The contact

THE CONTACT WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ISSUE - 662, 12 - 18 APRIL 2016 PH: (905) 671 - 4761

Will & Kat’s Date with Dilli See on Page 20-21

Namdharis come out against Akalis following murder of Chand Kaur See on Page 5

CANADIAN-SIKH WOMAN MAY TRY TO BOMB DELHI r Intel reports warn Canadian-Indian woman, 35, may target Capital for a terror attack as part of ISIS cell r Suspect with ISIS links already has her sinister aides posted in the city

By ABHISHEK BHALLA A Sikh-Canadian woman, suspected to be an ISIS agent, may carry out terror strikes in Delhi along with other associates who are already in the Capital, according to a specific intelligence input. Agencies have the name and passport details of the woman, who they suspect is travelling to Delhi.

An alert has been sent to airports, intelligence, and investigating agencies tracking the activities of terror group ISIS,

stating that the 35-year-old woman could carry out strikes along with other ISIS members.A Sikh-Canadian woman, suspected to be an ISIS agent, is suspected to be travelling to Delhi. An alert has been sent to airports and investigating agencies. A Sikh-Canadian woman, suspected to be an ISIS agent, is suspected to be travelling to Delhi. An alert has been sent to airports and investigating agencies.

Continued on Page 2

Major football event in France was ISIS target

By TOM WYKE For Daily Mail The ISIS terror cell which carried out the Paris and Brussels attacks had intended to target the Euro 2016 football summer tournament in France, it was claimed. The attack on Brussels appears to have been in reaction to the sudden arrest of Salah

Abdeslam and that the real plan was to carry out another massacre in France in the summer, according The Liberation newspaper.

Mohamed Abrini, who has supposedly admitted to being the ‘man in the hat’ captured on CCTV before the Brussels airport

bombings, is believed to told investigators about the Euro 2016 plan. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the terror threat was ‘extra proof of the very high threats to the whole of Europe and to France in particular.

Continued on Page 2

Issue - 662 (2)

12 April - 18 April 2016

CANADIAN-SIKH WOMAN MAY TRY...

Continued from Page 1 According to the input, the woman’s passport is due to expire in December 2016. Daily Mail from the UK has details of her passport but her identity is being withheld since the information is part of an ongoing intelligence operation. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which has arrested 25 recruits and is probing several cases related to ISIS, has also been roped in.

Sources said the information regarding the possible entry of the Canadian-Indian woman was shared with Indian intelligence agencies by their counterparts in another country. Intelligence reports have recently raised fears of Indians living abroad being attracted to the Sunni jihadi group, which has lured hundreds of youths from the West. Sources say over 40 people suspected of having links with ISIS have been arrested from across the country.

A total of 24 Indians have so far joined the terror outfit, of whom six were reportedly killed in different incidents. While two

returned, 16 are still reportedly part of ISIS. Several Indian youths aspiring to join ISIS have been stopped from travelling abroad.

“In the past, Adil Fayaz Wada, an Indian living in Australia, travelled to Syria to be part of jihad. This is the first time, though, that information has been generated of a Sikh living abroad and suspected of having links with ISIS,” said an intelligence official.

One of the Indians reportedly killed fighting in Syria, Atif Vaseem Mohammed, who was a resident of Hyderabad, also lived in the US for a brief period before returning to India and travelling to Syria. Some Indians living in UAE have been identified for their alleged ISIS links. In January, three Indian nationals who were based in Abu Dhabi were deported and later arrested by the NIA on suspicion of being involved in activities linked to the Islamic State. The growing influence of ISIS on Indians living in the Gulf has alarmed the security establishment. The concern was flagged at a recent meeting chaired by union Home Minister

Rajnath Singh to combat the ISIS threat.

“Several Indians living in the Gulf are getting attracted to ISIS. These are Indian citizens and the threat of them coming back and carrying out strikes in the name of ISIS cannot be ignored,” said a government official. Sources said it is feared that many members of home-grown terror group Indian Mujahideen who fled the country following a crackdown ended up fighting on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border or the Af-Pak region, before joining ISIS. Earlier in the year, the NIA busted an Indian module drawing inspiration from ISIS called Janoodul- Khalifa-e-Hind, or the Army of Caliph in India, after countrywide raids prompted several arrests. India adopted a unique strategy to combat the ISIS threat by carrying out a deradicalisaiton programme for young people attracted by ISIS ideology.

Some went through counselling sessions, but the hardened ones were arrested.

We will not let our guard down.’

Abrini, a long-time petty criminal who grew up with Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in Belgium’s troubled Molenbeek

over the November terror assaults in Paris, police have also uncovered links to last month’s Brussels attacks, notably finding his fingerprints in the flat where the two airport suicide bombers were staying before they blew themselves up on March 22.

That attack and a second at a Brussels metro station an hour later killed a total of 32 people and injured hundreds more. Abrini was arrested in the Brussels neighbourhood of Anderlecht on Friday and, according to prosecutors, said he was the mystery ‘man in the hat’ seen in surveillance footage next to the two bombers at the airport. ‘He confessed his presence at the crime scene,’ the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement Saturday, adding that he also ‘explained having thrown away his vest (jacket) in a garbage bin and having sold his hat afterward’.

But even before the Brussels bombings, Abrini, 31, was a wanted man over his suspected

role in the November 13 gun and suicide bomb attacks in Paris in which 130 people died. The Belgian of Moroccan origin was seen at a petrol station north of Paris two days before the attacks with prime suspect Abdeslam, who drove one of the vehicles used in the attacks.

Belgian authorities have charged Abrini with ‘participation in the activities of a terrorist group and terrorist murders’ over the massacres in the French capital.

During the course of the inquiry, it has emerged that Abrini has a long record of theft and drug possession, with his brother confirming he had done stints in jail. ‘‘Brioche’ is someone who likes money a lot and who has had a lot of money. In fact, he was reputed to have made himself 200,000 euros. That is a thief,’ fellow suspect Ali Oulkadi told Belgian investigators. ‘He never spoke about religion or anything like that.’ Identified as a radical Islamist by Belgian investigators, Abrini is believed to have briefly visited Syria last year and his younger brother Suleiman, 20, died there.

He was known to security services for belonging to the same cell as Abdelhamid Abaaoud, one of the organisers

Austria probes link between November Paris and 2008 Mumbai attacks

Austrian prosecutors are probing a possible link between a Pakistani, held in Salzburg in connection with the Paris terror attacks, and the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008.

“Leads pointing to this are being looked into,” prosecutors in Salzburg said, adding however that the identity of the Pakistani suspect, who has been in custody since December in the western Austrian city, has not been confirmed.

“Wide-ranging investigations on this question, among others, are ongoing, although the public prosecutors’ office has been waiting for information on this from Pakistan since December 2015,” they said in a statement.

A source in Paris and the Sunday Times said that the man is thought to be a bomb maker for Pakistani extremist organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba and Lashkar-eJhangvi.

India holds Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), allegedly linked to al-Qaeda, responsible for the 2008 Mumbai assault that killed 166 people.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is blamed for a string of high-profile attacks in recent years. The 34-year-old was

arrested in Austria in December along with an Algerian.

French investigators suspect that the Islamic State (IS) group, which claimed responsibility for the Paris bombings in November last year as well as attacks in Brussels on March 22, sent both men to Europe to carry out attacks.

Austrian authorities said in February that they are believed to have been in the same boat bringing around 200 migrants to Greece as two men involved in the Paris atrocities.

While those involved in the attacks were able to travel onwards, the pair were held up

by Greek authorities for 25 days because they were carrying fake Syrian passports.

They then arrived in Salzburg at the end of November -- after the Paris killings -- and Austrian police arrested them at a centre for migrants on December 10.

A senior security official in Pakistan told AFP he had no information.

“We are in completely in the dark about such a person... who he is, his identity and his affiliations,” the official said.

of the Paris attacks and one of the gunmen who opened fire on bars, restaurants and a concert hall there. Abrini and Abdeslam - who was arrested near his family home in Molenbeek after a four-month manhunt - grew up together as teenage friends in the district, where they used to live next door to each other.

Belgian prosecutors said after Abrini’s arrest that he and

brother Brahim - another attacker - on two other trips between Brussels and Paris.

Interviewed by AFP in November, Abrini’s family swore that on the night of the Paris bloodshed he was in Molenbeek, the tough, immigrant-heavy neighbourhood that has earned a reputation as a haven for radical jihadists. His mother has said that he never spoke of going to Syria or of IS.

Abdeslam had also rented an apartment in the Paris suburbs used by the November 13 gunmen before their deadly rampage. The black Renault Clio the pair were driving was later used to transport the three suicide attackers who struck outside the Stade de France, and investigators believe Abrini accompanied Abdeslam and his

‘They say he is dangerous, that he is armed... It makes me sick,’ she said.

His repeated trips between Paris and Brussels, however, suggested he played at least a logistical role in the tangled network of Islamic State militants behind two of the worst terror attacks on European soil in recent years.

Brussels ISIS terror cell ‘had planned to carry out new massacre at Euro 2016’

area. Nicknamed ‘Brioche’ after his days working in a bakery, Abrini is thought to have given up training as a welder at the age of 18 before eventually gravitating towards the extremist milieu.

Already the target of a manhunt

Impetence?

416-992-5489

Issue - 662 (3)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Issue - 662 (4)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Troubles for Afghan government as US withdrawal looms This is another one of those stories where all I can do is shake my head because after seven years of being in office, President Obama still thinks he’s the smartest person in the room - any room or the world, but still has absolutely no clue what’s going on in the world. His Secretary of State John Kerry, who has stumbled from one foreign policy disaster to another, paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Saturday. The nominal purpose of the visit was to head off a political crisis that could damage US withdrawal plans, so he demanded that the government renege on a 2014 agreement to replace the current government in September. Afghanistan’s presidential elections in 2014 resulted in bitter disputes between the two leading candidates, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, including accusations of massive voter fraud on both sides. The US brokered an agreement for a “unity government” of the two candidates, with Ghani becoming president and Abdullah in the newly created post of chief

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

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

executive.

The text of the agreement called for a “loya jirga” (grand assembly) to be called in September 2016, at the end of two years.

The loya jirga would decide the future of the government and amend the constitution - as such assemblies have done at key points in Afghanistan’s recent history. So the purpose of Kerry’s visit to Afghanistan on Saturday was to tell the Afghan politicians and the Afghan people that they should not hold a loya jirga. He said that, despite the agreement calling for it, the loya jirga was “a goal,” not a requirement: “Let me make this very, very clear, because I brokered the agreement, President Ghani signed it and Chief Executive Abdullah signed it, and I was there to witness the signing, and I had the privilege of joining them in announcing it. There is no end to this agreement at the end of two years or in six months from now. This agreement ends – this is an agreement for a unity government, the duration of which is five years. ... But we are – in no way does the agreement itself have some particular termination. The constitution has elected a president. The president has agreed to a unity government and a political agreement was made between Dr. Abdullah and President Ghani for how they would go forward in a unity government. But it is our understanding that that is a mandate for five years and there’s no termination whatsoever in six months.”

So there you have it. John Kerry brokered the deal, so he knows what it means better than the Afghan politicians do, since they merely signed it. We’ll have to see whether Kerry’s visit did the job, or whether it infuriated the opposition so much that it made a loya jirga even more likely. Kerry also repeated an offer to the Taliban for peace talks, which is laughable.

The fact that Afghanistan has had no government since 2014 is just one of the country’s problems. The economy has been sinking and, perhaps worst of all, the resurgent Taliban are stronger than at any time since they were toppled from power in late 2001. In October of last year, President Obama reversed himself on the Afghanistan troop withdrawal. Instead of a total withdrawal, he announced that a residual force of 5,500 troops would be

left on a continuing basis. This was only the latest of several similar reversals. He was forced into this because many people believe that SUNNY BAINS the Obama’s total withdrawal from Iraq squandered the victory won by President Bush via the to the Taliban. According to one deserter: 2007 ‘surge’ and because Obama’s own “I decided to leave the army when my dead ‘surge’ strategy in Afghanistan has been and injured comrades lay in our base, and a failure. Analysts give three reasons for nobody took them to hospital. My army training is very useful now, as I am training the resurgence of the Taliban in 2015: * With the end of the US/Nato combat Taliban fighters with the same mission and the withdrawal of most knowledge.” Government troops suffered foreign forces from Afghanistan in 2014, huge losses in 2015. U.S. officials the Taliban could move much more freely estimate that 5,500 Afghan security force in Afghanistan with no fear of being members died that year alone, far more bombed or raided. They’ve used this than the 3,500 Nato lost in its entire freedom to overrun military bases and to decade-long campaign. As the “fighting seize weapons, Humvees and police season” approaches in the summer, the

vehicles from Afghan forces. * Also in 2014, Pakistan’s military launched Operation Zarb-e-Azb, which attacked Taliban militants hiding in the tribal region (FATA) between Pakistan and Afghanistan. This forced militants in the FATA to flood into Afghanistan. * Afghan security forces are poorly trained and lack equipment, especially air power and reconnaissance that was previously provided by Nato forces.

The viability of Afghan’s military is further in doubt as a new report by CNN that desertion is rife, as Afghan soldiers defect

fear is that losses in 2016 will be even greater.

The remaining Nato forces are increasingly being deployed in battle zones to support Afghan forces fighting the Taliban.

Afghanistan’s government is requesting (perhaps begging) that the US cancel its withdrawal plans, or even to bring in new troops. With President Obama concerned with little else beyond his legacy, this is something that he is unlikely to approve, unless the situation in Afghanistan gets so bad over the summer that he has no choice. That may in fact happen.

The US said it will take action against over 300 Indian students caught in a sting operation for allegedly trying to illegitimately extend their stay in the country.

“For the most part, they all came on legitimate student visas. It was actually when they were in country that some of them allegedly sought to extend their stay in the United States,” Mark Toner State Department deputy spokesperson said on Monday.

306 students were caught in a sting operation conducted by the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

As many as 21 brokers and middle men, including 11 people of Indian-origin, were arrested last week as a result of the sting operation. Toner said only those Indian

students who tried to illegitimately tried to extend their stay in the US will be taken to task and no genuine student will be harassed.

“These individuals who came here on a student visa did come either to work or to study legitimately. They did qualify for student visas. They met the qualifications.

They were issued student visas,” Toner

said. “It was only after living here, attending a university, that they then decided to again allegedly seek out the assistance of this criminal organisation to extend their stay in the United States,” he said.

Responding to a question, Toner said the Indian students were issued visas by US diplomatic missions in India to study in American educational institutions and not a fake university created by the Department of Homeland Security as part of the sting operation.

“They did come here legitimately, on legitimate visas. It’s not about a visa issue. Once they were here in the United States, they then sought a criminal organisation to extend their stay,” Toner said.

306 Indian students in US ‘caught’ trying to extend their stay

Issue - 662 (5)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Namdharis come out against Akalis following murder of Chand Kaur

Rare are the people in this world who feel truly secure. Even millionaires worry about money. But when you stop to think about what life is and how it works, that’s not so surprising. Don’t we all arrive here under miraculous circumstances? Is not the one thing that we can all be sure of, the fact that one day we won’t be here any longer, yet we will never know when that is? This planet isn’t designed to make us feel comfortable. It is here to afford us an amazing experience for which we can be deeply grateful. !!!

Circumstances don’t always align themselves with our requirements. Things don’t invariably fall into place. Others, it seems, reap the benefit of serendipity while we struggle with irritants and impediments. Yet once in a while, life surprises us.

Processes bring better results than expected. Or we find ourselves to be the beneficiaries of a helpful coincidence. It wouldn’t take much to inspire you to improve your view of the world. One small but surprisingly helpful development might make all the difference. Indeed, soon enough, it will! !!!

Some people adhere slavishly to life’s rules and regulations. They know what’s expected and bristle at the very thought of doing anything other than the conventional. Others are more aware of the gaps in the matrix, the loopholes in the law, the exceptions to the rule and the ways in which exemptions can be legitimately made. Don’t you fall into that latter category, at least once in a while? Aren’t you surprisingly smart? Can’t you expect to rewrite a rulebook and successfully have your innovation accepted? It turns out that you can! !!!

Are all relationships difficult? You may as well ask, ‘are all relationships easy!’ They are what they are.

We are what we are. As for what we are to each other, that has a lot to do with who we are to ourselves. When we feel at home with our own personalities, happy in our own skin, glad of our past and inspired about our future, we become easier to be with. Then others cannot help but treat us well. If something needs to be changed in your personal life now, work on changing something in yourself. !!!

You can’t be everything to everyone. Does someone imagine you can do the impossible? Are you tempted to try, just because it would be so nice to grant their wish? Would that be for their benefit - or for yours?

Sometimes, some people use relationships as a way of relating more to themselves than to other people!

What matters now, is that you know why a situation is the way that it is and why a person is behaving as they are. A wise insight could make a world of difference to your personal life, soon. !!!

Don’t be in too much of a rush. If others appear to be putting you under pressure, ask yourself if you may be imagining this? If you are sure this is not the case, it still doesn’t mean that you are obliged to accept the expectations that are being placed upon you. Even people who ‘belong together’ don’t own each other and sometimes, we forget how much strength and independence we are entitled to feel. It isn’t just in the emotional or personal realm that these comments apply. Be sure within yourself wherever you go.

BHAINI Thakur Uday Singh, the head of the Namdhari Sect, appealed to his followers not to vote for “drug dealers” in the upcoming 2017 assembly elections.

Referring indirectly to the Akalis, he said that it is the duty of Punjab’s masses to defeat the dons of the drug mafia in the upcoming assembly elections. At the time, he was addressing a gathering of Namdhari devotees on the evening following the death of Namdhari matriarch Chand Kaur. Namdhari matriarch Chand Kaur was shot dead by two unidentified assailants on April 4 near Thakur Partap Singh Academy. The Punjab government ordered a high

level investigation into the case but have yet to find the culprits. AAP’s state convener, Sucha Singh Chhotepur, extended his condolences to the grieving Namdhari sect. Addressing

the same gathering, Chhotepur said that the murder of Namdhari matriarch Chand Kaur in broad daylight has exposed the disturbed state of law and order in Punjab.

Chhotepur claimed that the SIT (Special Investigation Team) formed by the Punjab government to investigate the murder was merely a charade meant to deceive the Punjab masses.

SGPC creates committee to address racial attacks on Sikhs living abroad AMRITSAR SAHIB SGPC President Avtar Singh Makkar created a 21-membered committee to

abroad. The committee will work to ascertain the reasons behind racial attacks on Sikhs and

Eco-Sikh Chairman, Dr. Rajwant Singh, warmly welcomed the SGPC’s move. He said that his

collect information about prepare a report to organization was already the factors responsible for recommend strategies to running a campaign across racial attacks on Sikhs control such attacks. the U.S. to raise awareness

India’s top woman biker Veenu Paliwal dies in road accident One of India’s top women bikers, Veenu Paliwal, died in a road accident in Vidisha district in Madhya Pradesh late on Monday evening.

Paliwal, 44, was on a nationwide tour on her Harley Davidson when the accident took place.

She was accompanied on another bike by fellow biker Dipesh Tanwar.

Paliwal died after her bike went out of control on a turn and she skid off a road near Gyaraspur about 100km

from Bhopal. She was rushed to a primary health centre and later to the Vidisha district hospital, where she was declared brought dead.

Paliwal and Tanwar were heading to Bhopal from

Sagar when the accident took place. Paliwal, a Jaipur resident, was known for her skills with the motorcycle and for having driven the Harley Davidson bikes at 180kmph.

She was planning to make a documentary on her nationwide bike journey.

The police said that her family and friends had been informed and that they would be reached Jaipur soon. The post-mortem on Paliwal’s body was to take place today morning.

about the Sikh identity.

Rajwant Singh said that his organization has approached President Barack Obama and appealed to him to take action regarding this matter.

A 30-second advertisement will be prepared for national TV channels to inform the American public about the Sikh identity. “A total of 1.2 million dollars are required to complete the advertisement plan, for which most [of the money] has been collected, while the SGPC is expected to contribute the rest,” said Rajwant Singh. There has been a sharp increase in hate crimes on the Sikhs living abroad. Earlier in January, Gurcharan Singh Gill, a 68 year old store clerk was shot day. Since then, there have been at least 3 hate crimes in Fresno alone. In March, a Sikh teenager was attacked and bullied whilst on his way back to home from school. Just a few days ago, Supninder Singh Khehra from Quebec, Canada, was physically abused. Similar attacks on Sikhs have taken place all over the world in recent months.

Impetence?

416-992-5489

Issue - 662 (6)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Maharashtra Council passes Bill to regulate dance bars Jail term of up to six months for inappropriately touching or misbehaving with a bar dancer and hefty fine for violating licence norms are some of the key provisions of a landmark Bill passed today in Maharashtra Legislative Council with an aim to regulate dance bars.

The Bill, which sets the stage for reopening of dance bars after more than a decade, and comes post a recent Supreme Court verdict, was passed in the Upper House by voice vote with Deputy Chairman Vasant Dawkhare in Chair.

The Bill was piloted by Leader of the House and Minister for Revenue Eknath Khadse.

The legislation seeks to prohibit “obscene”

dances (dances which have sexual connotations, sexual gestures, actions which hint at sexual intercourse during a performance) in hotels, restaurants, bar rooms and other establishments.

It lays down guidelines to “protect the dignity and safety of women in such places with a view to prevent their exploitation”.

Any person seeking a licence under the new law to open dance bars in hotels, restaurants and bar rooms will have to provide conducive working condition for women employees and take adequate steps for their protection.

Besides, the owner will have to ensure adequate security of people visiting such a place. Dance bar licence will not be issued

for places which already have permission for discotheque and orchestra.

The owner/manager of such an establishment, if found violating the licence conditions, shall face a jail term of up to 5 years or Rs 25 lakh fine or both.

If he continues to violate the norms, a fine of Rs 25,000 will slapped per day.

A patron cannot misbehave with the dancer or touch her inappropriately. Violating this rule shall invite a jail term of up to 6 months or Rs 50,000 fine or both.

The owner/manager will not let dancers perform any “obscene” dance and shall ensure no woman is sexually exploited. If found guilty, such a person shall invite a jail sentence of 3

Vijay Mallya may now have to face a non-bailable warrant After failing to appear before the Enforcement Directorate for three times, liquor baron Vijay Mallya now may have to face a non-bailable warrant in connection with a money

laundering probe in the over Rs 900 crore IDBI loan fraud case.

The ED is may either move a competent court in Mumbai to get a nonbailable warrant issued against him or write to the passport authority under the Ministry of External Affairs to get his international travel authority document revoked.

ED’s office in Mumbai, they said, is preparing legal papers to take the next step in the wake of Mallya skipping the third summons that required him to “personally” join investigations on April 9.

Mallya had last week informed the Investigating

Officer (IO) of the case in Mumbai that he will be unable to depose personally citing the ongoing legal proceedings going on in the Supreme Court over settlement of

loans. The agency had issued fresh summons last week to Mallya asking him to appear on April 9

after he sought two extensions from the earlier dates of March 18 and April 2. Mallya, who owes more than Rs 9,000 crore to a consortium of 17 banks, on March 30 had submitted to the Supreme Court a repayment plan of Rs 4,000 crore by September this year. The top court has asked the consortium led by the State Bank of India (SBI) to respond to the liquor baron’s proposal. Mallya’s lawyer told the Supreme Court that he had two rounds of meeting through video conferencing with the banks after leaving India last month. “The media hype has vitiated the fair trail,” he told the court from London.

years or Rs 10 lakh fine or both.

Further, if the person continues to commit the same crime, each day a fine of Rs 10,000 shall be imposed.

According to the legislation, a patron will not be allowed to throw coins, currency notes or any object that are monetary in nature on the dance floor.

The Bill is expected to be

Peru raids local Mossack Fonseca office, seizes documents

Authorities in Peru raided the local office of Panamabased law firm Mossack Fonseca on Monday, seizing accounting documents in an investigation into possible tax evasion and fraud, the country’s tax agency said.

A team of 20 tax officials sought evidence on whether companies Mossack Fonseca helped establish in tax havens

were used to commit crimes in Peru, tax agency SUNAT said in a statement.

TV images showed police standing by with riot shields in front of a house in Lima’s financial district San Isidro.

Mossack Fonseca is at the center of an international data leak scandal that has embarrassed several world

Panama Leak: British PM David Cameron’s mother gave him 200,000 pounds as a gift. Why? What is being considered an ‘unorthodox’ move is British Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to release a summary of his tax returns from 200915.

Cameron has published his tax records to clear the air regarding his personal finances raised by the mention of his late father in the Panama Papers for setting up an offshore fund. The 11.5 million documents leaked

from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca reveal the creation of more than 200,000 companies in offshore tax havens.

introduced in the Assembly tomorrow, and going by the all-round support it received in the Council, a smooth sailing is likely in the Lower House too.

Such a revelation has led to a demand for Cameron’s resignation. However, Cameron is not accused of doing anything illegal he sure has made four different statements over four days.

After a three paged summary was published by the Downing Street, it was observed that two 100,000 pound payments were made a year after the PM inherited 300,000 pound from his father in 2010. It

was his mother, Mary Cameron, who had transferred the two payments to his account in 2011. This was done to allow the family estate to avoid a 80,000 pound worth of inheritance tax.

Downing Street said the payments were an attempt to “balance” the sums received by all the Cameron children, as Mr Cameron’s older brother had inherited the family home.

leaders and shone a spotlight on the shadowy world of offshore companies.

The local representative of Mossack Fonseca in Peru, Monica de Ycaza, told reporters that she was collaborating with investigators. She could not be reached for further comment.

Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak of more than 11.5 million documents, dubbed the “Panama Papers,” from the law firm.

Pre-mature Ejaculation?

416-992-5489

Issue - 662 (7)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Autistic tendencies high in NRI kids?

