itself a ‘do tank,’ as opposed to a ‘think tank.’ It has produced more than 2,500 units of affordable housing, including an innovative ‘half a good house’.After Chile’s 2010 earthquake, ELEMENTAL was enlisted to help rebuild the hard-hit city of Constitucion; the firm drew up a master plan and designed a cultural center and an ‘incremental’ housing project known as Villa Verde.

Aravena also was cited for his buildings at the Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago,

where he studied and now teaches after a five-year stint at Harvard; they include its schools of architecture, medicine, mathematics and most recently the UC Innovation Center Anacleto Angelini. His design for an office building for health care company Novartis is under construction in Shanghai, China.

Its office spaces are designed to accommodate different forms of work - individual, collective, formal and informal.

‘His built work gives economic opportunity to the less privileged, mitigates the effects of natural disasters, reduces energy consumption and provides welcoming public space,’ Pritzker said. Lord Peter Palumbo, the chair of the jury, said jurors were ‘captivated, stunned and overwhelmed’ by what they saw when they visited Aravena’s work.

‘He understands materials and construction, but also the

women aged 30-34 rose 28 percent (from 16.5 percent to 21.1 percent),’ said the report.

Meanwhile, first births to women 35 and over rose 23 percent in those 15 years. Still, it is relatively rare for women to have their first child when they are older than 35, making up just nine percent of all first births in the country. When the numbers were crunched according to ethnicity, Asian or Pacific Islander mothers ‘had the oldest average age at first birth in 2000 (27.8 years) and 2014 (29.5 years).’ The youngest mothers tended to be American Indian or Alaskan native, at 21.6 years in 2000 and 23.1 years in 2014.

Washington When US President Barack Obama feels tired or discouraged, reaching into his pocket can help him get over it. For inspiration he carries some of the keepsakes people have given him since he started running for office. He says that helps him cope on a bad day “because somebody gave me this privilege to work on these issues that are going to affect them.”

The president made the revelation on Friday during separate interviews with three YouTube personalities. One of his interviewers had asked ahead of time for Obama to bring a meaningful item and talk about it.

He was prepared. When asked, Obama pulled quite an assortment from his right pants pocket: rosary beads from Pope Francis, a tiny Buddha, a metal poker chip he said came from a bald biker with a handlebar mustache he met in Iowa in 2007, a Coptic cross from Ethiopia and a Hindu statuette of the monkey god Hanuman.Obama has too many of the mementoes to carry all of them around “but I’ll pick out a few things...to remind me of all the people I’ve met along the way and the stories they told me,” he told Ingrid Nilsen of Los Angeles.

She’s known as

Average age of first-time moms rises to 26 in US

MIAMI The average age of first-time mothers is rising in the United States, and reached 26.3 years of age in 2014, according to US government data out Thursday.

In 2000, women on average became mothers at the age of 24.9, said the National Center for Health Statistics. The report updates a previous version which tracked ages of mothers back to 1970, when the average age of a US woman’s first birth was 22. Researchers say changes in the age of motherhood are important because having children later in life can affect overall family size and population growth.

Women’s ages at childbirth are also ‘associated with a range of birth outcomes, such as multiple births and birth defects,’ it said.

The main reason for the rise in average age at first birth is a sharp decline in teen pregnancies. First births to mothers under 20 dropped 42 percent from 2000 to 2014.

Today, about one in seven of these first births is to teenagers. In 2000, the figure was one in four. First births to mothers in their 30s are also rising, as women increasingly pursue careers before having children. ‘From 2000 to 2014, the proportion of first births to

importance of poetry and the power of architecture to communicate on many levels,’ the jury citation read.

Most of Aravena’s work has been in Chile, but he has also designed projects in Mexico, Germany, Switzerland and the United States. Aravena, who is director of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, said he was ‘deeply thankful’ for the prize - ‘just overwhelmed, ecstatic, happy.’ ‘Architecture is a collective discipline. So we think, with gratitude, of all the

people who contributed to give form to a huge diversity of forces at play,’ he said in an emailed response to his selection as the Pritzker laureate.He said he would use the prize ‘to explore new territories, face new challenges and walk into new fields of action.’ ‘After such a peak, the path is unwritten. So our plan is not to have a plan, face the uncertain, be open to the unexpected,’ he said. In Chile, colleagues cheered Aravena and the award, the country’s first.

Barack Obama carries around a Hanuman statue in his pocket “Missglamorazzi” on the video sharing website. The interviews were part of a continuing White House strategy to reach different audiences and keep alive discussion of themes from

said. “I would want it to be a catalyst, but one that didn’t get too hot or too cold, and hopefully, it would be one that was useful to humanity, that we could actually use and wasn’t just

Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Obama was also questioned by Adande Thorne, a video game enthusiast from Orlando, Florida, known online as “sWooZie,” and Destin Sandlin, an Alabaman who is into science and makes educational videos.

Sandlin, who said he holds a civilian job at the Department of Defense, asked Obama to describe the characteristics of “Obamium,” a hypothetical element named after him.”I would want it to be stable,” Obama

some shiny object. “Obama said his favorite movie last year was “The Martian,” starring Matt Damon. He has not seen “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

Asked by “sWooZie” who would emerge victorious if musicians Drake and Kendrick Lamar faced off in a rap battle, Obama chose Lamar. He said Drake is an “outstanding entertainer,” but that Lamar had the best album last year, titled “To Pimp a Butterfly.”

Last year Obama praised Lamar’s song, “How Much a Dollar Cost.”

American sues Twitter for giving voice to IS New York Twitter is being sued by the widow of an American killed in Jordan who accuses the social media company of giving a voice to Islamic State (IS) terror outfit, adding to the pressure to crack down on online propaganda linked to terrorism. Tamara Fields, a Florida woman whose husband Lloyd died in the November 9 attack on the police training centre in Amman, said Twitter knowingly let the terror group use its network to spread propaganda, raise

money and attract recruits.Lawyers specialising in terrorism said Fields faces an uphill battle, though the case could lead to more calls for social media companies to take down posts associated with terrorist groups. “Without Twitter, the explosive growth of IS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” according to the complaint, which was filed in the federal court in Oakland, California. Fields wants Twitter to

pay her triple damages for violating the federal AntiTerrorism

Act by having provided material support to terrorists.

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Three winners hit $1.6b US lottery jackpot LOS ANGELES Three winning tickets shared a $1.6 billion bonanza in the US Powerball lottery on Wednesday, after millions of people tuned in to see the fate of the world-record jackpot live on TV. The winning numbers were 4, 8, 19, 27 and 34, with a 10 as the so-called Powerball number. Lottery fever gripped the United States, with people forming long lines outside stores to buy tickets and then frantically checking their $2 slips to see if they had hit the mammoth jackpot.

