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THE CONTACT WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ISSUE - 668, 24 - 30 MAY 2016 PH: (905) 671 - 4761

Modi inks $500m deal to develop Iran’s Chabahar port in move to open up India’s trade routes to Afghanistan and Europe ... and bypass Pakistan

CHABAHAR OPENS AFGHAN TRADE ROUTE CUTS OUT PAKISTAN India has confirmed it will invest $500 million to develop the Chabahar port in Iran. The strategically-located port allows New Delhi to easily access Afghanistan and Europe by circumventing Pakistan. India and Iran signed a landmark agreement on Monday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the oil-rich country. The development of the port in southern Iran is a tactical decision as it will counter China’s growing involvement in the re-

gion. A trilateral agreement on transport and transit corridors was signed by India, Afghanistan and Iran, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the deal could alter the course of history in the region. Chabahar port lies outside the Persian Gulf and is easily accessed from India’s western coast, without entering Pakistan. It is just 72 km from Pakistan’s Gwadar port, which is part of China’s $46 billion plan to develop the China-Pakistan

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Economic Corridor, and is aimed at opening new trade and transport routes across Asia “This major effort will boost economic growth in the region. We are committed to take steps for early implementation of the agreements signed today,” Modi said.

The bilateral agreements signed by India and Iran after detailed discussions between Modi and President Hassan Rouhani included setting up an aluminium plant, and laying a railway line to give India access to Afghanistan and Cen-

tral Asia. The agreements come months after the lifting of international sanctions on Iran, following Tehran’s historic

nuclear deal with the Western powers over its contentious atomic programme.

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24 May - 30 May 2016

Chabahar opens Afghan trade route...

Continued from Page 1 The trilateral agreement was signed later by India, Iran and Afghanistan in the presence of

gagement between the two countries, quoting a Ghalib’s poetry.

“Once we make up our mind, the

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani arrive to attend trilateral meeting at Saadabad Palace in Tehran, Iran Modi, Rouhani, and Afghan Presi- distance between Kaashi and dent Ashraf Ghani.

Kaashan is only half a step,” he Inviting President Rouhani to visit said.

India, Modi said he would look Modi had earlier said the lifting forward to strengthening the en- of sanctions had opened up im-

mense opportunities and India was looking to expand cooperation with the Persian Gulf nation in sectors such as trade, investment, infrastructure and energy.

Modi also called on Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, signifying the strength of the unique relationship between the two countries.

Invoking the age-old cultural bonds between India and Iran, Modi said it was time for the two countries to march together by regaining the past glory of historical ties which had witnessed its share of ups and downs.

Addressing a conference on the traditional ties between India and Iran before winding up his two-day visit here, Modi spoke about how the cultures of the two countries have been woven over the centuries.

He said the conference, aimed at highlighting sufism and other cultural linkages, was a perfect response to those who preach radical thoughts in our societies. He added that the ancient civilizations of the two countries have been inclusive and welcoming to foreign cultures.

Iran and India to combat terror together

India and Iran have decided to jointly combat terror, radicalism and cyber crime as the two strategic partners agreed on the signing of 12 new agreements.

“We have agreed to consult closely and regularly on combating threats of terrorism, radicalism, drug trafficking and cyber crime,” Modi said, addressing a joint press conference with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

The two nations also signed agreements in fields such as trade

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said Modi, who is the first Indian Prime Minister to visit the important energy-rich Persian Gulf nation after a gap of 15 years. Terming the ‘dosti’ (friendship) between India and Iran as old as history, he said that through the centuries, the two societies have stayed connected through art and architecture, ideas and traditions, and culture and commerce.

Modi claimed that Iran was among the first countries to come forward in support when an earthquake struck Gujarat in 2001, while Modi was chief minister of the state. Describing the agenda and scope of partnership as truly substantial, Modi said: “The outcomes and agreements open a new chapter in our strategic partnership... Expanded trade ties, deeper connectivity, including railways, partnerships in oil and gas sector, fertilizers, education and cultural sphere are driving our overcredit, culture, science and tech- all economic engagement.” nology and railways. In 2003, India and Iran agreed to develop Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman outside the Strait of Hormuz, near Iran’s border with Pakistan. India and Iran have also agreed to enhance interaction between their defence and security institutions on regional and maritime security, LONDON All-night services on London’s Underground trains will be launched for the first time in August, the city’s new mayor said Monday, SYDNEY A drone has captured a bloody despite union protests feeding frenzy by around 70 tiger against the move. The longsharks on a dead whale, turning awaited 24-hour services will the pristine waters of the aptly be launched on August 19 on named Shark Bay in Australia red. two of the network’s 11 lines Two boatloads of tourists were on on Friday and Saturday a cruise to Dirk Hartog Island in nights before being rolled out Western Australia when they more widely. The London came across the gruesome Underground, widely known as spectacle on Friday. Geraldton- the Tube, dates back to 1863 and based Eco Abrolhos Cruises sent carries over one billion up a drone to record nature taking passengers every year. “The Night Tube is absolutely vital to its course.

India promises to spend big in Iran’s free trade zone India will invest billions of dollars in setting up industries - ranging from aluminum smelter to urea plants - in Iran’s Chabahar free trade zone after it signed a pact to operate a strategic port on the Persian Gulf nation’s southern coast.

“The inking of commercial contract to build and run the strategic port of Chabahar will help India gain a foothold in Iran and win access to Afghanistan, Russia and Europe, thus circumventing Pakistan,” Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari told the PTI. “The distance between Kandla and the Chabahar port is less than the distance between New Delhi and Mumbai, and so what this agreement does is to enable us quick movement of goods first to Iran and then to Afghanistan and Russia through a new rail and road link,” he explained.

“Over Rs 1 lakh crore investment can happen in Chabahar free trade zone,” he said.

Iran, Gadkari said, has cheap natural gas and power that Indian firms are keen to tap to build a 0.5-million tonne aluminium smelter plant as well as urea manufacturing units.

“We spend Rs 45,000 crore an-

nually on urea subsidy, and if we can manufacture it in the Chabahar free trade zone and move it through the port to Kandla and onward to hinterland, we can save that amount,” he claimed.

Gadkari added that Nalco will set up the aluminium smelter while private and co-operative fertiliser firms are keen to build urea plants, provided they get gas at the right price.

Railway PSU IRCON will build a rail line at Chabahar to move goods right up to Afghanistan, he said.

Gadkari said India Ports Global Pvt, a joint venture of the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and the Kandla Port Trust, will invest $85 million in developing two container berths with a length of 640 metres and three multi-cargo berths.

The Indian consortium has signed the port pact with Aria Banader Iranian.

“The contract is for 10 years and can be extended. We will take 18 months to complete phase one of the construction,” he said.

He added that the first two years of the contract are a grace period where India doesn’t have to guarantee any cargo.

All-night trains finally come to London’s Underground

Drone captures shark feeding frenzy on whale

my plans to support and grow London’s night-time economy creating more jobs and opportunities for all Londoners,” said Sadiq Khan, who was elected as London’s mayor earlier this month. “The constant delays

under the previous mayor let Londoners down badly.”

Round-the-clock services were due to start last year but were delayed by disagreement between unions and transport authorities over pay and conditions for staff, prompting a wave of strikes. Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, said it still had “major concerns over the safe running of the Night Tube”. He added that, while the union supported the introduction of allnight trains, the service “cannot be delivered on the cheap”.

Issue - 668 (3)

24 May - 30 May 2016

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The Cat is already out of the Bag!

By Haya S. Qureshi I read the news regularly but mostly just the headlines. Recently, I came across something that made me read the complete article. I anticipated the backlash Zahra Haider, a Canada-based Pakistani writer, was going to face on social media. In Pakistan, we have a famous saying, Bad acha, badnambura!

“Good can be bad and bad good, it all depends on what others think of you.”

I spent twenty-seven years of my life in Pakistan. When you move abroad people ask you all sorts of weird questions. Why aren’t you wearing a hijab? Do girls go to school in Pakistan? I have heard there’s a war going on. I spent my entire life in Lahore which is not altogether immune to terrorism. However, it is not ‘officially’ a war zone. I have no idea what goes on in the war zone. There have been instances when I have woken up with the sound of a bomb blast and shards scattered all around. And I don’t doubt there are terrorist groups at work in Pakistan.

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Personally, I have never come face-to-face that complete with a terrorist (at least not that I know openness on of!), but I have come across a lot of other s e x u a l ugly things. I have seen a very different subjects is SUNNY BAINS side of the country that no one wants to the best way talk about. I know the real Pakistan and to prevent what makes it intolerable is not what’s c h i l d r e n being reported in the media. It’s the from thinking about them excessively, nastily, virginity on their wedding night and got unbelievable level of hypocrisy and utter or unwholesomely, and also the almost away with it. I also know women who were lack of compassion combined with a indispensable preliminary to an virgins but ‘failed’ to bleed, as a result of shocking sense of self-righteousness. enlightened sexual morality.” Our Sexual which their marriages ‘failed’.This is a Like one of my friends put it, Ethics (1936) society in dire need of not only sex “Degeneration of the society on a whole.” Considering how common, or perhaps I education but facing the facts that are Truth is taboo and those who dare speak should say popular, gang rapes are in the screaming in its face. So let’s try to be it are crucified by those who love to stone country we need to start looking into the honest and admit what’s really going on. someone else because as long as mirror. Anyone can grab a woman’s butt Admitting the facts is the first step to someone else is being called a slut no anywhere, anytime they want without recovery. one will have time to call them one!This having to face any kind of consequences. I have repeatedly been accused of pruning is the twenty-first century and my roots with my own hands children are not even being This week, I am presenting to you an article written because I am a ‘wannabe taught about human evolution basher’ who enjoys bad by a friend and a fellow scribe Haya S. Qureshi. let alone sex. The word sex mouthinghermotherland Originally from Pakistan, she is currently in Seoul and which is simply not true. To itself is a taboo in Pakistan when, in fact, the act is going will be writing for The Contact and Ajit Weekly on a what extentare we on in plain sight in the country. regular basis. -Editor supposed to love? Is Bertrand Russell once wrote:” becoming blind to the There is no sound reason, of any sort or A woman’s bag can also be snatched distinction between the right and wrong kind, for concealing facts when talking to anywhere, anytime. I often joke with my love? Denial is not patriotism. Pointing the children …The boys who are brought friends that better watch out for the bag out something that’s wrong is not up in the official ignorance think and talk because where’s the butt going? treason. much more about sex than the boys who Being away from Pakistan for a long time I applaud Zahra Haider for her courage. have always heard this topic being treated can make you forget a lot of things but Women are the ones who will eventually on a level with any other … All ignorance then there are reminders … even outside have to talk on this subject because is regrettable, but ignorance on an of your own country. The other day, I was men can get away with just about important matter such as sex is a serious at a subway station in Seoul where anything based on one simple excuse, danger …There is no excuse for deceiving everyone was walking around minding “Men will be men!” Truth be told, they children. And when, as must happen in their own business except for a bunch of will never be able to get away with it conventional families, they find that ‘desi’ guys. They were just busy staring unless this ‘ideology’ was not being their parents have lied to them, they lose at the legs of women passing through the condoned by a majority of women. We confidence in them and feel justified in doors of that subway. It almost looked as need to stop giving men the upper hand lying to them … Virtue which is based if they had an x-ray vision. I had forgotten and fight this fight together.

I will end with a bit of euphemism: The upon a false view of the facts is not real how creepy it was being ogled at. virtue. Speaking not only from theory, but In a society where virginity is held up like cat is already out of the bag. What is it from practical experience, I am convinced a trophy, I know women who have faked going to take for us to nail the pussy?

Indian pilots grounded for mistaking road for runway MUMBAI An Indian airline has grounded two pilots for attempting to land their plane on a road which they mistook for a runway, the airline and reports said Monday. The IndiGo flight from Ahmedabad in Gujarat state to Jaipur in Rajasthan was close to touching down until the pilots were alerted

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by a “too low terrain” warning in the cockpit, IndiGo said in a statement. “The captain in command immediately took a precautionary measure and carried a goaround. The aircraft landed safely on subsequent approach,” added the statement. The incident, the latest to highlight safety concerns in India’s rapidly expanding aviation sector, happened on February 27 but has only just come to light in Indian media. The Hindustan Times quoted an aviation official as saying the plane was at an altitude of around 900 feet and 90 seconds away from landing on a road running parallel to the runway.

IndiGo said the pilots were made aware

of their mistake by an enhanced ground proximity warning system, which alerts the cockpit if the plane is in danger of flying into the ground or hitting something.

“At no time was safety compromised.

Both pilots have been taken off flight duty with immediate effect, pending investigation,” said the statement. “The matter was duly reported to the (aviation regulator) Directorate General of Civil Aviation by IndiGo flight safety department,” IndiGo added. IndiGo, famed for its no-frills approach and fixation with punctuality, commands almost 40 percent of its home market, the biggest share of any airline. It is the country’s only consistently profitable airline. The government wants to make air travel affordable for millions of its citizens but a number of safety incidents have led to concerns over the speed of growth. Earlier this year an Air India plane with 160 passengers was forced to return to New Delhi almost 30 minutes into a Milanbound flight after smoke was detected in the cabin.

In December a London-bound Air India flight with over 200 passengers returned to Mumbai after three hours in the air over a suspected rat sighting in the cabin. That same month a technician working for Air India died after being sucked into a jet engine as the plane pushed back for takeoff at Mumbai airport.

India cages endangered lions after fatal attacks

AHMEDABAD Thirteen endangered Asiatic lions that only live in a forest in western India have been caught and caged after three villagers were killed in recent months, a wildlife official said Monday. The pride of lions has been rounded up from Gir sanctuary in Gujarat state after at least one of the animals last week dragged a teenager from his village while he was sleeping and killed him.

Gujarat’s chief conservator of forests, J A Khan, said the lions were captured in recent days from an eastern part of the protected forest in a bid to find the “maneaters” responsible. Khan said it was unclear why or how many of the cats had ventured outside of the sanctuary, their last remaining natural habitat, to find prey, describing the attacks as rare. “Lions that have preyed upon humans will be analysed in detail, while the rest will be slowly introduced back into the wild,” Khan told AFP. “We will be doing a scat analysis which includes testing the animals’ faeces for human tissues, chemical analysis of their blood and even genetic analysis,” he said.

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24 May - 30 May 2016

Villages in ashes after deadly Indonesia volcano eruption

The people that we find most difficult and demanding are, very often, the people who have most to offer us and with whom ongoing interaction can potentially be most productive and rewarding. When they sense the same thing in us, conflict (ironically) becomes even more likely to arise. They wish they could work with someone easier - as do you. But when needs must, differences can be put aside and amazing progress can occur. Prepare to see that point delightfully demonstrated soon. !!!

You are famously loyal. Once you have made a commitment to a cause or an individual, your faith becomes unshakable and no sacrifice is too great.

That’s why you are sometimes reticent to develop a sense of connection. You know just how much of your time is likely to be given over, once you have given your heart. You may or may not be sure about who is in the right with regard to a current conflict. But you know where you must direct your support. Can you do that without perpetrating an injustice? !!!

Sometimes, we try with all our might yet we don’t seem to get far. How frustrated do we then feel when others appear to attain significant success whilst making hardly any effort? It may just be that they have chosen easier objectives or have found themselves in a situation that naturally favors them. Or it may be that they earlier put in much hard work and only now is it paying off. Others may soon wonder quite what you have done to warrant the wave of heavenly assistance that is rolling into your life. You, though, can just be glad of it. !!!