HYDERABAD Autism is on the rise among NRI kids with more than 30% of the reported cases seen by experts in city hospitals are said to be catering to this segment alone. Though the high

incidence in NRI children is a fact unanimously acknow-ledged by city experts, they are divided over the factors responsible for the rising cases of autism - a neuro behavioral problem in children that leads to communication barriers and known to affect 1 in 1,000 kids in the country.While one group attributes it on the alien social set-up that NRI kids grow up without proper support to develop their communication skills, the other group credits it to the higher level of awareness about the disease that their

parents enjoy.

“It has been noticed that NRI parents, if both are working, have minimum exposure to other people around and they often involve themselves in gadgets besides remaining

immersed in their work.

Even if appointed care givers take care of the physical needs of the children, there is a huge gap of communication created with the kid,” said Anitha Are, clinical psychologist, Citizens Hospital, who has come across 50-60 NRI autistic kids in last three years.While blaming the rise in autism cases in NRI kids to environmental factors, she added that an alien country go on to make it difficult for them to interact, respond and communicate.However, in a differing note but at the same time acknowledging higher autistic case load in NRI kids having seen over 50 such cases in last two years, Dr K Srinivas, consultant neuropsychiatrist, Maxcure Hospitals, sought to pin the blame to more number of autism screenings resorted to by their well-educated parents.

“Unlike Indian parents, who would take it easy if their four year old child does not manage to speak even a few words, NRI parents settled in developed countries rush for autism screening at two years of age if they suspect any autistic behaviour,” added Dr Srinivas, who practised for three years in the USA. So, what are the symptoms of autistic behaviour?

Sometimes, they could get manifested in inability of kids to babble words like “Pappa”, “Mamma” at 18 months, or failure to describe simple emotions like hot or cold when they are between 2.5 and 3.5 years or are unable to narrate a small event at the age of four. Some children fails to respond to calls by name.

Take for instance, take the case of 18-month old baby boy Akash, whose family is settled in the USA. His mother started working when he started learning gestures like ‘bye’ and started babbling “Pappa” and “Mamma”, leaving the kid to his grandmother, who was addicted to watching television.Left untaught, the kid soon stopped responding to name calling, stopped eye contact and use small words for communication before an expert diagnosed his condition in a screening at the age of two-and-half years.In fact, the autistic behaviour is also likely if working parents leave the children in creche or preschools but there is no interaction and socialising with other kids.

Clarify stand on bringing Kohinoor back to India: SC to centre New Delhi The Supreme Court on Friday asked the government to clarify its stand on a PIL seeking return of Kohinoor

India and even South Africa. Somebody here is also asking for the Kohinoor. Do you know about it,” the bench asked the Solicitor

diamond.A bench headed

by Chief Justice TS Thakur, which did not issue notice on the PIL, asked the Solicitor General to seek instructions in the matter within a week.“Everybody is claiming the Kohinoor.

How many countries are claiming Kohinoor?

Pakistan, Bangladesh,

General.Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar said he was unaware of it and would need time to seek instructions and get back.

During the hearing, the bench, also comprising Justices R Banumathi and UU Lalit, said there has been a press report attributing statements to the British Prime Minister

quoting him as saying, “if we were to accept such demands, British Museums would be empty”.“Why don’t you approach the government?

Hasn’t the government taken up the matter?” the bench told the petitioner.

The court was hearing a PIL filed by All India Human Rights and Social Justice Front seeking directions to the High Commissioner of UK for returning the diamond among other treasures — “ring, talwar (sword) and other treasures of Tipu Sultan, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Rani of Jhansi, Nawab Mir Ahmad Ali Banda and other rulers of India.”

The PIL has made the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Culture, High Commissioners of UK, Pakistan and Bangladesh parties in the case.

Draft bill: Two years in jail for abusing transgenders New Delhi Physical, sexual, emotional and even economical abuse of a transgender person could be punished with imprisonment of up to two years if a Bill drafted by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (SJE) were to come into effect.

The ministry, headed by Thaawar Chand Gehlot, circulated a draft Cabinet note on the ‘Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2016’ to all ministries for their comments on March 23. It proposes imprisonment of at least six months and not more than two years, along with a fine for people found guilty of compelling a transgender person to beg, denying them access to a public place, forcing or causing a transgender person to leave his/her house or village and harming or injuring their physical or mental wellbeing.The Bill provides recognition of transgender people before law and gives them rights and entitlements including reservation in education and government jobs under the OBC quota, if the person in question does not already belong to the SC/ST community.

According to the 2011 Census, there are 6 lakh people belonging to the transgender community. A

the IPC to cover cases of sexual offence against transgender persons. The legislation is modelled on

transgender person, as per the draft legislation, will be recognised as one once he/she gets a certificate issued by the District Magistrate of the district where the applicant is residing on the recommendation of a district-level screening committee comprising a chief medical officer, district social welfare officer, psychologist/ psychiatrist, social worker and two representatives of the transgender community.

The draft law also proposes to create a National Council of Transgender Persons and start schemes to provide scholarships, textbooks and hostel accommodation to them. It further calls for necessary amendments in

the private members’ bill moved by Rajya Sabha MP Tiruchi Siva and passed by the Upper House on April 24, 2015. This was the first time in 45 years that a private members’ Bill had been passed by the House, forcing the government to assure the House that it would bring it’s own law in Lok Sabha after “correcting infirmities” in Siva’s Bill. The SJE ministry had several rounds of consultations and has finally moved a Cabinet note.Many provisions of Siva’s Bill have been accommodated in the government legislation except for provision for exclusive transgender rights courts and national and state commissions for transgender persons.

Issue - 662 (8)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Google unveils India health cards as it eyes vast market NEW DELHI Google on Tuesday began offering its own doctor-vetted health information on search pages in India, as the Internet

giant battles to boost user numbers in the key emerging market. The “health cards”, available in Hindi and English, cover more than 400 conditions and give basic information such as typical symptoms, the prevalence of a disease and medical illustrations for people with limited reading skills.

After the United States and

Brazil, India is the third country to get the health cards, which appear at the top of a Google search page when searching using its smartphone app. “How

contagious is this condition, am I in the age range that’s likely to get it, what are the common symptoms - these are questions we see constantly,” said Prem Ramaswami, a senior product manager at Google. “We view this as a simple outline, a stepping stone, a framework from which an individual can learn about the health condition and

have a more informed conversation with their doctor.”

The health cards are part of Google’s strategy to improve the quality of information available on the Indian Internet, to encourage people to use the search engine and help it tap the vast market.

With hundreds of millions of Indians not online or new to the Internet, Google is still seen by many as a specialist research tool rather than a daily information source.

Many people prefer to ask friends for information rather than search for it online, meaning Google has struggled to gather high-quality content, while India’s plethora of official languages has also posed a barrier. Approximately one in 20 Google searches worldwide is for health-related information, the search giant said.

The Indian health cards were produced together with India’s Apollo Hospitals and Columbia Asia Hospitals. India has roughly one doctor per 1,400 people according to the World Bank far fewer than in most developed countries.

Consensual sex with girl below 16 is also rape: Punjab and Haryana high court CHANDIGARH In a verdict with wide ramifications, especially where the accused in rape cases are seeking leniency on the grounds that the intercourse was consensual, the Punjab and Haryana high court has made it clear that if the girl is below 16 years of age, the other partner in the sexual act is a criminal.

“A minor girl can be lured into giving consent for such an act without understanding the implications. Such consent, therefore, is treated as not an informed consent given after understanding the pros and cons as well as consequences of the intended action.

Therefore, as a necessary corollary, duty is cast upon other person of not taking advantage of the so-called consent given by a girl who is less than 16 years of age,” observed Justice Anita Chaudhary.

Justice Chaudhary passed these orders on March 30 while

dismissing an appeal filed by a man from Gurgaon district against his conviction for raping a minor girl. The accused in the case was emphasizing that his conviction should be set aside because the sexual relations with the victim were consensual.

Dismissing his plea, the court

made it clear that if the girl is below 16 years, the other partner in the sexual act has to be treated as a criminal. The law left no choice to him and he couldn’t plead that the act was consensual, the court observed.

Accused had kidnapped the victim, who was around 15 years of age on January 22, 2010. The

father of the victim, who filed a complaint before the police, was not aware of the person who was involved.

The girl was recovered later, and then it appeared that the accused was a mason and was working in the house of the complainant. He was already married and had two children.

He was tried before the district court Gurgaon, which on October 10, 2010, hold him guilty for rape and kidnapping of a minor girl and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

Aggrieved by the sentence, the convict had filed appeal before the Punjab and Haryana high court. His main argument was that the girl had stayed with him, and it was a case of consensual sexual relationship, thus, the court should be lenient to him and he should be released. Rejecting his appeal, the HC held that a minor is incapable of thinking rationally and whether it is civil law or criminal law, the consent of a minor is not treated as valid.

Pathankot attack: Pakistan backtracks after seeing NIA evidence on terror links

NEW DELHI Pakistan has backtracked from its promise to allow a team of Indian investigators to visit there to probe the Pathankot terror attack case apparently after finding that NIA has enough evidence to nail ISI’s links with terrorists involved in it, official sources said.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had given the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of Pakistan, during its five-day trip to India, critical evidence on Pakistani handlers of the terrorists who carried out the January 2 attack on the strategic airbase.

The JIT was given full transcript of the telephonic conversations between the terrorists and their Pakistani handlers along with their identity, the sources said.

The NIA gave to JIT the links of Pakistani officials, believed to be ISI personnel, with the handlers of the terrorists, the sources said. The JIT was provided with electronic and forensic evidence regarding the slain terrorists’ Pakistani links, name of the

Wild elephant kills five in India

NEW DELHI A rampaging elephant killed five members of a family including a nine-day old infant in a remote village in India’s northeastern frontier, a local official said Tuesday. The elephant trampled the family to death while they were asleep in their thatched hut in the early hours of Tuesday in Behali forest, some 256 kilometres (160 miles) from

85-year-old man allegedly kills wife, son over use of air conditioner ANGAMALY An 85-year-old man allegedly killed his wife and ailing son in their house in Angamaly for using the air conditioner disregarding his diktat against it to bring down the rising power bill, police said.

Paul Painadathu also allegedly made an attempt to commit suicide after fatally attacking his 74-year-old wife and 54-year-old son with a sharp edged iron bar at around 1am. Paul, a retired

railway official, has been detained and investigations are on, police said. Paul telephoned his other son working in Qatar and informed him about the incident and also told him that he was going to commit suicide. The panicstricken son immediately telephoned their relative staying in the neighbourhood, who in turn alerted the police. According to police, Paul had warned against excessive use of air conditioner

in view of escalating electricity bill. But both his wife and son, who had recently undergone treatment for heart problem, ignored his advice and switched on the AC last night, police said. Enraged over this, Paul entered the room in which the two were sleeping and hit them with the iron bar. Both died on the spot. After the incident Paul allegedly tried to kill himself by hanging from the roof

terrorists and several other critical evidence after an exhaustive probe conducted by the NIA. The Pakistani team was given concrete proof that Jaishe -Mohammed chief Masood Azhar’s brother Abdul Rauf was in constant touch with the terrorists and giving them necessary instructions during the three-day carnage.

“The JIT was completely surprised over the evidence the NIA had gathered as proof of the Pakistani links of the terrorists.

They realised that their game is up. The sudden turn around on the promise of allowing an NIA team to visit Pakistan could be the result of that,” a source said.

Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit on Thursday had indicated that Indian investigators may not be allowed to visit Pakistan to pursue the probe in connection with the Pathankot attack.

However, India countered it by saying that before the JIT’s visit here, both sides had agreed that it would be on the basis of reciprocity.

but could not climb the ladder due to his old age, police said.

Assam state’s capital Guwahati.

Both parents, their infant daughter and two other children died during the incident, while their three-year-old daughter survived the attack and was being treated at a hospital for minor injuries. ‘The family was asleep when the elephant attacked their hut,’ Rajiv Chaudhary, a divisional forestry officer, told AFP. He said the elephant had apparently strayed from its herd when it charged the home. The animal reportedly left the area soon after the attack, according to the official.

Wildlife experts say encounters between humans and elephants are increasing in India’s rural areas due to the destruction of the animals’ habitat. Last month a herd of wild elephants went on an hours-long rampage in neighbouring West Bengal, killing five people and damaging vehicles and homes before being subdued with tranquilliser darts.

Issue - 662 (9)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Arvind Kejriwal: The As Punjab polls loom, AAP looks towards Canada and UK ‘most attacked’ politician Toronto Come year-end, Vancouver resident Jaskirat Kaur Mann will spend two to three months at her native village in Punjab.

The motive behind her trip isn’t

just flying south for the winter.

Mann’s objective is to campaign for the Aam Aadmi Party in the early 2017 Punjab assembly polls – a project the party has undertaken across Canada and Britain, two countries with a substantial Punjabi population.

Hoping to score a repeat performance of the 2015 Delhi assembly polls, AAP backers across Britain have also launched programmes to raise support and funds for the party’s Punjab campaign. AAP coordinator

CAUGHT

DRUNK DRIVING? CALL VICKY SINGH AT:

416-887-4971

Prayas Chaudhary told HT in London that the success of the Flame of Hope programme in Britain before the Delhi polls has inspired the launching of a similar project – the Flame of Hope for

Punjab – across four cities of Britain in February. During that time, Adarsh Shastri and Jarnail Singh – two AAP legislators from Delhi – toured Britain and participated in public events across Glasgow, Wolverhampton, Leicester and London. A street procession in Southall was wellreceived, with MLAs appeared on Sikh TV and radio stations to outline their future plans for a Punjab Dialogue Commission.

The February campaign was aimed at mobilising volunteers, meeting the public, answering their questions, explaining AAP’s agenda in Punjab, and telling NRIs how they can support clean politics. The public events were attended by Sikhs and nonSikhs, who asked the two MLAs a range of questions on the challenges facing the ‘aam aadmi’ of Punjab.

“Teams for a more aggressive and focused UK-wide campaign are being formalized, and we hope to

Elders settle gangrape case with 30 maunds of wheat Toronto A gangrape case in Pakistan has been reportedly settled for 30 maunds of wheat by local elders, highlighting the grave travesty of justice in the country. A police case was registered a few days ago by the 14-year-old victim’s brother in Ghulam Nabi Shah area of Umerkot district in Sindh province.The victim’s father said that following the registration of the

case and the subsequent arrest of the suspect, he was forced to settle the dispute through the ‘Jirga’ -- a traditional system of settling disputes through tribal elders -- and was promised a compensation of 30 maunds of wheat. The jirga was held under the supervision of a local influential landlord, he said. He said that after he refused to accept compensation, he was forced to leave the area with his family.

have teams for each city declared very soon,” Chaudhary said.

Fund-raising is a very important aspect for AAP supporters in Britain. A total of Rs 15 lakh was donated through the party’s website by Indian passport holders before the Delhi polls.

Several AAP volunteers from Britain also travelled to the Indian capital for the elections.

Mann, the convenor of AAP’s Canada unit, said a “big group” was working to mobilise support for the Kejriwal-led AAP, which shook the nation’s political scene by making short work of its rivals in the Delhi assembly polls. “We will go all out to campaign for the party. So far, around 3,000 people have already committed to supporting it,” said the 35-yearold native of Bhatinda, who runs a trucking company in Canada.

Kejriwal is also expected to visit Toronto and Vancouver this year.

“We’re trying to fix the right time,” Mann said, adding that his presence would give the movement a big impetus.

Another expected visitor is AAP MP Bhagwant Mann. Party activists are also planning to participate in nagar kirtans to mark the Vaisakhi festival.

NEW DELHI For Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Saturday’s shoe attack on him was perhaps the first such attack. However, the AAP chief has been the victim of numerous attacks, including physical assault and ink attacks, ever since he joined active politics. Kejriwal appears to have become the most attacked politician of late.

Following is a list of attacks on Kejriwal: * In November 2013, a man who claimed to be a supporter of Anna Hazare attacked Kejriwal and other AAP leaders with ink. * In March 2014, while campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections in Varanasi, an unidentified group of men threw

ink and eggs on Kejriwal. He escaped unhurt. * In April 2014, while campaigning for Delhi assembly elections, he was punched on his back by a man in Dakshinpuri. * Again in April 2014, four days later, Kejriwal was slapped by an autorickshaw driver in Delhi’s Sultanpuri area. * Earlier in January this year, Kejriwal faced an ink attack from Bhavana Arora, a member of AAP splinter group Aam Aadmi Sena, in an event held to celebrate the success of the first phase of odd-even scheme for vehicles in the national capital. * In February 2016, his car was attacked by a group of men in Punjab while he was in the state for campaigning.

from NTU’s Asian School of the Environment and an earth scientist at Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS).

“These vibration patterns are caused by alternating slow and fast ruptures occurring on the same patch of a fault.

The study, led by Barbot’s PhD student, Deepa Mele Veedu has major significance on the prediction of earthquakes.

Seismic hazards in the Southeast Asia region will probably come from an impending large earthquake in the Mentawai seismic gap in Sumatra, Indonesia - a current area of active monitoring and investigation, researchers said.

EOS scientists have earlier pointed out a large earthquake may occur any time in this area southwest of Padang - the only place along a large fault where a big earthquake has not occurred in the past two centuries.

The team’s latest findings could potentially be applied in the seismic monitoring of the area to help better forecast large earthquakes in the region.

Team led by Indian-origin researcher finds new way to predict quakes Singapore Scientists, led by an Indian-origin researcher, have discovered a way to forecast earthquakes based on slow fault movements caused by moving sub layers of Earth.So far, scientists believe that larger earthquakes are unlikely to occur following tremors or earthquakes below a Richter scale of 2 that are caused by small vibrations or slow fault movements.

However, researchers from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore found that not only do these vibrations potentially point to an impending earthquake, they also discovered a discernible pattern to them.“This discovery defied our understanding of how faults accumulate and release stress over time,” said Sylvain Barbot,

“If only slow movements are detected, it does not mean that a large earthquake cannot happen there. On the contrary, the same area of the fault can rupture in a catastrophic earthquake,” Barbot said.

Executions hit highest level in 25 years in 2015 Beijing There were more executions worldwide in 2015 than in any year since 1990 and almost 90 percent occurred in three countries - Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

At least 1,634 people were executed last year, the organisation said, adding that the actual number was probably significantly higher given that there are no definitive numbers for China.

“The number of known executions rose by more than 50 percent compared with 2014 -

this development is unsettling and alarming,” said Oliver Hendrich, an expert on capital punishment at Amnesty International in Germany.

At least 977 people were executed in Iran last year, mostly for drug crimes, Amnesty said, while more than 320 death sentences were carried out in Pakistan and at least 158 people were executed in Saudi Arabia.

In the United States, 28 people were executed last year - the lowest number since 1991, Amnesty said.

China is believed to remain the world’s top executioner, with the number of people put to death

annually in the thousands, though the exact figure is a state secret, the rights group said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, asked about the report, said Amnesty often released “unfair” statements about China that lacked objectivity. “So we have no interest in making comment on this,” he told a daily news briefing in Beijing. Countries that impose the death penalty are in the minority for the first time now, Amnesty said. It added that 102 countries had got rid of the death penalty for all crimes by the end of 2015, compared with 60 countries in 1996.

Issue - 662 (10)

Khatri Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, Canadian Citizen, 28 yrs. old, 5’11” tall, turbaned, handsome, non-drinker, working as a pharmacist in a GTA hospital.

The girl should be from respectable Sikh family, educated, professionally employed and with family values.

Please email recent picture and bio-data to: tklamba@hotmail.com Or Call : 647-502-1963 ***664*** 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 *** 664*** Punjabi Sikh parents seek a match for their Canadian born and raised, clean shaven son, 32 yrs. old, 6’-1" tall, handsome, Doctor MD, finished internal Medicine, residency and now doing followship (Specialization). The girl should be resident doctor (MD) or Physician, born and raised in Canada and from Ontario, beautiful, atleast 5’-5" tall with family values. Please send your bio-data & recent picture: sm9058@hotmail.com ***663*** Punjabi Sikh parents seek a match for their Canadian born and raised, clean shaven son, 32 yrs. old, 6’-1” tall, handsome, Doctor MD, finished internal Medicine residency and now doing fellowship (specialization). The girl should be resident doctor (MD) or Physician, born and raised in Canada and from Ontario, beautiful, atleast 5’-5” tall with family values. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: sm9058@hotmail.com ***662** Match for beautiful, intelligent, well-cultured girl, canadian pr, citizenship this year, born in 1985, 5'-5" tall, B.Tech (india), pg project management (canada), working in Admn. Dept of a company in canada. The boy should be Jat sikh, qualified, canadian, well settled. Brother and parents in USA, belong to Ludhiana but now built kothi in Amritsar. Please send your biodata and recent picture to: dhillonintl@yahoo.com or call: 1718-414-4618 *** 662*** Goswami Puri parents seek a suitable match from a sound background family in India or Canada for their handsome, Canadian Citizen son, 5'-8" tall, Born September 1992 in India & graduated in Canada, working in a Courier Company in Vancouver & holding Class one licence.

Caste no bar. Student visa /work

12 April - 18 April 2016

permit can also be considered.

Please your bio-data & recent picture to: goswami1957@gmail.com or Call 778-680-4440. (6-8 pm weekends & 2-4 pm Friday) *** 662*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 32 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, beautiful, Master’s degree in English, working in a top ranking bank of Canada, divorced after short marriage. The boy should be well educated, professionally employed, Canadian Citizen and with family values. Please email recent picture and bio-data: gill.roop@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-604-615-4316 Or : 1-639-317-7836 ***662** Jat Sikh family seeking USA/ Canada based match for their beautiful daughter, 27 yrs. old, 5’4” tall, well settled, born and raised in USA, Master of Science in Nursing-Nurse Practitioner/ Bachelor of Science in Nursing, well cultured in both English and Punjabi with traditional values (Non drinker, non smoker). The boy should be Jat Sikh and equally qualified. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: dhaliwal.sr85@gmail.com Or Call : 1-754-673-8388 ***662** Jat Sikh parents seeking a suitable match for their son, 36 yrs. old, 5’-11” tall, born and raised in Canada, MBA and CMA, working as a Business Analyst in a reputed company. The girl should be Canadian Immigrant/ Citizen, well educated and family oriented.

Please Call : 905-846-7328 ***662** Ramgarhia Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 30 yrs. old, 5’ tall, B.Sc. Nursing, Registered Nurse (RN), Working in India, beautiful and family oriented. The boy should be Canadian/American, Immigrant of Citizen. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: sohalsp@gmail.com Or Call : 647-829-5872 (Leave Message) ***662** Nai Sikh family seek a suitable match for their daughter, 33 yrs. old, 5’ 7” tall, Post graduate, Canadian Citizen, having good job. The boy should be well settled & educated. Toronto Area preferred. Caste no Bar. Please send you bio-data & recent picture to: singh1112015@hotmail.com Or Call : 289-242-6151 ***662** Looking for a Canadian Citizen boy, well educated, well settled, clean shaven for a Canadian born, 27 yrs. old, 5’-9” tall, Tonk Kashtria girl, working as a Marketing Manager in Toronto.

Call : 416-577-5935 ***662** Looking for a Canadian Citizen boy, well educated, well settled, clean shaven for a Canadian born, 31 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall, Tonk Kashtria girl, working as a Law

Clerk in Toronto. Call : 416-5775935 ***662** Jat Sikh parents from Chandigarh invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, DOB 1989, Completed her studies from Canada and working with a reputed company.

The boy should be educated, settled from Canada/America.

Please email recent picture and bio-data to: taj5651@yahoo.com ***662** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 31 yrs. old, 6’-2” tall, Canadian Citizen, professionally educated, running his own successful business. The girl should be educated, beautiful, tall with family values from US/ Canada. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: gurjeet_hothi@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-778-344-0303 ***662*** Saini Sikh parents seeking a match for USA citizen son, 26 yrs. old, 5'-11" tall, clean shaven, Engineer, working since 2012 in private sector, New York based family. Caste no bar. USA resident only. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: 28jsaini@gmail.com or call: 1516-852-7032 *** 662*** Ghumar/Parjapat well reputed businessman family in Punjab (India) seeks a suitable match for their son, Canadian PR, 28 yrs. old, 6' tall, B.com, MBA, now doing CPA, professionally well employed in Winnipeg. Girl should be tall, well educated and family oriented. Please send your biodata & recent picture to: mansingh2951@gmail.com or call 1-204-979-3277 or 011-9199883-67557 *** 662*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, born and raised in Canada, 30 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, Masters in Clinical Psychology, professionally employed, well versed in both cultures. The boy should be well educated, professionally settled between 28-34 yrs. of age.