‘It’s official! There were 3 jackpot-winning tickets in tonight’s Powerball draw: California, Florida & Tennessee,’ California Lottery tweeted. Local television showed swarms of people, many cheering and chanting, descending on the Los Angeles convenience store where the California ticket was sold.The jackpot, which had stood at $1.5 billion for much of the day, eventually crept up to nearly $1.59 billion, a record

in the US lottery industry. The three winners will rake in an eyewatering $528.8 million each, NBC News said, although the taxman will soon come calling.

The odds of winning were at least one in 292 million.

customers love me, and I love them,’ he told CNN, grinning broadly. Despite the miniscule chances of hitting the jackpot, shops all over the United States did a roaring trade in frenzied last-minute ticket sales in the

There was a windfall too for Balbir Atwal, owner of a 7-Eleven franchise in Chino Hills, a Los Angeles suburb, who will pocket a $1 million bonus for selling a winning ticket. ‘I didn’t expect this big crowd but my Chino Hills

final hours before the live raw.

Office workers dashed out between meetings to buy tickets, fantasizing about what they would do with the winnings, and commuters in New York joked about scooping the jackpot

US court fight over $100m Picasso sculpture NEW YORK A prominent American art dealer has gone to court in a fight with a British collector - reportedly representing the Qatari royal family - over a Picasso sculpture valued at more than $100 million.

The work, ‘Bust of a Woman (Marie-Therese),’ dated 1931, is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as part of the largest exhibit of sculpture by the Spanish master in 50 years.

Larry Gagosian, who has worked with members of the Picasso family for years, is asking the federal court in Manhattan to reject the opposing side’s claim to the sculpture. He contends that he purchased it in May 2015 from the daughter of the artist, Maya Widmaier-Picasso, for $105.8 million, according to a legal action he filed in federal court, viewed Wednesday by AFP. The subject of the bust, Marie-Therese Walter, was Picasso’s mistress and model for several years and the mother of Widmaier-Picasso. Gagosian said he had so far paid $79.7 million for the work, or 75 percent of the purchase value. He also said he had concluded a sales agreement with a New York

buyer, who expects to take possession of the sculpture once the exhibit ends on February 7.

Gagosian further states that he received a letter in October from a British trading firm, Pelham

Europe, asserting its ownership of the sculpture and threatening to have it seized in New York.

That firm, founded and headed by a former expert from Christie’s auction house, Guy Bennett,

contends that it reached an agreement in November 2014 to purchase the work from Widmaier-Picasso for 38 million euros ($41.3 million at current rates). It says the broker Connery, Pissaro, Seydoux served as intermediary.

But the artist’s daughter renounced the sale after a first payment of only six million euros, according to Gagosian’s legal filing. A clause in the contract stipulated that the sale would only be considered as final once the entire price had been paid, court papers said. The British company was working for the royal family of Qatar, Gagosian told The New York Times.As The Times noted, the case is complicated by the nature of Picasso’s family - his many wives, muses, children and grandchildren have for years wrangled over his valuable creations. MoMA did not respond to AFP’s request for comment, and Pelham Europe could not immediately be reached.

US spy chief’s personal accounts hacked WASHINGTON US spy chief James Clapper’s personal online accounts have been hacked, his office confirmed Tuesday, a few

months after CIA director John Brennan suffered a similar attack. Clapper’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed the hack but refused to provide details. ‘We are aware of the matter and we reported it

to the appropriate authorities,’ spokesman Brian Hale told AFP. A teen hacker who goes by ‘Cracka’ claimed to have hacked Clapper’s home telephone and Internet accounts, his personal email, and his wife’s Yahoo email, online magazine Motherboard reported. Cracka told Motherboard that he had changed the settings on Clapper’s Verizon account so that calls to his home were rerouted to the California-based Free Palestine Movement.

Cracka is part of the ‘Crackas with Attitude’ group, which broke into Brennan’s personal email account last year. Hackers from the group have said they are teenage high school students.

to save them from the deep freeze of winter. For days, the talk of the nation, from coast to coast, and even from Canada to Mexico, was: will someone finally win the first Powerball in two months and, if you were to win, how would you spend such a whopping jackpot?

‘I’m not a regular, but why not?

Like the commercial says, ‘Hey, you never know,’’ said Nick Friedberg, a carpenter and father of two drinking coffee on a bitterly cold street in Manhattan.

‘Non-stop, everyone’s talking about it,’ he said, running through a list of things he would like to buy. ‘Do the world, that’s for sure.

‘I’d love to go to Europe, never been. There are a lot of stuff over there I’d like to see, Italy and all that history. I like all that stuff,’ he told AFP. Lottery executives say ticket sales reached record levels, generating more than $1 million an hour in Texas alone in the final build-up to the draw.

Wednesday’s jackpot started at $40 million on November 7 and was the result of 20 draws with no overall winner.

‘Sales are doing exponentially

more than we’ve ever done before,’ Gary Grief, chair of the Powerball game group, told AFP on Tuesday. ‘I’m hearing anecdotally and through news outlets, millions of people who have never played Powerball before are indeed purchasing a ticket.’

It was a bonanza of sorts for retailers too, particularly those in US states bordering the handful that do not participate in the game. The lottery had anticipated that 85 percent of all possible combinations would be wagered on so there was an 85 percent likelihood of a jackpot winner on Wednesday night. The previous US jackpot record of $656 million, on March 30, 2012, was scooped up by three winners from North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Texas. The world’s richest lottery is Spain’s annual Christmas ‘El Gordo,’ which in 2015 handed out 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) but which capped individual wins at 400,000 euros and handed out thousands of smaller prizes.

Indian grandfather assault case US police officer acquitted

New York A US court has acquitted an Alabama police officer who was arrested for brutally assaulting an Indian elderly man in February last year, media reported on Thursday.

In an apparent jolt to the paralysed Sureshbahi Patel’s bid to seek justice, the court acquitted Eric Parker on the grounds of being ‘presumed innocent’ after two mistrials could not establish his guilt beyond doubt, Al.com reported.

Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala threw out the case against Parker, who faced up to 10 years in prison for using excessive force against Patel.

A team of three federal prosecutors had twice tried Parker last year for the takedown of 57-year-old Sureshbahi Patel.

Both trials ended with a deadlocked jury.

“Mr Patel had-and has-just as much right to be free from excessive force as every citizen of this country. He is welcome here, and it is appropriate to grieve his injury,” Haikala was quoted as saying.

“However, that injury, standing alone, does not provide the basis for a criminal judgment against

Mr. Parker,” the judge added.

Parker still faces a state charge of misdemeanor assault in Limestone County.

On the morning of February 6 last year, a neighbour in Huntsville called police to complain of a ‘skinny black guy’ who is “just kind of walking around close to the garage.”

Police found Patel walking along the sidewalk but Patel, owing to lack of knowledge of English, could not answer questions and the confused encounter ended with Patel in an ambulance.