We always hope that things and situations will improve.

We know, somehow, that the moment we begin to expect deterioration, we will inevitably find ever more proof of this phenomenon in action. Both optimism and pessimism create self-fulfilling prophecies - yet it is hard to look on the bright side after an experience that has brought some disappointment. You aren’t sure what to make of the circumstances you face.

You would like to feel hopeful, but you feel you have a duty to be realistic. Actually, though, to be realistic now is to be optimistic! !!!

One of your most splendid attributes is your intellect.

You are smart and sharp. That makes you an interesting debating partner, but a most undesirable person to get into an actual argument with. You don’t give way or let go. When you know you are right, it becomes a matter of great importance for you to ensure that everyone else knows it too. That’s fine, apart from where highly charged emotions are involved. In your emotional life, you may find it easier to lose a battle than to strive so determinedly to win one. !!!

We should never enter any relationship in the hope that the other person will change some aspect of themselves. Nor should we ever offer to change ourselves in order to suit another person. That, though, is not to say that change never happens.

But change, when it is constructive, emerges independently. We do it for ourselves because we want to. Others can support us in this, but they can’t push us. Look at what you may be able to change within yourself. That may yet change everything.

KARO Indonesian rescuers searched for survivors in scorched villages and devastated farmlands Monday after a volcano erupted in clouds of searing ash and gas, killing seven and leaving others fighting lifethreatening burns.

Witnesses have described sheer panic as waves of gas and fine rock were unleashed from Mount Sinabung on Sumatra island Saturday, consuming farmers trying to flee the slopes of the highly active volcano. The fastmoving flows reaching temperatures of up to 700 degrees Celsius (1,300 Fahrenheit) incinerated homes and left livestock blackened and peeling. Agustatius Sitepu, the head of the local military in Karo district where the volcano is situated, arrived to scenes of chaos as rescue crews raced to reach those left alive. “The villagers who managed to survive were running around in panic, trying to save themselves,” he told AFP on Monday. “There were only a few dozen. They were terrified. They were covered in ash.”

The eruptions were so violent that townships as far away as 12 kilometres

(seven miles) were covered in thick layers of ash, he added. Villagers are trying to recover from Saturday’s eruption. Abdi Putera, an orange farmer, was busy getting rid of the volcanic

rushed to hospital suffering horrific burns.

One of the victims succumbed to their wounds by nightfall, taking the official toll to seven, local disaster mitigation agency

ash which covers his oranges, despite the government warning the area is still dangerous. “If I don’t blow off the ashes, it will get thicker and thicker and will eventually damage my oranges. If that happens, I wouldn’t be able to sell my crops and make a living for my family,” Putera explained. Those worst affected were all farming within the “red zone” - an area four kilometres from Sinabung declared off limits by authorities - when the volcano erupted. Six bodies were recovered Sunday, with three others

chief Nata Nail told AFP on Monday. “Two more remain in the intensive care unit, suffering burns to 90 percent of their body,” he said. Footage showed their clothes blackened and hanging off charred limbs as rescue teams brought them by stretcher to hospital. Nail said rescue teams were still finding survivors on Sunday during sweeps of homes and farms in Gamber village.

The Sinabung mountain has shown less activity on Monday, but officials from the Indonesian meteorology, climatology

and geophysics agency known as the BMKG are continously monitoring the mountain’s activity. “The Pyroclastic is very dangerous. Not only because of its flow and steam, but it also brings secondary dangers such as cold lava flow and flash floods,” said Arif, an officer with the BMKG. Residents were ordered to evacuate Gamber in late 2014 due to the unacceptable risk from lava flows, dense ash and falling volcanic rock. But some villagers grew tired of living in temporary shelters and began returning to their farms for economic reasons, despite repeated government warnings.

“We hope because of this disaster, those living near Sinabung, and tourists, will realise that Sinabung is still very dangerous,” Nail said. Sinabung roared back to life in 2010 for the first time in 400 years. After another period of inactivity it erupted once more in 2013, and has remained highly active since.

Sixteen people died during a particularly fierce eruption in 2014, and Sinabung remains at the highest alert level.

Toy ‘arms race’ turning Lego violent WELLINGTON Lego products are becoming increasingly violent as toymakers engage in an “arms race” to retain children’s attention in the digital age, New Zealand researchers said Monday. The University of Canterbury team said child’s play was becoming more brutal, with a higher proportion of weapons appearing among Lego’s building blocks and war-like scenarios featuring in its themed kit sets. “The Lego company’s products are not as innocent as they used to be,” lead researcher Christoph Bartneck said. “The violence in Lego products seems to have gone beyond just enriching game play.”

In a peer-reviewed study published by the online journal PLOS ONE, the researchers concluded that Lego “showed significant exponential increases of

violence over time”. While Denmark-based Lego has been making plastic building blocks since 1949, the study found its first weapons were issued in 1978 when a castle kit included swords, axes and lances. An analysis found that weapons had steadily become more commonplace and were now included in 30 percent of Lego kits. Bartneck said the percentage was probably higher as the data

scenarios involving shooting and threatening behaviour have increased over the years,” it found.

“The atmosphere of the violent acts is predominantly perceived as exciting.” The study said Lego was simply reflecting a broader trend in children’s entertainment. “To catch the attention of their customers, toy manufacturers are similarly locked in a metaphorical arms race included only small, single- for exciting new products,” brick weapons, not items it said. such the best-selling Star Wars’ Death Star, which in itself is a giant planetdestroying ray blaster. In addition, the research examined Lego catalogues from 1973 to 2015 and found the scenarios depicted in the company’s kits had become more violent. “Currently, around 40 percent of all pages contain some type of violence - in particular,

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Issue - 668 (6)

24 May - 30 May 2016

Climber dies on Everest, two others missing KATHMANDU An Indian mountaineer has died on Mount Everest and two of his teammates are missing, expedition organisers said Monday, as the death toll from the Himalayan climbing season rose to five.

Subhash Pal reached the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) summit on Saturday but collapsed while descending the Hillary Step ice wall and died the following day. He was the third to die on Everest in recent days, after an Australian and a Dutch climber succumbed to altitude sickness.

Another two climbers have died on other peaks.

“He died while the guides were bringing him down,” said Loben Sherpa of Trekking Camp Nepal, which organised the

Indian team’s expedition to Mount Everest. Expedition officials made contact with Pal and teammate Sunita Hazra on Sunday and helped them descend to Camp 3, but the whereabouts of the remaining two climbers are still unknown. “Sunita has been rescued and brought to a hospital in Kathmandu for treatment. We still don’t have any update on the missing two,” said Sherpa.

Another Indian climber died after falling ill while descending from Mount Dhaulagiri in the Himalayas. On Thursday a Nepali guide was killed when he slipped and fell 2,000 metres down Mount Lhotse, the world’s fourthhighest peak. The number of deaths brings the dangers into focus but is not unusual - according to the authoritative

Himalayan Database, 34 people died on Everest in the five years to 2013. As climbers ascend above 8,000 metres, they enter the “death zone” - notorious for its difficult terrain and thin air - where oxygen supplies fall to dangerously low levels and make mountaineers susceptible to altitude sickness.

“There are mixed feelings with the recent deaths, frostbite and rescues as it brings into focus the danger of climbing Everest,” said veteran mountaineer and blogger Alan Arnette. “However there is a sense of relief that in many ways, it was a ‘normal’ season.” A tourism official said more than 30 climbers had been rescued this season after suffering altitude sickness or frostbite. More than 350 climbers including 140

foreigners have successfully scaled Everest this season after two consecutive years of deadly disasters that led to almost all attempts being abandoned.

Since the first summit of the world’s highest peak in 1953 more than 300 people have died on Everest and Lhotse, which share the same route until Camp 3 at 7,200 metres. The last

year in which no deaths were recorded on the mountain was 1977.

Despite the risks and recent disasters, Everest’s allure remains undimmed, with Nepal issuing 289 permits to foreigners for this year’s spring climbing season. Hundreds of climbers fled Everest last year after an earthquaketriggered avalanche at base camp killed 18

people. Only one climber reached the top in 2014 after an avalanche killed 16 Nepali guides that year. Mountaineering is a major revenue-earner for impoverished Nepal. But last year’s earthquake, which killed almost 9,000 people nationwide, threatened the future of the Himalayan nation’s climbing and trekking industry.

Eating fat won’t Insect excrement turns Taj Mahal green make you fat

LONDON Encouraging people to eat a low-fat diet is making Britain’s weight problem worse not better, and having a disastrous impact on health, two anti-obesity campaign groups said on Monday. In a report questioned by other health specialists, the National Obesity Forum (NOF) and Public Health Collaborative (PHC) said “eating fat does not make you fat”. UK dietary guidelines advise people to eat lots of fruit and vegetables, plenty of carbohydrates such as potatoes, bread, rice, pasta and other starchy foods, alongside some meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy proteins.

They also encourage using low-fat milk and dairy products, and warn that foods and drinks that are high in salt, fat and sugar should be consumed in small amounts. The NOF/PHC report, entitled “Eat Fat, Cut The Carbs and Avoid

Snacking To Reverse Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes”, called for a “major overhaul” of the guidelines and said snacking in-between meals is what is making people overweight.

“The role of poor dietary advice has been ignored for too long. Specifically, the ‘low fat’ and ‘lower cholesterol’ messages have had unintended disastrous health consequences,” the report said. But other health and nutrition experts questioned the report’s conclusions and voiced concern that it had been selective in its citing of evidence.

“This report is full of ideas and opinion however it does not offer the robust and comprehensive review of evidence,” said Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation.

“This country’s obesity epidemic is not caused by poor dietary guidelines; it is that we are not meeting them.”

LUCKNOW Its gleaming white marble walls have for years been yellowed by India’s air pollution and now the Taj Mahal faces a fresh threat - from green insect excrement.

Authorities have ordered an investigation after green-tinged patches began appearing on the back wall of the monument to love, which stands on the banks of the heavily polluted Yamuna river.

Environmentalists believe the pollutants in the river have caused a rise in levels of algae, which has in turn led to a surge in the numbers of the insects which feed on it. India’s National Green Tribunal, which hears cases related to environmental protection, raised the issue last week.

Now the state government of Uttar Pradesh, home to the world’s most famous

tomb, has ordered an inquiry. “The state government is extremely concerned about this issue. People can rest

ordered officials to find urgent solutions. The alert was sounded by environmental activist DK Joshi. “Three types of

assured that we will let no harm come to the Taj Mahal,” the chief minister’s spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary told AFP on Monday in the state capital Lucknow.

He said the chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, had

insects breeding in the stagnant and polluted waters of the Yamuna flowing behind the Taj Mahal are causing the problem,” he told AFP. “They’re attracted to the white sheen of the marble and the swarms are leaving

behind greenish-black faeces, which is discolouring the ancient monument.” Authorities have taken steps in recent years to try to protect the 17th-century monument from pollution from the nearby busy city of Agra, including banning local coalpowered industries. The Taj - India’s top tourist attraction - was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a tomb for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth in 1631. It has drawn a string of world leaders and royalty including former US President Bill Clinton, while Diana, the late British princess, was famously photographed alone on a marble seat there in 1992.

District officials in Agra said they had not yet heard of the chief minister’s directive but would take any action deemed necessary.

India’s budget mini space shuttle blasts off BANGALORE India successfully launched its first mini space shuttle on Monday as New Delhi’s famously frugal space agency joined the global race to make rockets as reusable as airplanes. The shuttle was reportedly developed on a budget of just one billion rupees ($14 million), a fraction of the billions of dollars spent by other nations’ space programmes.

The Reusable Launch Vehicle,

or RLV-TD, which is around the size of a minibus, hurtled into a blue sky over southeast India after its

7:00am (0130 GMT) lift off.

After reaching an altitude of about 70 kilometres (43 miles), it glided back down

to Earth, splashing into the Bay of Bengal 10 minutes later. The test mission was a small but crucial step towards eventually developing a full-size, reusable version of the shuttle to make space travel easier and cheaper in the future.

“We have successfully accomp-lished the RLV mission as a technology demonstrator,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spokesman Devi Prasad Karnik told AFP.

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24 May - 30 May 2016

German man claims to have found Hitler’s hidden Nazi nukes Berlin A hobby historian has claimed to have found Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler ’s nuclear bombs in an underground bunker in central Germany that had been lying there for over seven decades using 3-D imaging technology.

With the help of a ground penetrating radar, 70-yearold Peter Lohr says he discovered huge caverns in the ground under the Jonastal valley in Thuringia.

He also found five large metal objects in the cave, at least two of which he believes are atomic bombs.The shape of the metal objects corresponds to the shape of a nuclear weapon, said Lohr, who is a trained mechanical engineer.“The metal’s been lying there for 71 years. At some point it will decay and then we will have a second Chernobyl on our hands,” he told German tabloid Bild.The authorities do not seem to be taking his concerns seriously though.

“They just told me that I’m not allowed to continue my research anymore,” he said.This is of course not the first time that an a hobby researcher has made a fantastical claim about a hidden

underground lair full of Nazi secrets.

Just last year, two amateur historians had international

nuclear bomb.

Reputed historian Rainer Karlsch also published a book, “Hitler’s Bomb”, in

media on tenterhooks after claiming they had found a train in a hidden tunnel in Poland full of Nazi gold and other treasures.

After extensive searches of the site, qualified researchers said they could find no evidence the train existed.

However, that the Nazis did work on their own nuclear weapon is not just a theory believed by conspiratorial theorists, The Local reported.In July 2015 public broadcaster ZDF showed a documentary called “The search for Hitler’s nuclear weapon”.

Among the evidence they cited was a Russian military report given to Stalin which claimed that the Germans had successfully developed a

2005 which argued that the Nazis developed an atomic bomb.

Karlsch wrote that two tests on a small nuclear bomb had been carried out, one in October 1944, the next in March 1945.

The theory that the Nazis were in the process of developing a superbomb was first propagated by the leaders of the Third Reich themselves, who in the finals days and weeks of the war kept promising a “Wunderwaffe” (super weapon) which would turn back the tide of the Allied march.

But, according to Sven Felix Kellerhoff, an editor and historian at Die Welt, there is no evidence that this was anything more than propaganda.

Opposition accuses Canada PM Justin Trudeau of manhandling lawmaker Vancouver Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologised “unreservedly” for making physical contact with a female opposition member of Parliament who said Trudeau elbowed her in the chest as he waded through a group of mostly

mostly opposition members, and pulling a lawmaker through the crowd in order to get the vote started. As Trudeau turns around to pull the lawmaker through, Brosseau can be seen reacting in pain. Trudeau, a boxer and former bar

opposition lawmakers.

Opposition lawmaker Ruth Ellen Brosseau said she was elbowed in the chest and had to leave the House of Commons chamber on Wednesday. “I was elbowed in the chest by the prime minister and then I had to leave. It was very overwhelming,” she said. “I missed the vote because of this.” Footage from the House of Commons television feed shows Trudeau wading into a clutch of lawmakers,

bouncer, later stood up in Parliament and said it wasn’t his intention to hurt anyone as he attempted to escort the lawmaker though a throng of opposition lawmakers in the chamber. Trudeau said he thought the man was being impeded as he walked up the aisle of the chamber and wanted to help him. “I took it upon myself to go and assist him forward, which was I now see inadvisable as a course of action,” said Trudeau,

who characterised his actions as “unacceptable.”

“I apologise for that unreservedly and I look for opportunities to make amends,” he said.