Mainland area prefered. Please Call : 1-604-317-7576 ***662*** Match for Hindu/Sikh Ramgarhia Dhiman girl, 30 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, B.Sc., M.Sc. in Nursing, Vegetarian, holds US Visitor Visa. Upper caste no bar. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: rupajagdev85@gmail.com Or Call : 1-484-557-7706 Or : 011-9196460-12412 ***662** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their Canadian Citizen son, 26 yrs. old, 6’-2 tall, clean shaven, handsome, non-drinker, Diploma in HVAC-BCIT, Transit Operator-Coast Mountain Bus Company Vancouver. The girl should be Jat Sikh, Canadian Citizen/Permanent Resident, not more than 26 yrs. old, beautiful, professionally employed, preferably from Vancouver or BC area. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to:

gbala9999@gmail.com Or Call : 1-604-312-0526 ***662** Match for Hindu/Sikh Ramgarhia Dhiman Clean Shaven boy, 31 yrs. old, 5’-11” tall, MS in Engineering/MBA in IT from America, Vegetarian, working in US on H1B Visa. Upper caste no bar. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: rupajagdev85@gmail.com Or Call : 1-484-557-7706 Or : 011-9196460-12412 ***662** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their daughter, 38 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, Canadian Citizen, Never married, Professionally Employed in Health field (G.T.A.) The boy should be Jat Sikh, Educated, Employed, Never married. Please send your biodata & recent picture to: myshadi2016@hotmail.com ***662** Well educated Arora Sikh family seeking a well settled Canadian match for very beautiful, well mannered, pretty daughter, living in India, DOB 1988, 5’-2” tall, B.Com., running her own home made chocolates business in Amritsar. Please respond with biodata & recent picture to: matrimonial14rk@gmail.com Or Call : 011-91-70879-51829 ***662*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, born in U.S.A., raised in Canada, DOB 1988, 5’-6” tall, very pretty, software engineer. Suitable match from GTA, prefere IT/Medico, born and raised in Canada. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: simran_01@rogers.com Or Call : 416-272-9595 ***662** Jat Sikh family seeks a suitable match for their daughter, 23 yrs. old, 5’-7” tall, born in Canada, University degree holder. The boy should be born and raised in Canada, not more than 26 yrs. of age, educated, well settled with family values. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: ksingh5681@gmail.com ***662** Well established, well respected, Ramgarhia Sikh family invite matrimonial alliance for their son, born and raised in Canada, degree in Psychology and well settled as a regional operations manager in one of the top ranking companies of Canada. The girl should be educated, beautiful, family oriented and well versed in both cultures. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: gk_1925@hotmail.com Or Call : 905-915-0488 Or : 647-206-3245 ***662** Amritdhari Jat Sikh family seeking a suitable match for their son, 26 yrs. old, 5’-7” tall, Canadian Citizen, Engineering degree from BCIT Canada, well settled in govt. job. The girl should be educated, Canadian Citizen/ Immigrant and family oriented.

Please Call : 1-604-626-8653 ***1175** Well settled and reputed Jat Sikh family seeking a suitable match

for theit daughter 20 yrs. old, 5’7” tall, persuing Bachelors in Dental Surgery (BDS), very fair, slim, beautiful, residing at Mohali (Chandigarh). The boy should be Canadian Immigrant/Citizen, Medico/Lawyer/IT professionall or successifuul businessman from a well settled family. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: gurunanak3536@gmail.com Or Call : 011-91-98154-41730 Or : 1306-830-1878 ***662** Mazhbi Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 30 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, beautiful, LLM degree holder, working as Assistant Professor in Delhi University India, father Additional Secretery retired, status family. The boy should be Canadian/American, Iimmigrant/ Citizen, well educated and family oriented. Caste no bar. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: sahota.avtar54@gmail.com Or Call : 011-91-98681-07737 Or : 416-400-7895 ***662** Saini Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 31 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall, raised in Canada, M.A.Sc. in Engineering, working for a leading engineering company in GTA, Vegetarian. The boy should be very well educated, Canadian born/raised from early age, professionally employed preferably from GTA. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: shagan018@gmail.com Or Call : 416-795-7531 ***662** Well settled jat Sikh Maan parents in USA seeking a suitable match for their daughter, born in Sept 1985,U S citizen, Master,s in Mathematics currently teaching in high school, 5'- 5" Tall, slim. New York area prefered.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: manngurdip916@gmail.com *** 662*** 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 ***662*** Lubana Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 1985 born, 5’-9” tal, running his own successful business in USA and earning in six figures, graduated from Canadian University with bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and post graduate diploma, extended family well settled in Canada/USA, seeking a beautiful, professional, career and family oriented girl, USA family also welcome. Please email recent picture and biodata to: shaadi.northamerica@gmail.com Or Call: 647-956-4817 ***662**

Issue - 662 (11)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Key Paris attacks suspect, Mhd Abrini, arrested in Belgium Brussels A fugitive suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks was arrested in Belgium on Friday, French police officials said, after a raid Belgian authorities said was linked to the deadly March 22 Brussels bombings.

The suspect, Mohamed Abrini, is believed to be the mysterious “man in the hat” who escaped the double bombing at the Zaventem airport, according to one of the French officials. If true, that would mean Abrini had a key role in both attacks carried out by the Islamic State cell that left a total of 162 people dead - 130 in Paris and 32 in Brussels.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity to offer details about the

ongoing Belgian investigation, which has also involved French antiterror police.

Friday’s arrest of at least two people came a day after Belgian authorities released photos and video of the airport suspect.

The Belgian federal

prosecutor’s office confirmed “several arrests” but refused to provide more information.

Abrini was the last identified suspect still at large from the November 13 attacks in Paris which killed 130 people, although his precise role has never been clear. He is a 31-yearold Belgian-Moroccan petty criminal believed to have traveled early last summer to Syria where his younger brother died in 2014 in the Islamic State group’s notorious

francophone brigade.

He has not resurfaced since the emergence of surveillance video placing him in the convoy with the attackers headed to Paris.

He had ties to Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks who died in a police standoff on

November 18, and is a childhood friend of brothers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam.

He went multiple times to Birmingham, England, last year, meeting with several men suspected of terrorist activity, a European security official has told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide details on the investigation. He said the meetings, including one later last summer, took

German spy chief says IS wants to attack but no firm plan known Berlin Islamic State wants to carry out attacks in Germany and the security situation is “very serious”,

wanted to carry out attacks against Germany and German interests, but added: “At the moment we don’t have any knowledge

the head of the country’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) told a Sunday newspaper, adding that he knew of no concrete plot to strike.

The militant group released a video on Tuesday suggesting it may carry out further attacks in the West after the Brussels bombings and Paris attacks, naming London, Berlin and Rome as possible targets.HansGeorg Maassen told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag the group

of any concrete terrorist attack plans in Germany.”

He said Islamic State propaganda was aimed at encouraging supporters to take the initiative to stage attacks in Germany.

Maassen said there were several cases linking Germans returning from Syria to attack plans and warned that the danger posed by jihadists from Germany remained “virulent”.He said the country had avoided a big attack so far thanks to the successful work of security

authorities and luck such as a bomb detonator not working properly on one or two occasions.

In 2014, a German man described as a radical Islamist was charged with planting a pipe bomb -which never exploded -- at Bonn train station in 2012.

In 2006, two suitcase bombs left by Islamist militants on trains in Cologne failed to explode.

Asked how many Islamists in Germany were considered highly dangerous, Maassen said there were about 1,100 Islamists who were seen as a potential terrorism risk.

CHARGED

DRUNK & DRIVING? CALL VICKY SINGH

416-887-4971

place in several locations, including cafes and apartments.

He was traveling with Salah Abdeslam, who is in jail in Belgium for involvement in the Paris attacks, in the convoy headed to Paris in the 36 hours leading up to the attacks.

The man in the hat was with the two suicide bombers who killed 16 people at Brussels airport on March 22. A second arrest could also be linked to the Maelbeek subway bombing that killed another 16 people during rush hour that morning.

On Thursday, authorities released photos and video of a man wearing a dark hat, leaving the airport on foot, walking to the nearby town of Zaventem and then into Brussels, where all traces of him were reportedly lost.

The appeal for public assistance more than two weeks after the suicide bombings indicates that investigators were at a standstill.

The arrest of Abrini was first reported by Belgian broadcaster VRT.

Suspected Al Qaeda militants execute 17 Yemeni government soldiers Aden Suspected al Qaeda militants in southern Yemen seized and executed 17 soldiers loyal to President Abd-Rabbu

Ali Aqeel. “We entered Ahwar around two months ago to chase this corrupt individual and his gang,” the statement said. The soldiers had been visiting

Mansour Hadi on Saturday, local officials and residents said.

The soldiers were detained while travelling from the southern port of Aden to alMahra province in eastern Yemen via Ahwar, a city in Abyan province under al Qaeda control.The militants took them to a remote area and killed them by firing squad, the officials and residents said.

They said 17 other captive soldiers were wounded in the incident and some managed to escape and get help from local tribal leaders.Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, later issued a statement denying responsibility for the attack and blamed a local armed fighter named

family in Aden and were returning to their base in alMahra to draw their salaries, security sources said. They were not dressed in military uniform and were not riding in military vehicles. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has exploited the Yemeni war to expand areas under its control, seizing Mukalla, the capital of Hadramout province, last year and recruiting more followers.

The Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, backed by the United States, has helped AQAP become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago, a Reuters special report revealed last week.

Issue - 662 (12)

12 April - 18 April 2016

The return of Al Qaeda: Militants openly rule mini-state in Yemen Dubai/Cairo Once driven to near irrelevance by the rise of Islamic State abroad and harsh security crackdowns at home, Al Qaeda in Yemen now openly rules a mini-state with a war chest swollen by an estimated $100 million in looted bank deposits and revenue from running the country’s third largest port.

If Islamic State’s capital is the Syrian city of Raqqa, then Al Qaeda’s is Mukalla, a southeastern Yemeni port city of 500,000 people. Al Qaeda fighters there have abolished taxes for local residents, operate speedboats manned by RPG-wielding fighters who impose fees on ship traffic, and make propaganda videos in which they boast about paving local roads and stocking hospitals.

The economic empire was described by more than a dozen diplomats, Yemeni security officials, tribal leaders and residents of Mukalla. Its emergence is the most striking unintended consequence of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. The campaign, backed by the United States, has helped Al Qaeda in the Arabian

Peninsula (AQAP) to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago.Yemeni government officials and local traders estimated the group, as well as seizing the bank deposits, has extorted $1.4 million from the national oil company and earns up to $2 million every day in taxes on goods and fuel coming into the port.

AQAP boasts 1,000 fighters in Mukalla alone, controls 600 km (373 miles) of coastline and is ingratiating itself with southern Yemenis, who have felt marginalised by the country’s northern elite for years.

By adopting many of the tactics Islamic State uses to control its territory in Syria and Iraq, AQAP has expanded its own fiefdom.

The danger is that the group, which organised the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year and has repeatedly tried to down US airliners, may slowly indoctrinate the local population with its hardline ideology.

“I prefer that Al Qaeda stay here, not for Al Mukalla to be liberated,” said one 47-year-old resident. “The situation is stable, more than any ‘free’ part

of Yemen. The alternative to Al Qaeda is much worse.”

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is struggling to extricate itself from the Yemeni quagmire a year

government, which is backed by the Saudis, and the Houthis is due to begin on April 10.

In a recent statement issued by the Saudi embassy in

after intervening in the country’s civil war. Riyadh is determined to deny bitter rival Iran sway over another Arab capital. It has focused on attacking the Houthis who have seized parts of northern Yemen and who are allied to Iran.

But despite thousands of aerial bombings, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have failed to push the Houthis from the capital Sanaa. An estimated 6,000 people, half of them civilians, have been killed. A temporary ceasefire between the internationally recognised

Washington, Saudi officials said that their campaign had “denied terrorists a safe haven in Yemen.”

And yet, AQAP’s strength is growing.A US counter-terrorism official said AQAP remained one of Al Qaeda’s “most potent affiliates.” The United States launched its deadliest air strike yet on the group on March 22nd, killing around 50 of its fighters

at a military base outside Mukalla.

“The group’s bomb-making expertise and long-standing ambitions to carry out attacks using novel or complex tactics underscore (the) threat,” the official said.A senior Yemeni government official said the war against the Houthis “provided a suitable environment for the ... expansion of Al Qaeda.” The withdrawal of government army units from their bases in the south, allowed Al Qaeda to acquire “very large quantities of sophisticated and advanced weapons, including shoulderfired missiles and armed vehicles.”As well, the coalition’s preoccupation with fighting the Houthis “made it easier for Al Qaeda elements to expand in more than one area,” he said.

“And this is why Al Qaeda has today become stronger and more dangerous and we are working with the coalition now to go after elements of the group ... and will continue until they are destroyed.”

ISIS frees most of 300 abducted cement workers, kills 4

Al Qaeda branch in Bangladesh claims murder of atheist activist Dhaka A Bangladesh branch of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) on Friday claimed responsibility for the murder of a secular activist after he criticised Islamists on social media, a US monitoring group

Messenger... under the pretext of so-called ‘freedom of speech’,” Mufti Abdullah Ashraf, a spokesman for Ansar al-Islam, said in a statement according to SITE. Hundreds of secular activists held a protest earlier in the day

said, as the government vowed to catch his killers.

Ansar al-Islam said its operatives were behind the murder of Nazimuddin Samad, a 26-year-old law student who was killed late Wednesday near his university in Dhaka by assailants carrying machetes, SITE Intelligence Group said.

“This operation was conducted to teach a lesson to the blasphemers of this land whose poisonous tongues are constantly abusing Allah... the religion of Islam and the

to demand action for Samad’s death, the latest in a string of murders of secular bloggers and campaigners in Bangladesh.

The murders have sparked international outrage and demands for the government to protect freedom of speech in the Muslim-majority country.

Police on Friday filed a murder case and said they were treating his death as a “targeted killing”, although no arrests have yet been made.

Abu Hena Muneem, a senior home ministry official, dismissed

claims the government was failing to protect secularists and said the authorities were doing all they could to track down Samad’s killers.

“The accusations are not correct. Our law enforcement agencies are working very hard to find the culprits and they will soon be arrested,” Muneem told AFP. Activists, however, expressed concerns about the government’s readiness to protect them as they held a protest march in the capital.

Around 400 people chanted slogans including “stop the culture of impunity, save secular Bangladesh”.

“It is very worrying,” said Imran Sarker, a spokesperson for Bangladesh’s biggest secular activists’ group Gonojagoron Mancha.

“We wonder whether the government actually has the goodwill to put an end to this.”

Samad’s murder was the sixth such killing in 15 months.

His childhood friend and fellow activist Gulam Rabbi Chowdhury said he had gone into hiding before the attack and deactivated his Facebook page for a number of months.

AQIS previously claimed responsibility for the murder of an American atheist blogger in Bangladesh who was hacked to death on the streets of Dhaka in February 2015.

BEIRUT The Islamic State group has released most of the 300 cement workers it abducted near Damascus after questioning them to find out who were Muslims and killing four who were members of the minority Druze sect, a Syrian opposition monitoring group and a news agency linked to the extremists reported on Saturday.

The reports came two days after IS abducted the cement workers and contractors from their workplace in Dumeir, just northeast of the capital, after a surprise attack on government forces.The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said all those abducted have been released except for 30 people who were guards at the cement factory. It added that the fate of the 30 is unknown.

The IS-affiliated Aamaq news agency said most of the 300 were released after questioning to determine their religion and whether they support the government. It said four workers who belonged to the minority Druze sect were killed and 20 pro-government gunmen are still being held.

The Druze, a 10th century offshoot of Shiite Islam, made up about 5 per cent of Syria’s pre-

war population of 23 million people. Lebanon and Israel also have large Druze communities.

IS, a Sunni Muslim extremist group, considers all Shiites to be heretics deserving death.Aamaq also released a video from inside al-Badia Cement Company in Dumeir, about 28 miles (45 kilometers) northeast of Damascus, showing trucks and bulldozers in the sprawling facility. Some fighters could be seen inside. Also Saturday, a senior official with al-Qaida’s branch in Syria appeared in a video during which he denied reports by state media that he was killed in the northwestern province of Idlib. The Observatory also reported that Sheikh Abdullah al-Mheisny was not harmed. “I will remain a thorn in your throat and my happiest day will be when I get martyred,” alMheisny said in the video. The militant was wounded by a Russian airstrike in December in Latakia province.

A Saudi citizen, al-Mheisny had been fighting in northern Syria for months, serving both as a senior religious and military commander with the al-Qaida branch, known as the Nusra Front.Several top Nusra Front commanders have been recently killed in Syria by US airstrikes.

Issue - 662 (13)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Indian-South African judge Navaneetham Pillay bags top French honour JOHANNESBURG Navanetham Pillay, South Africa’s first non-white woman judge who is of Indian origin, has been conferred upon the highest

French civilian honour.Pillay, 74, was the first non-white woman judge of the high court of South Africa and has also served as president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda which tried leaders of a genocide that left nearly a million people dead.

Pillay, the daughter of a bus driver who qualified against great odds through community

support, said she considered it a great honour to have received the Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur (the Legion of Honour).

A former UN high commissioner for human rights, Pillay became the first non-white woman to open her own law practice in Natal Province where she was born.

French ambassador to South Africa Elisabeth Barbier said the award was a recognition of Pillay’s work for international justice system, human rights and women’s rights.

During her 28 years as a lawyer,

Cong invitation to Nitish for Punjab event may cause AAP heartburn

New Delhi Political temperatures are set to rise in Punjab on April 14 when the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) showcase their strengths at an annual harvest festival in Bhatinda district.

In a surprise move, the Congress invited Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar to participate in the Baisakhi mela (fair) in Talwandi Sabo.

If Kumar agrees to attend, it is likely to cause heartburn among AAP cadre given that Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and the Janata Dal (United) leader share a good rapport and helped each other in last year’s elections in their respective states.

Besides, the Bihar CM’s adviser Prashant Kishor will steer the Congress’ election campaign in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab where the AAP has emerged as a serious contender for power.

Both the states go to polls in 2017.Post Bihar victory, Kumar has become a rallying figure for anti-BJP parties and is increasingly seen in political circles as the face of a possible national alternative to take on the NDA. JD(U) leaders have often

suggested that Kumar will be the “consensus” prime ministerial candidate for 2019 polls.

The three parties Congress, AAP and SAD had earlier displayed their political might at the Maghi mela in Muktsar on January 14.

By the end of the event, the AAP had taken a clear lead over its rivals though the question remains whether it will sustain the momentum till the next year’s elections.

Now, the battle has shifted to Talwandi Sabo, where Guru Gobind Singh stayed for nine months and completed the recompilation of the Guru Granth Sahib in 1705.

For the Bihar CM, it will be an occasion to connect with Sikhs from Punjab ahead of the celebration of the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh at his birthplace in Patna Sahib on January 5, 2017.

The Bihar government is looking to tap the tourism potential of the mega event and expect a complete transformation of the capital city as had happened to Nanded in Maharashtra about 50 years ago at the time of the celebration of 300 years of the coronation of Guru Granth Sahib.

Pillay defended anti-apartheid activists and helped expose the use of torture and poor conditions of political detainees.

In 1973, she won the right for political prisoners on Robben Island, including anti-apartheid champion and South Africa’s first black president Nelson Mandela, to have legal representation.

Other renowned South Africans who have received the award include Mandela, his fellow prisoner Ahmed Kathrada, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, writer Andre Brink and unionist-turned-politician Jay Naidoo.Pillay is currently the 16th commissioner of the Madrid-based International Commission against the Death Penalty, which works with the United Nations and other bodies in promoting the abolition of capital punishment.She cofounded Equality Now, an international women’s rights organisation, in South Africa and has been involved with other organisations working on issues relating to children, detainees, victims of torture and of domestic violence, and a range of economic, social and cultural rights.

She holds a master of law and a doctorate of juridical science from Harvard University.

Kashi’s Kathak dancer Soni Chaurasia breaks world record

Varanasi Soni Chaurasia, a Kathak artiste, has set the world record for the longest dance by performing Kathak continuously for more than 123.30 hours at Mount Litera Zee School here on Saturday. Her name will now be registered in the Guinness Book of Records.

Chaurasia broke the record of Hemlata Kundalu of Trichur, Kerala, who performed Mohiniattam (a classical dance) continuously for 123.20 hours.

Soni Chaurasia continued to perform even after the recordbreaking feat.

She started her effort on April 4 at 6pm under the guidance of her teacher Rajesh Dogra and

reached the milestone on Saturday late evening. A medical team was present at auditorium of the school near Khushipur bypass where she broke the record.

Her teacher Dogra was jubilant over the achievement. “I don’t have the words to describe my feelings. My disciple has set a world record. Thank God. Soni has done it. She has made it.

She has created it. She has made us proud. Her achievement is a gift to the art world,” Dogra said. A few months ago, she had made her first attempt to break the record in November last year.

However, she fell after dancing continuously for 87 hours and 18 minutes.

consecutive year that the Congressional mandated cap has been reached in the first five days of the filing. “Unless the economy changes again, we would continue to see it,” he said.Majority of these estimated 250,000 H-1B visa applications are “certainly” either by companies that have Indian

considered for one of the 85,000 available visas.

Each petition not selected is a business need unfulfilled and a growth opportunity that is delayed or thwarted. “However, artificial limits established more than a generation ago are again hobbling the economic potential of this great nation,” Pradis said, calling for lifting this visa cap.

“Why do we continue to artificially limit this program? In a reasonable system, market demand should factor into how many business visas are granted, and indeed, demand for H-1B visas slowed when the economy took a downturn. But each year that we cap these visas when demand outweighs supply, all we’re doing is creating obstacles to economic growth. We’re losing out on shared prosperity for no good reason,” he said in a statement. The US is one of the most important economies in the world, but its full potential is going unrealised, he said. “We live in a wireless world, but our visa system is a relic from the days of the dial-up modem. It’s long past time for Congress to lead on this issue and reform the H-1B program in a way that addresses the needs of American businesses, US workers and our economy. Congress must bring our immigration system out of the last century and into this one,” Pradis said.

Majority of 250,000 H-1B visa applications are from India, says US New Delhi The US government is believed to have received about 250,000 petitions for H-1B visas - the most sought after American work visas - with a majority of them being from either Indian companies or having huge footprint in India.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services on Friday said it has reached the Congressional mandated cap for H-1B visas in the general category and also the 20,000 for those who completed higher education from inside the US in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects.USCIS did not give the number of H-1B petitions it received since April 1, when it started accepting applications for this most coveted visa for the fiscal year 2017 beginning October 1, 2016. But, it says the successful petitions would be determined by a computerised draw of lots.

“We had 230,000 H-1B visa petitions last year. I think, this year it is going to be higher. We think 250,000 H-1B petitions were filed this year,” Bill Stock, incoming president of American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and a founding partner of Klasko Immigration Law Partners said.Stock’s estimates are based on his experience and interaction with lawyers and those groups who mostly file H1B visas. This is fourth

owner like TCS or companies that have substantial operations or development centres in India like IBM, Stock said in response to a question.The recent increase on certain category of H-1B visas, he said, “may have had a little impact” on Indian companies. “But I think their business so much depends on H-1B and being able to send people on projects, they (Indian companies) are going to pay fees on those petitions,” Stock said.

President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Victor Nieblas Pradis said the “avalanche” of petitions for H-1B visas mean that USCIS will once again randomly determine which of those petitions will actually be

Issue - 662 (14)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Anti-IS Syrian journalist Lebanon Police rescue 75 Syrian sex slaves ‘shot in head’ in Turkish city Beirut Lebanon’s security forces have dismantled the country’s largest known sex trafficking ring and

uncovered since the outbreak of the Syrian war,” a Lebanese security source told AFP. Police officers in the Mount

freed 75 mainly Syrian women, a security source said on Friday.

They had been raped and beaten, while some showed signs of “mutilation”, a statement from the Internal Security Forces said.

“This is the largest sex trafficking ring we’ve

Lebanon region north of Beirut “identified and arrested a group of people who made up Lebanon’s most dangerous human trafficking network,” the ISF statement said.

They “rescued 75 women, most of them Syrian nationals who had been subjected to beatings and

psychological and physical torture, forced to perform sexual acts and had indecent images of them taken and distributed,” it said.

Ten men and eight women guarding the apartments where the victims were kept have been arrested, the statement said.

Two other suspects remain at large.

Speaking to AFP, the security source added that “an eightmonth-old baby, likely the child of one of the rescued women, was also found”. Even before the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011, Syrian women had been pushed into the illicit sex trade in neighbouring Lebanon. “However, as with any war, conflict has made Syrian women and children even more vulnerable,” the source said. “They pay the highest price.”

World tiger count rises for first time in 100 years NEW DELHI The number of wild tigers across the globe has increased for the first time in a century thanks to improved conservation efforts, wildlife groups said on Monday.

Data compiled by the WWF and the Global Tiger Forum show that the glo-

numbers are on the rise," Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International, said in a statement released on Monday.

This is the first time the count of these endangered cats has gone up since 1900, when there were 100,000 tigers. India is home to more than half of

bal population of wild tigers has risen to an estimated 3,890 from an all-time low of 3,200 in 2010. "For the first time after decades of constant decline, tiger

the world's tiger population with some 2,226 tigers roaming its reserves across 18 states, according to the last count in 2014. Russia, Bhutan and Nepal also saw higher tiger numbers in their latest surveys. However, experts cautioned that the numbers may be partly down to improved data gathering, with the inclusion of new sample areas and upgraded survey techniques as well as enhanced protection efforts.

Bangladesh registered a severe decline from 440 tigers in 2010 to 106 in

2015, though conservationists say this may have been due to an over-estimation of the population six years ago.

There has been a rapid fall in Indonesia because of heavy forest destruction to meet a growing global demand for palm oil, pulp and paper.

Cambodia is mulling the idea of reintroducing tigers after declaring them functionally extinct last week following no evidence of the big cats since 2007.

Deforestation, encroachment of habitat and poaching have devastated tiger numbers across Asia.

Poachers often sell tiger body parts to the lucrative traditional Chinese medicine market, as well as other man-made problems such as habitat loss.

In 2010 the 13 countries with tiger populations Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam launched a plan to double their numbers by 2022.

Monday's global census was released a day before a three-day meeting of ministers from these countries in New Delhi to discuss conservation efforts.

Istanbul A Syrian journalist who opposed Islamic State group jihadists was in intensive care Sunday after being shot in the head by a masked gunman in southern Turkey, reports and activists said.

Mohammed Zaher alShurqat was walking down a street in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep close to the Syrian border when he was targeted by the gunman, the Dogan and Anatolia news agencies reported.

El-Shurqat worked for a channel called Aleppo Today TV which is strongly opposed to IS jihadists who have taken control of much of Syria’s northern Aleppo province.

He was immediately hospitalised and is in intensive care, the Turkish reports said, without giving further details.

According to Ibrahim alIdelbi, a Syrian activist in Gaziantep, this was the second attempt against Shurqat’s life in three months.