Patel who arrived from India to help care for his grandson later testified that he does not speak English and did not resist. “I did not try to run away but I did go back a couple of steps to show them my house,” testified Patel through an interpreter at the second trial.

“They put their hands on me and I was just standing and did not move,” he added.

The case drew international interest, drawing Indian diplomats to Madison and prompting Governor Robert Bentley to issue a letter apologising to Patel and to India.

Patel now lives with his son while undergoing medical care.

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Sikh bus driver in Los Angeles assaulted, called a terrorist

A Sikh bus driver in Los Angeles was brutally assaulted and called a terrorist and a suicide bomber, the victim’s representatives said today over two months after the incident was reported to the police.The Sikh Coalition group, is representing the victim Balwinder Jit Singh, who worked as a bus driver for 17 years.While he was being beaten by a passenger on November 6, Singh kept his foot on the brake of his bus to ensure the safety of the pedestrians and passengers.The assault left Singh in the hospital with a black eye, swollen and bruised face and jaw, and infection in his eye.“Two months later, he continues to suffer from blurred vision and pain,” the Sikh Coalition said.Singh, who is on the board of a recentlyvandalised Gurdwara in Buena Park, has retained the Sikh Coalition to represent him in this ongoing criminal investigation.

Although he immediately

reported the incident to the police, he delayed going public because he didn’t know how to do so until he contacted the Sikh Coalition.“I know that sharing my story sheds further light on the bigotry and hatred faced by communities across the nation.These crimes cannot be tolerated,” he said in a statement issued through Sikh Coalition.

According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff s Office, the individual responsible is currently in custody with the Los Angeles Police Department in a different criminal case.Police say the suspect potentially faces only misdemeanour assault charges for attacking Singh.“These charges fail to capture the violent nature of the attack, and the antiSikh bias that precipitated it,” the statement said adding that the Sikh Coalition’s legal team is working with the local sheriff’s department and the FBI to push for a hate crime investigation and prosecution.

Rishi Kapoor Openly Challenges Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh!

Rishi Kapoor is known for displaying his daring views on the micro blogging site Twitter.

Yet again, the veteran actor Rishi Kapoor has done something of a similar kind.

After voicing his opinions on various burning issues, Rishi Kapoor has now dared Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. As we all know, twitter was abuzz with the controversial issue of Kiku Sharda getting arrested for mimicking Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.Almost all Bollywood celebrities voiced their support for Kiku Sharda and Rishi Kapoor too did the same. However, when all other Bollywood celebs were putting forward hassle free statements

for supporting Kiku Sharda, Rishi Kapoor went a step ahead and stated, “See this picture! I would like to play this rockstar in a film. Let me see who puts me behind bars? Go Kiku Sharda!” Veteran superstar Rishi Kapoor posted a picture of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and captioned it with the stated.

Rishi Kapoor in his tweet has challenged the authorities to arrest him. The dare devil actor Rishi Kapoor has given an open challenge to Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and has concluded his tweet by supporting Kiku Sharda.

Standup comedian Kiku Sharda was arrested on the grounds of hurting religious sentiments.

Spacewalk suspended after leak in US astronaut’s helmet Nasa cut short a spacewalk on Friday at the International Space Station after one of the astronauts reported a leak in his spacesuit helmet, the US space agency said.

Tim Peake, who on the mission became the first astronaut from Britain to walk in space, and US astronaut Tim Kopra had finished the primary goal of their outing when Kopra reported a water ball had formed in his helmet.

The astronauts were not in any danger, but Nasa curtailed the spacewalk as a precaution, flight director Royce Renfrew said during an interview on Nasa TV. Peake, 43, a former army major, blasted off to the station as part of a six-month mission for the European Space Agency in December, becoming the first Briton in space since Helen Sharman travelled on a Soviet spacecraft for eight days in 1991, and the first to do so under a British flag.His mission has attracted widespread attention in Britain, with news channels beaming live coverage of the spacewalk. “We’re all watching, no pressure! Wishing you a happy stroll outdoors in the universe,” British musician Paul McCartney said on Twitter.

About three hours into Friday’s spacewalk, Kopra, 52, reported that his helmet pad was damp and a ball of water had collected in his helmet, prompting Nasa to end the mission.

The leak increased as Kopra and

Peake returned to the airlock.

“It was quite noticeable,” Kopra later told ground controllers.

Nasa tightened its flight rules after a spacesuit worn by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano leaked during a spacewalk in July 2013, nearly causing him to drown.Nasa eventually tracked

indicated a leak from somewhere in the spacesuit’s backpack, which contains a cooling system.

In an interview on Nasa TV, Cassidy called it “a significant concern.”

Kopra and Peake had replaced a failed voltage regulator in the

down the source of the problem and outfitted the helmets with absorption pads and breathing snorkels as additional safety measures.Chief astronaut Chris Cassidy, who was Parmitano’s partner during the aborted 2013 spacewalk, said the cold temperature of the water

station’s power system shortly after leaving the station’s airlock at around 8 am EST/1300 GMT. They were scheduled to spend more than six hours outside the station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, on other maintenance chores.

Miami zoo mourns oldest known tree kangaroo Miami is mourning the death of its beloved tree kangaroo Patty, 27, which had to be euthanized Wednesday after developing various ailments related to old age. ‘At over 27 years old, Patty was the longest living Matchie’s

tree kangaroo in recorded history - a record that was celebrated this past October,’ officials at the Zoo Miami said in a statement.

Patty was a top draw at the zoo, one of this city’s most popular attractions.

U. S. human rights official urges Indian leaders to promote tolerance A top U.S. human rights official expressed concern on Thursday about recent incidents of violence in India against religious minorities, urging national leaders to be vigilant in protecting the right of Indians to freedom of worship.

“We have concerns about some of the recent incidents here in India,” said Sarah Sewall, U.S. under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, citing the mob killing of a Muslim man rumoured to have eaten beef and a string of attacks on churches last year.

“Much of the challenge is for political leaders, as well as religious leaders, to be setting a strong and firm example about the need to uphold constitutional protections,” Sewall told Reuters during an official tour of a mosque, church and Hindu temple in Delhi.

Sewall’s visit this week to New Delhi and Dharamsala, where she is due to meet Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, is part of a warming in U.S.-India ties since tension between the allies spiked over

the arrest of an Indian diplomat in the United States in 2013.

Ties have improved since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power in May 2014, though some sticking points remain over U.S. visas issued to Indian citizens who have been trafficked in the United States, besides India’s criminalisation of homosexuality.

U.S. officials have said Indian citizens who have been issued U.S. “T visas” have been subject to restrictions, including long delays in renewing passports at Indian consulates in the United

States. The United States still has some outstanding concerns about how those visas are being handled, Sewall said, but added that she was “encouraged by the direction the practice was evolving.”

“I will say from the U.S. side, we feel like the relationship is very much on track,” Sewall told Reuters.