Opposition New Democrat lawmaker Peter Julian called it a “pretty violent push” and said he had never seen such behaviour in his 12 years in Parliament. “Physical force in this House is never permitted,” he said.

Opposition Conservative Andrew Scheer said he was sitting across from Trudeau and said it was clear he lost his temper.

“He was motivated by anger and lost his temper,” Scheer said. “It is very, very unfortunate. We had a member of Parliament that wasn’t able to vote.”

Opposition New Democrat leader Thomas Mulcair later screamed at Trudeau “What kind of man elbows a woman!?” in the chamber before lawmakers intervened to make sure things didn’t escalate.

Tempers have been running high as the government pushes through a motion to limit debate on its euthanasia legislation.

60,000 people died in Syrian govt’s prisons in 5 years: Monitor Beirut At least 60,000 people have died in Syrian government prisons over the past five years from torture or due to dire humanitarian conditions, including a lack of food, a monitor said on Saturday.

The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, Rami Abdel Rahman, said he compiled the toll from regime sources.

“Since March 2011, at least 60,000 people lost their lives to torture or to horrible conditions, notably the lack of medication or food in regime detention centres,” Abdel Rahman told AFP. He said the highest number of deaths had been recorded in the infamous Saydnaya prison as well as detention centres run by Syria’s notorious air force intelligence and state security forces.

Thousands of prisoners are held in the military-run Saydnaya prison, one of the country’s largest detention

centre located 30 kilometres (18 miles) north of Damascus.

Rights groups have accused Syria’s government of systematically using torture and inhumane practices in its detention centres.

whereabouts of thousands of detainees remain unknown.

Abdel Rahman also said that “several thousand people” have died while being held by rebel groups and jihadist factions like the Islamic

A UN probe in February accused the Syrian government of a policy of “extermination” in its jails.

The Britain-based Observatory says it has compiled a list of 14,456 names -- including 110 children -- who have died in regime prisons.

According to Abdel Rahman, government forces have arrested a total of 500,000 people since Syria’s conflict erupted in 2011.While some have been released and others died, the

State group. In early 2014, a regime defector calling himself “Caesar” smuggled out of Syria some 55,000 photographs depicting the tortured and abused bodies of around 11,000 people who had reportedly died in Syrian jails during the first two years of the conflict.Earlier this month, the UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, named Eva Svoboda to oversee progress on the issue of detainees.

Issue - 668 (8)

24 May - 30 May 2016

World’s longest railway tunnel across Alps to be opened soon

In what can come as inspiration for Indian rail engineers, the 57kilometre long Gotthard rail tunnel – the world’s longest rail tunnel cutting through the Alps – is now ready for commissioning.

“Eleven days from now, the tunnel will be handed over and commercial operations will begin shortly”, said Peter Huber, CEO of the Transfer Gotthard, the Swiss-Italian consortium that executed the ambitious project, which aims to provide for a rail freight corridor from Rotterdam in Holland to Genova in Italy.

India’s longest tunnel is the 11.2 kilometre link from Banihal to Quazikund linking the Jammu region to the Kashmir valley.

The completion of the Gotthard tunnel provides a boost to India’s Kashmir rail link project that envisages the construction of the world’s highest rail bridge over River Beas. “ Rail technology has advanced. Austrian tunneling

technology that is being used in the Kashmir project should enable faster execution”, said Dr Alfred Veider, CEO of Thales Austria.Thales has commissioned signalling work for the Gotthard tunnel, including the installation of the European Train Control System (ECTS).

While providing seamless freight and passenger transportation across Europe’s north-south axis, the Gotthard tunnel will reduce travel time from Zurich in Switzerland to Milan in Italy from the existing four to three hours. Over an execution period of eight years, the tunnel has been built at a cost 1.9 billion Swiss francs.

The Gotthard not only connects two regions, but had also been an example of an engineering feat achieved by engineers working in two different languages. Swiss and Italian engineers worked on the project in their own languages.

Justin Trudeau says ‘I am human’ after fracas in Parliament, cites job pressure Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, under fire for getting involved in an unprecedented physical fracas in Parliament, said on Thursday that he was only human and in a high pressure job but promised there would be no repeat of his actions.

Trudeau, impatient at what he saw as stalling tactics by the opposition ahead of a vote on Wednesday evening, crossed the floor in the House of Commons to grab one legislator and drag him to his seat, accidentally elbowing another in the chest.

He has apologized three times already and said he would accept any punishment meted out by a special committee of legislators examining the incident.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, under fire for getting involved in an unprecedented physical fracas in Parliament, said on Thursday that he was only human and in a high pressure job but promised there would be no repeat of his actions.

Trudeau, impatient at what he saw as stalling tactics by the opposition ahead of a vote on Wednesday evening, crossed the floor in the House of Commons to grab one legislator and drag him to his seat, accidentally elbowing another in the chest.

Canadian Sikhs want Komagata chapter in school curriculum Even as Prime Minister Justin Trudeauapologized to the Sikh community in the House of Commons in Ottawa for the 1914 Komagata incident, Canadian Sikhs have demanded that the episode should be made part of school curricula across the country.

The Komagata Maru was a Japanese ship that was hired by Malaysiabased rich Sikh Baba Gurdit Singh to bring 376 Indians, mostly Sikhs, to Canada to challenge the racist laws of the time in 1914. Since both India and Canada were British dominions at that time, the Indians should have had the right to enter Canada. But the Canadian government of that time put in place various

Pre-mature Ejaculation?

416-887-4971

clauses in laws to bar Indians from entering Canada.

The Komagata Maru, which entered Vancouver harbour on May 23, 1914, was forcibly sent

back to India after two months.

On reaching Budge Budge in Calcutta in September 1914, the passengers were subjected to firing by British Indian police in which 19 of them were killed.

In his apology in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Trudeau said: “Canada’s government was, without question, responsible for the laws that prevented these passengers from immigrating peacefully and securely. For that, and for every regrettable consequence that followed, we are sorry.”

“Today while knowing that no words can fully erase the pain and suffering experienced by the passengers I offer a sincere apology on behalf of the

government for the laws in force at the time that allowed Canada to be indifferent to the plight of the passengers of the Komagata Maru.” The Canadian prime minister said, “The Komagata Maru incident is a stain on Canada’s past. But the history of our country is one in which we constantly challenge ourselves, and each other, to extend our personal definitions of who is a Canadian. We have learned, and will continue to learn, from the mistakes of our past. We must make sure to never repeat them.” Welcoming the apology, advocacy group World Sikh Organization deman-ded that a Komagata chapter be included in school curricula across Canada. World Sikh Organization president Mukhbir Singh said: “Prime Minster Trudeau’s apology in the House of Commons today is a historic moment for Canadian Sikhs and recognizes the dark chapter the Komagata Maru tragedy marks in Canada’s history.

While Canada is today a model of multiculturalism and inclusivity, it is important for us to understand that it was not always so.”

He has apologized three times already and said he would accept any punishment meted

who know me said ‘OK, Justin, is there something bugging you?

Is the atmosphere in the House

out by a special committee of legislators examining the incident.

“I think people understand that there is a tremendous amount of pressures that come with this job and I am human,” Trudeau said in his Parliament Hill office, which was dotted with pictures of Trudeau, his family, and his former prime minister father as well as a Lego canoe with four miniature figures in it.

“But I think at the same time, a big part of recognizing strengths and weaknesses is when you make a mistake you admit it, you make amends, you ask for forgiveness and you make sure it never happens again.”

The affair was a rare public loss of control for Trudeau, 44, who led his Liberals to power last October with a promise of “sunny ways”, and dented his image. Telegenic and tattooed, Trudeau has gained a rock star level of celebrity thanks partly to an avowed feminist stance and he is often swarmed by fans seeking selfies.

“Quite frankly a lot of people said: ‘Don’t worry about it, everyone has bad days’. But the people

getting particularly toxic?’“ he said.

Trudeau said his response was that “you can’t separate one from the other” but that he should have refrained from getting involved in the incident, which was gleefully dissected on Twitter with the hashtag #elbowgate and splashed on newspaper front pages across the country.

“I made a poor judgment call in wanting to step in on a situation that I should have just let evolve without the prime minister thrusting himself into the middle of it,” he said.

Trudeau is in no immediate political danger since the next election is not due until October 2019 and opinion polls put him far ahead of his rivals.

The special committee of legislators could find him in contempt of Parliament, thereby potentially triggering a vote of confidence which he would easily win given the Liberals’ majority in Parliament.

The incident, while mild compared to the brawls between legislators in Taiwan, Japan and Ukraine, was rare in Canadian politics.

Baby born with foetus in China

In a rare case, a woman in northwest China has delivered twin brothers with one of the babies having another foetus in his abdominal area.

The twin brothers were born prematurely in Xi’an, provincial capital of Shaanxi. The elder boy weighed about two kilogrammes at birth.

When doctors checked a mass in his abdominal area, they discovered to their surprise that

it looked like a fetus with bones and nails, state-run China.org reported.

What happened to the baby is known as foetus in foetu, an incredibly rare occurrence which affects only one in every 500,000 births, the report said.

The third foetus was taken out 15 days after the boy was born. The cause of the condition remains unknown, the report said.

Issue - 668 (9)

24 May - 30 May 2016

Indian Muslims angry over Yoga Day ‘Om’ chant proposal NEW DELHI Muslim groups on Wednesday slammed a directive from India’s Hindu nationalist government for participants in International Yoga Day to chant “Om”, citing religious bias.The mass outdoor yoga session, to be held in June

for its second year, is an initiative spearheaded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is seeking to reclaim the practice as an historic part of Indian culture.

“Yogic practise shall start with a prayer or prayerful mood to enhance benefits of the practise,” read a note issued by Ayush ministry, which works for the promotion of yoga, as shown by television networks.The ministry said participants should chant

the sacred sound “Om” and Hindu vedic hymns at the start and end of the 45-minute event on June 21.Muslim groups reacted with anger, saying such chants were against their faith and accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of seeking to

impose a hardline Hindu agenda.“We are not against yoga but India is a secular country and the state has no religion,” Zafaryab Jilani, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board told AFP. “If they are imposing a Hindu religious practice on the rest of us, it is unconstitutional. ”The government waded into a similar controversy last year after it made the surya namaskar pose

64 laces named after Gandhis in Delhi alone: Rishi Kapoor tweets map

New Delhi It looks like Rishi Kapoor is still not done with the Gandhi family.

The 63-year-old actor on Thursday tweeted a map of Delhi, highlighting the places named after the Nehrus and Gandhis.

Earlier this week, the actor stirred a political storm when he posted a thread of tweets, slamming the Congress Party for naming important places such as roadways, railways and airports after the Nehrus and Gandhis.

“Change Gandhi family assets named by Congress.Bandra/ Worli Sea Link to Lata Mangeshkar or JRD Tata link road. Baap ka maal samjh rakha tha ?” he wrote.

The veteran actor then asked for suggestion from people on whether or not the names can be after film personalities such as Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Ashok Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan.

“Film City should be named Dilip

Kumar,Dev Anand,Ashok Kumar ya Amitabh Bachchan ke naam?

Rajeev Gandhi udyog Kya hota hai? Socho doston!” Kapoor wrote.

“Imagine Mohamad Rafi Mukesh Manna Dey Kishore Kumar venues on their name like in our country. Just a suggestion” he tweeted.“Why Indira G airport International ? Why not Mahatma Gandhi or Bhagat Singh Ambedkar or on my name Rishi Kapoor. As superficial! What say?” the next tweet read.

“Raj Kapoor has made India proud over the years all over even after his death. Certainly more than What has been perceived by politics,” it added.

Reacting to Kapoor’s tweets, the Congress called him “parochial” and said he sought “power” .

“Rishi Kapoor fails to realise the contribution of the Gandhi family towards nation building,” said Mumbai Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam .

(sun salutation) part of the event.

Muslim groups say certain yoga poses and chants have clear Hindu overtones and are against Islam.“They are again and again trying to impose a Hindutva (“Hinduness”) agenda. This order should be cancelled immediately,” Khalid Rashid Firangi Mahali, a top Muslim cleric said.The opposition also weighed in, accusing the government of seeking to impose a narrow vision on the ancient tradition, which commands huge global popularity. “Yoga has achieved the status of an international art form and by imposing such conditions the government is killing its essence,” Manish Tewari, a leader of the main opposition Congress party said.“People from different religions do it and the practitioner should decide what to chant.”Following the outcry, the Ayush ministry issued a clarification saying the directive was not compulsory.In 2014 the United Nations accepted India’s proposal to declare June 21 as International Yoga Day, highlighting its health benefits.

Apple boss to meet Modi and his gold iPhone

MUMBAI When Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook meets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this weekend as part of an Asian tour aimed at boosting sales, he will sit down with a man whose penchant for a selfie - often using his gold iPhone - can get him into trouble.

Modi breached electoral rules when he photographed himself holding his party’s symbol of a lotus flower immediately after casting his vote in the 2014 general election, one of the many selfies he regularly takes with his Apple phone. Cook meets the 65-year old prime minister in New Delhi on Saturday, and will

be hoping Modi’s enthusiasm for phones can help Apple as it tries to bolster sales in India. While smartphone usage is surging as the middle class swells, most Indians still can’t afford Apple’s iPhones and the company has only about 2 percent market share in a country where 100 million phones were sold last year. Apart from snapping the usual selfie, Modi is likely to tell Cook that if Apple wants to sell more phones in India, it should make them there, and help the prime minister realise his ambition of turning the country into a manufacturing powerhouse.

Driver by night, she storms a male bastion Neha Kulkarni Driver by night, she storms a male bastion “Sorry, what? You are my driver?... I think I have dialled your number by mistake, I have booked an OLA cab for myself.”

Leaving behind such comments and driving in the day as well as night hours is Kanchi Shah (30), a female cab driver for OLA cabs in Mumbai. Working since one and a half years for the company, Kanchi believes she is living her life to the fullest.

Juggling between the two professions of event management and driving, Kanchi claims to be doing what she likes best. The decision of becoming a cabbie was well thought of by her husband and her, Kanchi claims.

“After we brought our new car, we decided to make a side business out of it. Not only that, it was my husband who encouraged me to convert my driving licence to a taxi licence.

By doing this, I get to fulfill my passion for driving.”

An Electronics and Telecommunications engineer by profession, when asked if what she does, worries her kin, Kanchi asserts, “Absolutely no! Though my family is completely aware of the difficulty of my work and profession, they supported me.

My in-laws have no objection to my work.”

Kanchi claims she has a target of working for specific hours in the night. Though she aims to

wrap up by 11.30 pm or midnight, work hours tend to increase sometimes. However, dedication towards finishing her goals gets her going.

“There have been instances

driver. To mention one, there was a family completely scared to believe that they were being driven by a female. I could sense this because while I was taking a few turns on bumpy roads,

where I had to ferry commuters till the farthest corners of the city in the wee hours of the night and I have tried doing it as a professional. However, as I get to choose my working hours and day-offs, I take work only when I want to and make sure I finish it,” Kanchi said.

Though Kanchi claims she has added perks and incentives, it often becomes hectic, she claims. To manage the strain of driving for hours together, she prefers to take a break by getting back home in the afternoon and keeping herself occupied with driving in the morning and evening peak hours to earn better.

While sharing some of her experiences, she said, “I have often seen lack of confidence among commuters on a female

even those who were sitting in the back had put on their seat belts. Some of them even stopped conversing or speaking on the phone, perhaps, expressing their lack of faith in me as a driver,” Kanchi added.

However, nothing deters her, she claims.