Idelbi told AFP in Beirut that Shurqat was a rebel commander who had fought President Bashar alAssad’s troops and a media activist in his home

town, Al-Bab, until IS took over. He became a journalist with Aleppo Today after he moved to Turkey.

Citing a friend who visited

added in its report.

Several Syrian journalists who fled the country’s five year civil war use Gaziantep as a base but it has become an

Shurqat in hospital in the southern Turkish city, Idelbi said he was “still alive”.

Another activist, Assaad al-Achi, confirmed the report. “When Daesh took control he started a programme on Aleppo Today against Daesh,” he said, speaking to AFP via the Internet in English and using an Arabic acronym for IS. Turkish police have studied security camera footage and interviewed witnesses and believe the shooting was carried out by a member of IS, Dogan

increasingly dangerous location from which to report.

A Syrian activist who produced documentaries hostile to the Islamic State group, Naji Jerf, was shot dead in Gaziantep in December in a crime that caused international concern At the end of October, IS claimed responsibility for killing young activist Ibrahim Abdelkader and his friend Fares Hamadi.

They were found decapitated in a house in the city of Sanliurfa just east of Gaziantep.

Issue 662 (15)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Jon Favreau offers a visual treat with Neel Sethi’s Mowgli Cast: Neel Sethi; (Voices of) Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Bill Murray, Lupita Nyong’o, Scarlett Johansson, Giancario Esposito, Christopher Walken Direction: Jon Favreau Ratings: 3 Stars The Jungle Book, for most Indians, is a whiff of nostalgia. Jon Favreau’s feature-length adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling classic serves that purpose pretty well. The Jungle Book mostly succeeds in delivering what it promised: Mowgli and his squad, in live-action.

Favreau’s film has Neel Sethi as protagonist Mowgli, who is raised by a pack of wolves. This mancub is liked by most jungle-residents, apart from one Shere Khan (Idris Elba). Khan the tiger wants Mowgli dead. His belief that no man can be good is as strong as cast in stone, and Khan will stop at nothing to kill Mowgli. In this fight between man and beast, Mowgli is aided by the black panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), and the bear Baloo (Bill Murray). There’s the hypnotising, seductive python Kaa (Scarlett Johansson) to be taken care of, and the quest of the all-devastating ‘red flower’ (fire) to accomplish too. Neel Sethi

breathes life into his Mowgli in an inimitable manner.

The boy jumps and runs and mouths dialogues with an impressive agility.

While this Mowgli climbs creepers and breaks into bee-hives with ease, the average Indian audience will find his/her heart pining for the animated one of the good ol’ Doordarshan days.

Idris Elba’s thundering voice from within Shere Khan is largely responsible for the occasional shudders in this jungle tale.

Ben Kingsley and Bill Murray as the loyal guardians Bagheera and Baloo respectively are endearing

in parts and suitably strict in others. Lupita Nyong’o lends the necessary emotions to her Raksha, Mowgli’s wolf-mother. It is Scarlett Johansson’s Kaa who needed some more screen-time.

Jon Favreau’s direction provides an apt staff to Justin Marks’s story, supporting it and helping transport viewers into the jungle. The Jungle Book is quite faithful to the 1967 original, and borrows from and stays true to Kipling’s original works.

The film wins in its technical aspects and how! The live-action re-imagining of The Jungle Book is

achieved brilliantly. Thanks to the technical flawlessness, the jungle is a living, breathing, menacing being in this story. Mowgli’s world is tantalising, but there are those odd moments when you need to strain your eyes to see exactly what is happening.

Most of the action in The Jungle Book happens during the night, and while that serves the purpose of imparting that mystery to the forest, it also hampers the attention of the viewer.

Favreau’s rendition of the book might demand a lot of patience, but it makes up for that in its CGI and 3D photography. The direc-

Kung Fu Panda 3 Directed by Alessandro Carloni, Jennifer Yuh Nelson Voices of Jack Black, James Hong, Bryan Cranston, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, J K Simmons, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Kate Hudson Ratings: 3 Stars What the world wished someone would tell them has now been said. At being told he need not count his dumplings, Po chortles, his eyes a wondrous round, “I always knew I wasn’t eating up to my full potential!” So now you know. The film series that has made such light work of weighty matters packs in yet more and

lands neatly on its feet, both grown-up and childlike.

Master Shifu (Hoffman) is looking for some “alone time” for further spiritual development, and tells Po (Black) to take up his teaching duties. Nervous Po messes up the first teaching session with the Furious Five. However, before Po has the time to fret, a person who looks surprisingly like him, Li (Cranston) lands up in the Valley and beats his dumpling-eating record. It takes a few seconds and some incongruous words before Li and Po, apparently the only two pandas left in the world, realise they may be father and son. Ping (Hong), a goose who has raised Po as his own son,

looks on in unconcealed but not ill-intentioned jealousy.

Meanwhile, an old enemy of Master Ooogway, Kai (Simmons), has come back from the spirit world to take over the Jade Palace. Kai has been capturing the ‘chi’ the spiritual energy that exists in all living beings of all the kung fu masters in China, and becoming more powerful.

Pandas have the power to invoke chi too, and when Li offers to teach Po that in the secret village of the Pandas, Shifu urges him to accompany his father there. In this secret village, Po learns to live the easy life, including the art of snoring, sighing, munching a twig while leaning on the balcony to look at a setting

sun, and to just go rolling down a mountain instead of walking. And, of course, to relearn the joy of just eating, without watching.

When danger comes eventually, it is these tricks that come handy. One of the overriding themes of Kung Fu Panda 3 is the refrain, first by Shifu and then by Po “I am not teaching you to be me; I am teaching you to be you.” However, the DreamWorks animation says it more effortlessly in action, drawing out each of its village-ful of characters with warmth and detail. Even Mei Mei (Hudson), the coquettish ribbon dancer who renders jelly-like even her pendulous panda audience.

tor, along with his team of technicians, does a fabulous job of creating a world where even the adult can lose himself/herself in. The technical wizardry is of that level.

However, for an Indian in his/her late-20s/early-30s, The Jungle Book is synonymous with the Doordarshan Mowgli. That series of 52 episodes, with animated creatures of the jungle mouthing stories of nature and animals will forever be the winner, no matter how many Jungle Book-adaptations follow.

At less than two hours, editor Mark Livolsi has tried to keep the film crisp, but

he hasn’t been able to eliminate the drops in pace, especially in the first half. The narrative picks up steam post interval. The encounters with Shere Khan and their anticipation keep one hooked to the screen.

John Debney’s versions of the songs from the 1967 Jungle Book blend into the story seamlessly. Bare Necessities, I Wanna Be Like You and Trust In Me are all reminiscent of their respective originals.

In all, take a trip to the jungle this week. Let Mowgli hold your hand and take you back to childhood.

Issue 662 (16)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Is Jannat 2 actor engaged?

The truth, straight from Esha Gupta It looks like the season of BTown marriages is on its full bloom. Recently, Preity Zinta have tied the knot with Gene Goodenough and Bipasha Basu has also announced her marriage with boyfriend Karan Singh Grover. And yesterday, there were rumours that Jannat 2 actor Esha Gupta has got engaged.

Esha had shared the picture of a solitaire ring in her finger on Instagram and wrote, “He asked and I said yes (sic).”

The picture and the caption both were indicating that she has finally found her man and has got engaged. And after that, all the gossip mills were abuzz with the rumours of her engagement.

In an earlier interview, Esha had said, “Besides, people know that I’ve been a relationship with somebody for the longest time but it’s just that I don’t like getting into this media business and talking about my personal life. I think they just want to see him but I don’t want the poor guy to get dragged into all this. My boyfriend is mature enough to understand that this industry thrives on rumours. Before I even entered the industry, I had told him that such things will happen and people will write.

He has come to terms with it.” On the work front, Esha Gupta is currently filming Hera Pheri 3 and will also star in Neeraj Pandey’s Rustom which stars Akshay Kumar and Ileana D’Cruz in the lead roles. Esha was recently also seen in a music video titled Main Rahoon Ya Na Rahoon opposite Emraan Hashmi.

Singing with Priyanka will be wonderful says Parineeti Chopra

Actress Parineeti Chopra, who will go behind the mic to sing for “Meri Pyaari Bindu”, says it would be “wonderful” if there’s ever an opportunity to sing with her cousin and actress Priyanka Chopra.

Priyanka has earlier crooned foot tapping numbers like “In My City” ft. will.i.am, “Exotic” ft.

Pitbull, and even the title track of “Dil Dhadakne Do” Asked if she plans to sing a number with Priyanka, Parineeti told IANS. “Wow! (Singing with Priyanka) that would be wonderful. That would be really wonderful, but I have to ask her.” “That is a great idea, we should do it,” she added in an ecstatic tone. Priyanka,

who has got global recognition with her stint in the American TV series “Quantico”, has now bagged a Hollywood film “Baywatch” alongside actors Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron. Parineeti says for crooning a number together, they first “have to be in the same country”.

CAUGHT

DRUNK DRIVING? CALL VICKY SINGH AT:

416-887-4971

Proud to be Saqib’s co-actor in Father is always tensed about audience ‘Dobaara’ says Huma Qureshi acceptance for me says Tiger Shroff Actress Huma Qureshi, who is all set to share screen space with her

brother Saqib Saleem, says she is “proud” to be his “co-actor and partner in crime”. On the occasion of Sibling Day on Sunday, the ‘Badlapur’ actress also mentioned

the release date of the Hindi remake of the Hollywood film ‘Oculus’.

“Happy Sibling Day, Saqib Saleem... Proud to be his partner in crime and co-actor in ‘Dobaara’, which is releasing in September 2016”, Huma tweeted on Sunday.

Released in 2013, ‘Oculus’ is the story of a brother and sister battling paranormal activity. Saqib and Huma will be essaying the characters played by Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites in the film. Huma’s other Bollywood projects include Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Viceroy’s House’ and Malayalam film alongside superstar Mammootty’s ‘White’.

Actor Tiger Shroff says his father Jackie Shroff, who has enjoyed the adulation of his fans for years, is always tensed about how the audience will accept him.

“My father is always tensed and scared on how the audience will (react)...accept me or not. Being a son of a talented and great actor like him, there is pressure, and there are expectations. He understands that,” Tiger told PTI. “Every star son has to face this thing. I work very hard to make my father and mother proud.

That is my goal.” According to Tiger, his father loved the trailer of his upcoming film “Baaghi”.

“My family is very happy about this film. My father

doesn’t speak much but I could sense that he is very happy. The biggest high for me is when my parents are happy.”

In his debut film “Heropanti”, Tiger stunned everyone with his action and dancing skills. Now for his second film “Baaghi” the young actor has learnt Kalaripayattu, an ancient martial art form from Kerala. Chief Commando trainer Grandmaster Shifuji Shaurya Bharadwaj has trained the 26-year-old actor in Kalaripayattu. In the film as well, Bharadwaj will be seen as the trainer of Tiger. “Before I met him (Chief Commando Trainer Grandmaster Shifuji Shaurya Bharadwaj) there was pressure.

Issue 662 (17)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Kristen Bell slaps reporter on red carpet

I love the wisdom I have gained through ageing says Cameron Diaz Actress Cameron Diaz feels the best part of growing older is the knowledge she gains through new experiences.

The “Mask” star, who recently released her second book, “The Longevity Book: Live Stronger, Live Better, The Art of Ageing Well”, discussed about her lack of fear when it comes to ageing, reported Femalefirst. Diaz said through her research, she has learned more about ageing physically, but she also looks forward to how much she gains in life experiences. “What I have to offer the people around me, the wisdom I have gained through the experiences I have had, and looking forward to all of the years I have ahead of me (is my favourite part of ageing),” she tells her friend Gwyneth Paltrow’s newsletter Goop. The 43-year-old feels “stress, inflammation, lack of movement, poor nutrition, lack of sleep and not being connected to the people you love” contribute to premature ageing the most, but she was also shocked to learn about it on a cellular level.

We need a new normal-body type says Jennifer Lawrence

‘Hunger Games’ star Jennifer Lawrence says the film industry has become so conditioned to skinny frames that healthily proportioned women are deemed overweight. The 25-yearold Joy star said Hollywood’s perception of what’s ‘normal’ when it comes to body image is unhealthy and reveals she sometimes ends up feeling like the ‘fattest one’, reported a website.

“I would like us to make a new normal-body type.

Everybody says, ‘We love that there is some-

body with a normal body!

And I’m like, ‘I don’t feel like I have a normal body’,” Lawrence said.

The actress added that her body is often described as curvy, but only because people are used to seeing ‘underweight’ models and actresses. “I do Pilates every day. I eat, but I work out a lot more than a normal person. I think we’ve gotten so used to underweight that when you are a normal weight it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, she’s curvy,’ which is crazy.”

Kristen Bell hit a rude male reporter who tried to grab her during a premiere of her new movie ‘The Boss’. Bell had an uncomfortable encounter with the reporter, whose name is Kevin Donnelly. In a video obtained by entertainment website JustJared, Donnelly was seen bobbing the mic on Bell’s face as he asked a silly question about who’s the boss in the movie, reports aceshowbiz.com. “I don’t really care,” he added. It’s

Jennifer Lopez taught Kerry Washington how to dance Actress Kerry Washington says she learned to dance from singer-actress Jennifer Lopez.

“I had this very inspiring teacher named Larry Maldonado. He had an awesome substitute teacher named Jennifer, who would sometimes step in and teach, but then she left to move to Los Angeles and be on ‘In Living Colour’,” Washington said on ‘The Tonight Show’, reports femalefirst.co.uk. “I learned to dance from Jennifer Lopez. It was like meant to be that I would be famous,” she added.

Meanwhile, the 39-yearold previously revealed she tries to “quit acting all the time”. She said: “I try to quit acting all the time!

Not necessarily the show, it’s not that I would ever walk away from ‘Scandal,’ but at times I am like, ‘Eh, I’m done with this acting thing.’ But being able to tell the story brings me back.”

unclear what prompted Donnelly’s bizarre question.

“Okay. That’s enough,” Bell said. As she turned her back ready to leave, Donnelly suddenly grabbed her arm while calling her “baby”. Having had enough, Bell slapped the reporter, sending him sprawled on the floor. “Kristen, it’s really OK,” he said as he got up and climbed over the barricade. Shocked with his behaviour, Bell quickly made her way inside the building.

Issue 662 (18)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Parents donate organs of a brain New front opens in war on superbugs dead 16-yr-old, save three lives New Delhi The parents of a 16-yearold girl, who died on April 9 after meeting with a road accident two days before,

saved the lives of three others in the city by deciding to donate their child’s organs. The girl became the first minor in the city this year to have her heart, kidneys and liver donated.

The minor girl, a resident of Vasant Vihar, was riding her two-wheeler when she was hit by a car on April 7 in Thane. She was rushed to Jupiter Hospital but the

doctors there found that her reflexes had become numb and that she was unresponsive to the treatment. On Saturday, after

two days of hospitalisation, she was declared brain dead, a condition in which the brain stem cells stop responding even though the heart continues to beat.

According to hospital authorities, it was on the suggestion of the girl’s relatives that her parents agreed to donate her organs. “Her relatives are

from Indore and are employed with security agencies and fire brigades. They have been part of several green corridors that Indore had created for transporting organs,” said Aniruddh Kulkarni, transplant coordinator, Jupiter Hospital.

On Saturday evening, the first apnea test, to confirm brain death, was conducted on the deceased. Then, team operated on her to retrieve her kidneys and liver.

According to doctors at Fortis Hospital, the heart could not be extracted due to “certain medical conditions”.

While one of her kidney has been transplanted into a 24-year-old man, the second kidney was transplanted into a 42year-old man, both residents of Mumbai. The liver has been donated to Global Hospital, Parel, for a recipient.

AMSTERDAM A newly-discovered antibiotic-resistant gene is threatening to open a new front in the war against superbugs by rendering a last-resort drug impotent, experts warn.

The gene's resistance to colistin, a life-saving medication which has been around for 60 years, is the latest frustration for physicians battling disease with a shrinking arsenal of antibiotics to treat a wide variety of ailments, many once easily curable.

Dubbed mcr-1, the resistance-conferring gene easily transfers between bacteria, benign or otherwise, found in humans, animals or the environment.

First identified in China last November, the gene has since been discovered in livestock, water, meat and vegetables for human consumption in several countries, and in humans infected with E.coli - one of the disease-causing bacteria it targets.

For the first time, mcr-1 has now also been found

living in the gut of healthy humans, a conference of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) heard in

since 1959 to treat infections caused by Gramnegative bacteria - a category including the foodpoisoning germs E-coli and Salmonella, as well as

Amsterdam this weekend. "(A) key element for the emergence of superpathogens (superbugs, or drug-resistant germ strains) has made its way to our bodies," researcher Aycan Gundogdu of Turkey's Erciyes University told delegates. "It is (only) a matter of time (before) the dissemination of mcr-1 gene will be prevalent in the clinic, bringing the world closer to an antibiotic crisis."

Colistin has been available

Acinetobacter which can cause pneumonia or serious blood and wound infections.

CHARGED

DRUNK & DRIVING? CALL VICKY SINGH

416-887-4971

Issue 662 (19)

12 April - 18 April 2016

US man’s bank payment stopped Suicide bombing kills 12 new Army recruits in Jalalabad over dog’s ‘terrorist’ name San Francisco In a bizarre case, a man’s online payment to his dog walker was blocked by a bank in the US because his service dog’s name sounded like a dreaded terror network. Bruce Francis, 55, from San Fran-

cisco, was transferring USD 374 from his account to his dog walker and wrote his dog’s name ‘Dash’ in the memo line, as he has done every month for the past couple of years.

Chase Bank blocked Francis’s online payment because his pitbull mix’s moniker loosely resembles the terrorist network ‘Daesh’, another name for ISIS. Bank officials thought ‘Dash’ was a hair too close to ‘Daesh’ the Arabic term for the Islamic

State or ISIS, and cancelled the payment. The dog walker notified Francis ten days later that she still had not been paid.

“I called my bank, and they were kind of squirrely about why the payment didn’t go

through,” Francis told the New York Daily News. When he logged into his account, he realised the bank had flagged the transfer made earlier this month for review by the US Treasury Department, which posted a note on his account asking him to “explain what Dash means”. “I said, ‘Oh, so that’s what this is about,’“ said Francis. “Last year, you didn’t hear John Kerry talking about Daesh, but now he is, and he pronounces it like ‘dash,” he

said. Francis, who suffers a rare form of muscular dystrophy and relies on his 9-yearold service animal, was quick to obey the Federal Reserve.

He called the Office of Foreign Assets Control and told them that Dash is his dog’s name.

The payment was then processed.

“The idea that my dog is a terrorist is pretty funny. Seriously, the only thing Dash could terrorise is a roast chicken,” said Francis. A Chase Bank spokesperson defended almost collaring an innocent man and his dog.

“If a name on the OFAC list appears on a payment, we are required to review it,” the bank told KTVU San Francisco.

“This is an important part of ensuring that crime does not filter through the US banking system. In this instance, the payment was flagged, reviewed and eventually released,” he said.

This is not the first case of mistaken identity to make headlines in the war on terror.

Nutella left a bad taste in an Australian family’s mouth last year when the hazelnutchocolate spread brand refused to personalise a jar for a 5-year-old girl named Isis.

FBI arrests man for wanting to practice yoga, meditate on airplane Honolulu A Japan-bound airplane returned to Hawaii because of a violent passenger who wanted to do yoga instead of sit in his seat, the FBI said.

The pilot of the March 26

flight attendants told him to return to his seat. “Pae pushed his wife because she was trying to make him stop,” the complaint said. “He felt that she was siding with the flight crew.” He tried to head-butt

United Airlines flight from Honolulu International Airport to Narita International Airport turned the plane around after hearing that Hyongtae Pae was yelling at crew members and shoving his wife, the FBI said in a criminal complaint.

Pae told the FBI he didn’t want to sit in his seat during the meal service, so he went to the back of the plane to do yoga and meditate. He became angry when his wife and

and bite Marines who were passengers on the flight and tried to force him back to his seat, Assistant US Attorney Darren Ching said at Pae’s detention hearing today. According to the complaint, he threatened to kill passengers and was yelling that there is no god. Pae went into a rage because he felt the flight crew was ordering him around, Ching said.

Ching said Pae shouldn’t be

released because he’s a danger to his wife, himself and others. Pae urinated on himself and was on suicide watch at the Honolulu Federal Detention Center, Ching said.

US Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang ordered that Pae be released on USD 25,000 bond, but with certain conditions including not leaving the island of Oahu and undergoing a mental health evaluation.

Since the arrest, Pae’s wife has been staying at the Waikiki Gateway Hotel, defense attorney Jin Tae “JT” Kim told the judge, who asked whether Pae had financial resources to continue staying there after his release. Kim said he’s working with the consulate to transfer more money to Pae’s wife and find alternate, temporary housing.

Chang denied Kim’s request to allow Pae to return home to Korea, because that would involve getting on a plane again. Outside of court, Kim said his client is a 72-yearold retired farmer who traveled from South Korea to celebrate his 40th wedding anniversary with a Hawaii vacation.

At least 12 new army recruits have been killed in a suicide bomb attack in the eastern city of Jalalabad, a hospital official said on Monday.

Twelve bodies had been taken into the main regional hospital in Jalalabad city, 77.5 miles (125 kilometers) from the capital Kabul, said Ahsanullah Shinwari, the head of the hospital.

Another 38 people were wounded, most of them in critical condition, he said.

The recruits were traveling in a bus Monday afternoon on the outskirts of Jalalabad - the capital of Nangarhar province.

Initial reports indicated that an attacker on an explosives-laden motorcycle rammed the bus, according to Ahmad Ali Hazrat, chief of the Nangarhar provincial council.

No group has yet claimed responsibility. Suicide attacks regularly take place in Jalalabad, as the

province is home to a number of anti-government insurgent groups.

Earlier Monday in Kabul, at least one person was killed when a bomb ripped through a bus carrying Education Ministry employees to work.

Interior Ministry Spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said five people were wounded in the blast, caused by a magnetic bomb attached to the bus.

Rahim Gul, the assistant bus driver, gave a higher death toll, telling The Associated Press that two employees were killed.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for that attack. The Taliban frequently use roadside and so-called sticky bombs, as well as suicide attacks against Afghan security forces and government employees across the country.

Such bombings regularly take place in Kabul, though the Afghan capital has not seen a major attack in several months.

Issue 661 (20)

Prince William and the Duchess graced a lavish garde

THE heavy gold-embossed invite announcing the Black Tie dinner for the Royals was security-cleared and delivered under great secrecy as per protocol demands. It came with detailed instructions (a manual, no less!) on the proceedings of the evening.

The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai, was a perfect setting for the Black Tie dinner. It was full of symbolism. Taj had hosted four generations of the Royal family in the last 135 years and to host the youngest Royals was really important for them. There was an unmistakable sense of history as you ascended the majestic red carpet steps of the Taj. The mix of people was the best Mumbai has to offer. Glittering Bollywood beauties and

Britain’s Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, meets Bollywood actors Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit at the Charity Gala reception at Taj Hotel in Mumbai.

:+(1 :,//,$0 .$7( 0(7

%·72:1 powerful captains of industry. The dress code was Black Tie or National Dress and the party seemed to be divided right in the middle.

Almost like a generational split. Alia in an offshoulder gown wearing her fresh beauty ever so lightly. Sonam in a white fusion outfit with elaborate head accessories. Jacqueline in a tight hourglass gown. Parineeti showing off her new, toned abs in a cropped top and flared pants. Aditi (Rao Hydari) showing off her new stylist. All proudly wearing Manish Malhothra.

Madhuri wearing her ageless charm and beauty in a saree. Aishwarya in a mukaish nude saree with beaded tassels. While all the younger actresses worked red carpet gowns, the older actresses still sported the Indian national dress--the saree. The wives of the captains of industry, Anu Mahindra, Swati Piramal, Neerja Birla wore Indian outfits, while those of the younger tycoons like the Poonawallas wore gowns. There seemed to be a generation gap.

Every guest was allotted a table at the drinks reception and could move around freely and socialise until the arrival of His/Her Royal

Highness (HRH). Constant advisories were announced by the British High Commission delegates on the acceptable behaviour in the presence of HRH. It seemed a bit like being back in the colonial times, remarked one of the guests. As if the British were still educating and civilising the unruly Indian mob. After the arrival of HRH, all phone and selfie sticks had to be put away and guests had to restrict their

movements to their assigned tables with an assigned host from the British High Commission. The royal couple, on arrival, would split up and visit each of the tables, shake hands and official pictures would be taken. A guest remarked that it seemed like a bit of a Russian roulette because you didn’t know which of the Royals you would end up meeting. There was a lot of debate on who

would be the favourite between the two. There was hushed excitement in the room and lots of talk on which designer Kate would wear.

There was a lot of chatter that she would go Indian and sport a saree. Another strong rumour was that she would wear Manish Malhothra. A lot of guests were practising what they would say in the 30-second interaction they would have with the Royals.

The Royals arrived 20 minutes late. The chatter was that Bollywood always arrived late and thus the Royals had to be delayed. One guest remarked, “Now they know who the real Royalty is!”

A hush fell over the room and the excitement was palpable as everyone patiently awaited their turn at their table. The top of the heads of both Kate and Will could be spotted as they moved slowly through the room greeting all the guests. They stood a head taller than most of the gathering.

Kate, in her Jenny Packham navy blue gown, glided through the room with a short chiffon trail to match. So much for the Indian designer.

And a missed opportunity for Kate. The sight of her in a saree would have set the world media aflutter. Just imagine social media. She flashed her perfect smile and tilted her head ever so lightly. Every interaction was personalised. One of the guests, giddy after their interaction with Kate, remarked, “In 30 seconds she made me feel as if I was the most important person in the room. She looked deeply and right into my eyes and looked ever so interested. I am sure they get trained for

(21)

5 April - 11 April 2016

en party in Delhi to celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday

this. Trainers go to the Royal Palace.”