She is scheduled to meet Indian officials to discuss areas of mutual concern, including violent extremism, migration, and the protection of citizens from trafficking and slavery.

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White House assures Sikhs of their safety and security WASHINGTON The White House has assured American-Sikhs of their safety and security in view of the increasing threats and hate crimes against the community members in the recent past. In a rare gesture, Melissa Rogers,

special assistant to President Barack Obama and head of the office of faith based and neighbourhood partnerships office of the White House, visited a Gurdwara in Maryland to deliver the message of reassurance

from the President. Asserting that the US government’s stand with Sikhs in America, Rogers also expressed empathy with the Sikh community over the recent incidents of violence against Sikhs and a reported case of vandalism at Los

Angeles Gurdwara, a media release said. “I want to offer our deepest condolences for some recent violence and attacks against Sikhs and Sikh institutions. These reports are of tremendous concern to us as we

Man charged for vandalising Gurdwara in US

they are to you. We feel a deep sense of loss for victims of these crimes,” Rogers said in her address to the community at the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation (GGSF) Gurdwara. “When these kinds of things happen there is kind of deep sense of violation and anxiety. We want you to know that we stand by with you during these challenging times,” she said.

Rogers said such incidents not only cause a great grief among the people who are being attacked and the communities mostly associated with it, but they also threaten all as America draws its strength from the diversity of its people. “We want you to know that we stand by you and we will continue to work until we stamp these incidents out. Like you we believe that attack on any faith is an attack is an attack on every faith,” Rogers said. “It is essential that all faith communities here and all over the world stand against hate motivated violence. We will continue to stand with you and we will continue to work to ensure that security and your civil constitutional rights are protected,” she added.

“Sikh community has shown tremendous resilience in face of challenges and I am confident that you will triumph and we will be there with you to triumph over the current challenges that we face together,” Rogers said in her remarks. She was presented with a ‘siropa’ and a book on the Sikh scriptures.

6 Indians killed in a road accident in US

In a tragic accident, six Indians, including four of a family, were killed in the US state of Oklahoma when their speeding mini van collided headon with a tractor-trailer on a highway under wet road conditions, police said.

The accident that occurred on Highway 69 in Mayes County near Chouteau in rural Oklahoma last week killed 32-year-old Bhaskar Jha, his wife Annu Jha, 31, and their two children aged 1 and 3. Bhaskar, who hails from Madhubani district in Bihar, was driving the ill-fated vehicle and apparently lost control because he was travelling too fast for the wet road conditions, The Kansas City Star reported. The report also identified the fifth deceased as Agni Pal Singh, 34. The sixth was a woman, who was not identified by police.

Investigators said it was raining at the time of the crash and the mini van was driving too fast for those conditions. They added that the area of the highway between the towns of Mazie and Chouteau is especially

dangerous during bad weather.Bhaskar’s relatives in New Delhi said that he was working as a senior associate with Cognizant Technology Solution for over one year and that the news was broken to them by company officials.

“We are still waiting for the dead bodies and it has already been five days since the accident took place,” said Bhaskar’s younger brother Prem Shankar Jha. They said Singh was Bhaskar’s colleague and the sixth deceased person was the former’s wife.

Their eight-month-old child is the lone survivor of the horrific mishap and is undergoing treatment for serious injuries. Prem said he has approached the Ministry of External Affairs and requested its intervention to speed up the process of repatriation of the dead bodies. The Ministry has requested the Indian Consulate in New York to provide all possible assistance, he added.

governments infects the United Nations as well.”

Court papers accuse Ashe of taking USD 200,000 from Piao and another defendant in exchange for attending and

watches and USD 40,000 to lease a new BMW X5. He also bought a membership at a South Carolina country club for USD 69,000, and built a USD 30,000 basketball court at his

speaking in his official capacity at a private conference in China hosted by a real estate developer. In addition, Ashe also agreed to promote a USD 20 million deal for an unnamed company to install a “national internet security system” for Antigua, the court papers say.The government’s papers also accuse Ashe, 61, of using the bribes to support a lavish lifestyle, spending USD 59,000 on hand-tailored suits in Hong Kong, USD 54,000 for two Rolex

home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, according to the papers.Ng has been accused of bribing Ashe to support a multibillion-dollar UN-sponsored conference center that Ng hoped to build as his legacy in Macau, where he lived. Also charged was Francis Lorenzo, a deputy UN ambassador from the Dominican Republic, who prosecutors say was paid tens of thousands of dollars a month

by Ng’s organizations to support the Macau project.

Woman pleads guilty in United Nations bribery scheme LOS ANGELES A 21-year-old man has been charged for vandalising a Gurdwara with hateful anti-ISIS graffiti in a suburb in Los Angeles in December and faces maximum sentence of three years if found guilty. Brodie Durazo has been charged with one felony count of vandalism of a religious property and two misdemeanor counts each of vandalism under US $400, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office, Los

Angeles Times reported on Wednesday. Gurdwara Singh Sabha’s board members and community members said in the early hours of December 6, the Gurdwara in Buena Park was vandalised with hateful anti-ISIS graffiti along with a community member’s truck in the parking lot, according to the Sikh Coalition.

The vandalism prompted an increase in police patrols near the religious center and sparked fear among members of the Sikh community.

Obama to present national medal of science to Indian-American WASHINGTON US President Barack Obama would present the prestigious National Medal of Science to an Indian-American scientist on January 22 for his outstanding contribution to science. Dr Rakesh K Jain is among 17 scientists, engineers, mathematicians and innovators who will be awarded by Obama at a White House ceremony.

Awarded annually, the Medal of Science recognises individuals

who have made outstanding contributions to science, engineering, and mathematics.

Jain, an IIT-Kanpur alumnus, is professor of tumor biology at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Harvard Medical School.

He has received numerous awards for his work on tumor biology, particularly research on the link between tumor blood vessels and improving the effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

WASHINGTON A Chinese businesswoman has pleaded guilty in a bribery case accusing a former president of the United Nations General Assembly of accepting more than USD 1 million from sources in China to use his position to promote various business interests.Heidi Piao yesterday told a judge in federal court in Manhattan that she and others arranged secret payments “with the intent of influencing John Ashe in his official capacity.”

The plea was part of a cooperation agreement that could require Piao to testify against Ashe, a former ambassador to the United Nations from Antigua and Barbuda, and earn her leniency on bribery, money laundering and other charges that carry a combined maximum penalty of 60 years in prison.Paio, a 52-year-old naturalized US citizen was charged last year along with Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng, Ashe and others in a case US Attorney Preet Bharara said could show that “the cancer of corruption that plagues too many local and state

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Bobby Jindal demits office as Louisiana governor

NEW YORK Indian-American Bobby Jindal has demitted office as Louisiana governor at the end of his second four-year term, the media reported on Tuesday.