Expressing how she is a ‘driver by the night’ she said, “I love the peace and the freedom to drive in the night. I think it is much more comfortable and relieving.

In fact, my husband trusts me with driving and calls me a deadline-meeting driver.”

“I think I am just trying to do what I want to without any inhibitions and make my place in it. When it comes to safety, yes I do take precautions while driving in the night, but in the end I know I am an inspiration to others.”

Issue - 668 (10)

Khatri Dhir family seek a suitable match for their son, 1984 born, 5’-7” tall, Canadian Citizen, B.Com (1st year) own business, Friendly, Non-vegetarian, NonManglik, family oriented. The girl should be Khatri, family oriented, beautiful, educated. Girls on Student Visa/Work permit can also be considered. Please send you bio-data and recent picture to: moit13@yahoo.com Or Call: 905-792-7730 ***669*** Brahmin parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 26 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall, Canadian Citizen, pretty, family oriented Vegetarian, university graduate. The boy should be Canadian/American, Immigrant/ Citizen, Vegetarian, Professionally qualified, employed from good family background. Boys on student visa for higher studies (university level) may also be considered.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: : bhupp1958@gmail.com Or Call : 905-956-2392 (or leave Message) ***668*** Jat Sikh parents seeking a match for their daughter, born and raised in Canada, 30 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, Master’s degree holder from a Candaian University, professionally employed, well versed in both cultures. The boy should be well educated, professionally settled between 28-34 yrs. of age, born or raised in Canada. Mainland area prefered. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: parmjit50@gmail.com Or Call : 1604-317-7576 ***668*** Punjabi Sikh parents seek a match for their daughter, born and raised in Canada, 27 yrs. old, 5’4” tall, beautiful, pretty, Doctor (MD), finishing her specialized Residency in Ontario. The boy should be Doctor (MD) or Pharmacist or Dentist, born and raised in Canada, handsome, atleast 5’-10” tall with family values and well versed in both cultures. Ontario prefered.

Please send your bio-data and recent picture to: dkgrewal6@gmail.com ***668*** Mehta (Khatri) parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 27 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, Lawyer, working as lawyer with a Law firm and at present on work permit.

The girl should be Canadian Immigrant/Citizen, beautiful, educated and family oriented.

Boys close relatives are well settled in Canada. Caste no bar.

Please Call : 416-417-2927 Or : 647-281-1639 ***668*** Ramdasia Sikh family seek a suitable match for their daughter, 25 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, born in USA, well versed in both cultures, Bacheler’s degree in Accountancy. The boy should be 5’-11” or taller, clean shaven, well educated and family oriented.

Caste no bar. Please send your

24 May - 30 May 2016

bio-data and recent picture to: kainthsingh@yahoo.com Or Call : 1-916-717-8949 ***668*** Jat Sikh Brar parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 31 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, born and raised in Canada, Chartered Accountant, Vegetarian, nondrinker, clean shaven, working in GTA with family values. The girl should be from Jat Sikh family, well educated and family oriented.

Malwa area prefered. Please send your bio-data and recent picture to: msbrar100@gmail.com Or Call : 416-970-7028 ***668*** Jat Sikh Brar parents looking for a suitable match for their daughter, born and raised in Canada, 29 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, RN and Master’s degree in Nursing, Currently working in GTA. The boy should be well educated, professionally employed, prefered non-drinker, non-smoker, vegetarian with family values.

Malwa area prefered. Please send your bio-data and recent picture to: skbrar100@gmail.com Or Call : 416-970-7028 ***668*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suiable match for their son, 25 yrs. old, 6’ tall, Dentist in India, handsome & family oriented. The girl should be American/Canadian Immigrant or Citizen, well educated, family oriented. Please send your biodata and recent picture to: jat3k@yahoo.com Or Call : 1-917-250-9355 ***668*** Ravidasia parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 33 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, Canadian Citizen, working as a nurse, family oriented. The boy should be highly qualified, professionally employed, Canadian Citizen between 30-35 yrs. old, with family values.

Please email recent picture and bio-data to: charan1949@yahoo.com ***668*** 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 416-7081392 ***668*** Jat Sikh parents seeks a suitable match for their extremely handsome, Canadian born, 32 yrs. old, 6'-2" tall, B.Sc., nondrinker, family oriented son, Working with the government.

The girl should be pretty, tall, educated, having good family values. Please send your biodata & recent picture to: japman01@hotmail.com or call: 1-250-220-4259 *** 668*** Jatt Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their daughter, innocently divorced, 37 yrs. old, 5'- 4" tall, beautiful, Canadian

citizen, well versed in both cultures, professionally employed in Toronto. The boy should be family oriented and from a respectable Jatt Sikh family.

Please respond with a recent picture and bio-data to: torontomatrimonial@gmail.com or call 416-509-5012 *** 668*** Punjabi family seeking a suitable match for their US citizen son, born in 1979 with a B.A. degree in Computer Science and Business and working as a Marketing Director, well settled family in California. The girl should be educated and family oriented.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: tara.pabla@gmail.com or call: 1-858- 484-8602 *** 668*** Well-settled Jatt-Sikh family from US seeking a suitable match for their beautiful, family-oriented, US-born & raised daughter, 5'-6" tall, 29 yrs. old, Masters in Finance. The boy should be welleducated, Jatt-Sikh & from US. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: newyorkrishta@gmail.com *** 668*** Kashyap Rajput Hindu Punjabi parents seeking a suitable match for their only son DOB 1984, 5’10” tall, high level professional chef, never married, non-smoker, non-drinker, handsome, fair complexion belongs to a high status family. The girl should be family oriented from Canada/ USA. All the family is settled in USA. Caste no bar. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: nitakashyaprajput@yahoo.com Or Call : 1-862-236-0152 ***668*** Saraswat Brahmin parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, DOB May 31, 1982, 5’6” tall, Canadian Citizen, working as Practitioner Nurse. Looking for a suitable qualified match from Canada/America. Please Call : 905-676-1903 ***668*** Saini Sikh family seek a suitable match for their son, 26 yrs. old, 5’-8” tall, American born, clean shaven, B.Tech., working in New York Engineering Company, nonsmoker, non drinker. The Girl should be from any Sikh family.

Preferably from New York or U.S.A. East Coast. Caste no Bar. Call : 1-516-852-7032 ***668*** Khatri Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 26 yrs. old, 5’-11” tall, Canadian Citizen, working as a finance specialist with Canadian Govt., wears turban, non-trimmer, nondrinker. The Girl should be Canadian Immigran/Citizen, educated, having good family values and from Sikh family.

Please send your bio-data and recent picture to: manjit_msb@yahoo.ca or Call : 1-604-853-2709 ***668*** Jat Sikh family in GTA seeks alliance for their Canadian born son, 25 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, fair,

professionally engineer, employed with govt. Looking for Canadian born girl, Univesity Graduate, slim and fair. Please send your bio-data and recent picture to : jatcanadian@hotmail.com or call 416-938-4195 ***668*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their beautiful daughter, 25 yrs. old, working as RN in Seattle (USA), completed BSN in Nursing. The boy should be born in Canada/America, well educated, professional (Doctor/ Dentist), employed with moderate family values. Please send your bio-data and recent picture to : madamk1940@gmail.com or call : 1-778-564-5300 ***668*** Jat Sikh Grewal parents seeking a suitable match for their son, 36 yrs. old, 6’-1” tall, Canadian Citizen, MBA degree holder, working with reputable bank. The girl should be educated, professionally employed and with family values.Please send your bio-data and recent picture to : grewal2016@yahoo.ca or Call : 1-604-765-9214 ***668*** Khatri Dhir family seek a suitable match for their son, 1984 born, 5’-7” tall, Canadian Citizen, B.Com (1st year) own business, Friendly, Non-vegetarian, NonManglik, family oriented. The girl should be Khatri, family oriented, beautiful, educated. Girls on Student Visa/Work permit can also be considered. Please send you bio-data and recent picture to: moit13@yahoo.com Or Call: 905-792-7730 ***668*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance 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, empoyed never married. Please send you bio-data and recent picture to: myshaadi2016@hotmail.com ***668*** Canadian well settledJat Sikh family family seeks a suitable match for their daugther, 1989/ 5’3”, Canadian Citizen, well cultured, family oriented, Bachelor in Administration Accounting, employed as Administration Assistant. The boy should be Canadaitn Citizen/ PR, well educated, sober, professionally employed and should be from Ropar, Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib, Mohali Or Ludhiana Distt. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: lidharfamily@gmail.com Or Call : 647-783-2118 (5 PM to 9 PM Weekend any time) ***668***

US citizens Jat Sikh Saini parents seeking professional alliance for their 30 Yrs/5’8"/ Greencard holder, fair, slim and beautiful daughter, Licensed Physical Therapist, presently working in New York. Boy residing and working in New York preferred. Please send your biodata & recent picture to:.ts215saini@gmail.com or call: 1-516-765-5004 *** 668*** Jat sikh clean shaven handsome boy, 29yrs. old, 6’ tall, B-Tech, M-Tech (India), MBA Finance (USA), working in US Seeks tall, beautiful, well educated, American citizen/immigrant girl.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: mangat.harjit@yahoo.com or call: 1- 917 353 8909 *** 668*** Jat Sikh parents seeking a suitable match for their daughter, born and raised in Canada 29 yrs. old, 5’-7” tall, beautiful, family oriented, Master’s degree in Physiotherapy and professionally employed in Ontario. The boy should be well educated, professionally settled with family values. GTA prefered. Please email recent picture and bio-data to: sanjog60@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-204-881-7405 ***668*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their son, 29 yrs. old, 5'- 8" tall, Canadian citizen, university graduate with B. Comm, CPA, CMA, professionally employed. The girl should be family oriented, well educated with a balance of both eastern and western values.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: kk.gill1@hotmail.com or call 647918-9571 *** 668*** Wanted suitable match for well settled single Hindu Nai Canadian citizen boy, Software Engineer(working),Goverenment Job. 5'11" height, 26/02/1987 (born in Punjab, India). Seeking educated and working/student Canadian/PR match. send Bio data/pictures at: naveenbalram@yahoo.ca or call 709-685-5062. Parents Govt employees, only son. *** 668*** Jat Sikh Family in Edmonton seeks a matrimonial alliance for their Canadian born daughter, annulled, 36 yrs. old, 5’-5" tall, B.Com., Currently working as an accountant. The boy should be professional, respectful Jat Sikh, under 40 yrs. of age, well versed in English. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to: hmanjitk@gmail.com or call: 1-780-690-2831 *** 668***

House-Keeper In Brampton, Canada (Live-in or out). Hotel experience preferred but will train the suitable candidate. Must be available to stand, walk and bend for extended periods of time. Duties include making beds, dusting, cleaning bathroom, vacuuming, replenishing supplies, cooking and elderly care (1 hr. daily approx). Pls. call 647-632-3999

Issue - 668 (11)

24 May - 30 May 2016

Afghan Taliban leader likely killed in US drone strike in Pakistan Washington The United States conducted a drone strike on Saturday against the leader of Afghan Taliban, likely killing him on the Pakistan side of the remote border region with Afghanistan in a mission authorized by US President Barack Obama, officials said.

The death of Mullah Akhtar Mansour, should it be confirmed, could further fracture the Taliban - an outcome that experts cautioned might make the insurgents even less likely to participate in longstalled peace efforts.

The mission, which included multiple drones, demonstrated a clear willingness by Obama to go after the Afghan Taliban leadership in Pakistan now that the insurgents control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since being ousted by a U.S.-led intervention in 2001.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook confirmed an air strike targeting Mansour in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region but declined to speculate on his fate, although US officials speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters he likely was killed. “We are still assessing the results of the strike and will provide more information as it becomes available,” Cook said. A Taliban commander close to Mansour, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, denied Mansour was dead.

“We heard about these baseless reports but this not first time,” the commander said. “Just wanted to share with you my own information that

Mullah Mansour has not been killed.”

In December, Mansour was reportedly wounded and possibly killed in a shootout at the house of another Taliban leader near Quetta in Pakistan.

Bruce Riedel, an Afghanistan expert at the Brookings Institution thinktank, described the US operation in Pakistan as an unprecedented move but cautioned about possible fallout with Pakistan, where Taliban leadership has long been said to have safe haven.

Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, predicted strained ties between the US and Pakistani militaries and said it would put Pakistan’s powerful InterServices Intelligence (ISI) spy agency on alert.

“It is also a signal to the ISI that the US is losing patience with promises of Pakistan facilitating talks with the Taliban and is finally willing to strike at the Afghan Taliban leadership in Pakistan,” he said.

A State Department official said both Pakistan and Afghanistan were notified of the strike but did not disclose whether that notification was prior to it being carried out.

“The opportunity to conduct this operation to eliminate the threat that

Mansour posed was a distinctive one and we acted on it,” the official said.

There was no comment immediately available from Afghan security and intelligence officials. The

Pakistani military also did not respond to requests for comment.

Troubled peace talks The US drones targeted Mansour and another combatant as the men rode in a vehicle in a remote area southwest of the town of Ahmad Wal, another US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. US special operations forces operated the drones in a mission authorized by Obama that took place at about 6 a.m.

EDT (1000 GMT), the official said. That would have placed it at Saturday at 3 p.m. in Pakistan.

Cook called Mansour “an obstacle to peace and reconciliation between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban” and said he was involved in planning attacks that threatened US, Afghan and allied forces.

Michael Kugelman, a senior associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center, said the most important target for the United States remained the top leadership of the Haqqani network, which is allied

Egypt PM says cannot rule out terrorism behind vanished airplane Cairo Egypt’s Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said on Thursday that the search was underway to find the missing EgyptAir plane and it was too early to rule out any explanation for the incident, including terrorism.

“Search operations are ongoing at this time for the airplane in

Erection Problem?

416-992-5489

the area where it is believed to have lost contact,” he told reporters at Cairo airport. Asked by a journalist if he could rule out that terrorists were behind the incident, Ismail said: “We cannot exclude anything at this time or confirm anything.

All the search operations

must be concluded so we can know the cause.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will chair a national security council meeting on Thursday morning, a statement from his office said. It did not say if the meeting would discuss the plane.

with the Taliban.

Mansour had failed to win over rival factions within the Taliban after formally assuming the helm last year after the Taliban admitted the group’s founding leader, Mullah Omar, had been dead for more than two years.

It was unclear who Mansour’s successor might be and Riedel said his death could create a crisis for the Taliban.

A US intelligence analyst said Mansour had been in a power struggle with Mullah Mohammad Rasoul, whose deputy, Mullah Dadullah, was killed late last year in what officials think was a fight with Mansour’s more hardline faction. But the US official cautioned against concluding that the shakeup might diminish the Taliban’s broader sense of strength, given political tensions in Kabul and the uneven performance of USbacked Afghan forces in recent months.

“The Taliban have made considerable progress in Helmand (province) and elsewhere so it’s hard to see much incentive for them to start compromising now, with the fighting just heating up again,” the official said.

NIA arrests Indian Mujahideen’s key operative from Delhi’s IGI airport New Delhi The NIA Friday arrested Abdul Wahid Siddibappa, a suspected financier and logistics provider of Indian Mujahideen (IM), from Delhi airport. A special court sent him to NIA custody for seven days after the agency said he was required for interrogation.

While NIA has maintained that Abdul, a cousin of former IM chief Ahmed Zarar Siddibappa alias Yasin Bhatkal and a relative of IM founder Riyaz Bhatkal, was arrested upon arrival from Abu Dhabi, sources said he was deported by UAE authorities.