She talked about her clothes to the fashionistas, charity to the do-gooder wives, and about her son George to others. And for those who want to know--she is painfully thin.

But much softer in real life. Her skin is luminous and her smile perfect. Will was equally charming and could be seen laughing like one of the boys at one table and then mildly flirting with the Bollywood beauties at another. And their smiles remained intact even after greeting 200 guests and making 30 seconds of polite conversation with each one.

After the “darshan” as one guest called it, the party moved inside for a sit-down dinner. The hall had been decorated with large flower elephants in a corner, chhatris suspended from the ceilings, and low-mood lighting. The decor was a bit jaded.

The head table had the handsome Raghuram Rajan, who was not seated next to the Prince.

Instead, Will had to make do with a very giggly Aishwarya who was seen talking to him most of the evening, while Kate was entertained by

SRK in a white jacket and black tie. The other guests at the high table were Karan Johar (his suit was well-fitted but he seems to have put on a lot of weight), Natasha Poonawalla in a gold glittering gown, and the High Commissioner, among others. The head round table of 12 was in the centre of the hall and then the tables fanned out in order of importance. The table next to the head table was occupied by the likes of Sachin and Anjali Tendulkar, Anand and Anu Mahindra, Rishi and Neetu Kapoor, Kumar Mangalam and Neerja Birla. Neither the cricket legend nor the modern-day industry captains got to sit at the head table. The menu was an elaborate thali.

A decent thali, but with all the excitement and waiting, most guests were ravenous and though the food was adequate, it was not by any means spectacular or the best that Taj can do. But to be fair, Taj pulled off an enviable guest list. All A+ guests that are used to special handling, and having them in one place could not have been easy. But the experience of their staff managed the tough assignment

with ease and everyone looked pleased.

Maybe the generous pouring of Champagne helped. The service was excellent. And for once, Indians--who have a reputation for not being able to sit through a sit-down dinner-stuck to the table plan. There was no switching name tags and no hopping between tables.

As a diamond-dripping guest ruefully remarked, “It still takes a Brit to discipline the Indians!” The entertainment on stage, which was on one end and thus quite far from the Royal table (thank God for small mercies) was not much to write home about. There was a duet performance by Shankar Mahadevan and his son, who did a Bollywood medley which was nice. Then there was dinner with elevator music which was followed by a super tacky, super loud skin show-cum-performance by Shiamak Davar’s troupe on Bollywood’s popular hits. The only novelty was to watch the stars watching extras performing their most popular hits. Ash and Madhuri looked amused as the dancers performed Dola Re Dola; Alia was foxed as they performed Radha on stilts

and SRK could be seen explaining to Kate some finer details when his numbers came on. Finally, SRK and Ash were invited to formally welcome the couple. SRK said a few lacklustre words, and Ash presented Kate a bouquet of flowers wrapped in pink crepe paper which she had to hold through Will’s short and sweet speech.

They gave us elegance and grace and we gave them brash, tacky, loud dances. Really, India is so much more.

After that the Royal couple left. And the who’s who of Mumbai tried to get out of the hall and to their cars. The likes of Sachin, Rishi Kapoor, Ash, and Anil Kapoor were seen jostling with guests to get out of the hall and to their cars.

This must have been a new experience for them. They looked bemused. And even though for a few minutes it felt like the world order had shifted, soon all was restored. The hotel lobby, passageways, doors and the porch were by now thronged by fans, screaming and chanting, waiting to see their true royalty. And it isn’t Kate and Will.

Issue 662 (22)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Three ‘lady terrorists’ arrested in Pakistan

Pakistan on Monday claimed to have recovered two suicide jackets and three hand grenades from three “lady terrorists” in Sargodha area, a media report said. “The CounterTerrorism Department (CTD) Sargodha on Monday announced the arrest of three female suspected terrorists near the Lahore Road area,” Dawn News reported.

The officials said they

were shot at during a raid in the Bypass Sem Nala area in which three female suspects were arrested while trying to escape. “The decision to conduct a security operation was taken after the horrific Gulshani-Iqbal park suicide attack in Lahore, which killed at least 72 people including women and children,” the report added.

Summer may bring Zika to Europe, US AMSTERDAM With summer approaching, Zika may find its way into virus-carrying mosquitoes in Europe or the United States, disease experts have warned, but any outbreaks are likely to be small and short-lived.

Doctors and scientists attending a major infectious diseases conference in Amsterdam said there was no reason to panic, and the idea of screening travellers was far-fetched. Zika is borne by the Aedes aegypti mosquito found in Latin America and the Caribbean - in the grips of an outbreak of the virus which has been linked to severe brain damage in babies and rare neurological diseases in adults.

"We have to accept that someday there will be a... traveller coming back from South America with Zika virus in his or her blood and there is a potential risk of starting a transmission," tropical medicine professor Eskild Petersen of Denmark's Aarhus University said Monday.

"I would say that the southern part of the United States and southern Europe are definitely at risk," he told AFP on the conference sidelines.

However, he stressed, the risk should not be exaggerated. "It is a disease which

in the vast majority of cases is a mild viral disease." Rare cases of sexual virus transmission have also been recorded.

The warmer summer months bring with them the peak mosquito season

terranean areas, but we don't have the virus. Not yet."

There is a risk of "some little outbreaks" around a single imported case, he added, "but I don't think at this time the virus will re-

for Europe and the United States after the insects' eggs - typically found in stagnant water - hatch.

In Europe, the potential threat comes from a related mosquito, Aedes albopictus, which began to spread in southern Europe about 25 years ago.

Albopictus is not known to have transmitted Zika to humans in the wild, but has been shown capable of doing so in laboratory experiments. "A real risk for Europe? No, I don't think so," said Jean-Paul Stahl, an infectious diseases expert from the Grenoble University Hospital in France. "The vector (the mosquito) is in the Medi-

settle in Europe."

The main challenge, according to Petersen, would be to prevent infected blood making its way into blood banks and being given to a patient with low immune protection.

According to Nick Beeching, a senior lecturer on infectious diseases at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, it is hard to predict threat based on the limited data available.

Very little is known about Zika - how long it may hide out in the human body, the degree of risk of sexual transmission, and the full list of diseases it may cause.

"We think its mostly trans-

mitted by the mosquitos that transmit dengue and similar infections, so we think there is probably not going to be much of a problem in countries where you don't have those mosquitoes," said Beeching.

But "we don't know that for sure."

Studies are ongoing to see if other mosquitoes elsewhere may also transmit the virus. Petersen said there may also be a risk for Africa, where Zika was first identified in 1947, in Uganda.

If the virus had evolved genetically since then, it could mean that people in tropical Africa - who may have originally enjoyed Zika immunity - no longer do.

"The latest report I have seen, it was (Zika) described from the Cape Verde islands, which is halfway between Brazil and Africa," he cautioned.

Issue 662 (23)

12 April - 18 April 2016

US newspaper publishes fake ‘President Trump’ frontpage WASHINGTON A US newspaper has published a mockup of what a frontpage might look like should Republican frontrunner Donald Trump win the presidency, as it condemned his “deeply disturbing” and “profoundly un-American” vision.

“Deportations to begin, President Trump calls for tripling of ICE (immigration and customs enforcement); riots continue,” read The Boston Globe’s fake headline, dated April 10, 2017. It was posted on the editorial page, accompanied by a ruthless editorial article saying Trump’s campaign “demands an active and engaged opposition.”

The mockup was published just three months before the Republican National Convention confirms the party’s nominee, with speculation growing over what Trump might do

should he actually win the highest office in the land.

On the page are several

called Islamic State group, another on a Republicancontrolled Congress pass-

lomatic crisis with China after naming his dog, a Shar-Pei, after Chinese

articles, including one on US soldiers refusing to follow orders to kill the families of members of the so-

ing a libel law targeting “absolute scum” in the press.

A separate article details how Trump sparked a dip-

First Lady Peng Liyuan. “I don’t know why she’s so offended, I love cute puppies and I love women! It’s

DUBAI Dubai plans to build a tower that will stand higher than its Burj Khalifa, currently the world’s tallest sky-

than Burj Khalifa, Emaar chairman Mohamed Alabbar told reporters as he revealed details of the project. But he said that the final height will be an-

Expo trading fair.

Designed by SpanishSwiss architect Santiago Calatrava Valls, the tower will have observation decks, in addition to 18 to 20 mixed-use floors that will host restaurants and a boutique hotel, Alabbar said. Burj Khalifa is 828 metres (2,700 feet) high and it cost $1.5 billion to build. It was opened in January 2010.

Alabbar described the new structure as an “elegant monument” which would add value to property being developed by the company along the city’s creek. “Many would like to have a view” when considering buying a property, he said. The tower will be slender, evoking the image of a minaret, and will be anchored to the ground with sturdy cables, Emaar said.

PARIS The lives of millions of women and children can be saved every year with an investment of under $5 per person on basic healthcare and contraception, a study into pregnancy-related deaths showed Saturday. Nearly six million children younger than five and 300,000 women died in 2015, according to research in The Lancet medical journal. Ninety-five percent of maternal and child deaths occur in 74 low- and middle-income countries.

“Many of these deaths could be prevented if highimpact and affordable solutions reached the populations that needed them most,” study leader Rob-

not like I tweeted out a photo of a Rottweiler named (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel,” he was quoted as saying.

A note from the editor at the bottom of the page warns readers that “what you read on this page is what might happen if the GOP frontrunner can put his ideas into practice, his words into action.” The accompanying editorial urges Republicans to oppose Trump. “Donald J Trump’s vision for the future of our nation is as deeply disturbing as it is profoundly un-American,” it said, warning that Trump could be one of the world’s next “demagogic strongmen.” The satirical frontpage “is an exercise in taking a man at his word.

And his vision of America promises to be as appalling in real life as it is in black and white on the page,” the editorial said.

“It requires an opposition as focused on denying Trump the White House as the candidate is flippant and reckless about securing it.” It pointed to Trump’s “winks and nods at political violence at his rallies,” among other controversies. “If Trump were a politician running such a campaign in a foreign country right now, the US State Department would probably be condemning him,” it added. “For now, Republicans ought to focus on doing the right thing: putting up every legitimate roadblock to Trump that they can.” Urging Republican leaders to pick an alternative nominee, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan or businessman and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the Globe’s editors noted: “It is better to lose with principle than to accept a dangerous deal from a demagogue.”

ert Black of John Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health said in a statement.

ing 90 percent of those in need with basic services such as pregnancy and delivery care, childhood

“Our analysis shows that expanding access to care to keep more mothers and children alive and healthy is feasible, and a highly cost-effective investment.”

Four million lives could be saved each year by reach-

nutrition, and treatment for infectious diseases like pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria, said the team.

This was broken down into 1.5 million newborn deaths, 1.5 million child deaths, 149,000 newborn deaths and almost 850,000 stillbirths. Access to contraception on its own, could reduce 67,000 maternal deaths, 440,000 newborn deaths, 473,000 child deaths and 564,000 stillbirths, they estimated.

The cost would be $6.2 billion (5.4 billion euros) in low-income countries, or $6.7 per person who needs it. In lower middle-income countries, the required amount is $12.4 billion or $4.70 per person, and in middle-income countries $8 billion or $3.90 per person. Overall, the cost per head would be $4.70, the team said.

The cost of saving lives?

Dubai to build tower Under $5 per person taller than Burj Khalifa

scraper, property developer Emaar said Sunday.

The viewing tower will cost around $1 billion (880 million euros) and will be “a notch” taller

nounced upon completion, adding that his company would like to present the tower as a “gift to the city before 2020,” the year Dubai hosts the world

Loo put up for rent at 3,000 pounds a month in UK London A toilet in a posh suburb in London has been put up for rent at a hefty amount of 3,000 pounds a month.

James Atherton, who is the owner of the Hampstead Heath lavatory, is looking to rent or sell the unusual piece of real estate which is a stand alone loo he owns inside a block of flats at the bottom of Highgate West Hill.

It is by a bus turn-around point which is being promoted with a sign on the

wall offering a “toilet space”, hoping to catch the attention of bus drivers who need stop to relieve themselves at Parliament Hill Fields, the Daily Mirror reported.

Atherton, also predicted a surge in interest if Camden Council follows through with its controversial plans to close the public toilets in Pond

Square in Highgate village and the Victorian toilets at the entrance to Hampstead Heath were demolished in the 1990s.

“The bus drivers in Highgate don’t have a toilet, I thought they might be interested in buying it, or maybe three of them could get together and rent it. I hope they don’t shut the pub-

lic toilets in Pond Square because they are needed but it would be good news for me in a business sense,” Atherton said.

The toilet has been left unused for many years but is in good condition and could also double-up as a storage room, the report said.

It is up for rent at an asking price of 3,000 pounds a month but Atherton said he would also consider selling a 20-year lease for 20,000 pounds.

Issue 662 (24)

12 April - 18 April 2016

This actionoriented week can bring promising results if you channel your energy into key goals and ambitions. The more willing you are to override your limitations, the more successful you can be. Tread with care on Tuesday, as a fiery combination could cause an argument or even a minor accident. This is one day when it pays to go slowly.

Feelings could be intense, yet you might keep them to yourself, which wouldn’t be such a good idea. The pressure could be explosive, especially on Tuesday, causing a bout of anger and frustration. To avoid this, it would be best to tackle issues as they arise and discuss them with those who need to know.

Not only will this help create a solution but can save you a lot of stress as well.

Your social life bubbles with excitement and opportunity. The more people you meet, the more your life opens up in interesting ways. It would be best to avoid cantankerous folks or those looking for trouble on Tuesday. Keep a low profile.

Mercury eases into Pisces and your career sector on Thursday, encouraging you to research your options, apply for jobs.

There’s plenty of activity in your career, kickstarting a new phase. If you’re looking for work, the presence of Mars encourages a proactive approach to getting what you want. Use creative solutions and try to stand out from the crowd and showcase your skills. Avoid impulsive moves on Tuesday, particularly when dealing with those in authority.

The desire for adventure continues to show up this week, spurring you to take up new challenges. An unexpected romantic opportunity could appear, disrupting your best-laid plans. Think very carefully about getting too involved, as it might not be in your best interests and could even have negative consequences.

Go easy regarding finances this week, as it could be all too easy to make the wrong moves.

Overspending or the unwise use of funds in general could leave you struggling at a later date. If you need to talk, discuss things with a professional adviser who can help set you on the right track. Tuesday is the day to watch out for splurging and melting your plastic.

Your relationships can be very direct and honest this week. An upbeat aspect on Monday could encourage you to melt the ice concerning someone you’ve admired for some time. You’ll need to be careful and sensitive to other people’s feelings on Tuesday. Even an innocent remark could cause a spat, leaving you hurt as a result.

There’s a pleasant focus on your romance sector, paving the way for some wonderful date nights. Use your leisure time to channel your creative skills, as doing so can be very therapeutic now.

You can make great strides this week where your job and career are concerned if you focus on one goal and work to achieve it.

The fun meter is set on high, with m a n y opportunities for leisure and pleasure providing thrills and spills. Romance can also be a heady subject, bringing passion and intensity your way. There’s little chance you’ll want to make a commitment, however, which is just as well. Avoid dangerous sports or activities on Tuesday, when it’s best to keep things low-key.

It’s “all systems go” at home, with a chance that the days ahead could be fun yet disruptive. Unexpected events will mean that your best-laid plans may fall by the wayside. Avoid frustration if possible, as that will only make things worse. If you’re feeling annoyed or edgy, channel your energy into exercise or a long walk. Doing so will be calming and therapeutic.

Communication is fast paced this week. You may be busy closing deals, discussing ideas, and generally interacting with others. There’s a lot to be gained from expanding your network and meeting new people, as the lucky breaks will come rolling in. It would be to your advantage to avoid arguments on Tuesday.

An upbeat aspect on Monday can be excellent for attending interviews and meetings with a view toward getting results. Your ability to project a confident demeanor can go a long way to helping you succeed. Avoid impulsive spending on Tuesday, as it will certainly do more harm than good. Channel your energy into exercise instead, which will leave you feeling calm and centered.

Issue 662 (25)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Technology What tweets can tell us about future Can a flow of information across Twitter signal about a momentous future event?

According to a new study, “yes” it can.

Northeastern’s Alessandro Vespignani, Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor of physics, computer science, and health sciences, has teamed up with an interdisciplinary group of scientists to develop an innovative method to map how tweets about large scale social events spread.

Using massive twitter datasets and sophisticated quantitative measures, it tracks how information about political protests, large business acquisitions, and other “collective phenomena” gather momentum, peak, and fall over time, from city to city, and where the impetus

comes from for that trajectory.

The findings is only a first step, notes coauthor Nicola Perra. But knowing the characteristics of that buildup could, in the future, enable us to prepare ahead of time for undesirable repercussions from such events, with implications for crises from earthquakes to power grid failures.

“A lot of people have analyzed social media in terms of the volume of tweets regarding particular phe¬nomena such as the Arab Spring,” says Vespignani. “What we are trying to understand is the presence of precursors: Can we find a signal in the flow of information that will

tell us something big is about to happen? That’s the multimillion dollar question.”

In an interdisciplinary

leap, the researchers turned to network modeling in neuroscience to conduct the study.

“For the brain we map based on physiology, we map on geography,” says Vespignani.

“Everyone wants to predict when the next big event is going to be, what will trend in the future,” says Perra.

“We are, as a research community, in the early stages of understanding this type of phenomena. There is very little understanding of even past events, so we are very far from prediction. But in the future our findings may lead us to that.”

Facebook photo lands rioter in jail

An Irish man has been jailed after tagging himself in a photo on social networking website Facebook that showed him taking part in a riot, a media report said.

Robert Darragh, 21, kept his face covered so that he could not be identified in the CCTV footage.

However, investigators looking through photos on social media sites from the riots found Darragh being

tagged in a photo showing him participating in a riot during a clash between nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland in July 2015, belfastlive.co.uk reported.

After his arrest, Darragh told the police that he had been drinking heavily and could not remember throwing anything at police.

Belfast Crown Court sentenced Darragh to two years in jail.

that a single account can significantly influence how information spreads.

Much of the online rumouring behavior was driven by “breaking news” accounts that offer the veneer of officialdom but don’t necessarily follow standard

ers posted 1,279 tweets related to the rumour. Of those, 38 percent affirmed the rumor, and 57 percent eventually denied it.

Nearly all of the affirmations happened in the first hour and 20 minutes, before police re-

journalistic practices of confirming information.

The first rumour was one of many that spread during the “Sydney Siege” of December 2014, in which a gunman took 18 hostages at a chocolate cafe in Australia. A radio talk show host reported that federal police were raiding homes in the largely Muslim Lakemba neighborhood when, in fact, officers were on a previously scheduled tour of a local mosque. Over a period of several hours, Twitter us-

sponded to the rumor, and the bulk of these stemmed from just five Twitter accounts that were widely retweeted.

US man ‘live streams’ gun Official Twitter accounts can slow spread of rumours shooting on Facebook

A video showing a man firing at someone while streaming the incident live on social networking site Facebook’s “Live Video” feature went viral and was being investigated by Chicago police, a media report said. In the video clip, a man in a blue hat is seen talking into the camera while standing in front of a convenience store in Chicago’s West Englewood neighbourhood, tech website Mashable reported.

Moments later, shots are fired and the phone drops to the street with camera

facing up. The apparent assailant steps into the frame and continues the firing.

Soon a woman’s scream is heard, the report added.

While people raised questions on video’s authentic-

ity, Chicago Police said the video is likely legitimate.

“Chicago Police Department is aware of the video on social media in ques-

tion and suspect the video is connected to the incident,” a police officer was quoted as saying.

The officer said that detectives were working to confirm its authenticity, adding that a man, believed to be a known gang member, was shot at the location seen in the video.

The suspected shooter was still at large.

“Live Video” feature allows users to broadcast live video from their smartphones, making it easier for them to disseminate news faster to a large audience.

A recent research has found that tweets from “official accounts,” the government agencies, emergency responders, media or companies at the center of a fast-moving story, can slow the spread of rumours on Twitter and correct misinformation that’s taken on a life of its own.

The researchers documented the spread of two online rumors that initially spiked on Twitter, alleged police raids in a Muslim neighborhood during a hostage situation in Sydney, Australia, and the rumored hijacking of a WestJet flight to Mexico, that were successfully quashed by denials from official accounts.

The case studies also offer lessons for organisations that may have plans in place to deal with an actual crisis, but haven’t considered how to handle online rumors and communicate before they have complete information or know what is true.

The researchers found that the vast majority of the tweets both affirming and denying the two rumours were retweets of a small number of Twitter accounts, demonstrating

CAUGHT

DRUNK DRIVING? CALL VICKY SINGH AT:

416-887-4971

Issue 662 (26)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Three Indian students stabbed in Ukraine; two dead, one in hospital New Delhi Two Indian medical students were stabbed to death, with a third injured grievously in an attack in

student, Shri Ankur Singh, a resident of Ghaziabad who was in his fourth year.

Third year student Indrajeet Singh Chauhan, a resident

Ukraine on Sunday.

All three victims were students at the Uzhgorod Medical College, and were attacked by three Ukrainian nationals around 3 am on Sunday. The deceased were identified as Pranav Shaindilya, a resident of Muzaffarnagar, a third year

of Agra, survived the stabbing and is recuperating in a hospital.

“Based on his statement, the police apprehended the Ukrainian nationals who were trying to cross the Ukrainian border. Passports/documents of the three Indian students and

blood-stained knife were reportedly recovered from the Ukrainian nationals,” said Vikas Swarup, the external affairs ministry spokesperson.

The Indian embassy in Kiev, which was informed of the incident at around 11 am the same day, has been trying to ascertain the facts from the police, the University authorities and other local contacts, Swarup added.

“The Embassy has spoken to the families of the two deceased students. All necessary actions are being taken to complete the formalities for sending the two bodies to India. The Embassy is also taking up the matter related to safety of Indian students strongly with the Foreign Office of Ukraine,” he said.

New Delhi A village panchayat in Uttar Pradesh has decided to banish the families of girls who wear “jeans and tight clothes”. The decision of disallowing girls to wear jeans and tight clothes, was taken

at a panchayat held in Bawli village. “Despite warning, if any girl is found wearing such clothes, her family would be boycotted,” village head’s husband Omveer said, PTI reported. The panchayat also asked vil-

lagers to pledge not to give or take dowry and opposed playing of DJs in marriages.

It also condemned female foeticide. Any family which does not adhere to these decisions would be banished from the society, he added.

Panchayat to boycott families of girls who wear jeans, tight clothes

Women’s entry in Shani Shingnapur temple will lead to rapes says Shankaracharya

Haridwar Dwaraka-Sharda Peeth Shankaracharya Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati has once again made a controversial statement saying the entry of women in the Shani Shingnapur temple will lead to crimes such as rapes against them.

Women should not have entered the sanctum sanctorum of the Shani Shingnapur temple as it will bring bad luck to them, the 94-year-old seer said.

Expressing his displeasure on the Shani temple

trust’s recent decision to lift a 400-year-old ban on women’s entry in the sanctum sanctoram, Shankaracharya said, “Shani is a planet of sins.

Worshipping him will lead to a rise in crime against women.". New agency ANI also quoted the DwarakaSharda Peeth Shankaracharya as saying, “women entered Shani temple’s inner sanctum, due to this, incidents of rapes will increase further.”

Women entered Shani temple inner sanctum, due to this, incidents of rapes

will increase furtherShankaracharya Swaroopanand Several women’s right activists have criticised the Dwarka seer for his highly insensitive and irresponsible remarks. Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati has also held the worship of the "unworthy" Shirdi Sai Baba by his followers responsible for a droughtlike situation in Maharashtra.

The Dwaraka seer had on many occasions in past disapproved worshipping Sai Baba.

Issue - 662 (27)

12 April - 18 April 2016

I hate being called ‘sweetie’ or Earth could become ‘honey’: PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi hotter than thought NEW YORK Asserting that women in workplace and society deserve equal treatment, PepsiCo’s Indiaborn CEO Indra Nooyi said she “hates” being called “sweetie” or “honey” and women should be respected as individuals and not addressed by such names.“We still have to have equal treatment.

I hate being called sweetie or

honey at times which I still am called. All that has got to go. We have got to be treated as executives or people rather than honey, sweetie, babe. That has to change,” Nooyi said yesterday at the Women In the World Summit presented by renowned journalist and author Tina Brown

in association with the New York Times.Nooyi said women have been in the “revolution mode” for many many years, from getting entry into the “boys club” to demanding parity in pay.She said women have “clawed” their way into the workplace by getting their degrees, good grades in school, which made the male counterparts “take note of us.”

“We clawed our way into the revolution in this work place. Then we needed parity in pay, not yet there we are still fighting for that,” she said.Nooyi, however, lamented that women do not help other women in the workplace as much as they should and asked women to make sisterhood more

Man weighing 175 kg booted out of US aircraft for being ‘too large’

strong.“There is a bigger issue we have to talk about. I don’t believe women help women enough in the workplace. Let’s figure out how we can help each other way more than we are today,” Nooyi said.She said experts need to address why women compete with women too much in the workplace when they should instead be helping each other out. She also pointed out that women often do not take feedback from other women positively.“We assume feedback from women means something is wrong but if that same feedback came to us from men we are willing to accept it or worse still we don’t give the feedback to women the way we should,” she said.“I think we have to change our whole approach to supporting each other taking advice from each other, seeking it out,” she said. “The sisterhood has to become way stronger than it is today.”She said while there is interaction of helping women in the workplace, the fact that has been ignored is how to help this interaction between the woman and her personal life as she assumes the role of a daughter, wife, mother and daughter-in-law.