He has been replaced by Bel Edwards, the only Democratic governor in the deep south. The 44-year-old, in an interview over the weekend, did not rule out another bid for the elected post, and added that as of now, he has decided to work with America Next, a thinktank. In 2008, Jindal was sworn in as the governor of Louisiana, becoming the first Indian-American to hold the top position. He was elected as governor for two terms.Last year,

Jindal announced his bid for the 2016 US presidential elections, but abruptly dropped out of the race a few months later saying: “This is not my time.” Once seen as a rising star in the Republican Party, Jindal’s campaign failed to gain much traction as he kept polling less than one percent in

various national surveys. A Brown University graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Jindal rose to prominence at the start of President Barack Obama’s first term when he was asked to deliver the Republican Party’s rebuttal to the State of the Union address in 2009.

Dying American fulfils dream of Asian fame An eight-year-old American boy with terminal cancer has prompted thousands of Chinese Internet users to post photos online in support after he told his father he wanted to be famous in the Asian country before dying.

Dorian Murray was diagnosed with the pediatric soft tissue

Indian diaspora is world’s largest at 16m

cancer rhabdomyo-sarcoma at the age of four. Earlier this month, his family decided to stop treatment after discovering the disease had spread to his spinal cord and brain. ‘All the meds, everything we have to go through, it’s just a lot, it’s a lot to take,’ the boy matter-of-factly told local TV station WPRI. The Rhode Island boy told his father Chris that before he ‘goes to heaven’ he ‘would like to be famous in China...

Diana Hayden’s First Baby Has Come From An Egg Frozen Eight Years Ago

LOS ANGELES Along with a beautiful baby girl, former Miss World Diana Hayden has delivered possibly the perfect solution to Indian women battling the biological clock. The child was born of an egg that Hayden had frozen eight years ago, according to a Times of India report.Hayden, who is now 42, read about egg freezing a decade ago in 2005, and decided to give it a shot. She froze 16 eggs – a process that took her five months – with an infertility specialist. In doing so, she joined the line of Indian women that is slowly increasing to opt for this procedure for lifestyle reasons, not medical.“A career woman need not think about her biological clock, and get pressurised into getting married earlier than she wants or have a

baby when she isn’t ready,” said Hayden in an interview with ToI, while still ensconced in her hospital suite at Surya Mother and Child Hospital in Santa Cruz, Mumbai. “I froze my eggs for two reasons: I was busy with my career at that time and, more important, I was very clear that I was going to wait to fall in love and marry before having a baby.”This back-up plan worked beautifully for Hayden, who was diagnosed with endometriosis (a medical condition that deterred her from having children) after she was married two years ago to beau Collin Dick. The couple decided to test Hayden’s eggs, and were able to produce baby girl Arya who has been pronounced in perfect health by doctors: “Hayden’s daughter weighed 3.7kg, and was 55cm long.

Winning $1.6 billion Powerball tickets sold in three US states

UNITED NATIONS Humanity is on the move, but we are traipsing across the globe a bit less than you might think.

According to the latest United Nations estimates, 244 million people, or 3.3% of the world’s population, live in a country other than the one where they were born. Their ranks are growing at a faster pace than the world population as a whole, with enormous economic, social and demographic repercussions for their native and adopted countries. However, they are concentrated in just 20 countries. By far, the most popular destination in 2015 was the United States, followed by Germany, Russia and Saudi

Arabia. But the ranking should not be viewed as a popularity contest. Saudi Arabia shows up because it hosts an enormous number of migrant workers, not immigrants who resettle, as in the United States. The United Nations report does not distinguish between who migrates with legal papers and who does not. Among the migrants worldwide are 20 million refugees — those who have fled war or persecution in their home countries. Indians make up the largest diaspora: 16 million Indians are scattered across the world, which partly reflects the country’s demographic size (1.2 billion) and youth (median age is around 26).

LOS ANGELES Winning tickets in the nearly $1.6 billion Powerball lottery were sold in California, Florida and Tennessee, officials said on Thursday, leaving at least three people to split the record-setting jackpot.

California Lottery officials confirmed that the winning six numbers had been purchased at a convenience store outside Los Angeles, as well as at locations in Florida and Tennessee. The identity of the winners was not yet known.

Lottery officials said it could be several hours before it is known whether there are other winners for the $1.586 billion jackpot in the 44 states, Washington, DC and two US territories where Powerball is played. The six winning numbers were 08, 27, 34, 04, 19 and Powerball 10.

They were picked during a late Wednesday draw for the prize at lottery offices in Tallahassee,

Florida. In Chino Hills, a suburb east of Los Angeles, crowds descended on a 7-Eleven store where the winning ticket had

combination were 1 in 292 million. The prospect of a huge payout sparked a ticket-buying frenzy that was expected to

been bought, snapping pictures and congratulating staff. The store will receive a $1 million bonus for selling the ticket. The odds of picking a winning

reach a rate of $1.3 million per minute during the evening commuter rush hour, Gary Grief, executive director of Texas Lottery, told a news conference.

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BCCI bans Ajit Chandila for life; Hiken Shah for 5 years Haryana off-spinner Ajit Chandila was slapped with a life ban for his involvement in the 2013 IPL spotfixing scandal, while

Mumbai batsman Hiken Shah was handed a fiveyear suspension for making a corrupt approach to a fellow player as the BCCI disciplinary committee sealed their fate after a

meeting here today.

However, the committee, headed by BCCI President Shashank Manohar and comprising Jyotiraditya Scindia and Niranjan Shah, deferred a decision on Chandila’s coaccused Pakistani umpire Asad Rauf till February 12, giving him a final deadline of February 9 to file his reply.

The 32-year-old Chandila, an off-spinner who was found guilty of spot-fixing during his stint with Rajasthan Royals, was handed a tougher punishment for violating the codes pertaining to accepting bribes, fixing, under performing, trying to induce a fellow player and

We need brave youngsters in the side says Dhoni The likes of Barinder Sran and Manish Pandey are going through a trial by fire in just their debut series but

Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni feels there is nothing unfair about putting them up against a rampaging Australia as the team needs a “brave” bunch of youngsters going forward.

India have already conceded the ongoing ODI series against Australia after going down in the third match in

Melbourne as well. The youngsters have not quite made a resounding impact but by Dhoni’s own admission, it is too early to judge them on performance. Sran has been decent in his three outings so far, bagging three wicket in the process.

Pandey came in to bat at 276/4 with four overs left in the Brisbane ODI. Despite his IPL showings, he is not a slam-bang cricketer and yet had to go for it, managing 6 runs off 5 balls in the end. “If you are getting a chance to play for your country, irrespective of the situation, it isn’t unfair. As captain that’s what you have to communicate to these youngsters,” said Dhoni in Melbourne, the venue of the third ODI.

betting.