Abdul had been detained

by UAE authorities in January 2014, but it took India more than two years to get him deported. The UAE authorities had arrested and produced Abdul in a local court which delayed his deportation. At that time, India had failed to produce robust evidence against him even as Pakistan put pressure on UAE through diplomatic channels to stall his handover to India, sources said.An Interpol red corner

notice issued against Abdul says he is wanted for alleged involvement in the 2006 Mumbai serial blasts, 2008 Delhi blasts and 2010 Chinnaswamy

Stadium blasts.

According to the dossier on Abdul with Indian agencies, the 32-year-old allegedly routed money sent by IM founders Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal using banking channels and Western Union ahead of the blasts. Abdul’s name features in an NIA case (RC 6/2012) which addresses a grand IM conspiracy “in association with the IM sleeper cells based in the country and abroad to commit terrorist acts’’ in India. Sources said Abdul had been using the alias ‘Khan’ and his codename was also found in chats between Yasin and Riyaz.

Yasin was arrested in August 2013 from the India-Nepal border along with Asadullah Akhtar and a list of UAE contacts was recovered from them.

Issue - 668 (12)

24 May - 30 May 2016

Indian parents tether toddler to rock while they work AHMEDABAD Fifteen month-old Shivani tugs at a plastic tape her mother has wrapped around her leg and tied to a rock at a building site in western India.Barefoot and

so he is not able to control her,” said the 23-year old, covering her face with her sari. “This site is full of traffic, I have no option. I do this for her safety.” There are about 40 million construction

caked in dust, the toddler spends nine hours a day in temperatures topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) attached to the 4.5 foot (1.4 metre) tape marked “caution”. Sarta Kalara, her mother, says she has no option but to tether Shivani to the stone despite her crying, while she and her husband work for 250 rupees ($3.8) each a shift digging holes for electricity cables in the city of Ahmedabad.“I tie her so she doesn’t go on the road. My younger son is three and a half

workers in India, at least one in five of them women, and the majority poor migrants who shift from site to site, building infrastructure for India’s booming cities.

Across the country it is not uncommon to see young children rolling in the sand and mud as their parents carry bricks or dig for new roads or luxury houses.

Many such families live in tents on site or, like Shivani’s, bed down in the open at night.Prabhat Jha, head of child

New Delhi Indian families are getting smaller and the decline is sharpest among Muslims, religious census data released

men while for families headed by women it was 4.47%.

The Muslim community is often targeted by Hindu right-wing groups of having large families

protection at Save the Children India, said creche facilities were rare, and usually cost.“There should be creche facilities, either from the government or the construction companies. There should be a safe place for these children. They are at real risk of being hurt,” Jha said.Indian companies usually outsource the hiring of cheap labour.

Contractors bring gangs of workers, often recruited from the same village, to lift, dig or hammer with little oversight or safety provisions.While Shivani is tied to her rock, men pause for coconut and water amid the searing heat as mothers take quick breaks to feed their kids.Parents said their children usually stayed with them until they are seven or eight, when they are sent to live with grandparents in poor tribal villages in a neighbouring state.Kalara, holding Shivani as the plastic tape dangled from her leg, said managers had turned a blind eye to her plight. “They don’t care about us or our children, they are only concerned with their work.”When a Reuters photographer returned to the site on a second day, a group of labourers laying power cables threw stones at him.

Minority report: Muslim families shrinking fastest among Indian communities

on Friday said, in what could be signs of rising literacy levels in the community.

The report of the census carried out in 2011 was released almost a year after the government revealed religion-wise population figures from the same year.

The latest data said the country’s average family size in 2011 was 4.45 members, down from 4.67 a decade earlier, a drop of 5.3%.

In the Muslim community the average family size fell from 5.61 to 5.15, the report released by the home ministry said. The reduction was sharper 11.1% for Muslim households headed by

and a higher population growth rate.

Last year, BJP parliamentarian Sakshi Maharaj and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) Sadhvi Prachi had separately asked Hindu women to bear at least four children to counter the growth in Muslim population.

Religious population data released last year showed that the community grew by 24.6 percent between 2001 and 2011.

At 17.22 crore, the community formed 14.2% of India’s 121 crore population. With a population of 96.63 crore, Hindus constitute 79.8% of the

population.

Data released on Friday also showed the average size of Hindu families declined by 5.02% over the decade, Christian households by 6.47%, Sikh by 7.44%, Buddhist by 5.96% and Jain by 5.5%.

The average household size was higher in male headed households as compared to those headed by females across all religious communities.

Overall, “Christians had the highest percentage of households headed by females (17.4%) followed next by Buddhist (15.9%). The lowest percentage of female headed households is in Jain community (11.5%),” the report said.

The data showed that the difference in household size between different religious communities wasn’t as big as was often made out. Besides, the continuing decline has also narrowed the gap in family size between different religious communities.In 2011, the average size of a Hindu family was 4.35. In contrast, a Muslim household had 5.15 members, a Christian household 4.05, Sikh household 4.85, Buddhist household 4.1 and a Jain household 4.45 members.In 2011, an average Muslim family just had 0.8 more persons than a Hindu household as compared to 1.03 persons in 2001.

God belongs to all: Rawat after BJP MP, Dalit leader attacked at temple

Dehradun Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat visited BJP MP Tarun Vijay in the hospital on Saturday, assuring him of action against those who attacked him for visiting a temple with a Dalit leader.

Vijay was attacked by a mob when he visited the Silgur Devta temple in Chakrata on Friday with Dalit Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Daulat Kunwar, at PunahPokhri village.

“The commissioner will give me a firsthand report and we will take stringent action accordingly.

People’s rights should be recognised and nobody can be stopped from going to a temple as God belongs to all,” Rawat said before he met Vijay.

The chief minister acknowledged that certain issues have problems when it comes to relaxing norms, and said he did not have a concrete solution for

people who strictly adhered to customs and traditions. He however said spreading awareness was one way to deal with it.

“We are persuading the people and changes can be seen. Public awareness also needs to be cultivated in the matter. Yes, customs should be respected, but you can’t stop someone from worshipping.

I want to call on all religious leaders in the state to open the doors of their temples to people from all faith and also to the Dalits. After all, everyone is human,” Rawat said.

He further said that besides the guilty, those who were lax in preventing the incident will also not be spared, assuring of some action by Saturday evening.

Rawat assured that Vijay will be given assistance from the state government for his medical treatment.

Indian police arrest man over Facebook post

NEW DELHI Police in southern India said Tuesday they have arrested a man for posting a doctored image on Facebook showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi bowing before a Muslim leader.

Mohammed Mehboob, 25, was arrested on Sunday on charges of “promoting enmity between religious groups” after workers for Modi’s party in southern Karnataka state’s Koppal district complained about the post. “We acted on a complaint filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers and arrested him,” the investigating officer Kali Krishna told AFP, referring to Modi’s Hindu nationalist party. The

image showed Modi touching the feet of Akbaruddin Owaisi, a controversial Muslim legislator from neighbouring Telangana state who has been prosecuted for making derogatory remarks about Modi in the past. In March, police in central India arrested two Muslim men on charges of obscenity over a doctored image of Mohan Bhagwat, a leader of the controversial Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The image showed Bhagwat dressed in a tight pair of women’s trousers and black high heels, an apparent reference to the group’s decision to change their trademark khaki shorts for brown trousers.

Issue - 668 (13)

24 May - 30 May 2016

Osama bin Laden poster 26/11 case: Pak court to charge Lakhvi, 6 others for abetment to murder signed by US Navy SEAL team sells for $100,000

Lahore Lashkar-e-Taiba’s operations commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi and six others accused in the 2008 Mumbai attack case will be individually charged for the abetment to murder of each of

the 166 people who died in the carnage, a Pakistani antiterrorism court ruled on Friday.

“The seven suspects will be charged individually,” a senior court official said, quoting the verdict of the trial court.

The official said the court, however, did not allow cross examination of the suspects in this regard.

The prosecution had filed an application in the ATC Islamabad some two months ago requesting it to make amendment in the charges against the suspects in abetment to murder of each individual in the carnage.

The trial court in March last had reserved the verdict after the prosecution and defence lawyers completed their arguments on the plea that amendment in the charges against all seven suspects in abetment to murder of each individual in Mumbai attack should be made.

166 people, including six Americans, were killed and more than 300 injured in the attack in November 2008 by 10 Pakistani terrorists.

The prosecution was of the view that it was seeking amendment

to the changes “for further strengthening the case against the suspects”.

It had also pleaded for including the post-mortem reports of those killed in the attack.

The prosecution said India should be asked to send the postmortem reports of each victim of Mumbai attack while the defence lawyers opposed it.

Meanwhile, the Mumbai attack case has faced inordinate delay as no proceedings were held for the previous seven consecutive hearings.

The next hearing of the case is scheduled for May 25.

The Pakistani authorities are blaming India for the delay in the case, saying it cannot move further till the Indian government sends witnesses to Pakistan for recording statements in the case.“The seven consecutive hearings of the case were adjourned without any

In-laws booked for harassing NRI woman for dowry

PHAGWARA Police on Friday booked the husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law of an NRI woman, for allegedly harassing her for more dowry and forcing her to marry another relative. Police booked Komalpreet Kaur’s husband Parvinder Singh, fatherin-law Balbir Singh and motherin-law Balbir Kaur under various sections of IPC. Police said that Baljinder, who lives in the US, had married off his daughter to Parvinder from Nangal Majha village on February 20, 2013. He spent Rs 20 lakh on the marriage

and also gave the family expensive gifts. But his daughter’s in-laws started demanding a luxury car. They also started insisting that Komalpreet divorce her husband and marry another person from their family so he could also go to the US. When Komalpreet refused, they told her that they had married her to their son so that another relative could travel to the US after their son divorced her. The in-laws forced her to leave her marital home. Upon returning home to her parents, Komalpreet lodged a complaint with the police.

proceedings because the Pakistani government is still awaiting its counterpart’s response about sending (Indian) witnesses to Pakistan for recording statements in the case,” the court official said.

The foreign ministry of Pakistan had written to the Indian government about three months ago asking it to send all 24 Indian witnesses to Pakistan for recording statements in the trial court in Mumbai attacks case.

According to prosecution lawyers, the trial court had already completed recording the statements of all (Pakistani) witnesses in the case which has been underway in the country for more than six years.

“Now the ball is in India’s court.

The Indian government should send all Indian witnesses of the Mumbai case to Pakistan to record their statements so that the trial could further move ahead,” a prosecution lawyer said.

Mumbai attack mastermind Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younis Anjum are accused of abetment to murder, attempted murder, planning and executing the Mumbai attacks.

Lakhvi is living in undisclosed location after he got released from jail on bail a year ago. The other six suspects are in Adiala Jail Rawalpindi.

Houston A “wanted” Osama bin Laden poster, signed by US Navy SEAL Team 6 has been auctioned for a whopping 100,000 dollar in Houston.

Before Admiral William McRaven took over the chancellor’s office at the University of Texas, he oversaw one of the most daring raids in modern military history - the assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The raid, recounted in a number of books, articles and the Hollywood blockbuster “Zero Dark Thirty,” saw a squad from the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 sweep into the 9/11 mastermind’s hiding place to kill the terrorist leader.

The admiral’s personal Osama

“wanted” poster, signed by SEAL Team 6, was auctioned off at a Houston dinner on Tuesday. “(The photo was a) reminder to all of us that this was guy we were looking for from 2004,” McRaven was quoted as saying by the Houston Chronicle.

“It’s a $ 10 poster in a seemingly priceless frame,” he said.

Later, Perrin asked the former commander of US Special Operations Command why he insisted on a proper burial for Osama.“As evil as he was, it’s all the more important to do the right thing,” McRaven replied to thunderous applause.

The event raised more than 840,000 dollor for Texas Children’s Cancer Center.

Osama was killed in the US Navy SEALs raid on May 2, 2011.

Islamic State plans wave of attacks during Euro 2016: French spy chief Paris France’s security chief Patrick Calvar has warned that Islamic State terrorists are gearing up for a campaign of bomb attacks on large crowds in the country, host to next month’s Euro 2016 soccer championships.

Rare remarks by Calvar, the head of DGSI internal intelligence agency, to the Parliament’s defence committee spelled out “a new form of attack ... characterised by placing explosive devices in places where there are large crowds and repeating this type of action to create a climate of maximum panic.

“Clearly, France is the most threatened and we know that Daesh (Islamic State) is planning new attacks,” Calvar told the committee on May 10, according to a transcript of his testimony released to the media on

Thursday. The comments came six months after militants killed 130 people in coordinated assaults on cafes, bars, a football stadium and a music hall across Paris.

He said the militant group had

stretched after two militant attacks last year and regular street protests. However, the government say all measures are in place to ensure it runs smoothly. “We will not drop our guard,” Prime Minister Manuel

the numbers to launch the new attacks, including some 645 French citizens or residents currently in Syria or Iraq, of which 400 were fighters. A further 201 were either in transit to or from the region, he said.

Euro 2016 starts on June 10 and runs for a month at 10 stadiums across France. About 2.5 million spectators are expected for 51 soccer matches involving 24 teams. There will also be “fan zones” for crowds watching games on big screens in major cities. France’s police force is

Valls told RTL radio on Thursday when asked about Calvar’s comments. In a reminder of the challenges facing security forces, a fake bomb left behind after a training exercise at Manchester United’s stadium in Britain forced the evacuation of the 75,000-seater ground and the abandonment of a match last weekend. Referring to the Arabic acronym for Islamic State, Calvar said Daesh was still using the same migrant routes through the Balkans to get its fighters into Europe.

Issue - 668 (14)

24 May - 30 May 2016

Doctor hacked in Bangladesh, IS claims responsibility A homeopathic doctor was today hacked to death by IS militants in Bangladesh. The Islamic

shifted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital in critical condition, police said.The deceased along with

State group claimed responsibility for the attack. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent weeks especially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. A homeopathic doctor was today hacked to death and a professor was seriously wounded by machete- wielding Islamic State militants in Bangladesh amid a series of brutal attacks on secular activists and minorities by Islamists.

Sanaur Rahman, 58, a homeopathic doctor, was riding home on his motorbike along with Saifuzzaman, assistant professor of Bangla literature at Islami University, while they were attacked by the assailants in Kushtia town this morning.Rahman died on the spot while Saifuzzaman has been

Saifuzzaman was going to his native village at Shishirmath to give free treatment to local people, Sahabuddin Choudhury, officer-in-charge of Kushtia Model Police Station, said.

They were intercepted by three to four people and attacked with machetes indiscriminately, he said, adding the assailants attacked them in a similar fashion that bears the hallmark of previous murders of bloggers and secular activists.The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Fighters from the Islamic State assassinated a doctor who called to Christianity in Kushtia, western Bangladesh,” the IS-affiliated Amaq news agency said in a brief Arabic message, according to SITE Intelligence Group.

Proloy Chisim,

superintendent of police (SP) of Kushtia, said that they were also probing whether personal enmity was behind the murder.Both the doctor and the professor were fans of a mystical musical tradition known as Baul, which is popular in western Bangladesh.

Rahman also used to arrange musical concerts based on Baul ideology at his native village every Friday, his relative said.

Minorities targeted There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent weeks especially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners.

Earlier this month, a 65year-old Muslim Sufi preacher was hacked to death by unidentified machete-wielding assailants in northwest Bangladesh, two weeks after a liberal university professor was killed in a similar attack claimed by the dreaded ISIS terror group.