CHARGED

DRUNK & DRIVING? CALL VICKY SINGH

416-887-4971

WASHINGTON Global warming could make the planet far hotter than currently projected because today’s scientific models do not correctly account for the influence of clouds, researchers said this week. The study in the journal Science was led by researchers at Yale University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

When climate scientists look ahead to how much the planet’s surface temperature may warm up in response to a doubling of carbon dioxide a byproduct of fossil fuel burning they typically predict a rise of between 2.1 and 4.7 degrees Celsius (3.75 to 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit).

But these models overestimate the ability of clouds to reflect back sunlight, and counteract warming in Earth’s atmosphere, researchers said. “We found that the climate sensitivity increased from four degrees Celsius in the default model to five to 5.3 degrees Celsius in versions that were modified to bring liquid and ice amounts into closer agreement with observations,”

said lead author Ivy Tan, a researcher at Yale University. The problem is most models assume there is more ice in clouds than there actually is. Icier clouds would gain more liquid in a warming environment, and more liquid in clouds would mean less global warming. “Most climate models are a little too eager to glaciate below freezing, so they are likely exaggerating the increase in cloud reflectivity as the atmosphere warms,” said coauthor Mark Zelinka.

“This means they may be systematically underestimating how much warming will occur in response to carbon dioxide.”

Researchers said their findings add to previous studies that have suggested clouds may make warming worse, rather than lessen it.“The evidence is piling up against an overall stabilizing cloud feedback,” said Zelinka.

“Clouds do not seem to want to do us any favors when it comes to limiting global warming.” The study was funded by NASA and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

WhatsApp strengthens encryption WASHINGTON A man weighing about 175 kg has claimed that he was kicked off a United Airlines flight in Las Vegas and had to undertake a “walk of shame” due to the heavyhandedness of the crew.

Errol Narvaez says he was stranded in Las Vegas after he was asked to leave a flight to New Jersey on Tuesday for being too large.“I never want anyone to treat me like that again,” said the 31-year-old bookstore manager who was in Las Vegas to celebrate his birthday.He said the first thing he noticed was his seat had been changed. Narvaez told he paid for pre-boarding and sat in his newly assigned seat.

That’s when, according to him, a man in his row grabbed a flight attendant.“I heard him say, ‘The flight is five hours. I need to be comfortable. I need to be compensated,'” Narvaez said.He was asked to leave the plane, then, according to him, asked to pay for a new flight. He referred to his escort off the plane as a “walk of shame.”“If you do the math, how many people

[witnessed this] There was about 100 people. That’s [100] sets of eyes watching me as I’m walking from the back of the plane to the front,” he said. Reacting to the incident, United Airlines in a statement said: “To better ensure the comfort of all customers, United requires that customers purchase a second seat if they can’t sit with both armrests lowered and without encroaching on the seats of their fellow passengers. “The customer had not previously purchased a second seat and there were not two available seats together on the flight,” the statement added.

Narvaez was stuck in Las Vegas for six hours waiting for his new flight, despite attempts to buy a second seat on his original flight.

Narvaez said he has always had weight issues and just expected a reputable company like United to have treated him with respect.

Narvaez said he is not considering legal action but would like for United employees to undergo sensitivity training for dealing with ‘larger customers’, the report said.

WASHINGTON Facebook on Tuesday announced it had bolstered the default encryption settings for the more than one billion users of its popular WhatsApp messaging service so that all messages will now be accessible only to the sender and recipient. The update arrives amid a heightened international debate over how much access law enforcement should have to digital communications and follows a high-profile showdown between Apple and the FBI over an encrypted iPhone linked to one of the San Bernardino shooters. WhatsApp began working on developing full endto-end encryption on its messages about two years ago with the help of software provided

by Open Whisper Systems, a security nonprofit. The communications app began offering it by default on text-only messages between two users in 2014, but group messages and those containing rich media such as photos and videos were not fully encrypted.As of Tuesday the entirety of

WhatsApp messages will be supported by end-to-end encryption, the company said, meaning the company will not have any capability to read customers’ messages even if approached by law enforcement.

‘The idea is simple: when you send a message, the only person who can read it is the person or group chat that you send that message to. No one can see inside that message,’ WhatsApp said in a blog post announcing the update. ‘Not cybercriminals.

Not hackers. Not oppressive

regimes. Not even us.’

Facebook’s decision to increase security of its messages occurs on the heels of the FBI’’s highprofile attempt to force Apple to unlock an encrypted iPhone belonging to a Syed Farouk, who along with his wife opened fire at a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif., in December, killing 14 and wounding 22. The Justice Department declined to comment on the WhatsApp update.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Issue - 662 (28)

12 April - 18 April 2016

US military christens self-driving ‘Sea Hunter’ warship PORTLAND The US military on Thursday christened an experimental selfdriving warship designed to hunt for enemy submarines, a major advance in robotic warfare at the

core of America’s strategy to counter Chinese and Russian naval investments.

The 132-foot-long (40-metre-long) unarmed prototype, dubbed Sea Hunter, is the naval equivalent of Google’s self-driving car, designed to cruise on the ocean’s surface for two or three months at a time - without a crew or anyone controlling it remotely.

That kind of endurance and autonomy could make it a highly efficient submarine stalker at a fraction of the cost of the Navy’s manned vessels. “This is an inflection point,” Deputy US Defense Secretary Robert Work said in an interview, adding he

hoped such ships might find a place in the western Pacific in as few as five years. “This is the first time we’ve ever had a totally robotic, trans-oceanic-capable ship.” For Pentagon planners

such as Work, the Sea Hunter fits into a strategy to incorporate unmanned drones - with increasing autonomy - into the conventional military in the air, on land and at sea. It also comes as China’s naval investments, including in its expanding submarine fleet, stoke concern in Washington about the vulnerability of the aircraft carrier battle groups and submarines that remain critical to America’s military superiority in the western Pacific.

“We’re not working on antisubmarine (technology) just because we think it’s cool.

We’re working on it because

we’re deeply concerned about the advancements that China and Russia are making in this space,” said author Peter Singer, an expert on robotic warfare at the New America Foundation think tank.Work said he hoped the ship, once it is proven safe, could head to the US Navy’s Japan-based 7th Fleet to continue testing. His goal is to have ships like the Sea Hunter operating on a range of missions, possibly even including countermine warfare operations, all with limited human supervision.

“I would like to see unmanned flotillas operating in the western Pacific and the Persian Gulf within five years,” he said, comparing the protype ship to early drone aircraft. The ship’s projected $20 million price tag and its $15,000 to $20,000 daily operating cost make it relatively inexpensive for the US military.

“You now have an asset at a fraction of the cost of a manned platform,” said Rear Admiral Robert Girrier, the Navy’s director of unmanned warfare systems.

Developed by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the ship is about to undergo two years of testing, including to verify that it can safely follow international norms for operating at sea. First and foremost is ensuring that it can use radar and cameras to avoid other vessels.

Powered by two diesel engines, the ship can reach speeds of 27 knots.

Facebook raises Periscope challenge with video upgrades SAN FRANCISCO Facebook on Wednesday ramped up its challenge to Twitter-owned Periscope with upgrades to the social network’s live video broadcasting feature.

People using the Live streaming feature at Facebook will be able to ‘broadcast: to groups at the social network or in scheduled ‘events.’ Scheduled events can even be used for online questionand-answer sessions. ‘We hope this new ability to both broadcast and watch live video within Groups and Events enables people to connect more deeply with their closest friends, family and the communities of people who share their interests,’ Facebook product management director Fidji Simo said in a blog

post. Facebook also began letting people replay comments made during live broadcasts or weigh in with reactions such as sad, angry, love, or ‘wow,’ that were launched recently in News

Feed.

‘Live Reactions appear in real time and disappear quickly so broadcasters and other viewers can get a sense of how people are feeling at different points during the live video - it’s like hearing the crowd applaud and cheer,’ Simo said. Data gathered

by Facebook showed that people comment 10 times more often on live videos than on regular videos. The social network also added filters that let people personalize the look of broadcasts, and planned to add

the ability to draw or doodle on videos while they are being streamed live, according to Simo.

Facebook unveiled a section dedicated to live broadcasts and made it simpler to search for video. People accessing the social network from desktop computers will be able to use a Facebook Live Map providing ‘a window into what’s happening’ in the world of broadcasts.

Facebook Live launched in the middle of last year and was initially limited to celebrities but recently opened to a wider audience of broadcasters. The service allows members of the social network in 60 countries to use smartphones to live stream video. The new features were being rolled out to Facebook applications tailored for mobile devices powered by Apple of Android software.

Facebook has been working to tune into the growing trend of online video, an area where Alphabet-owned YouTube has dominated. Celebrities and athletes have used Live to share candid moments and field questions, according to Facebook. Chefs have used Live to provide cooking tips and news agencies have used the service to broadcast breaking stories.

California wildfire: ‘Selfie’ arsonist gets 20 years, $60-mn fine

San Francisco A man who took a video of himself surrounded by flames that erupted into one of the worst California wildfires of 2014 was fined $60 million and sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to arson on Friday, officials said.

Wayne Allen Huntsman, who initially pleaded not guilty to setting the nearly month-long King Fire, changed his plea and admitted to three counts of arson to forest land with enhancements for causing injury to firefighters and destruction of property.

“I plead guilty because I did it,” Huntsman told the court on Friday, according to assistant district attorney Dave Stevenson.

The fire blackened nearly 100,000 acres, destroyed at least a dozen homes and displaced thousands of Northern California residents southwest of the Lake Tahoe resort area.

Huntsman was sentenced to prison and ordered to pay $60 million in restitution to the victims, the El Dorado County district attorney said in a

statement.

The fast-moving conflagration was sparked on September 13 and spread through the Eldorado National Forest in the central Sierra Nevada mountain range over the 27 days it took to control the blaze.

A handful of the thousands of firefighters who responded suffered nonlife-threatening injuries. At least 12 homes and around 100 other structures were destroyed by the flames.

Prosecutors said Huntsman fled the scene of the fire and encountered a good samaritan who offered to give him a ride out of the area.

Huntsman showed the driver a selfie-style video he took of himself standing between two of the fire’s points of origin.

“Listen, I got fire all around me,” Huntsman says in the video, which was provided by the prosecutor’s office. “I’m stuck in the middle, babe.”

The driver made a recording of the video and turned it over to investigators, prosecutors said.

Huntsman was arrested within days of the fire’s start.

Unlocking method won’t work on newer iPhones: FBI

Silicon Valley The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s secret method for unlocking the iPhone 5c used by one of the San Bernardino shooters will not work on newer models, FBI Director James Comey said.

“We have a tool that works on a narrow slice of phones,” Comey said at a conference on encryption and surveillance at Kenyon College in Ohio late on Wednesday. Apple’s shares were down 1.3 percent at midday. Comey added that the technique would not work on the iPhone 5s and the later models iPhone 6 and 6s. The iPhone 5c

model was introduced in 2013 and has since been discontinued

by Apple as newer models have become available.

The Justice Department said in March it had unlocked the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone with the help of an unidentified third party and dropped its case against Apple Inc, ending a highstakes legal clash but leaving the broader fight over encryption unresolved. As the technique cannot be used to break into newer models, law enforcement authorities will likely have to lean on Apple to help them access the devices involved in other cases.

Issue - 662 (29)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Ex-Navy SEAL who ‘shot’ Osama bin Uber settles California lawsuit Laden faces drunk-driving charge over driver checks for $10 million

Montana The former US Navy SEAL who says he fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden was arrested on Friday on a drunken driving charge after police found him asleep in a car parked at a convenience store in his Montana home town.

Customers at the store called police to report a sleeping man behind the wheel of the running car around 2:30am, Butte-Silver Bow County undersheriff George Skuletich said. An officer woke the man up, identified him as Robert O’Neill and noticed odd behaviour.

O’Neill denied drinking and gave different stories about where he had been, Skuletich said.

O’Neill failed a field sobriety test

and refused a test to determine his blood alcohol level. At that point, he was charged with driving under the influence, a misdemeanour, Skuletich said.

Jail records show O’Neill was released after posting a $685 bond. It is his first arrest.

A phone number listed for O’Neill was disconnected. It’s not clear whether he had hired an attorney.

O’Neill began publicly discussing his role in the 2011 bin Laden raid two years ago. He told The Associated Press in a 2014 interview that the American public had a right to know more details about the killing of the al Qaeda leader.

Pentagon officials previously said it is not clear whose shots killed bin Laden.

San Francisco Ride-sharing service Uber on Thursday said it agreed to pay $10 million to settle a California lawsuit accusing it of misleading the public about the thoroughness of its driver background checks.

The lawsuit, which was filed jointly by district attorneys in San Francisco and Los Angeles, accused Uber of using misleading advertising to make the background checks sound better than they were and of picking up passengers at airports without proper authorisation.

“Uber has agreed to pay $10 million as part of this settlement, as well as to address a number of advertising and airport-related issues -- many of which we have already dealt with,” Uber said on its blog.

The company admitted no wrongdoing but said that it agreed not to use terms such as “safest ride on the road” or describe its driver background checks as “the gold standard”.

“Accidents and incidents do happen,” Uber said.

“That’s why we need to ensure that the language used to

describe safety at Uber is clear and precise.”

In the settlement, San Francisco-based Uber agreed to provide its ride-sharing services only at California airports where it has explicit permission to operate and to clearly describe airport fees to passengers.

“We are pleased that Uber has agreed to comply with state consumer laws,” said Los Angeles County district attorney Jackie Lacey.

“With this settlement, the ridesharing company has pledged to

communicate honestly about its driver background checks and airport fees.” Under the settlement, Los Angeles and San Francisco will split the payment evenly. The agreement also called for Uber to pay an additional $15 million if it does not comply with all terms of the deal within two years. In addition, Uber said that it will continue to work with California’s Division of Measurement Standards to make sure its app accurately calculates fares using GPS data.

Teacher who won $1 million prize accused of shoplifting $15 blouse Edgecomb An English teacher from Maine who won the one million dollarGlobal Teacher Prize last year has been accused of shoplifting a blouse worth $14.99.

Nancie Atwell is founder of The Centre for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb. She was selected from 1,300 applicants from 127

countries at a ceremony in Dubai with former president Bill Clinton in attendance. She said the money will go toward school improvements.

The Portland Press Herald reports security personnel saw Atwell browsing through a Damariscotta store on March 28.

The security officers say she

New Jersey man may go to jail for refusing to take down Trump flag New York Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump appears to have a passionate supporter in Joseph

Hornick, a New Jersey man who faces a $2,000 fine or 90 days in jail for flying a flag emblazoned with the billionaire candidate’s name over his home.

Local officials said the flag violates an ordinance prohibiting the display of political signs more than 30 days ahead of an election and issued him a summons. New Jersey’s primary is on June 7.

For weeks, Hornick has displayed the blue flag with

Trump’s “Make America Great Again!” campaign slogan on a pole outside his two-story West Long Branch house, at a busy

intersection near Monmouth University.

Trump has been campaigning this week in neighbouring New York in an effort to snag the Republican presidential nomination.

Despite being issued a summons on March 25 for the violation, Hornick apparently intends to keep it up.

“The fine can be in the millions of dollars! That flag will never come down!” he wrote in a defiant

Facebook post.

Hornick did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Lori Cole, West Long Branch’s clerk, said on Friday that Hornick, 54, could also face 90 days in jail as a maximum penalty if a judge determines he is in violation of the law.

“It just came up recently,” she said of the controversy.

Brian Hegarty, a former Democratic Party councilman, complained to authorities about Hornick’s flag, according to a March 25 police report.

Hegarty told police that he had complained several times about the flag to a code enforcement official but no action was taken.

Sergeant James Gomez, in the report, said Hornick initially agreed to take down the flag before speaking with his attorney.

“He advised on the advice of an attorney he would not be removing the flag and would fight any summons issued to him,” Gomez wrote.

Hornick is scheduled to appear in court on April 20.

removed the blouse from a hanger, rolled it up and placed it in a bag she was carrying.

Atwell says it was a misunderstanding. She says she had returned another item and took the blouse in exchange.

She’s scheduled to appear in court next month on a misdemeanour theft charge.

Twitter adds button to share tweets in direct messages

SAN FRANCISCO Twitter on Tuesday added a button that lets people easily share ‘tweets’ in direct messages. The move came as an acknowledgement of the appeal of one-to-one connections to users of the popular one-to-many messaging service, and as Twitter worked to ramp use of its platform.

Millions of direct messages are sent daily at Twitter, and the number of tweets shared privately tripled in the second half of last year, according to product manager Somas Thyagaraja.

‘With all this interest, we’ve also heard from many of you that it

could be easier to share a Tweet using Direct Message,’ Thyagaraja said.

‘So now - in just a few taps - you can share unique Twitter content from your timeline right into your private conversation.’ Twitter has gradually enhanced its direct messaging option by letting people add animated snippets referred to as GIFs or emotioncapturing symbols called ‘emojis,’ as well as the option to send lengthy missives. The new ‘message’ button was added to Twitter applications tailored for mobile devices powered by Apple or Android software, according to Thyagaraja.

Issue - 662 (30)

12 April - 18 April 2016

A Muslim country that loves America

Washington In this time of dispiriting headlines -- when Islamist terrorists target Christian children and their mothers on an Easter Sunday outing in Lahore, Pakistan; when an American presidential candidate advocates stopping Muslims from coming to the United States; when ISIS terrorists have just killed dozens in Brussels; when the very possibility of peaceful coexistence sometimes seems remote, there is a place that may just restore our faith in the future: Welcome to Albania.

The small Muslim majority nation in the Balkans, a region that until

recently was synonymous with political turbulence, is a model of inter-religious coexistence.

And it is also one of the most pro-American countries on Earth.How did that happen? The answer contains important lessons for America on the global stage.Walk around the airy streets of the capital Tirana and ask people what they think about the United States, and you will be met with almost uniform responses of admiration, respect and gratitude.

Just as uniform is the reaction to the U.S. presidential election.

Albanians say they are not following the primaries closely, but they react without hesitation when they hear the name “Trump,” with some laughing, some shaking their heads, and others wincing. Most have not heard of Ted Cruz, and seem enthusiastic about a possible Hillary Clinton presidency. But when it comes to Trump, reaction is a mixture of disbelief, amusement and revulsion. “He seems a little crazy, but clever,” Aurora Xhixha, a microbiologist, told me. “Selfish,” is how Endri Hasanaj described him.

Discussing Trump’s call to stop Muslims from entering the United States, Adelina Bego, a doctor, sounded pained. “Here in Albania we live together, without considering religious differences,” she said. “We have seen America as the symbol of democracy, a symbol to emulate.” Trump’s proposal, she said, would destroy that symbol.

U.S. secretaries of state from James Baker to John Kerry have received rock star treatment in Albania. Republicans and Democrats are admired here by people of all parties and religions.

And the reason, in a word, is integrity.

American foreign policy, which so often suffers from the conflict between ideals and practical considerations, has found here a merger of idealism and action.

Albanians fell in love with the United States in 1919, when world leaders gathered at the Paris Peace Conference to redesign the world after World War I dismantled the empires that had held sway over much of the planet. President Woodrow Wilson stood up for Albania, stopping a plan to dismember the country and hand the pieces to its neighbors, Italy, Greece and Serbia.That’s why in Tirana today you can see Wilson’s statue on Wilson Square.

Albanians, who endured the most repressive of Communist dictatorships under Enver Hoxha, admired the United States as a beacon of freedom, approved of Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this

WHO launches $2.2b appeal to tackle humanitarian crises UNITED NATIONS Ongoing turmoil in Syria and the impact of drought in Ethiopia are among the diverse and pressing crises cited by the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) as the agency and its

partners appealed for some $2.2 billion to provide lifesaving health services to more than 79 million people in more than 30 countries facing protracted emergencies this year.According to WHO’s Humanitarian Response Plans 2016, launched today in Geneva, the agency and health partners are working together to provide urgent health services including essential medicines, vaccines and treatment for diseases such as cholera and measles, often in insecure and extremely difficult

settings.Collectively, $ 2.2 billion is needed to provide lifesaving health services, of which WHO is appealing for $480 million.“The risks to health caused by humanitarian emergencies are at an all-time high,” Dr. Bruce

Aylward, WHO’s interim Executive Director, Outbreaks and Health Emergencies, said in a statement.“And the situation is getting worse. The increasing impact of protracted conflict, forced displacement, climate change, unplanned urbanization and demographic changes all mean that humanitarian emergencies are becoming more frequent and severe,” he stressed.In Syria, one of the biggest humanitarian emergencies, WHO and

partners are seeking funds to provide 11.5 million people with health services including trauma and mental health care, and to provide vaccines, medicines and surgical supplies to almost five million Syrian refugees living in neighbouring countries. WHO also needs urgent funds to support 6.8 million people threatened by the worst drought in decades in Ethiopia, with one of the priorities to provide emergency health services to save the lives of more than 400 000 severely malnourished children. In addition to more than 30 protracted emergencies, WHO is also responding to sudden onset emergencies, such as Cyclone Winston that impacted Fiji in February 2016, and to infectious disease outbreaks including Zika virus, the remaining risks of Ebola in West Africa and Angola’s worst outbreak of yellow fever in 30 years.In one of the most profound transformations in its history, WHO is rolling out a new Health Emergencies Programme that will increase operational capacity in countries and enable a faster, effective and predictable response to all kinds of health emergencies including outbreaks and humanitarian crises.

wall” words, and deeply valued the efforts of the George H.W. Bush administration, which helped pave their path to NATO. In 1991, some 300,000 Albanians chanting “USA! USA!” came out to hear Secretary of State James Baker declare that “Freedom works.”

Affection for America grew passionate when Bill Clinton led a NATO operation next door in Kosovo to save ethnic Albanians from a genocidal campaign.

Clinton is a superstar in Kosovo and here. Years after that war, George W. Bush visited Tirana.

its words, has given it a measure of moral authority among the people. You might think a Muslim-majority country is a poor candidate to be America’s cheerleader, but Albania is uniquely suited to emulate the United States. As much as twothirds or more of the population is estimated to be Muslim, but coexistence, tolerance and patriotism figure much more prominently than religion.

Centuries of invasions and foreign conquerors have made the need to unite take precedence over private religious

Back then, Tirana’s socialist mayor, Edi Rama, famously declared “Albania is for sure the most pro-American country in Europe, maybe even in the world.” Rama is now Prime Minister. America’s close ties with Albania have not prevented Washington from speaking honestly to a country still riddled with problems, including entrenched corruption. But the consistency of American behavior, putting action behind

differences. And Muslims here have some of the most strikingly moderate views of any Muslimmajority country -- about one-fifth are Bektashi, followers of a moderate Sufi sect, while others follow Fethullah Gulen, U.S.based Turkish advocate of modern democratic Islam. Most others are just as moderate.

There are relatively few mosques in town, and I have only seen a handful of women wearing hijab, the veil, much less a burqa.

Washington In a love story which will astonish everyone, a 51-year-old mother and 32-year-old son are madly in love and the couple wants to have a baby together.

Kim West from London, got pregnant when she was 19 and gave birth to Ben Ford, whom she gave up for adoption. Thirty years later, in 2013, Kim received a letter from Ford and the duo reunited while Ford was in search of his biological parents.

Ford who was married to Victoria by then, met Kim in 2014 and they kissed for the first time. That was the time when they realized that they were sexually attracted to each other.

Later, Ford separated from his wife for a having a relationship with his mother and moved in with

Kim in Michigan. “I know people will say we’re disgusting, that we should be able to control our feelings, but when you’re hit by a love so consuming you are willing to give up everything for it, you have to fight for it. This is not incest, it is GSA. We are like peas in a pod and are meant to be together. It’s a once in a lifetime chance and something Ford and I are not willing to walk away from,” Kim said.

Kim and Ford are in love and they term their relationship as ‘Genetic Sexual Attraction’ meaning a phenomenon that occurs between adoptees and their long-lost parents.

The duo now wants to have a baby together and is even open for surrogacy if they can’t have a child biologically.

‘I’m in love with my son.

I want to have his baby’

Issue - 662 (31)

12 April - 18 April 2016

British MP performs cancer operations for Palestinians GAZA CITY British lawmakers normally spend their breaks catching up on paperwork or holidaying, but one parliamentarian has instead travelled more than 2,000 miles to the Palestinian territories to carry out life-saving breast cancer surgery.

Philippa Whitford, a parliamentarian for Central Ayrshire in Scotland and a breast cancer expert before entering parliament, travelled to provide care for a number of Palestinian women, who face an uphill struggle to get quality treatment.

Whitford carried out four major cancer operations in the occupied West Bank last week, before travelling to Gaza on Sunday to advise hospitals there on how to improve their care.

One operation was on a woman with “very advanced” cancer, said the lawmaker, who returned to the United Kingdom on Thursday.

“It was very large in the breast and very advanced in the lymph nodes.

She had had chemotherapy, but it hadn’t got a lot smaller and she still had a lot of disease.”

“It was just a difficult operation and we knew it would be,” she said, adding that initial signs

suggested it had been successful. Whitford, who became a lawmaker for the leftwing Scottish National Party (SNP) in the 2015 British

been under an Israeli blockade since 2006. There are regular shortages of medicines including those to treat cancer and no radiotherapy in the

election, said breast cancer treatment in the Palestinian territories suffered from a lack of planning, resources and Israeli restrictions.In Gaza, breast cancer kills more women than any other cancer, according to a 2011 research paper by researchers from Harvard Medical School. Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars with Israel since 2008.

The strip, run by Islamist movement Hamas, has also

coastal enclave. “Getting anything into Gaza is not secure.

You can’t say ‘we get a delivery every month and it will be here and the hospital will be stocked.’

So they are forever running out of things,” Whitford said.

She said that, while in England doctors would usually remove just a part of the breast, in Gaza they tend to remove the whole breast - whether through lack of training or due to limited medical facilities. Radiotherapy is

LONDON If you’re as obsessed with homerepair shows as we are, you know that all houses need a little loving. Sometimes a new coat of paint will do the trick, annnnnd

Dreamland high-rise to the test by spending two full weeks living inside it. Nothing can prepare them for what awaits inside.