“He is held guilty of misconduct and corruption within the Articles 2.1.1; Article 2.1.2; Article 2.1.3; Article 2.1.4; Article 2.2.2; Article 2.2.3; Article 2.4.1 of the BCCI Anti Corruption Code. Ajit Chandila is banned for Life from playing or representing cricket in any form or to be associated in any way with the activities of the Board or its Affiliates,” BCCI Secretary Anurag Thakur said in a statement.

“The endeavour of BCCI is to clean cricket and any kind of malpractices will be dealt with severely,” Thakur later said at a promotional

event.

Batsman Shah, on the other hand, was found guilty of making a corrupt approach to a fellow Mumbai player in the domestic circuit.

“He is held guilty of committing breach of Articles 2.1.1; Article 2.1.2 and Ar-

ticle 2.1.4 of the BCCI Anti Corruption Code. Hiken Shah is banned for five years from playing or representing cricket in any form or to be associated in any way with the activities of the Board or its Affiliates,” the BCCI Secretary said.

Match-fixing widespread in tennis, Grand Slam winners part of it World tennis was rocked on Monday by allegations that the game`s authorities have failed to deal with widespread match-fixing, just as the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, kicked off in Melbourne. Tennis authorities rejected reports by the BBC and online BuzzFeed News, which said 16 players ranked in the top 50 had been repeatedly flagged to the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) over suspicions they had thrown matches in the past decade. The reports said the TIU, set up to police illegal activities in the

sport, either failed to act upon information that identified suspicious behaviour

were playing in the Australian Open, the media reports added. Reuters was

amongst players, or impose any sanctions. All of the players, including winners of Grand Slam titles, were allowed to continue competing, while eight

unable to independently verify the findings by the BBC and BuzzFeed News, which said they had obtained documents that included the findings of an

India will get full-time coach after World T20 says Thakur BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur on Monday said the Indian cricket team will have a full-time coach after the World T20 and the high-profile advisory committee comprising Sachin Tendulkar, V.V.S. Laxman and Sourav Ganguly will have a say in the appointment.

Thakur also threw his weight behind under-fire skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, as the team slumped to three successive losses in the ongoing

five-match ODI series in Australia. “There has been a demand for a full-time coach for a long time. We had decided that Ravi Shastri will be the Team Director till the World T20.

We do not want to do anything between the season but we also need to decide on the future. We will be playing 13 Tests next season. Like a team is selected series to series, we need to have full-time coach,” Thakur responded to a query from PTI on the

The hearing of Rauf was scheduled for today but he did not appear in person and sent a reply stating that “no fair enquiry has been conducted in his matter and hence a de novo enquiry be held by appointing another enquiry officer.”

sidelines of an ICC promotional event in New Delhi.

Thakur did not get into the details about whether the

BCCI would continue with Shastri, only hinting that even the former India allrounder could be consid-

ered for a long-term role.

“The decision will be taken in consultation with the Advisory Committee (Tendulkar, Laxman and Ganguly). We might decide on a coach even before the World T20 but the proper announcement will only happen post tournament,” the BCCI secretary said. However the secretary backed skipper Dhoni despite India’s meek surrender Down Under in the ongoing ODI series in which they are down 0-3.

investigation set up in 2007 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), the governing body of men`s professional tennis.

“The Tennis Integrity Unit and the tennis authorities absolutely reject any suggestion that evidence of match fixing has been suppressed for any reason or isn`t being thoroughly investigated,” said ATP chairman Chris Kermode.

“And while the BBC and BuzzFeed reports mainly refer to events from about 10 years ago, we will investigate any new information, and we always do,” Kermode told a hastily arranged media conference at Melbourne Park.

The BBC and BuzzFeed News said they had not named any players because without access to their phone, bank and computer records it was not possible to determine whether they took part in match-fixing.

They said the 2007 ATP inquiry found betting syndicates in Russia, northern Italy and Sicily making hundreds of thousands of pounds betting on games which investigators thought to be fixed.

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Elusive emu finally caught

An elusive emu that avoided capture for days has been rounded up by a rancher in Southern California.

The 6-ft flightless bird was first spotted last weekend wandering the rural Aguanga area south of Hemet, but an animal services officer was unable to track it down. Animal Services spokesman John Welsh says the big birds native to Australia are known for running very

fast. A rancher managed to corral the emu into a fenced-in 5-acre area on Tuesday. He gave the bird food and later helped animal services officers coax it into a trailer.

The emu was brought to the San Jacinto Valley Animal Campus, where it will be held until its owner claims it.

Officials say the bird is tame, and is likely someone’s pet.

Help us find burglar, get free pizzas for a year Fed up of frequent thefts, a restaurant in the US is offering a unique reward of free pizzas for an entire year to anyone who can help nab the culprit of the most recent burglary in the eatery last Sunday.

Patrick White, the owner of Kaos Pizzeria place in Denver, Colorado, said a man captured in surveillance footage broke into his restaurant. White said

the thief came into Kaos through a back window and stole about $1,000, from the restaurant’s two

cash registers before taking off. This is the third time Kaos has been burgled in recent months.

White said, “What is so disturbing about this is how nonchalantly he just walks onto the property. I have a lot of female employees, it makes everyone nervous. It really brings morale down.”

In an effort to identify the thief, White posted the surveillance video online. The video has received nearly 2,000 views.

lice received a call from the Army asking where he was. After initially telling a

lie involving his “sick” father, police say Chen admitted that he was vacationing in Hawaii with his girlfriend.

Chen, who resigned from the force on December 14, is facing charges of felony larceny and defrauding a public community. He turned himself in to police on Tuesday.

Hawaii vacation costs cop his job

A vacation in Hawaii not only cost a former Connecticut police officer his job, but also led to criminal charges being brought against him.

Donald Chen was granted two weeks off from December 1 to 15 by the Stamford police department so he could report for training

with his US Army Reserves unit. Eight days into Chen’s military leave, po-

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Health E-cigarettes not helping people quit smoking Electronic cigarettes that are widely promoted and used to help smokers quit traditional cigarettes are not assisting much in this task, says a new study.

A new analysis by the University of California-San Francisco has found that ‘vapers’ dedicated enthusiasts of electronic cigarettes are 28 percent less likely to stop smoking.

“As currently being used, e-cigarettes are associated with significantly less quitting among smokers,” said lead author Sara Kalkhoran from the Massachusetts Gen-

eral Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

E-cigarette regulation has the potential to influence marketing and reasons for use, the findings showed.

“The inclusion of e-cigarettes in smoke-free laws and voluntary smoke-free policies could help decrease use of e-cigarettes as a cigarette substitute, and, perhaps, increase their effectiveness for smoking cessation,” the researchers explained.

In 2015, the US Preventive Services Task Force said that there was insufficient evidence to recommend

the devices to help adults quit smoking, the researchers revealed.

Moreover, no e-cigarette company has submitted an application to the US Food and Drug Administration to approve e-cigarettes for smoking cession, they added.

“E-cigarettes should not be recommended as effective smoking cessation aids until there is evidence that, as promoted and used, they assist smoking cessation,” Kalkhoran said.