The country’s first gay magazine editor was brutally murdered along with a friend in his flat in Dhaka by Islamists two days after the professor’s murder.Less than two weeks ago, a Hindu tailor was hacked to death by machete-wielding ISIS militants in his shop in central Bangladesh.

Hidden Islamic school exposed in heart of Brussels district that spawned Isis attacks Authorities in Brussels have closed a clandestine Quranic school in Molenbeek, the district in the heart of the Belgian

centre that comprised two classrooms on the ground floor, as well as two rooms in the attic for the smaller children. The rear

capital that spawned the Islamic State cell responsible for launching the deadly terror attacks in Brussels and Paris. Police were alerted to the existence of the school with shuttered windows and locked doors on all but one side by a tip off from a concerned neighbour.The 38 children, aged between three and eight years old, had been registered as being home schooled but were in fact being taught in the secret Quranic

workshop was transformed into a dining hall and playground.The Belgian news outlet sudinfo.be reported that Mayor Françoise Schepmans closed the school on the grounds that it had not followed proper planning regulations. However, the Molenbeek mayor heralded the closure as another step in the district’s fight against extremism.“This school is clearly a Quranic school.

Children are placed there

all day. It is a ritual question, the inscriptions are in Arabic and you feel that this is a partisan place,” he was quoted as saying.Molenbeek gained overnight infamy in the wake of the November’s Paris attacks that left 130 dead. Attacks in January in Brussels were also found to have originated from the same area of the Belgian capital, where a super-cell of mostly Belgian-born Islamic State members had been found to have staged the attacks.Salah Abdeslam, who was linked to both the Brussels and Paris attacks, was able to hide in Molenbeek throughout a four-month international manhunt. French and Belgian authorities said the jihadi hid among a network of family and friends in the district.

Salah and Brahim Abdeslam, 26 and 31 respectively, had run a pub in Molenbeek before they converted to radical Islam.

Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam refuses to speak at French hearing The man prosecutors believe is the sole survivor of the Islamist group that attacked Paris last November appeared before a French investigating judge on Friday, but refused to say anything about the assault in which 130 people were killed.

Salah Abdeslam, a French national born to Moroccanborn parents in Belgium and raised there, was brought under heavily armed escort to a court in central Paris from his solitary-confinement cell in a high-security prison outside the capital.

But what was supposed to be the first proper interrogation of the 26-yearold since he was helicoptered to France from Belgium in late April was cut short after he refused to talk.

Invasion of Privacy Frank Berton, his lawyer, said Abdeslam, who was captured in Brussels and extradited to France, was upset about being kept under day-and-night watch inside his cell at FleuryMerogis prison, south of Paris.

“What I can say is he’s particularly upset by the camera surveillance in his cell, something that is illegal under the law as it

stands,” Berton told reporters.“He can’t handle being watched 24 hours a day and that’s causing a

at least of having played a logistics role in the assault on a football stadium, several cafes and the

problem psychologically I believe.”

Abdeslam’s refusal to speak was unexpected as his lawyer Berton had said last month he was ready to speak after transfer to France, where he was officially placed under investigation on April 27 on counts of suspected terrorism and murder.

Paris Attacks Mastermind Abdeslam is believed to be the sole survivor of Nov. 13’s attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers, including his brother, for which the Islamic State militant group that controls large parts of Syria and Iraq claimed responsibility.

Investigators suspect him

Bataclan concert hall, where 90 rock fans died.

Abdeslam was Europe’s most wanted fugitive until his capture in Brussels on March 18 after a fourmonth manhunt. He had fled France by car on the night of the attacks, passing through road police checks before his name was circulated as a suspect.

Lawyers representing victims of an attack in which hundreds were also injured voiced frustration but not surprised.

“This just proves he’s somebody who’ll never cooperate with the justice system. We never did and never will trust him,” said lawyer Samia Maktouf.

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24 May - 30 May 2016

Aishwarya and Randeep-starrer is a screechy, mawkish melodrama Director: Omung Kumar Cast: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Randeep Hooda, Richa Chadha, Darshan Kumaar Ratings: 1 Star Filmmaker Omung Kumar hasn’t just dropped a vowel from the unlucky hero’s name for his film based on Sarabjit Singh, who Pakistan alleged was an Indian spy responsible for carrying out bomb blasts in its territory, but he has also made the reel story a mawkish, screechy mess.

The blame lies largely in the script which doesn’t leave much for its actors to do other than excessively cry or scream or otherwise sit sulking.

The film begins with the search for Sarabjit, a farmer who one night in 1990 drunkenly wanders over from Bhikiwind, a village in Punjab, India to Pakistan and is caught immediately. Then it shuttles from his family’s mission to prove his innocence and get him back, and his own agonising ordeal in jail where he suffers many atrocities so as to coerce a confession.

The first half waywardly rushes through 18 years of Sarabjit’s life, barely giving depth to any of the char-

acters in process. They include his sister, Dalbir Kaur (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), his wife (Richa Chadha) and his two daughters.

Subtlety is a word that doesn’t exist in Kumar’s dictionary. The treatment is so maudlin and shrieking that one craves for some stillness and perspective in the narrative. There are sporadic scenes of Kaur staging a protest or going on a hunger strike and terrorist attacks on India in the period that Sarabjit is in jail. The quiet, poignant spell finally arrives when the family meets Sarabjit for the first time in years.

One does wonder what is Kaur’s estranged husband doing on this trip given that he had left her early on?

Kumar’s way of addressing this query is by getting rid of him immediately once they return to India.

The film may be titled Sarbjit but Dalbir Kaur is more central to the film.

Kumar wants to lionize the sister’s struggle which is great but the way he goes about is contrived.

What’s needed are scenes where we get a real sense of Kaur such as when Sarabjit lauds her for her valour and tireless efforts while she expresses

her frustrations.

Of the cast, Randeep Hooda stands out as he demonstrates the emotional toll of the physical abuse and solitary confinement Sarabjit endured, making audiences empathise for the man who obtained freedom only with death. He also does a credible job with his Punjabi delivery.

Chadha’s job here is to look mopey and faint whenever the need be, which is throughout the film barring a few songs.

There’s just one scene to showcase the wife’s point of view in this sister-dominated act and she does well. Aishwarya Rai wails and shouts a lot and has another struggle - with the Punjabi accent. But she does shine in rare, few moments of silence.

Darshan Kumar steps late in second half to play the sole good Pakistani soul in lawyer Awais Sheikh who fights for Sarabjit and is attacked by his own countrymen.

If you are looking for context on Ranjan Singh Mattoo, the man Pakistan alleged Sarabjit is, or the debate over Sarabjit’s identity, then this is not the film. This is a tearjerker in which the tears hardly flow.

Sarbjit is the kind of film where as Sarabjit lays dying in a Pakistani hospital, Kaur gets a podium to stand and deliver a raging lecture. The director’s de-

Bryan Singer’s movie ensures each mutant characters gets a credible background Directed by Bryan Singer tarring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Oscar Issac, Rose Byrne, Evan Peters, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee Ratings: 3 Stars This is officially the seventh film in the X-Men series, not counting Deadpool, also a satellite (and now a veritable star) in the franchise’s universe.

This is Singer’s fourth XMen, of which the third was a sequel to two films separated by a film in the middle, none of which Singer had directed.

All that is to say that unless you are a diehard XMen fan unconcerned about the theory of natural progression, just be thankful that at least some of the faces are repeated from the last film, even as newer characters get introduced.

The last film was Days Of Future Past, also directed

by Singer. Continuing with the strength of this franchise, Apocalypse ensures each of the mutant characters gets a solemn, credible background. In the midst of times and elections where it is difficult to be “the other”, the film makes a subtle point about what it is like to find oneself in such shoes. As

it goes about setting current and future X-Men up for battle against Apocalypse (Issac) who has risen from 4th-Century Egypt into 1983 (when the film is set) Singer’s story and Simon Kinberg’s screenplay also make a respectable effort towards establishing what makes leaders such as him so charismatic. Considered the “first mutant”, who has been acquiring powers over millennia, “transferring consciousness” from one body to another, Apocalypse aka En Sabah Nur talks about “false gods”, “blind leaders” and “the systems” destroying the world. He promises his fellow mu-

tants who are making a living hiding their powers in dark alleys, unless welcomed into his sundappled, luxurious boarding school by McAvoy’s do-gooder Professor Xavier a chance to realise “their full potential”, and “the dawn of a new age”. At one point, Nur takes care of the world’s nukes in one go, for a reason that remains disconcertingly unexplained.

The sequence with Eric/ Magneto (Fassbender) is the best, where he is leading a warm pastoral life with a wife and daughter when the sudden realisation of his powers brings Poland’s conformist Communist police to his doorstep.

cision to end the film with his own didactic quote than with Kaur’s words is unfortunate and denies the real Kaur a platform to speak about her battle or

her brother. Instead we get are photos of the man himself and his family which will make viewers more mournful for the clan than the film itself.

Issue 668 (16)

24 May - 30 May 2016

People thought I can’t act says Lisa Haydon Model-actress Lisa Haydon says her biggest struggle as an actor was the perception, before ‘Queen’

was released, she can’t act. “People did not perceive me as someone who could act and ‘Queen’

was my opportunity to show them that I am not just a model as I can play a character too,” Lisa told IANS. “I believe in something called the big break.

‘Aisha’ was a small role but ‘Queen’ is like my first film. People started believing in me after that,” she added. Lisa, who

made her acting debut with the 2010 film ‘Aisha’, made a career-defining move with the portrayal of Paris-based free-spirited Bohemian single mom in Vikas Bahl starrer ‘Queen’. She later on went on to feature in ‘The Shaukeens’ and a few others. Asked how does she looks at the competi-

Bollywood is simply another business where it is male dominated says Kajol

tion in showbiz, Lisa said: “I don’t really feel like that. If there is a project that is meant for me, it will come my way.

I know nobody can do what I do. I don’t believe in competition and there is enough work for everyone.” Lisa is currently busy promoting her film ‘Housefull 3’ also featuring actors Akshay

Kumar, Riteish Deshmukh, Abhishek Bachchan, Jacqueline Fernandez, Nargis Fakhri, and Lisa Haydon.

The film is directed by Sajid Farhad and will release on June 3.

I am not in hurry to get married says Iulia Vantur

KAJOL

At 41, award-winning actress Kajol still stands strong and bold in the film industry. But the Padma Shri awardee, who has a film career spanning over two decades, believes that showbiz is “simply just another business” and is a man’s world.

Wage inequality recently became a hot topic in Hollywood and Bollywood. Asked about gender inequality in the film industry, Kajol told IANS in an interview: “It is male dominated. There is no getting away from that fact. Whether it is Hollywood or Bollywood, that will be there because currently our world is like that.”

“Hollywood or Bollywood, it is simply another business where it is male dominated. But again it has to be monetarily feasible and economi-

cally viable. That’s something that has everything to do with the pay scale as far as this particular business is concerned.” But neither age nor her marital status has ever come in the way of her career. Married to actor-producer Ajay Devgn, the mother of two, was last seen on the big screen in the 2015 film “Dilwale”. And no, she isn’t taking a break from movies as of now. She will soon start shooting for a film under their home banner production.

“I can’t talk about it right now. It is still in the scripting stage. I hope it goes on floors in the next three months or so. The director is yet to be finalised,” said the “Gupt” star. Apart from doing movies, she is also Lifebuoy’s Help a Child Reach 5 handwashing ambassador. Help a Child

Reach 5 has been advocating hand washing with soap as one of the most cost-effective means of preventing child deaths on platforms.

“It’s (the campaign) very close to my heart. As a star and as a person, you have a responsibility... you need to stand up and be a part of society and help out in whichever way you can. For somebody like me...I am famous and people recognise me. “Hopefully, they will believe in the things that I have to say, so I can use that to the advantage of my society and work for it,” she said about the cause for which she visited the capital and also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She shared that they talked about how hand wash should be mandatory in schools. “It is necessary to put in not only toilet

but wash basins as well.

So that facility should be available and then only the habit will be available.”

Has he shown any support to the cause?

“Officially, no. I can’t say that we have tied up. But I think the way we are going, what we are talking about, it coincides well with his own campaign (Swachh Bharat Abhiyan). We are definitely on the same page,” said the “Dilwale” star.

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Superstar Salman Khan’s rumoured girlfriend Iluia Vantur says she has no immediate plans of marriage, amid speculations that the duo is set to tie the knot later this year.

Breaking her silence over the marriage rumours, the Romanian beauty took to Instagram to post the clarification.

Also, Iluia refuted media reports that she was earlier married to a musician. “Dear friends, I didn’t feel the need to react to any rumours...

But now I think I should state clearly that I was never married and I am in no hurry to wear my wedding dress. God

bless us all!” she wrote.

Salman and Iluia have long been speculated to be in a relationship but the pair has always kept mum. The marriage rumours recently caught fire when Iluia was seen at the Mumbai airport with Salman’s mother Salma and sister Alvira.

Later, Salman made his first joint public appearance with Iluia at actress and good friend Preity Zinta’s wedding reception. At an event, when asked about the rumours, Salman did not debunk the reports but said he will not tell the media about his marriage and will rather tweet, to inform his fans.

Issue 668 (17)

24 May - 30 May 2016

10 men sleep outside my Characters on ‘The Royals’ are different says Elizabeth Hurley house says Jennifer Lawrence Elizabeth Hurley, who essays the role of Queen Helena on British dramedy ‘The Royals’, says all the characters on the show are “very different”.

“All the characters, they’re very different.

You know, a generation ago, I would’ve probably been cast as Princess Eleanor (played by Alexandra Park). She’s nothing like Queen Helena. But that would be a fantastic part to play,” Hurley said in an exclusive statement shared with IANS. Set in modern-day England, ‘The Royals’ follows the lives of a fictional British royal family who inhabit a world of opulence and regal tradition that caters to any and every desire, but one that also comes with the price tags of duty, destiny and intense public scrutiny. The show also stars actors William Moseley, Vincent Regan and Alexandra Park among others.

‘The Royals’ will premiere in India on Colors Infinity on Thursday.

Chloe Grace Moretz feels her acting career makes dating tough The 19-year-old actor - who is in a relationship with Brooklyn Beckham is occasionally stunned by how well she gets along with people she meets, but then realises it’s because they’ve already researched her likes and dislikes, and admits it doesn’t help that they’ve seen her show off her emotions and intimate moments on screen. She said: “(Potential boyfriends) have seen you in sex scenes in movies, they know what you look like crying. “And they can read your interviews and know your favourite bands so it feels like they have all this in common with you...

Happens a lot. I’ll think, ‘How are we vibing so hard right now?’ Then I realise, and I don’t care anymore, I just go back to work.” As a result, the Neighbours 2 Sorority Rising actor vowed only to date people who understand the way Hollywood works. She told Net-a-Porter’s magazine The Edit, “They’d understand the travel, the sex scenes with random people, the crazy schedules...” And it isn’t only potential boyfriends that Chloe - who was home-schooled - is wary of as she also revealed she only has one “real friend”. She said, “I’ve only got one real friend that I trust.

The X-Men Apocalypse star finds it difficult to wake up with the same people standing outside her door desperate to get pictures of her but doesn’t “really like to complain” about it because people perceive it as her not being appreciative of her fame.

She said, “I am so booked up for the next few years that there is no time. I took advantage of some time off after Hunger Games and tried to go on vacation with some of my girlfriends but then we found out a disgusting paparazzo had been following us with a long lens the whole time, so that ruined it and we had to leave after two days.