Because in Dreamland, every nightmare comes true.

afternoon, or at any time.

Rolf Deutsch hasn’t much time left, which leads him to start contemplating life after death.

It consumes him so much that he hires several people

available in Israel and east Jerusalem, but Palestinians say travel permits are hard to obtain, border points can be closed depending on events, and some cannot afford the trip.

More than 120,000 Palestinians entered Israel for medical treatment in 2015, mostly from the West Bank, according to Israeli officials.The lack of quality treatment in Palestinian territories, Whitford said, meant recurrence rates are believed to be more than double those in the United Kingdom. No delegation of British lawmakers has been permitted entry into Gaza by Israel since 2009. Earlier this year a delegation of members of the European parliament was refused entry.But Whitford applied and entered as a single doctor rather than in a delegation, thus skirting Israel’s restrictions.

It was a return for her, having worked as a breast cancer surgeon in Gaza for 18 months in the early 1990s with Medical Aid for the Palestinians. She said returning to the Palestinian enclave was like “coming home.”

More than 8 percent of Palestinian women develop breast cancer in their lifetime, the Palestinian health ministry

says. But Whitford said breast cancer was for a long time a hidden killer in Gaza due to social stigma. “When I came (in 1991) the doctors told me there was no breast cancer here,” she said.

“As soon as people realised there was a woman surgeon they started to come and I realised there was actually a lot of breast cancer.” Whitford said she never expected to be a lawmaker, but that her skills helped her in her role as the SNP’s shadow health spokeswoman.

The British parliament doesn’t meet between 24 March and 11 April this year. The leftwing SNP has also criticised the British government’s lack of firm action over Israel’s continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.

Whitford said the West Bank, which is supposed to form the bulk of a future Palestinian state, is “being moth-eaten - every time I come back the settlements are bigger, they are closer to key Palestinian towns and cities.”

“We need to be saying ‘we don’t want to deal with settlements, we don’t want British registered companies to be dealing with settlements.”

LONDON A new William Shakespeare First Folio, part of the original collection of 36 plays published in 1623, has been discovered on a Scottish island, the University of Oxford said Thursday. Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University, authenticated the First Folio as genuine, making it one of the most valuable books in the world.

The discovery brings the total of First Folios known to survive to 234, and comes shortly before celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of the English playwright’s death, on April 23, 1616.The Folio was found at the Mount Stuart mansion on the island of Bute, where it will be on display to the public until October. The three-volume work formerly belonged to 18th-century literary editor Isaac Reed, according to Smith.

“When the team at Mount Stuart first told me they thought they had a First Folio, I must admit I thought ‘yeah, sure, and so do I!’,’ she said sardonically. “But when I went up to investigate, I

could tell from the story of the book’s origins, the watermarks and the idiosyncrasies of the text that it was genuine. It was a really exciting moment.” The professor described the goatskin piece as “unusual, because it is bound in three volumes and has lots of spare blank pages which would have been used for illustrations.”

The book is part of the Bute Collection, one of Britain’s most important private collections of artwork and artefacts that is kept at Mount Stuart.“In terms of literary discoveries, they do not come much bigger than a new First Folio, and we are really excited that this has happened on Bute,” said Alice Martin from Mount Stuart. “But it is just the tip of the iceberg for the undiscovered material in the remarkable Bute Collection.”

The First Folio was printed seven years after Shakespeare’s death, ensuring the survival of plays such as Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and The Tempest, which would otherwise have been lost.

New Shakespeare 5 Haunted House Books That Will Make You Think Twice About Moving First Folio discovered

sometimes they require more of an... exorcism. That’s right, the haunted house books on this list would make for one supernatural episode of “Fixer Upper”, but hey, what’s a ghost, demon, or doorway to hell when you can have original stained wood floors?

Granted, they’re stained with blood, but look at that curb appeal.

1. “House of Bones,” By Dale Bailey Pro Tip: If gang lords and crack dealers steer clear of the abandoned Dreamland high-rise, it’s probably for a good reason.

Unfortunately, the strangers in this tale didn’t get the memo.

Built as affordable housing for those needing a second chance, Dreamland became the stuff of local legends when the walls started to bleed and inexplicable fatal accidents became the norm. Now, decades later and abandoned, five strangers put the terrifying legend of the

2. “The Haunting of Hill House,”

By Shirley Jackson If you’ve never read a Shirley Jackson tale, you’ve never been truly unnerved. Start with this classic thriller about four people seeking answers within one terrifying house.

3. “Nella Waits,” By Marlys Millhiser Marriage took Lynnette far, far away from the confines of her dull hometown. But when her husband dies, she returns to take care of her mother. She connects with Jay Van Fleet, who is also coping with a tragedy and has come back to claim his inheritance: his childhood home, haunted by the ghost of his mother Nella. Sadly, Nella is not at all happy that Jay and Lynnette are falling in love.

4. “Hell House,” By Richard Matheson The titular abode in Matheson’s novel is not someplace a house hunter wants to be at night, or

(including a physicist and a medium) to investigate Hell House, an old home that just might be the key to the other side. Now the question is “which side?” And will they survive the night after they open some of the many doors within?

5. “Wylding Hall,” By Elizabeth Hand A British band sets off to record their latest album in an ancient country house. Wylding Hall boasts fantastic acoustics, a gorgeous countryside, and the kind of deep dark secrets that keep property values low.

Though they manage to create the album that cements their reputation, it comes at a cost: Julian Blake, the group’s lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never heard from again. Years later, the surviving members and a documentary filmmaker return to tell what happened that summer.

Issue - 662 (32)

12 April - 18 April 2016

In US, rich may outlive poor by nearly 15 years MIAMI The richest Americans tend to outlive the poorest by almost 15 years, and that gap has grown since 2001, said a major study of income and life expectancy this week.

The findings, published Sunday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, were based on more than one billion tax records from 1999 to 2014, as well as government mortality

CAUGHT

DRUNK DRIVING? CALL VICKY SINGH AT:

416-887-4971

statistics. The gap in life expectancy between the richest one percent and the poorest one percent was 14.6 years for men and 10.1 years for women, said the study led by Raj Chetty, an economics researcher at Stanford University.

“For example, men in the bottom one percent of the income distribution at the age of 40 years in the United States have life expectancies similar to the mean life expectancy for 40year-old men in Sudan and Pakistan.”

The inequality in life expectancy also increased over time. “There was a larger increase in life expectancy for higher income groups during the 2000s,” said the study. The rich tended to live even longer - by more than two years for men and almost three years for women between 2001 and 2014. “Life expectancy did not change for individuals in the bottom five percent of the income distribution,” it said. Researchers said factors found to affect life expectancy among the poor included smoking and obesity.

Where people lived also made a difference.

Big Royal bash: 1 billion pound bill expected on Queen’s 90th birthday

Diamond and scroll break auction records in Hong Kong London A rare blue diamond set a new record at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong Tuesday after fetching HK$248.29 million ($31.8 million), despite a slowdown in China’s economy which has affected the auction market. The “De Beers Millennium Jewel 4”, a 10.10 carat vivid blue diamond, broke the record for the most expensive piece of jewellery sold at auction in Asia, but at the lower end of estimates which predicted it would fetch between $30 and $35 million. Slightly larger than an almond, it is described by Sotheby’s as the largest oval blue diamond ever to appear at auction and “internally flawless”. It was sold to an anonymous phone bidder.

“It was a very successful sale,” Sotheby’s international jewellery division worldwide chairman David Bennett said. “The fact that it’s a record price for jewellery in Asia I think speaks well about the Asian market. I think it’s alive and well and very healthy,” Bennett said.

The sale came hours after a scroll painting by Chinese master Zhang Daqian sold for a record-breaking HK$270.68 million ($35.93 million), also at Sotheby’s.

It was snapped up by Chinese collector Liu Yiqian’s Shanghai museum - the latest in a string of massive buys associated with the former taxi driver turned tycoon.Zhang’s splashed ink and colour scroll outstripped the

top-end pre-sale estimate of HK$65 million, breaking the record for the artist’s work at auction. A buyer from Liu’s Long Museum ended hour-long bidding for the work, entitled

auctions in the past few years, stunned the art world when he bought a famed nude by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani costing more than $170 million in November. He set a record for

“Peach Blossom Spring”, with more than 100 bids cast. The sales comes despite a slowdown in the Chinese economy which expanded 6.9 percent in 2015, the worst performance in a quarter of a century and a far cry from years of double-digit increases.There are fears that the combination of the Chinese economic slowdown and an anticorruption drive by President Xi Jinping could hit the Asia market - both Sotheby’s and Christie’s posted lower totals at their autumn sales last year in Hong Kong compared with the two preceding years.

Liu, who has been making record-setting purchases at

Chinese porcelain in 2014 by paying over $36 million for a tiny Ming Dynasty cup depicting a rooster and hen tending to their chicks, know as the “chicken cup”. Liu made world headlines by drinking from the cup after he bought it. Auctioneers say despite China’s economic downturn, there is still demand for top quality collectibles, and demand stretches across Asia.

The “Seal of the Mandate of Heaven” which belonged to the Kangxi Emperor, the longest reigning Chinese monarch, is to be auctioned on Wednesday at Sotheby’s as part of its spring sales season, with a starting at a price of HK$50 million.

Ancient church unearthed on Gaza building site London Over 1 billion pounds is the expected bill for a UK-wide celebration to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday this year, according to a survey.

Almost half of all British public intend to mark the landmark event over April to June this year and more than a third are planning trips to pubs, bars and street parties, said the survey released in ‘The Sunday Times’.

Nearly a quarter plan to raise a glass at home while watching the coverage on television.

The result will be a total of 1,021,779,027 pounds spent across the nation, says the survey of 2,000 British adults.

The survey also said that an average person is planning to spend 42.98 pounds on celebrations, with men intending to spend some 20 pounds more than women around the Queen’s actual and official birthdays -April 21 and June 11 respectively. Her official birthday will kick off a weekend of

festivities across the UK and a ceremonial ‘Trooping of the Colour’ on June 11.

A street party for 10,000 guests will be held on The Mall in London on June 12 with Princes William and Harry acting as joint presidents of the event.

Tickets for a street party to mark the occasion will cost 150 pounds. Across the UK, 15% of people will be throwing or attending a party in the Queen’s honour. London, Brighton, Plymouth and Belfast are predicted to see more than half their population getting on to the streets in party mood.

As a reflection of the regional popularity of the monarchy, Scotland will be splashing out the most, with an average of 49.41 pounds per person being earmarked for celebrations nearly 10 pounds more than those celebrating in England.Welsh citizens are setting aside 38.76 pounds. But in Belfast, the average spend will be just 26.32 pounds.

GAZA CITY Archaeologists have called for the preservation of an ancient church unearthed on a Gaza construction site, with different ministries in the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave seemingly at loggerheads over its fate.

The site is believed to be a church or cathedral dating back to at least the 7th century. The Gaza ministry of antiquities and a number of prominent archaeologists called for all building to be suspended until the relics can be protected and preserved.The ministry of endowments and Islamic affairs, however, owns the land and wants the commercial development to continue, with bulldozers working on Tuesday despite protests.

Hyam al-Betar, an archaeologist who works with the antiquities ministry, screamed at bulldozers to stop on Tuesday as they roughly moved marble columns from under the sand, breaking one.Technicians from the ministries of antiquities were hurriedly taking columns, as well as ornate marble bases, to the Qasr al-Basha - the only museum in Gaza - to be cleaned and restored before being presented.

Mohammed Al-Zarad, a researcher in archaeology at Gaza’s Islamic University, said it was a ‘very important site which must be protected.’

‘We found many of the rock layers

pieces found include a marble column engraved with leaves, pillars and a foundation stone bearing a Greek Christian symbol. Gaza, like much of the Palestinian territories and Israel,

had fossils in them dating back to the bronze age,’ he added, with other discoveries including plates and pottery - some of which were perhaps smashed by bulldozers.

Zarad said there were not enough resources to search for relics within Gaza and called on the world heritage body UNESCO to step in and ‘save the monuments of Gaza from loss.’

Jamal Abu Raida, from the ministry of antiquities, said the

is filled with antiquities. The territory has at various times come under the rule of Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans.

Betar said it was important to try to find a solution. ‘We extend our hand to all to cooperate in research into Gaza and its history because Gaza is one of the oldest cities in the world.’ ‘There are treasures beneath our feet,’ she added.

Issue - 662 (33)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Pak court issues non-bailable arrest warrant against Musharraf Lahor An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan has issued a nonbailable arrest warrant against former military ruler Pervez

Musharraf for his failure to appear before the court in the 2007 judges’ detention case.

72-year-old Musharraf, who last month flew to Dubai for purported treatment after the Supreme Court lifted bars on his foreign trips, was not present at the anti-terrorism court (ATC).

ATC judge Sohail Ikram expressed displeasure at absence of Musharraf and said he should have sought permission from the court before proceeding abroad, while hearing the case against Musharraf for allegedly putting the judges of the superior courts under detention after imposing emergency in 2007.

The court was not satisfied at the argument of his lawyer Akhtar Shah that Musharraf went out of the country after he was allowed by the government.

It also rejected contention of state prosecutor Amir Nadeem Tabish that government allowed Musharraf to leave after orders of the Supreme Court.

Later, the ATC judge issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Musharraf.

However, it is highly unlikely that the orders will be executed as several times in the past various courts issued orders to produce Musharraf but he easily dodged such orders citing security and health reasons.

The same court had issued such an order in September last year but withdrew when Musharraf refused to appear and instead sent a medical certificate that

Indonesian singer dies after king cobra bites

Jakarta An Indonesian singer has died after being bitten by a king cobra while she was on stage performing. Irma Bule, 29, kept singing for 45 minutes until the venom took hold and she started vomiting and having seizures.

New video shared online shows the moment the snake latched onto Irma Bule and a handler trying to loosen the cobra’s grip for some time. The Mirror reports the singer accidentally stood on the deadly snake on Sunday, causing it to bite her on the leg.

Ferlando Octavion Auzura, a member of the audience, told the Indonesian press that “in the middle of the second song Irma

stepped on the snake’s tail. The snake then bit Irma in her thigh.”Online reports claim the king cobra was not defanged.

According to Coconuts Jakarta the singer soldiered on with her performance rather than seeking medical attention straight away.

“The effects were felt 45 minutes after the bite. She vomited, had seizures, and her body seized,” Ferlando said. Witnesses reportedly claimed the singer refused an antidote from the animal’s handler. It’s believed the incident happened on Sunday evening at a village in Karawang, West Java. Irma Bule was reportedly taken to hospital where she later passed away.

he was unwell. It is believed that Musharraf enjoyed backing of army and despite several criminal cases, was allowed to go out of the country. Though, he has promised to come back and face all cases, it is highly unlikely that he would come anytime soon.

Musharraf ruled from 1999 to 2008 when he stepped down.

He lived abroad for most of the time until his return in 2013 to contest elections but was implicated in several high- profile cases and was not allowed to leave the country.

Musharraf had said before leaving that he was going abroad to seek medical treatment for a spinal cord ailment which has now developed several complications and will “come back in a few weeks or months”.

The ex-army chief is facing a slew of court cases after returning from five years of selfexile in Dubai.

He is facing trial in high treason case for abrogating the constitution in 2007 and illegal detention of judges same year.

In January 2014, Musharraf suffered a “severe heart attack” on his way to a special court to face the high treason charges following which he was admitted to an army hospital.

Robots set to aid postal workers with deliveries in Germany

TROISDORF Germany’s Deutsche Post is testing robots that could help postal workers cope with increasing numbers of parcels on their delivery rounds, a company manager said on Thursday. The volume of parcels being delivered

by Deutsche Post in Germany is rising steadily as more and more Germans buy goods online from retailers such as Amazon.com and Zalando .

That is making up for declining letter volumes, but posing problems due to the larger size of items involved. “Robots could be used in deliveries in three to five years’ time,” Clemens Beckmann, head of innovation at the group’s parcel and letter division, said in an interview with Reuters. “The technology is there.” The robots, which look like a table on wheels on which goods can be placed, would

follow delivery workers, helping them to transport and carry heavy parcels. If the postie stops walking, the robot stops too, and it only starts again when they move on. Deutsche Post is already conducting trials of the robots at its depots. It is also considering the idea of using robots as mobile pick-up points that would go and collect parcels from customers. However, that is a long way off because that would require rules on autonomous driving.

Still, Deutsche Post is already testing robotics elsewhere, such as moveable shelves in warehouses, and is considering drones to help monitor inventory levels in large depots in China and watch over valuable goods.

Around 80 percent of the processes in logistics sites are still done manually, Deutsche Post said.

Afghan boy’s text message saves 15 migrants trapped in truck London The text message from a young boy, writing in broken English on a no-frills cellphone, was frightening enough to set off a frantic, trans-Atlantic search that saved the lives of 15 migrants trapped in a locked truck in England.

The message flashed on the cellphone of volunteer Liz Clegg, who was attending a conference in New York: “I ned halp darivar no stap car no oksijan in the car no signal iam in the cantenar.

Iam no jokan valla.”

It was written by Ahmed, an Afghan boy of about 7, trying to say: “I need help. The driver won’t stop the car. No oxygen in the car. No signal. I’m in a container. I am not joking. I swear to God.” In March, Clegg and others volunteering at a squalid migrant camp in Calais, France, had handed out hundreds of basic cellphones to children living there, programming in a number for them to text in a crisis.

She knew Ahmed wouldn’t text something like that if he wasn’t in danger. So she called Tanya Freedman, from the Help Refugees charity in London, to tell her the boy seemed to be suffocating.

Freedman called police in southeast England to tell them of the emergency. The police

response was swift and effective, she said.

“I conveyed to them that it was a life-and-death situation,” Freedman told The Associated Press on Friday. “I had Ahmed’s number and the first thing they did was find an interpreter who spoke Pashto to talk to him.

They called him and immediately they realised it was an

into the back and freed 15 oxygen-starved migrants.

Only then did Freedman exhale: “It was absolutely nerve-wracking waiting to see if the police could find this boy in time to save his life,” she said.Leicestershire Police said 14 migrants were detained on suspicion of entering Britain illegally with their cases to be handled by immigration

emergency and they were able to put a trace of his cellphone and find out he was in a lorry (truck) in Leicestershire.”

Kent Police said in a statement that they received a call at 2:50pm on Thursday, reporting that migrants were believed to be in danger in a truck and that police established the truck was in Leicestershire.

The information was given to police in Leicestershire, who quickly found the truck parked at a highway service station, broke

officials, and one man was arrested on suspicion of illegal trafficking.Police said one child was placed in protective care.

None involved gave his last name because he is a minor.“I think it’s extraordinary that a 7-year-old boy knew his life was in danger and had the presence of mind to know what to do and give the right information and save himself and the others in the truck,” Freedman said. “We hope he’s getting the right kind of care.”

Issue - 662 (34)

12 April - 18 April 2016

US fight goes on with Apple over iPhone access NEW YORK The US government is keeping its encryption battle with Apple alive, pressing the high-tech giant to help crack an iPhone in a drug case in New York. The Justice Department filed a letter in a US District Court on Friday telling a judge that it still wants Apple to extract pictures, text messages and other digital data from an iPhone used by someone accused of trafficking in methamphetamines. Also on Friday, court documents were unsealed showing that Apple rebuffed an order to help break into a locked iPhone for police investigating criminal gang activity in Boston.

The news came after a highstakes showdown between Apple and the FBI over access to the iPhone of a California gunman ended with investigators saying they had extracted the data on their own. Timing in the Massachusetts case lent support to Apple’s ongoing argument that the US government was out to set legal precedent that would essentially open a back door into all iPhones.

A judge in Boston on February 1

CHARGED

DRUNK & DRIVING? CALL VICKY SINGH

416-887-4971

ordered Apple to help police extract data from an iPhone confiscated last year from an alleged gang member, according to documents posted online Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union. Apple told AFP it immediately challenged the order on legal grounds, and advised the court it could not unlock the handset because it was powered by iOS 9 software with updated security features.

The deadline passed for the US government to respond to Apple’s stance on the order, indicating the effort was dropped.

Meanwhile, on February 16, Apple received the legal demand to help the FBI in the San Bernardino case, which grabbed headlines as a terror attack and promised to win public support for the government.

Key questions remain about how much access law enforcement should have to encrypted devices and how to balance security issues with user privacy rights.

In the New York case, Justice Department lawyers told US District Court Judge Margo Brodie in a written filing that “the government continues to require Apple’s assistance in accessing the data that it is authorized to search by warrant.”

Apple lawyers said they were disappointed by what amounted to an appeal by the government, arguing anew that it was an attempt to set a troubling legal precedent and not really a pursuit of vital information for fighting crime. In the New York case, the accused drug trafficker confessed and is set to be

California to expand paid family leave for new parents

SACRAMENTO California will increase the amount of money new parents can receive through the state’s paid family leave program under a bill to be signed on Monday by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, his office said Friday.

The measure, passed last month by the state legislature, would increase the amount paid to new parents or people caring for a sick family member to as much as 70 percent of their regular income for the poorest workers, up from 55 percent.

Those earning more would still get an increase in payments, to 60 percent from 55 percent. The state also plans to eliminate a

seven-day waiting period imposed on receiving the benefits.The legislation aims to help more people take family leave, especially poorer Californians who could not afford to stop work if they only got 55 percent of their regular income, according to the bill’s author Jimmy Gomez, a Democratic assemblymember. The program, administered through the state’s disability system, would apply to all parents who take off time from work to bond with a child within one year of birth, adoption or placement as a foster child. It would also provide payments to people who take time to care for seriously ill family members.

sentenced, Apple attorneys said.

Apple is being asked to extract data from an iPhone for sentencing purposes.

In the San Bernardino case, in

to crack into an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a December rampage that left 14 dead.

Apple attorneys said they

contrast, the government called on Apple to create a new tool to bypass iPhone security systems

planned to oppose the government’s effort in the New York case by pressing in court

to find out whether it has done everything possible without the company’s help to get the data it seeks and by continuing to argue that the request is not backed by law.The US Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI went to court in New York to compel Apple to help it break into an iPhone confiscated in June 2014 from a suspected methamphetamine trafficker, according to court documents.

The US government sought to get Apple to help break into the iPhone under the auspices of the All Writs Act a 1789 law that gives wide latitude to law enforcement, the same one cited in the San Bernardino case.

Earlier this year, a lower court judge in New York sided with Apple, saying law enforcement lacked the authority to compel the company to comply.

Fidel Castro appears in public after nine months, criticizes Obama’s Cuba visit Cuba Cuban revolutionary icon Fidel Castro appeared in public for the first time in nine months, chatting with school children and criticizing Barack Obama’s recent visit. Castro, 89, was seen on state TV state seated as he spoke to children about a late fellow revolutionary leader, Vilma Espin.

The last time Castro appeared in public was nine months ago, when state TV showed him with civilians who work with the armed forces and the interior ministry.

Castro, leader of the Cuban revolution of 1959, yielded power to his brother Raul in 2006 for

health reasons.

He latest appearance comes as the ruling communist party prepares a convention on April 16

which is designed to set Cuba’s economic and political path for the next five years.

During Thursday’s public appearance, Castro spoke highly of Cuba’s free public education system.

In a newspaper article he criticized Obama’s historic visit to the island from March 20-23, the first by a sitting US president in more than 80 years.

“We do not need the empire to give us anything,” Castro wrote in an opinion piece in the state daily Granma.

Obama and Raul Castro restored US-Cuban relations in 2015 after half a century of enmity.

During his visit, Obama declared the Cold War finally over, and reached out to the Castro regime, even though the US trade embargo remains in place and the two countries differ on human rights.

Cambridge Scientists have made a significant leap towards mass producing platelets - the part of the blood that forms clots. The NHS and University of Cambridge team have discovered how to grow the body’s platelet factories in the laboratory. It could provide a new source of platelets to stop heavy bleeding, for example after a car crash. But the researchers need to make the process more efficient before starting trials. If you donate blood, then it is separated out into red blood cells, plasma and platelets so patients are given only the component they need.Platelets are needed after trauma, surgery, leukaemia therapy and in some blood disorders like haemophilia.

“We’re totally dependent on blood donation to produce those platelets,” said Dr Cedric Ghevaert, a consultant haematologist. His team has been trying to grow megakaryocytes - the platelet mother cells that live in your bone marrow and manufacture the clotting platelets.

Their breakthrough, reported in the journal Nature Communications, was the discovery of a set of chemical switches needed to create

megakaryocytes in the lab.

Dr Ghevaert described their results as a “major step forward” and told the BBC News website that “the next big step is to get

donation.

Dr Ghevaert added: “We can modify the platelets so they can trigger the clotting even better which would have huge

enough platelets out of each megakaryocyte”. The lab-made cells produce around 10 platelets each. But each one functioning normally in the bone marrow would produce up to 2,000.

It is hoped that recreating the same conditions as in the bone marrow could make the cells more effective. If the researchers are successful, then lab-grown platelets could be more useful than ones collected in a blood

advantages indeed for patients who have had a crash or a bleed or even in soldiers who have been injured.”

It could also allow doctors to have stockpiles customised to different patients. Platelets come in different forms just as red blood cells come in A, B, O and AB. And some platelet types, particularly those common in black and Asian ethnic groups, are relatively rare.

Huge leap to mass produced platelets

Issue 662 (35)

12 April - 18 April 2016

ROYAL CHALLENGERS TARGET PLAYOFFS In the last few seasons, the Royal Challengers Bangalore has always depended on the big three Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers. The trio has more often than not carried the team’s fortunes on their shoulders. Going by their form in 2015, RCB start firm favourites on Tuesday against the Sunrisers Hyderabad the teams’ opening fixture of the IPL. RCB will start without the services of their best bowler, Mitchell Starc. Samuel Badree is also set to miss a chunk of the action.