Electronic cigarettes, known by a variety of names, including vapour pens, are battery-powered

devices that heat nicotine and flavourings to deliver an aerosol inhaled by the user.

While they are promoted as a way to quit traditional cigarettes, they also are promoted as a way to get nicotine in environments where traditional cigarettes are prohibited. Many cities,

however, ban their use in smoke free sites where conventional cigarettes are also prohibited.

In their analysis, the UCSF research team reviewed 38 studies assessing the association between e-cigarette use and cigarette cessation among adult smokers.

The studies included smokers who both were and were not interested in quitting, and included people as young as 15 years old.

The study a systematic review and meta-analysis of published data was published online The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

Five easy ways to overcome stress! Questions you need to ask before Nowadays, stress has become very common and everyone of us experience it at some or other point in life. Tiring jobs, faulty eating habits, pollution are some things that leads us to stress.

Here are some easy tips to overcome stress: Meditation Meditation is the best things that you can do to keep stress at bay. 30 minutes of focused meditation daily helps people to be resilient under stress.

Sleep well Having adequate amount

of sleep is very essential to lead a stress free life. A sleep for 7-8 hours is a must to relax your mind and reduce stress levels.

Walking

Walking is the best and easiest form of exercise accessible to us. One should walk daily to stay

fit and healthy. Moreover, walking significantly contributes to enhanced mental health and helps you get rid of stress.

Positive thinking Positive thinking also plays a major role in getting rid of stress. Thinking positive helps your mind ease anxiety and helps you remain calm and happy.

Eating healthy Eating well plays an important role in maintaining good health.

Eating blueberries, salmon and almonds is believed to help in combating stress.

ExErcisE cuts hEart disEasE risk among thE dEprEssEd

Regular exercise can reduce heart disease risk in people suffering from depression, suggests new research. Depression is commonly associated with worse outcomes for patients with heart disease

and other conditions. As many as 20 percent of people hospitalised with a heart attack report symptoms of depression, while patients with heart disease have three times the risk of developing depression

compared to the general population, the study pointed out. “Our findings highlight the link between worsening depression and cardiovascular risk and support routinely assessing depression in patients to determine heart disease risk. This research also demonstrates the positive effects of exercise for all patients, including those with depressive symptoms,” said study author Arshed Quyyumi from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, US.

finalising a gynaecologist!

Choosing a good gynaecologist is very important for a pregnant woman. A good doctor helps you deliver your baby smoothly and let you experience comfortable birthing. Often women end up having the worst gynaecologist during their pregnancy and delivery.

So, one should always ask certain questions before finalising one.

Here are some questions which you should ask your gynaecologist: What kind of complications often leads to a Csection?

A normal delivery or C-section? Such questions might come in the mind of many women during their

pregnancy. So, one needs to twist the question to know if your doctor is in support of normal delivery or not.

Do you support breastfeeding?

We all know the benefits of breastfeeding and breast crawl right after birth. But some doctors might not support it, if one undergoes C-section. So, try to find out whether your doctor is in support of the same.

Are you present during labour and delivery?

You don’t need your doctor during the time of labour but it is good if she/he believes in checking on her/ his patient instead of leaving it fully to inexperienced

staff.

What kind of pain management options are available?

Don’t forget to discuss the important aspect of labour.

Many hospitals are equipped with facilities like an epidural, some prefer to offer hypnobirthing or other medications to ease the pains. So, try to know what options you have so that you can choose your method of pain management effectively.

Your opinion on stem cell banking?

Try to know what is your doctor’s opinion regarding srem cell banking. Discuss more details of stem cell banking and why she recommends one.

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19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Blueberries, red wine can help in erectile dysfunction Flavonoid-rich foods are associated with a reduced risk of erectile dysfunction, says a new study.

Eating foods rich in certain flavonoids trims down the risk of erectile dysfunction in men, especially in those under 70, reveals a collaborative study from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in UK and Harvard University in the US. A combination of consuming flavonoid-rich foods with

exercise can reduce the risk by 21 percent, the researchers said.

“This is the first study to look at the association between flavonoids and erectile dysfunction, which affects up to half of all middle-aged and older men,” said Aedin Cassidy, a professor from UEA. The research shows that of all the different flavonoids, anthocyanins (found in blueberries, cherries,

blackberries, radishes and blackcurrants), flavanones and flavones (found in citrus fruits) were found to offer the greatest benefits.

“The top sources of anthocyanins, flavones and flavanones consumed in the US are strawberries, blueberries, red wine, apples, pears and citrus products,” Cassidy said.

Eating a flavonoid-rich diet is as good for erectile function as briskly walking for

up to five hours a week, the findings, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed.

Green leafy vegetable intake lessens risk of glaucoma

A recent study says that leafy vegetables such as lettuce, spinach and kale and nitrate-rich vegetables

are associated with lowering the risk of primary open-angle glaucoma by 20 to 30 percent.

Researchers are likely to have uncovered a novel mechanism behind the ability of the common diabetes drug metformin to inhibit the progression of pancreatic cancer.

Diabetic patients taking metformin have a reduced risk of developing pancreatic cancer. Among patients who develop the tumour, those taking the drug may have a reduced risk of death, the study revealed.

Metformin a commonly used generic medication for type 2 diabetes decreases the inflammation and fibrosis characteristic of the most common form of pancreatic cancer, the researchers said.

This beneficial effect may be most prevalent in overweight and obese patients, the findings indicated.

“We found that metformin alleviates desmoplasia an

accumulation of dense connective tissue and tumour-associated immune cells that is a hallmark of pancreatic cancer,” said lead author Dai Fukumura associate professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts, US. The study focused on pancreatic ductal adenocarci-

Diabetes drug slows down growth of pancreatic cancer

noma the most common form of pancreatic cancer which also accounts for almost 40,000 cancer deaths in the US ever year.

Half of those diagnosed with this form of pancreatic cancer are overweight or obese, and up to 80 per cent have type 2 diabetes or are insulin resistant, said the researchers.

Glaucoma is a condition which can affect sight, usually due to build up of pressure within the eye because fluid cannot drain away. This new study found people who ate a nitrate-rich diet had lower levels of primary openangle glaucoma (POAG), a rare condition which involves chronic or acute sudden painful build-up of pressure in the eye.

The researchers followed up participants biennially in the prospective cohorts

More than 50,000 middleaged men were included in this large population based study. Dating back to 1986,

they were asked about their ability to have and maintain an erection sufficient for intercourse.

Obesity ups the risk of developing blood clotting disorder in children

of the Nurses’ Health Study (63,893 women; 1984-2012) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (41,094 men; 19862012). Eligible participants were 40 years or older, were free of POAG, and reported eye examinations. Information on diet was updated with questionnaires.