“There are 10 men sleeping outside my house and I see them every morning and it’s not lovely. I’ve talked about it a lot with other actors who have the same problems but we don’t really like to complain about it because if we do people go, ‘Shut up, millionaires.’ and say, ‘You’re so lucky.’ And yes we are lucky but I deserve the right to have control over my image. I would prefer that the only time somebody sees me is when I am in a film, or in character or if I am promoting a movie.”

And the 25-year-old

actor also opened up about her life before she became Hollywood’s highest paid actor, revealing she lived in a “rat-infested apartment” when she was 14-yearsold. She told the Daily Telegraph newspaper, “I didn’t want to have to struggle any longer than I did. I put in my time; I lived in a rat-infested

apartment when I was 14 and I was told ‘No’ many times. I put my blood, sweat and tears into all of this. “It’s easy to look from the outside and see my career grew very fast but there was a time before that career when I was working for it and I definitely wouldn’t have wanted that time to go on any longer.”

Nathalie Emmanuel will be back for the eighth instalment, confirms Vin Diesel The 27-year-old actor joined the cast of the action franchise last year and proved such a hit with fans that she’s been asked to reprise her role as computer nerd Ramsey.

Executive producer Vin Diesel, who also stars in the franchise as protagonist Dominic Toretto, announced Emmanuel’s return on Instagram on Thursday (May 19) when he uploaded a video of the pair driving around set.

He captioned the bizarre clip, “Ramsey’s back!

Love this girl... #F8 (sic).”

Details surrounding the plot are being kept tightly under wraps until nearer the release date next year, although the cast have already started shooting scenes in Iceland. Meanwhile, there

has been talk of Charlize Theron, 40, playing the main villain, although that’s yet to be confirmed.

However, the film will feature the return of Michelle Rodriguez as she reprises her role as Letty, while Lucas Black and Tyrese Gibson will continue to play Sean and Roman in the next instalment, respectively.

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Issue 668 (18)

24 May - 30 May 2016

‘I had free sex’: Activist Kavita Krishnan, mother take on FB troll

New Delhi CPI (ML) politburo member Kavita Krishnan and her mother Lakshmi ignited a debate on social media and teamed up to tackle a Facebook troll over women’s rights and consensual sex.

The ‘Spoilt Modern Indian Woman’ -- a feminist initiative aimed at breaking gender stereotypes -shared a quote by Kavita Krishnan on its Facebook page and initiated a discussion on what constitutes ‘free sex’.

While the underlying message was against misogyny, the post also slammed some Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) teachers, who allegedly compiled a ‘dossier’ in 2015, detailing the varsity

students’ “sex- and alcohol-filled” life.

The post claimed Kavita Krishnan had said on a TV channel debate that one can only pity people who fear ‘free sex’ because ‘unfree sex’ is nothing but rape.

A user, GM Das, commented on the group’s post: “Ask your mother/ daughter whether she had free-sex (sic).”

To this, Kavita responded, “Er, yes, my mother did.

Hopefully so did yours.

Because if the woman is not free, it is not sex but rape. Get it.”.

But the final nail in the coffin came when Kavita’s mother, Lakshmi Krishnan, also joined the debate and claimed that she had ‘free-sex’.

Mysterious deaths: Punjab police stations turn suicide cells Chandigarh After the fields, now Punjab’s police stations are earning a bad name for suicides. A 21-year-old woman committed suicide in a Bathinda police station on Saturday under mysterious conditions.

The victim identified as Jasbir Kaur, was allegedly tortured by the police in the name of questioning which compelled her to take the extreme step.

Jasbir was found hanging inside a police station bathroom. She was living in her maternal grandfather’s home in Kotra Kaura village of Bathinda.

“Jasbir had gone to pay obeisance at a Patiala Sikh shrine along with her friend Baljinder Kaur who went somewhere else with her boyfriend. When Baljinder’s parents lodged a missing report, the police had called Jasbir for questioning. The police scared the girl by asking

questions about Baljinder’s boyfriend. She was fearful when she asked to go to the loo where she committed suicide,” Jasbir’s aunt Kulwinder Kaur said.

and the family members themselves had brought the girl to police station.

However, SSP Bathinda Swapan Sharma has ordered a probe into the suicide.

Mental torture Sources said Baljinder was reported missing in Patiala but her friend Jasbir was mentally tortured by Bathinda’s Ballianwali police station.

Ballianwali police station is trying to hushup the case.

Sources say the accused police officials have blamed the family members for the suicide saying that the local Panchayat members

“We have ordered a probe.

Strict action will be taken against the police officials if they are found guilty of harassing the victim,” Swapan Sharma said.

Forced suicides This is not an isolated case where a person committed suicide in a Punjab police station. Earlier on May 18 two Barnala cops were arrested on charges of forcing a farmer to commit sui-

cide in the police station.

Handhiaya Police station ASI Charanjit Singh and head constable Saudagar Singh allegedly tortured a farmer Baldev Singh, 35, who committed suicide in the police station on May 11 by consuming poison.

The victim was taken to the police station where he was severely tortured.

Earlier on April 29, 2016, a Ludhiana SHO Davinder Chaudhary, ASI Buta Singh and constable Swaran Singh were suspended for compelling a 26-year-old youth to commit suicide. A 55-year-old farmer Masih, a resident of Khera village in Gurdaspur district had ended his life last month by jumping before a train.

A Punjab police inspector Vidya Sagar had tortured the farmer in the police station and was demanding money for his release from the family. The cop was suspended after deceased’s family members protested.

Issue 668 (19)

24 May - 30 May 2016

In Rwanda, a phone text can save a baby Rwanda Using an old mobile phone, health worker Floride Uwinkesha logs the latest local pregnancy, part of efforts in Rwanda to boost maternal health through a monitoring programme in isolated rural areas.The scheme has already helped slash infant and

maternal mortality rates.

Marceline Mwubahamana, three months pregnant at 31, doesn’t even have to leave home to have her details logged into a national database at the health ministry.

Uwinkesha, the community officer in charge of maternal health in the rural Nyarukombe district of eastern Rwanda, sends through simple codes on a basic mobile phone.The database known as RapidSMS, was set up in 2009 with the backing of the UN children’s agency Unicef and underpins a medical monitoring program for pregnancies and babies aged up to two years.Uwinkesha is one of 45,000 community volunteers helping track health across the remotest parts of the rolling hills of Rwanda. They are elected by the people of their village and given basic training by the government. “PRE,” she taps, giving a code that

means that the pregnancy was confirmed by a health centre. “NP,” she adds, meaning “no problem”. Once Mwubahamana’s details are recorded in the database, the software automatically generates a date for her next prenatal visit. “I also send basic information, such as their

identity number, if this is her first pregnancy or not and if there are any problems,” Uwinkesha said. She will receive a reminder text message ahead of the next appointment. This pregnancy is going well, but should there be health concerns or an emergency, the health worker can notify the nearest medical facility via a “red alert” text message. Once logged into the system, alerts help to flag up women who may be in danger. “We can easily find the names of women who have high-risk pregnancies, like those who have had repeated miscarriages or have had gynaecological surgery,” said Francois Hakizimana, who runs the Murambi medical centre, a short drive outside the capital Kigali. Typing on his computer, Hakizimana demonstrates how the system works, scrolling down the screen to show dozens of

names of pregnant women living in villages. “We can tell them to go to the nearest health facility as soon as we see that there is any problem,” Hakizimana said. Those involved in the text message programme say it has helped save many lives since its launch, but no exact figures are available since measuring the precise impact is tough.

In any event, Rwanda has registered huge progress in maternal health, according to World Bank data. The infant mortality ratio for babies aged under one year was 31 deaths per thousand births in 2015, just below the world average of 31.7 - a significant advance from 2009, when the rate stood at 47 per thousand. Over the same period, the maternal mortality rate was cut by almost a third, from 411 to 290 deaths per 100,000 births.

Uwinkesha will keep checking on Mwubahamana and her baby for up to 28 days after birth. After that, a health worker specialised in infant care will take over. Two carers are trained per village, often one man and a woman, who will perform at least three home visits in two years to verify the health of the child and record data such as its weight and normal breathing rate. “The main risks at birth are infections, malnutrition, diarrhoea and respiratory diseases,” said Joseph Nkinzingabo, who coordinates 1,422 health workers spread over an area comprising 14 health centres. Nkinzingabo just received a “red alert”: a woman who is about to give birth at home. Calling the mobile phone of her health worker, he checks that all is well. The mother was able to reach a health centre and delivered safely. “No need to send an ambulance,” he said.

S Koreans shun smartphones in ‘space-out’ competition SEOUL Dozens of people in one of the world’s most wired nations took part Sunday in South Korea’s “space-out” competition aimed at promoting a life free from stress and information overload. About 60 contestants spent 90 minutes sitting in a public park in Seoul without talking, sleeping, eating, or using any electronic devices during the event - under the slogan of “Relax Your Brain”. The “space-out” competition was launched by local activists in 2014. Sunday’s event - organised by Seoul city council - drew more than

1,500 online applicants who vied for the available places in the competition. “Let our brain - never free from information overload from a smartphone, TV or computer - relax! Let’s enjoy just thinking nothing!” the council said in a statement. Blank-faced contes-

tants - including a mother and a young child and middle-aged men in suits - sat or lay still in temperaturex of over 30 degrees Celsius (86F). Many held parasols against the sun.

Participants are also not allowed to look at their watches or move around too much. The person measured as having the most stable heart rate is adjudged the winner.

On Sunday the honours went to a famous local rapper. “I was so exhausted physically and mentally while preparing an album, so I just wanted to relax for a while,” said Shin Hyo-Seob, a.k.a. Crush.

Gaza ‘Spiderboy’ seeks to storm Guinness world records GAZA CITY Mohammed al-Sheikh is only 12 and feels trapped in Gaza but he dreams of a Guinness world record for a series of stunning backflips and his almost unbelievable body contortions. Mohammed, just 1.37 metres (four foot, six inches) tall and weighing 29 kilograms (64 pounds), can bend his body in seemingly impossible ways, throwing his feet over his shoulders with reckless abandon or jumping into a spider-like pose.

His antics earned this young Palestinian from the Gaza Strip the nickname of “Spiderman,” a mantle which fills him with pride.

Mohammed found fame just after a devastating war in Gaza with Israel that left over 2,000 Palestinians dead in 2014.Despite the 50day conflict interrupting his training, he appeared on the TV show “Arabs Got Talent” in Lebanon, where his body-bending act won 14 million votes. Though he didn’t win, he now hopes to writhe his way into the Guinness Book of Records from his home in the Tel al-Hawa area of southern Gaza City. Mohammed can perform four acrobatic moves better than anyone else on earth, his coach Mohammed Lubbad, 26, insists.

In an email seen by AFP, Guinness accepted his bid for a record entitled: “Most full body revolutions maintaining a chest stand in one minute.” In the video submitted as evidence, Mohammed lies on the floor with his chest pressed into the ground. His legs then spin around at 360 degrees - his feet touching the ground at every angle in a feat of amazing dexterity. He achieves it 33 times in a minute,

four more than the current record of 29, raising hopes he will be crowned in the coming weeks. For his mother Hanan, he is already a

“world champion,” but now he must “show his extraordinary gift and exceptional strength in world competitions”. At these words, Mohammed, perched on the coffee table, drags his back legs over his shoulders, picks up a glass with his toes and drinks from it.

But for Mohammed, even more than records he dreams of wriggling out of Gaza.

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Issue 668 (20)

by Sangeeth Sebastian Visiting Jayapur, the Uttar Pradesh village adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, is heartbreaking.

The welded, cast iron chairs in its newly inaugurated bus shelter, ironically designed to prevent vandalism, have been ripped off their joints and used as perches for gambling; toilets installed under Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan have been turned into de facto storage spaces for dried cow dung and fire wood, the doors are broken; batteries of solar lamps that provide light to a large swath of the village during night and a motor used for pumping water to 65 families have been stolen. Less than two years after Modi took this village of 3,205 residents, located 30 kms off his Varnasi constituency, under his wings, his dream of turning it into a model village, appears to have hit a wall of public apathy and adminstrative neglect.

Rustic attitudes Even the villagers Mail Today spoke to, including the village head, Narayan Patel, failed to offer any concrete suggestions to prevent vandalism or change rustic attitudes other than a meak defence that such destructive tendencies are common in villages across India. ‘These things happen everywhere,� Patel said. “I keep telling them not to do such things. They don’t listen. Those who break and steal things don’t do it in front of me. The problem is with the mentality,� he said. Mail Today got a glimpse of this when it spoke to some of the villagers who defended defe-cating in the open and blamed “poor welding� for the broken chairs inside the bus shelter. “Going out in the open feels better.

You also need less water,� said a villager when asked why the toilets are not used. Though over 400 toilets including biotoilets have been constructed in the village under

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'$5. $*( Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, only 20 per cent of them are being used by the villagers, according to Satyendra Kumar, a second year B.A. student at Sardar Patel Mahavidyalaya, Badhaini. Most of the toilet fittings including taps have been stolen.

Blame game A group of village youth, whom Mail Today spotted sitting on broken chairs inside the bus shelter and gambling, claimed that the chairs were not welded properly and denied any culpability on their part. The claim, however, was promptly denied by Kumar, who said the village head had given up the idea of fixing the chairs as miscreants kept on breaking them each time they were repaired. It was fear of miscreants that forced the local branch of the Union Bank of India to keep its Digital Knowledge Centre, a library cum computer centre, started as a part of its CSR initiatives, shut most of the time. Both the bank and the

centre were opened around the time Modi adopted the village in 2014. “Initially, we used to keep the centre open.

Then we started losing books and magazines,� said Prosanjit Sheel, Branch Head, Union Bank of India. The library subscribes to seven Hindi newspapers and news magazines apart from agricultuaral magazines. “Now, we open it for two to three hours a day as per requirement and also make sure that someone is there to monitor. If you leave the library open for two days unattended, all its contents will be wiped clean,� said Sheel.

The bank too had provided 35 solar lamps, out of which eight batteries were stolen. “It is quite depressing to see all this. But what can we do? We cannot go and sit behind them to find out if they are stealing batteries or not. If the local administration and police are strict they can prevent such things to a great extent,� said Sheel.

Attitudinal change Even he believes that bringing progress in the village is not possible without ushering in an attitudinal change in the minds of the people first. “It is true that by adopting Jayapur, Modi has provided villagers with a lot of facilities,� said Sheel. Some of them include good roads (the road that leads to Jayapur is surprisingly bump free), self-operated water pumps, a BNL tower, an under-construction, overhead water tank that is big enough to supply water to five nearby villages including Jayapur and an ATM accessed by more than 200 people every day. “But what eventually drives most of the villagers are parochial concerns about individual gains and benefits,� said Sheel. “When the bank was inaugurated, there was a heavy rush to open accounts. Villagers thought that since Modi had adopted the village, he will also put money into individual accounts,� he said. “For them (villagers) what matters is ‘I’ and not ‘We’,� he said.

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24 May - 30 May 2016

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Amid the intense heatwave and drought in many states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a strong pitch for a mass movement to save the forests and conserve every drop of water during the upcoming Monsoon season.

In his monthly radio programme ‘Mann Ki Baat’, Modi also talked about issues like the need to move towards a cashless society for transparency and to curb black money.

Modi, who has been reviewing the drought situation, said a number of states have taken some good initiatives towards water conservation.

Modi underlined the need to save every drop of water, which he described as God’s gift.

“I urge the countrymen to take a pledge with me that we will not let even a drop of water go waste during June, July, August and September (comprising Monsoon season)... The issue of water concerns not only the farmers but everybody... The rainy (Monsoon) season is coming. Start the preparations now to see where to save water,” he said.