However, RCB have made some smart buys in the auction and the think-tank will be spoilt

for choice when they sit down to pick the best XI

None of us had dinner after the loss to India says Mashrafe Mortaza

Bangladesh team has taken giant leaps in terms of achievement in limited overs cricket since the past one and half year. Series wins at home against the big teams and a superb start to the year 2016 by reaching the Asia cup T20 finals speaks about their growth. The rising Asian Giants entered the World T20 with a lot of hopes not only from their cricket-mad fans but also from the observers of cricket.

However, the team, after comfortably qualifying into the Super 10 stage, were shockingly ousted from the tournament without winning a single game.

They were beaten hands down by Australia and Pakistan in their first two games. But, it was the narrow loss at the hands

of their Asian rival India that caused heartbreak for the Bangladeshis.

Skipper Mashrafe Mortaza has revealed that he and his teammates skipped dinner after their gutwrenching one-run defeat against India in the recently concluded World T20. “We were very upset with that defeat. None of us had dinner that evening.

Losing is a part of the game and we did not want to lose that match,” Mortaza was quoted as saying by a local website, when a local boy asked about Bangladesh not being able to score two runs off the last three balls during their group league encounter against India, Mortaza, who is holidaying in Kashmir, said while speaking with local youngsters.

to take on the Sunrisers.

Kohli, however, hinted that Adam Milne may get the nod ahead of Kane Richardson, as the bowler consistently clocked over 150kmph in practice.

But this would also mean that he would be tossing the ball to a bowler with zero IPL experience.

Kohli also appeared to play his cards close to his chest when asked if they had enough firepower to clinch the title. “It’s not a matter of four or five games; there will be ups and downs,” he said. “We would like to be in a position where we aren’t dependent on anyone else to make the play-offs.”

On paper, RCB are a powerhouse. But the bowling front has always been a thorn in their side, and RCB will look to iron out the wrinkles. The pace battery of Milne, Sreenath Arvind and Varun Aaron will look to target Kane Williamson, Eoin Morgan and Shikhar Dhawan, who are a touch out-of-form.

Their coach Tom Moody was optimistic that they would find their groove soon.

Moody also claimed Yuvraj Singh’s absence is a big blow and hoped he would take the field soon. Yuvraj suffered an injury during the World T20 last month.

He also felt that Nehra’s inclusion will boost their bowling unit. “He is in top form and his experience on and off the field is invaluable,” Moody said.

Hope cricketers haven’t complained, says Bhogle on IPL ouster Noted cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle is still clueless about the reasons for his ouster from the IPL panel but hoped that players’ complaint has nothing to do with his removal.

“I still don’t know why I am not doing the IPL. I haven’t been told. I can accept the fact that people don’t like me.

But I genuinely hope it isn’t because cricketers have complained about what I have to say,” posted Bhogle on his Facebook page.

Speculation is rife that some Indian cricketers have complained against Bhogle to the BCCI for his comments on air but the

exact reason for his last minute sacking from the IPL commentators’ panel is not yet known.

“I tell every young cricketer who cares to listen that we will never agree on everything but I will always desire that they do well; that I cannot stop them from scoring a run, or taking a wicket or holding a catch.

It was just one bad day, good things are in store says Zaheer Trying to put up a brave face after suffering a humiliating nine-wicket loss against Kolkata Knight Riders in their IPL 9 opener, Delhi Daredevils captain Zaheer Khan has said that it was just a “bad day” in office for his side.

The new-look Daredevils, who are yet to go past the last four stage in IPL’s eight seasons, slumped to their seventh sub-100 total after being skittled out for 98, a target the Knight Riders overwhelmed with consummate ease in 14.1 overs at Eden Gardens on Sunday.

But Zaheer said it would be wrong to write the Daredevils off in the tournament that had just begun.

“Well, I’m smiling. I know it’s been a tough day out there for us but it was just one bad day. It’s just the beginning of the season, and I hope things will come along. Good things are in store,” Zaheer said at the

CHARGED

DRUNK & DRIVING? CALL VICKY SINGH

416-887-4971

post-match press conference.

“It’s a long tournament and I’m sure every team will have a bad day. It does happen sometimes. Hopefully for us that day is out of the way and we’re looking ahead for the remain-

with the way the boys have carried themselves on the field. The way the bowlers showed intent of taking wickets,” he said. “I’m very very happy with the energy and intensity showed by the boys on the field. This is how we’re going to ap-

But we’re happy with the combination. There’s no second thoughts on it. It was a tough day and we accept that,” he said.

Quinton de Kock and Mayank Agarwal had given Daredevils a brisk start, putting up 23 runs in just

ing league matches.

“We will stay together and turn things around. It’s going to be a long season, it’s too early to think about anything,” he maintained.

The Daredevils batting department failed to last the distance as they were bowled out in 17.4 overs.

But Zaheer backed his underfire batting unit to come good. “I’m just happy

proach the season. This is a young team. This energy is we’re looking at this format. We will create opportunities.” To the surprise of many, the Daredevils on Sunday ignored South African duo of Imran Tahir and JP Duminy on a slow Eden surface but Zaheer said he is happy with the team combination.

“Duminy was not available.

two overs before Andre Russell (3/24) sparked the collapse with a twin breakthrough, while John Hastings (2/6) tightened the screws at the other end. Later, spin duo of Brad Hogg (3/19) and Piyush Chawla (2/21) made it all the more difficult as the Daredevils batsmen struggled to build a partnership.

Issue 662 (36)

12 April - 18 April 2016

US military, watchers rescue 3 men from deserted Pacific island

Tata sells one of its UK steel plants amid broad restructuring Tata Steel has sold one of its steel plants in England to a London investment firm, a bit of welcome news for an industry under strain. The sale of the Scunthorpe works to Greybull Capital announced Monday has been nine months in the making and is separate from the UK government’s effort to save

the Port Talbot plant in south Wales. The deal will save thousands of jobs at the Scunthorpe plant and

the firms that supply it. Business Secretary Sajid Javid is expected to address the House of Commons on efforts to find a buyer for Tata’s other UK businesses, including Port Talbot. So far, London-based Liberty House is the only company to express interest in the Welsh plant.

UN panel to study a cap on global warming The US military said it has helped rescue three stranded men from a deserted Pacific island, after the shipmen used palm fronds to spell the word “HELP” and held up lifejackets.

Navy airplane crew members spotted the survivors and shared their location with relatives as well as with ships in Guam. A small boat then picked the men up and took them to Pulap in

Micronesia, the US Coast Guard said Thursday.

The mariners were back to safety on Thursday, three days after going missing. Authorities did not provide any further details about the men.

The Navy crew aboard a P-8 Madfox 807 and vessels had been searching for the men in the area of the last known location of their skiff.

Bulk carriers Brilliant Jupiter and Ten Yu Maru,

conducted 17 hours of search across some 178 miles (286 kilometers). “Our combined efforts coupled with the willingness of many different resources to come together and help, led to the successful rescue of these three men in a very remote part of the Pacific,” US Coast Guard spokesman Lieutenant William White said in a statement.

ernmental Panel on Climate Change for a report in 2018 on limiting warming to just 1.5C. The IPCC began a three-day meeting in Nairobi on Monday to consider how to do that.

LONDON Top climate scientists will launch a study this week of how hard it would be to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), although many of them fear it might be too late to reach that level. The world's average surface

temperatures reached 1C (1.8F) above pre-industrial times in a record-hot 2015.

They will rise by 3C (3.6F) or more by 2100 if current trends continue, many projections show.

A 195-nation climate summit in Paris in December asked the UN's Intergov-

Issue 662 (37)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Health Most of us can’t keep weight off for good Losing weight is hard enough. Keeping it off is even harder. Now, a team of researchers has found that most of us maintain our weight inconsistently, unless we shed a lot of kilos.

Lead author Joanna Huang from Novo Nordisk Inc. in Plainsboro, New Jersey, said that about two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese and the economic and health burdens of the obesity epidemic are substantial.

Achieving and maintaining weight loss has proven to be difficult.

Huang noted that many patients regain weight af-

ter their initial loss; and even after a period of weight loss, most people become ‘cyclers’ who regain weight or experience inconsistent losses and gains.

To analyze trends in weight change, Huang and her colleagues reviewed the electronic medical records of 177,743 obese patients who had no medical conditions associated with unintentional weight loss and who had been having annual body mass index (BMI) measurements for five years or longer.

Patients who lost more weight early on were more

likely to continue to lose weight over time. Among patients with modest weight loss, 23.1 percent maintained their weight and 2.0 percent continued to lose weight over the twoyear monitoring period; in those with moderate weight loss, 14.1 percent maintained their weight loss and 4.1 percent continued to lose weight; and in those with high weight loss, 19.4 percent maintained their weight and 11.1 percent continued to lose weight.

But over the two years, fewer patients maintained their weight. In the modest, moderate, and high

weight-loss groups, 40.0 percent, 35.9 percent and 18.6 percent of patients, respectively, regained over half of their lost weight during the maintenance period.

And most patients in each group experienced weight cycling or weight regain.

The high weight-loss group had the lowest proportion

Kidneys’ innate clock affects body’s metabolic processes Kidneys have an internal clock which plays an important role in maintaining balance within the body, a new study has found. Many of the body’s processes follow a natural daily rhythm or circadian clock that is based on regular light-dark cycles as the Earth rotates.

Now, researchers have demonstrated that the kidney possesses such an intrinsic circadian clock that regulates and coordinates a variety of the organ’s functions.

“Since urine formation and excretion by the kidney is one of the most easily detectable rhythmic processes (we are forming and excreting much more urine during the day), we hypothesized that at least a part of this rhythmicity is dependent on the circadian clock mechanism,” said Natsuko Tokonami from University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

By blocking kidney cells’ expression of a gene that

is critically involved in the circadian clock system, researchers found that the clock is responsible for the temporal adaptation of kidney function to the light and dark phases of the day that correspond to activity and rest.

Such adaptations have an important effect on the levels of various amino acids, lipids, and other components of blood in the body, researchers said.

Furthermore, in individuals who take medications, the kidney’s circadian clock controls the process of drug elimination from the body and therefore can influence the duration of a drug’s action and the effectiveness of the therapy, they said.

“We have shown that the circadian clock in the kid-

ney plays an important role in different metabolic and homeostatic processes at both the intra-renal and systemic levels and is involved in drug disposition,” said Dmitri Firsov from University of Lausanne.

The findings were published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

of cyclers with 58.3 percent, while 71.5 percent of the modest weight loss group and 74.1 percent of the moderate weight loss group were cyclers.

“These important challenges require further attention. We hope these results highlight the importance of chronic, consistent and conscientious

weight loss and management,” Huang said. “Identifying patterns of weight change is critical for tailoring weight management strategies to the needs of targeted patient groups.”

The study has been presented at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

Outdoor light may reduce myopia in kids As per a new study, exposure to outdoor light can lower short-sightedness or myopia in kids.

This study has revealed that the major cause of myopia is lack of adequate outdoor light and not remaining glued to computer screen or television.

“Children exposed to the least outdoor light had faster eye growth and hence faster myopia progression,” said lead researcher Scott Read, optometrist and associate professor at Queensland University Of Technology in

Australia.

Also, for those who already have myopia, increasing time outside is likely to reduce the progression of the vision problem.

Children should spend more than an hour and preferably at least two hours a day in the outdoor light to help prevent myopia from developing and progressing.

“Optometrists need to make their patients aware that less than 60 minutes’ exposure to light outdoors per day is a risk factor for myopia,” Read suggested.

New molecular marker can predict breast cancer risk Researchers have identified a molecular marker that identifies proliferating cells in normal breast tissue and can predict a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer, the leading cause of death in women with cancer worldwide.

The findings showed that women having a higher percentage of the molecular marker Ki67 are five times more likely to increase their risk of developing breast cancer.

Ki67 can be found in the cells called the mammary epithelium that line the mammary ducts and milkproducing lobules.

These cells undergo drastic changes throughout a woman’s life and a majority of breast cancers originate in these tissues. “Instead of only telling women that they don’t have cancer, we could test the biopsies and tell women if

they were at high risk or low risk for developing breast cancer in the future,” said Kornelia Polyak, researcher at Harvard University in US. Though doctors test breast tumors for Ki67 levels, the study published online in the Journal Can-

cer Research is the first to link Ki67 to precancerous tissue and use it as a predictive tool. The team examined biopsies from 302 women who had been diagnosed with benign breast disease. Of these, the researchers compared the tissue of 69 women who later developed cancer and 233 who did not. “By identifying women at high risk of breast cancer, we can better develop individualised screening and also target risk reducing strategies,” added Rulla Tamimi, associate professor at Harvard University.

Issue 662 (38)

12 April - 18 April 2016

Diabetes cases rise fourfold to 422 million people A new report has revealed that since 1980, the number of adults with diabetes worldwide has quadrupled from 108 million to 422 million in 2014.

The findings provide the most comprehensive estimates of worldwide diabetes trends to date and show that diabetes is fast becoming a major problem in low and middle income countries.

“Diabetes has become a defining issue for global public health. An ageing population and rising levels of obesity mean that the number of people with diabetes has increased dramatically

CAUGHT

DRUNK DRIVING? CALL VICKY SINGH AT:

416-887-4971

over the past 35 years” says senior author Majid Ezzati, from Imperial College London, London, UK. Ezzati added “Rates of diabetes are rising quickly in China, India, and many other low and middle income countries, and if current trends continue, the probability of meeting the 2025 UN global target is virtually nonexistent.”

The study, released ahead of World Health Day (7th April), includes data from 751 studies totalling 4.4 million adults in different world regions.

The study estimates ageadjusted diabetes prevalence for 200 countries meaning that researchers adjusted the results to account for diabetes becoming more common as a person ages and for some countries having older populations.

Between 1980 and 2014, diabetes has become more common among men than women. Global age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes doubled among men and increased by two-thirds

2014 was due to the ageing population.

National and regional findings include: -In the UK, after adjusting for an ageing population, 4.9 percent of women have dia-

among women.

Although there was an increase in overall rates (crude prevalence) of diabetes in many countries in Western Europe, age-adjusted rates were relatively stable suggesting that most of the rise in diabetes in Western Europe between 1980 and

betes in 2014 (compared to 4.0 percent in 1980). Prevalence has increased more among men, from 4.8 percent in 1980 to 6.6 percent in 2014.

-Northwestern Europe has the lowest rates of diabetes among women and men, with age-adjusted preva-

lence lower than 4 percent among women and at 5-6 percent among men in Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands.

-Prevalence of diabetes was highest in Polynesia and Micronesia (age-adjusted prevalence is over 20 percent in men and women). In American Samoa, nearly one third of the adult population has diabetes.

-The greatest increases in diabetes prevalence were in Pacific island nations, followed by the Middle East and North Africa, in countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

-Half of adults worldwide with diabetes in 2014 lived in five countries: China, India, USA, Brazil and Indonesia.

-Age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes has more than doubled for men in India and China (3.7 percent to 9.1

percent in India; 3.5 percent to 9.9 percent in China); and increased by 50 percent among women in China (5.0 percent to 7.6 percent) and 80 percent among women in India (4.6 percent to 8.3 percent).

-In the US, age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes in women increased by 50 percent (4.3 percent to 6.4 percent), and 80 percent in men (4.7 percent to 8.2 percent).

-Pakistan, Mexico, Egypt and Indonesia are all now in the top 10 countries with the largest number of adults with diabetes. Age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes doubled in Pakistan (4.9 to 12.6 percent for men and 5.9 to 12.1 percent for women), Mexico (6.5 to 10.9 percent for men and 6.5 to11.5 percent for women), and Indonesia (3.2 to 7.4 percent for men and 4.1 to 8.0 percent for women) and nearly tripled in Egypt (6.5 to 16.0 percent for men and 8.0 percent to 19.8 percent for women).

Marijuana offers new hope for fertility cure Heart rate fluctuations affect wisdom

Frequently smoking pot can take its toll on your sperm and now, a new study suggests that a marijuana receptor might

actually hold the key to new fertility treatments for men.

In the research, scientists showed that a cannabinoid receptor, called “CB2,” helps regulate the creation of sperm. Not only does this provide more evidence

that marijuana can disrupt fertility in males, but it also suggests a therapeutic strategy for treating male infertility.

Researcher Paola Grimaldi from the University of Rome Tor Vergata said that the possibility to improve male fertility is one of the main focuses of this study, since infertility is a worldwide problem that affect up to 15 percent of couples,

in which male factors account for almost 20-70 percent. To make their discovery, Grimaldi and colleagues treated three groups of mice with different agents for 14 to 21 days. The first group was treated with a specific activator of the CB2 receptor.

The second group was treated with a specific inhibitor of the CB2 receptor.

The third group received only a saline solution and served as the control group. The group treated with the CB2 activator showed an acceleration of spermatogenesis, while the group treated with the inhibitor displayed a slower rate of the process.

This suggests that a tight balance of CB2 activation is required for the proper progression of spermatogenesis.

Heartbeat fluctuations can affect one’s wisdom, according to a recent the study.

The researchers from University of Waterloo and Australian Catholic University found that our thinking process and heartbeat fluctuations are interconnected and also affects our wise reasoning in some complex social issues.

Scientists worldwide claim that the study is a milestone in the field of wisdom research. The researchers also identified conditions under which psychophysiology impacts wise judgement. “Our research shows that wise reasoning is not exclusively a function of the mind and cognitive ability,” said Igor

Grossmann from University of Waterloo. The findings published in online journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience showed for the first time that heart’s

functioning is actually associated with wise judgement. The study revealed that people with greater heart rate variability are better at wise reasoning.

Now, workout wherever, whenever using a fitness pass

Fresh apple a day can keep heart attack, stroke risks at bay You may want to start snacking on fresh fruit every day as a new study has found that people who do so are at lower risk of heart attack and stroke than the ones who don’t.

Researchers from the University of Oxford and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences conducted a large, nationwide study of 500,000 adults from 10 urban and rural localities across China, tracking health for 7 years through death records and electronic hospital records of illness. The study found that fruit consumption (which was mainly apples or or-

anges) was strongly associated with many other factors, such as education, lower blood pressure, lower blood glucose, and not smoking. But, after allowing for what was known of these and other factors, a 100g portion of fruit per day

was associated with about one-third less cardiovascular mortality and the association was similar across different study areas and in both men and women.

Study author Dr Huaidong Du said that the association between fruit consump-

tion and cardiovascular risk seems to be stronger in China, where many still eat little fruit, than in high-income countries where daily consumption of fruit is more common. Also, fruit in China is almost exclusively consumed raw, whereas much of the fruit in high-income countries is processed, and many previous studies combined fresh and processed fruit. Co-author Professor Liming Li said that a recent Global Burden of Disease report put low fruit consumption as one of the leading causes of premature death in China.

Fitness freaks now can get a monthly membership of gyms in the form of a pass which enables them to workout when they want, where they want and how they want. Fitpass an online portal offers access to over 1000 gyms and fitness studios in the capital and 100,000-plus daily workout options to choose from. Priced at Rs.999 per month, it offers users a variety of workout styles like yoga, zumba, pilates, aerobics, MMA, cross fit, circuit training, kickboxing, spinning, bootcamp and more.

“India wants to get fit but there is a lot of friction that prevents us from it -- price, convenience, fixed schedules, long term contracts and lack of standardisation of services,” Akshay Verma, co-founder of Fitpass, said in a statement.

“Fitpass is using technology to remove the prevailing market inefficiencies and make fitness super accessible to the Indian consumer. Most importantly, we are helping gyms and fitness studios to increase their utilisation rates,” Verma said.

Issue 662 (39)

12 April - 18 April 2016

POLISH WHITE BORSCHT Ingredients: 2 lb. smoked kielbasa 2 tbsp. unsalted butter 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped 2 leeks, trimmed, sliced 1 small yellow onion, sliced 2 medium russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1? cubes 2 sprigs marjoram 1 bay leaf, 1 1/2 cups sour cream 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 cup freshly grated horseradish, Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1/4 cup roughly chopped dill 2 tbsp. chopped parsley 4 boiled eggs, cut into wedges (See How to Hard Boil Eggs) Instructions: Boil kielbasa and 8 cups water in a 6-

qt. saucepan. Reduce heat to mediumlow; cook to flavor broth, about 25 minutes. Pour liquid and kielbasa into a bowl; reserve. Return saucepan to medium heat.

Add butter, garlic, leeks, and onion; cook until soft, about 10 minutes. Add reserved liquid, potatoes, marjoram, and bay leaf; boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; cook until potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes. Discard marjoram and bay leaf; purée soup in a blender. Return soup to pot; bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, whisk sour cream and flour in a bowl, add 1/2 cup soup, and whisk until smooth. Pour mixture into soup; cook, stirring, until thickened, about 5 minutes. Cut kielbasa into 1/2?-thick slices; add to soup along with horseradish, salt, and pepper. Garnish with dill, parsley, and eggs.

WILD RICE WITH DRIED CHERRIES Ingredients: 2 cups wild rice blend, rinsed until water runs clear and drained 4 tbsp. unsalted butter 5 inner stalks celery, cut into 1/4" pieces, plus 1/4 cup leaves, for garnish, 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 small red onion, cut into 1/4" pieces 1/3 cup chicken stock 1/3 cup dried cherries, roughly chopped 1/2 cup roughly chopped parsley, plus 1/4 cup leaves, for garnish 2 tbsp. minced thyme Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste, 1 lemon Instructions: Bring 12 cups water to a boil in a 6-qt. saucepan. Stir in rice and return to a boil; cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes.

Ingredients: 12 oz. Jerusalem artichokes, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and thinly sliced 12 oz. Comté cheese, thinly sliced Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste Flour, for dusting 1 (17-oz.) box frozen puff pastry (2 sheets), thawed 1 egg, lightly beaten Instructions: Heat oven to 325°. Line the inside of a 9" x 13" baking dish with parchment paper. Arrange artichokes and cheese together in two layers in dish, seasoning with salt and pepper between layers. Bake until artichokes are tender when pierced with the tip of a paring

knife, about 30 minutes. Let filling cool.

Increase oven to 350°. On a lightly floured surface, roll puff pastry sheets until 1/3" thick. Using a 6" round cutter, cut out 6 circles, reusing scraps as needed. Divide filling between centers of circles. Fold circles in half; pinch edges to seal. Transfer pasties to a parchment paper–lined baking sheet. Brush with egg; bake until golden and crisp, about 35 minutes.

WILD MUSHROOM BREAD PUDDING

Strain rice in a fine-mesh sieve; let drain for 10 seconds, and then return to pan.

Cover pan and let rice steam, off the heat, for 10 minutes. Transfer rice to a bowl and fluff with a fork; cover with plastic wrap and set aside. Wipe saucepan clean and add butter; melt over medium-high. Add chopped celery, garlic, and onion; cook until golden, 10–12 minutes. Add stock and cherries; simmer until liquid is evaporated, 2–3 minutes. Stir in reserved rice, the chopped parsley, thyme, salt, and pepper, and transfer to a serving platter.

Grate lemon zest over the top; garnish with celery and parsley leaves.

Ingredients: Unsalted butter, for greasing 12 oz. thick-cut bacon, cut into 1/4" slices, 1 1/2 lb. mixed mushrooms, such as cremini, oyster, and porcini, sliced 1/4" thick, 2 1/2 cups whole milk 1 1/2 cups heavy cream 1/2 cup grated parmesan 1/3 cup roughly chopped parsley 2 tsp. minced thyme 6 eggs, Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1 (1-lb.) loaf country bread, torn into 1" pieces (6 cups), lightly toasted 1 cup shredded Gruyère Instructions: Heat oven to 350°. Grease a 3-qt. oval baking dish with butter. Heat bacon and 1 tbsp. oil in a 12" skillet over medium-

CONGEE

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES Ingredients: 3 1/2 cups flour 1 1/4 tsp. fine sea salt 3/4 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. baking powder 16 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 cup sugar 1 cup packed brown sugar 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract 2 egg yolks (reserving whites for another use) 12 oz. semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped 1 1/2 cups almond flour Instructions: Heat oven to 350°. Whisk flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a

ARTICHOKE AND COMTÉ PASTIES

bowl. Combine butter, both sugars, and vanilla in a large bowl; beat on mediumhigh speed with a hand mixer until smooth and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add yolks, one at a time, beating after each addition; add dry ingredients; beat on low speed until just combined. Add chocolate and almond flour and mix until combined. Roll dough into 1 1/2 tbsp. sized balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet about 2” apart. Bake for 8 minutes; using a metal spatula, gently press cookie down slightly.

Bake 7 minutes more and cool slightly before serving.

Ingredients: 1/2 cup long-grain white rice 1 tsp. kosher salt Chinese chile oil, for garnish Thinly sliced scallions and small red chiles, for garnish Crispy shallots, for garnish Instructions: In a sieve, rinse rice under cold water and let drain. Put rice, 8 cups water, and salt into a 4-qt. saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook, partially covered and stirring occasionally, until the rice takes on the consistency of porridge, about 1 1/2 hours. Divide porridge between 4 bowls and garnish each with a drizzle of chile oil, scallions, chiles, and crispy shallots.

high; cook until bacon is slightly crisp, 6– 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer bacon to a bowl. Add leek to skillet and cook until soft, 3–4 minutes; add to bowl with bacon. Working in two batches, cook mushrooms in remaining oil until golden, 6–8 minutes; add to bowl with bacon. Whisk milk, cream, parmesan, 1/ 4 cup parsley, the thyme, eggs, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Stir in bacon mixture and bread; let sit 15 minutes. Transfer to prepared baking dish and sprinkle with Gruyère; bake until golden brown and set, about 45 minutes. Garnish with remaining parsley.

Issue 662 (40)

12 April - 18 April 2016