During follow-up, 1,483 incident cases of POAG were identified. Participants were divided into quintiles (one of five groups) of dietary nitrate intake (quintile 5, approximately 240 mg/d; quintile 1, approximately 80 mg/d).

The researchers found that greater intake of dietary nitrate and green leafy vegetables was associated with a 20 percent to 30 percent lower POAG risk; the association was particularly strong (40 percent-50 percent lower risk) for POAG with early paracentral visual field loss (a subtype of POAG linked to dysfunction in blood flow autoregulation).

Obesity has an association with the formation of blood clots in the veins of children and adolescents, says a new study.

Obesity as determined by body mass index was a statistically significant predictor of blood clot formation in juveniles, the study showed. The association between obesity and venous thromboembolism (VTE) formation of blood clots can cause both acute and chronic health problems if left untreated, the researchers warned.

“Our study demonstrated an association between obesity and VTE in children, which should be explored further in larger future studies,” said Elizabeth Halvorson, assistant professor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, US.

(Also read: Heavy marijuana use may alter brain structure and harm memory)

“There was a substantial improvement for patients in their ability to function and feel better,” said the

Of the 121 patients studied, 103 reported a decrease in monthly migraines while 15 reported the same number and three saw an increase in migraines.

study’s senior author Laura Borgelt from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in the US. “Like any drug, marijuana has potential benefits and

“This is important because the incidence of paediatric VTE has increased dramatically over the last 20 years and childhood obesity remains highly prevalent in the US,” she added.

For the study, the researchers conducted a retrospective chart review of patients at Wake Forest Baptist’s Brenner Children’s Hospital between January 2000 and September 2012. They identified 88 patients between ages 2-18 who confirmed cases of VTE. After adjusting for the other risk factors among them bloodstream infection and time spent in an intensive care unit the researchers found a small, but statistically significant association between obesity and VTE. The research was published in the journal Hospital Pediatrics.

Medical marijuana may help treat migraines

Marijuana can be used to effectively treat people suffering from migraine headaches, new research has found.

In the study, patients diagnosed with migraine headaches saw a significant drop in their frequency when treated with medical marijuana.

The study, published in the journal Pharmacotherapy, examined patients diagnosed with migraines and treated with medical marijuana between 2010-2014.

It found the frequency of migraines dropped from 10.4 to 4.6 headaches per month, a number considered statistically and clinically significant.

potential risks. It is important for people to be aware that using medical marijuana can also have adverse effects,” Borgelt cautioned.

(Also read: How marijuana shrinks cancerous tumours) Borgelt said cannabinoid receptors can be found throughout the body, including the brain, connective tissues and immune system. And they appear to have anti-inflammatory and painrelieving properties.

Cannabinoids are a group of active compounds found in marijuana.

These cannabinoids also seem to affect critical neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine.

Issue 650 (39)

19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016

Thai Chicken Balls

cold macaroni and tuna salad Ingredients: 3 eggs 3 cups macaroni 1/2 (10 ounce) package frozen green peas 2 (6 ounce) cans tuna, drained 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon black pepper Directions: Place eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Over medium heat, bring water to a full boil. Lower heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Immediately plunge eggs into cold water.

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add macaroni pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain and rinse under cold water.

Put frozen peas into a colander and rinse

with hot water; drain well. In a large bowl place the macaroni and peas. Peel eggs and dice them into the bowl. Put the tuna in the bowl, flaking it apart.

Stir mayonnaise into the mixture a little at a time, so the mixture is moist but not soggy. Sprinkle the salt and pepper and mix one last time. Cover and refrigerate for a least one hour or overnight.

Shrimp Durango

Pork with Peach and Black Bean Salsa Ingredients: 1 pound pork tenderloin, cubed salt and pepper to taste 1/4 cup cornmeal 1 tablespoon olive oil 1/4 cup beer 1 cup prepared salsa 1 (15 ounce) can sliced canned peaches, drained 1/2 (15 ounce) can black beans; drain and reserve liquid 1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro Directions: Season cubed pork with salt and pepper to taste. Place meat in a large plastic bag with the cornmeal. Shake well to coat the meat.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Place the coated meat in the

Ingredients: 2 pounds ground chicken 1 cup dry bread crumbs 4 green onions, sliced 1 tablespoon ground coriander seed 1 cup chopped fresh cilantro 1/4 cup sweet chili sauce 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice oil for frying Directions: In a large bowl, mix together the chicken and bread crumbs. Season with green onion, ground coriander, cilantro, chili sauce and lemon juice; mix well.

Using damp hands, form mixture into evenly shaped balls that are either small enough to eat with your fingers, or large enough to use as burgers.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.

Fry the chicken balls in batches until well browned all over.

skillet and saute for 5 to 10 minutes, or until browned. Reduce heat to medium.

Pour in the beer, salsa, peaches and beans with 2 tablespoons reserved liquid. Stir well and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Stir in the cilantro.

Anaheim Fish Tacos Ingredients: 1 teaspoon vegetable oil 1 Anaheim chile pepper, chopped 1 leek, chopped 2 cloves garlic, crushed salt and pepper to taste 1 cup chicken broth 2 large tomatoes, diced 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin 1 1/2 pounds halibut fillets 1 lime 12 corn tortillas Directions: Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat, and saute the chile, leek, and garlic until tender and lightly browned. Season with salt and pepper.

Mix the chicken broth and tomatoes into the skillet, and season with cumin. Bring to a boil. minutes until the halibut is easily Reduce heat to low. Place the halibut into the flaked with a fork. Wrap in warmed mixture. Sprinkle with lime juice. Cook 15 to 20 corn tortillas to serve.

Ingredients: 1 pound dry fettuccine pasta 3 tablespoons butter 1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined 1/2 cup white wine 2 tablespoons lime juice 1/2 bunch cilantro, finely chopped 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper salt and pepper to taste Directions: Bring a large pot of water to boil, add fettuccine noodles and return water to boil. Cook until noodles are al dente.

Drain well.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, melt butter over medium heat, add shrimp and cook about 3 minutes, until shrimp turn pink. Remove shrimp from heat and set aside.

Pour wine and lime juice into the skillet used to cook the shrimp. Bring the

Quick Sesame Green Beans Ingredients: 8 ounces fresh green beans, trimmed 2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce 1/2 tablespoon miso paste 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes 4 cloves garlic, minced 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger root 1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted Directions: Place the green beans into a steamer insert and set in a pot over one inch of water. Bring to a boil, cover and steam for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and transfer beans to a serving bowl.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, stir together the soy sauce, miso paste, red pepper flakes, garlic and ginger. Pour over the green beans and toss to coat. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

mixture to a boil. Boil until the mixture is reduced by half, about 2 minutes. Return shrimp to skillet. Add cilantro, cayenne pepper and salt and pepper. Stir to heat the mixture through, about 2 minutes. Toss with pasta and serve.

Issue 650 (40)

19 Jan. - 25 Jan. 2016