During the 30-minute broadcast, the PM urged Indians to practice yoga for a illness-free life, and said that on International Yoga Day on June 21 he would join a programme in Chandigarh.

Referring to the intense heatwave in several parts of the country, he said: “Most parts of the country are experiencing intense heatwave.

Be it humans, birds or animals, all are troubled... It is only because of environment that such problems continue to increase. In a way, humans destroyed the environment and put themselves on the path of destruction,” he said. The recent forest fires in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir also found mention in PM’s address. Modi spoke about the need to use technology to turn India into a ‘cashless society’. “We have to build a modern India. We have to make India transparent...We will need to some of our old habits,” he said. The PM spoke about the government’s steps in this direction like introducing Jandhan, Aadhaar and Mobile phone banking (JAM). He also mentioned the ‘POS’ (Point of Sale) instrument and the ‘RuPay’ mechanism of making payments.

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Sikh councilman termed terrorist in US hits back, says America is nation of immigrants New York A Sikh-American councilman was called a “terrorist” on Twitter by a Donald Trump supporter but the Indian-origin politician hit back at the troll, saying “you clearly dont know what it means to be an American”.

man. “How the hell did Hoboken allow the guys to be councilman? Shouldnt even be allowed in the US #terrorist,? Dubenezic tweeted on Thursday.

Bhalla, was quick to answer, exclaiming, “Sir, I am born and raised in America.

You clearly don’t know

Ravinder Bhalla, city council member at large and council president of Hoboken, New Jersey, posted a message on Twitter about the Hoboken City Council approving a waterfront multi-use pathway.

Giving it back After Bhalla sent out the tweet, Robert Dubenezic -- an open supporter of Republican presidential nominee Trump -- expressed shock that Bhalla was a council-

what it means to be an American...#ignorant.”

Dubenezics Twitter page contains several posts expressing his support for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trump.

“With a lot of the rhetoric were hearing from people like Donald Trump about Muslim Americans and people who are perceived to be from a Muslim background, I think the spread of Islamophobia from our national leaders sends the

wrong message,” Bhalla told NBC News.

“I hope this episode shows people that words can be hurtful and that discriminating based on how someone looks shouldn’t just be ignored.

People should be educated on different faiths and backgrounds so that diversity is celebrated,” Bhalla said.

Nation of immigrants “America is, after all, a nation of immigrants. And if we work together instead of against each other, well accomplish so much more,” he said.

Many voiced their support for Bhalla, including elected officials US Representative Bonnie WatsonColeman and Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer, members of the SikhAmerican community, and his constituents.

“At the end of the day, I dont hold any malice toward this person. I forgive him for what he said and hope he will educate himself about how his comments can be hurtful and divisive,” Bhalla said.

Obama says no apology for A-bomb on Hiroshima visit Tokyo Barack Obama will not apologise for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima when he this week becomes the first sitting US president to visit the city, he told Japanese television.

The comments are the clearest yet from his administration over an issue that raises hackles in the United States and has been the subject of heated debate for decades.

Asked if an apology would be included in remarks he plans to make, he said: “No, because I think that it’s important to recognise that in the midst of war, leaders make all kinds of decisions.

“It’s a job of historians to ask questions and examine them, but I know as somebody who has now sat in this position for the last seven and a half years, that every leader makes very difficult decisions, particularly during war time.”

American airmen launched the world’s first atomic strike on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, causing the deaths of about 140,000 people.

Tens of thousands were killed by the fireball that the powerful nuclear blast generated, with many more succumbing to injuries or illnesses caused by radiation in the weeks, months and years afterwards.

The southern city of Nagasaki was hit by a second bomb three days later,

around the world, that we should continue to strive for a world without nuclear weapons,” Obama said in the interview with NHK, aired Sunday.

US officials have consistently said in the weeks leading up to the visit that there would be no apology.

Obama’s upcoming visit

killing 74,000 people, in one of the final acts of World War II. Obama travelled to Vietnam at the weekend and is due in Japan later this week. He will visit Hiroshima after attending the Group of Seven summit hosted by Japan.

“My purpose is not to simply revisit the past, but to affirm that innocent people die in a war, on all sides, that we should do everything we can to try to promote peace and dialogue

has reignited an emotive debate over former US president Harry Truman’s epoch-making decision to drop the atomic bombs.

The speed, circumstances and repercussions of Truman’s decision remain contentious. In Japan, a majority believe the mass bombing of civilians was unnecessary and perhaps even a crime.

Many Americans believe that it avoided an even bloodier ground invasion of Japan.

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Australia legalises medical cannabis NIMBIN Jai Whitelaw was 10 when he first took medical cannabis, given to him by his mother in a bid to treat the debilitating epilepsy that saw him endure up to 500 seizures a day. Faced with the stark choice of breaking the law in the hope of soothing his chronic pain, or denying him possible relief, Michelle Whitelaw reached breaking point. “I literally sat on (the) couch for two days, thinking ‘Do I end his life and mine? Or do I risk helping him’,” she told AFP. She picked the latter, risking criminal charges. Now, almost two years on, things are set to change as Australia brings in new laws allowing the drug to be used for medical purposes. “If it didn’t work, I wouldn’t be here and Jai wouldn’t be here,” Whitelaw said at the Mardi Grass festival, an annual celebration of marijuana in Nimbin in Australia’s east.

At his lowest point Jai had to be resuscitated, was unable to write or read at school or even play outdoors as he struggled with

fits and the side-effects of pharmaceutical medications. In the 15 months since he began medicinal cannabis, which he takes in liquid form, he has had only four seizures. In Nimbin, he seemed like any other youngster enjoying the annual party.

Dope or medicine?

While recreational cannabis is drawn from the whole plant, therapeutic forms are derived from extracting particular types of cannabinoids - molecules that are found in cannabis - from the plant.”What we are starting to understand now is that different types of cannabinoids work differently for different kinds of health problems,” Nicholas Lintzeris, the clinical director at the University of Sydney’s Lambert Initiative, told AFP.”You extract the cannabinoids from the plants and then you put them together again according to the specific profile you want,” he added.Therapeutic use is

legal in several US states and other nations including Canada, Israel and the Netherlands. Support for

the practice has grown in Australia in recent years, with 91 percent in favour of legalising it for the seriously ill, according to a 2015 Roy Morgan poll. The national government has listened. While recreational use remains illegal, laws were passed in February permitting it for medical purposes, in a move Health Minister Sussan Ley said meant “genuine patients are no longer treated as criminals”. In response, New South

New York subway on the brink NEW YORK The New York subway is the seventh busiest in the world and has its highest ridership in 70 years, increasing delays and forcing management to formulate a plan of salvation. The morning commuter crush in Brooklyn, the city’s most

populated borough, can be overwhelming. Tempers can fray. Sometimes commuters have to wait for at least one, if not two trains to go by before they can board. “I saw two women pulling each other’s hair because they had bumped into each other,” said commuter Ana Fernandez, although such behavior is rare.

Kevin Ortiz, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) that operates the subway, said: “We are a victim of our own success.” In 2015, New Yorkers clocked up 1.76

billion journeys on the subway, the highest number since 1948 and an increase of 61 percent in 20 years. The city’s population has grown by nearly a million since 1994 and crime in the subway, at an all-time high in the early 1990s, has drastically fallen.Since 1981, $115 bil-

lion has been invested in what is one of the oldest subway networks in the world, which Ortiz described as having been in a “state of decay and disrepair” in the early 1980s.Today, it is considered the quickest and cheapest mode of transport around the city and operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.David King, assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University, said the transit system is largely in good repair.”Crowding issues are likely a larger source of troubles,” he said. “The trains are safe and clean, and breakdowns are rare.”A

looming closure of the tunnel that connects the ultra-hip Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg to Manhattan, for possibly 18 months of repair work, is likely to make overcrowding even worse. The 4, 5 and 6 lines that ply much of the same route from Brooklyn, up the eastern side of Manhattan to the Bronx have more passengers than the entire subway systems in Boston, Chicago and Washington put together. “I go early, before the rush,” said Fernandez, who commutes on the 6 line. A recent report from the New York state comptroller has highlighted an increase in delays, which the MTA attributes largely to the need to do maintenance work while ensuring that the subway operates 24 hours a day. “It is certainly a challenge to meet that increased demand,” said Ortiz, who outlined various steps that the MTA is taking in the short and the longterm. All trains are currently being used but the plan is to upgrade existing equipment. The MTA has ordered a new type of train that has no separation between carriages and would increase capacity.

Wales, Queensland and Victoria states are changing their regulations and trialling the drug on severely ill patients, with two states setting up cannabis farms. The legislative shift is a vindication for people such as Aborigi-

nal Australian Tony Bower, who has long given cannabis in oil and alcohol forms for free to parents of ill children after working out how to develop non-psychotropic medication from the plant. “You can’t refuse people. I’m an indigenous Australian, it’s not in our culture,” Bower told AFP of why he continued to supply families despite the legal risks, which once saw him spend six weeks in jail.

Some 150 children are regular patients of Bower, and his drug is set to reach more people after Anthony Coffey’s Australian Organic Therapeutic firm obtained rights to it. Coffey plans to

sell the medicine at Aus$60 (US$44) per patient per month. The budding industry has benefits beyond the medicinal, with hopes it could fuel “hemployment” in rural regions where jobless rates are higher, Nimbin-based HEMP (Help End Marijuana Prohibition) Party president Michael Balderstone said. Coffey said his company has already attracted investment from China and the Middle East.

Others are also looking to cash in on legal crops, with the University of Sydney estimating initial demand in Australia at more than Aus$100 million annually.

High-profile physician and drug reform advocate Alex Wodak told AFP there is growing evidence medicinal cannabis use can relieve symptoms in some severe cases such as the side-effects of cancer chemotherapy and chronic nerve damage pain. A key factor slowing the pace of the so-called “green rush” is minimal trial data and the medical profession’s

limited experience with a banned drug. As such, side-effects and the longterm impact of therapeutic use are not fully known, with some doctors cautioning against making the herb legally available without completed trials and high quality control standards.

Many caregivers fear a legalised drug may arrive too late for their sick family members. Cheri O’Connell, whose epileptic daughter and son are experiencing a new lease on life since taking medicinal cannabis, is calling for an amnesty from prosecution for all current users.

She is also worried government trials are being limited to certain types of cannabinoids that leave other products such as the one her children use - outside the law.”We’ve got something that works,” O’Connell told AFP. “Just because it’s cannabis doesn’t mean it’s all the same, there’s huge differences.”

British Indians among key voters decisive for EU referendum London There is a gnawing sense of urgency as the June 23 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union draws near: the outcome will affect one and all at various levels, and it is now clear that Indians and other minorities may hold the balance because there seems to be equal support for the In and Out campaigns among white voters.

The acrimonious campaign has seen friends turn foes and vice-versa among leading politicians, but in the Indian community, the opinion seems to be overwhelmingly in favour of UK remaining in the EU, a position in line with that of the Indian government, as articulated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his November visit.

Priti Patel, minister of state for employment in the David Cameron government, is the only major lawmaker of Indian origin in the Brexit camp. Patel has stuck to her long-held Eurosceptic position, earning her grudging respect from critics even if her arguments are often laughed at.

A new British Election Study survey reveals the crucial position of the Indian and other minority communities, categorised in official discourse as the BAME (Black, Asian and

Hugo Swire, Foreign Office minister responsible for India and the Commonwealth, has been urging the Asian media in Britain to spread awareness about the referendum and

minority ethnic) communities.

It found that opinion among the majority of white voters is absolutely neck and neck in favour of the Remain in EU (41.85%) and Brexit (41.79%) camps.

But opinion among BAME communities, including Indians, is clearly 2 to 1 in favour of remaining.

The voter turnout among BAME communities is traditionally lower than that of whites, but given their crucial position, there is an added urgency to ensure that members of these communities register and turn out to vote. The Remain camp is pulling all stops to encourage the BAME voters to turn out in large numbers.

highlight its importance to high-achieving young professionals who need the opportunities and access that membership of the EU brings.

Conservative MP Alok Sharma, who is coordinating the cross-party campaign group ‘British Indians for IN’, told HT: “In the past few weeks I have been speaking at events across the country and there is very strong support for the UK remaining in the European Union within the British Indian community. Our community is hugely successful and understands very clearly the significant economic risks we would all face if we voted to leave the EU”.

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The New Moon brings an excellent opportunity to take a romantic or business relationship to the next level. And if you’re signing deals or contracts at this time, you’ll get things off to a winning start. On the whole, this is a constructive week in which you’ll be eager to overcome obstacles and forge ahead. Should anything stand in your way, you'll apply sheer willpower to overcome it.

Monday’s New Moon could be the perfect time to begin a diet or start an exercise routine.

There’s also a very powerful focus on your zone of leisure and pleasure, which could see you excited about creative opportunities, particularly if they relate to entrepreneurial ideas. If you’ve been thinking about starting your own business, this might be a good time to research your options.

Have you been thinking about inviting a special person on a date? Monday might be the day to go ahead. With Mercury in Libra, charming conversation can pave the way for future outings. However, you may be more cautious when it comes to getting involved, preferring to take things one day at a time rather than jump in at the deep end.

A change in the family dynamic or DIY projects associated with your home are best implemented on Monday. The New Moon can help get things off to the best possible start. And with just a little planning you’ll be even more successful.

When it comes to writing, communicating in general, or selling something, you can do really well now.

Monday is the day to sign deals, collaborate on projects, or start an advertising campaign. This week’s New Moon can help things get moving! For business appointments or important dates, you’ll need to pin people down to a time and place or it could be a no-show. You might have an opportunity to considerably increase your income.

Monday’s New Moon could coincide with a new beginning for your finances, with a chance to reduce stress and get everything in order. Avoid making any impulsive purchases that might set you back rather than contribute to any gains. Setting a practical budget can be a great help right now. It seems you’re on a roll with a positive lineup of planets jogging through your sign.

Monday’s New Moon in your sign may be the best of the year for you. This is the time to implement changes in key areas of your life. Make a start over the next few days and you’ll notice a difference even sooner. You might find it useful to write down your goals, as this will kick-start the process and help you achieve them.

There’s a more relaxed focus showing up that encourages you to kick back and enjoy life. Monday’s New Moon in your spiritual sector could entice you to take up a spiritual practice that might help you achieve greater peace of mind. You’ll also be eager to contribute to community events and collaborate on projects, especially any that might be a bit of a challenge.

Interesting and lucrative opportunities could show up for you this week, bringing a chance to move up the career ladder or expand your business in a new direction.

Along with this, the New Moon in your social sector is actively encouraging you to move in new circles. Doing so could lend wings to your professional aspirations.

Your willingness to learn stands you in good stead right now, not only because it offers a chance to upgrade your skill set but also because it expands your understanding of what’s possible. You may get a chance to apply your newfound abilities when this week’s New Moon entices you to consider the possibility of a new job.

Money matters look much improved, although Jupiter in your zone of shared finances could be pushing you to think big when it comes to business. If there’s an opportunity to pool your skills and resources with others, this could be a good way to make progress sooner rather than later.

Relationships seem to be a major focus and a very pleasant one at that. With Venus currently dancing through Virgo with Jupiter and Mars, there could be more passion and interest than there has been for some time. You’ll be more inclined to do things with your love interest, friends, or family and include others in your plans.

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Technology Extremely social people more susceptible to online abuse People with intellectual disabilities or those extremely social and trusting are more susceptible to exploitation and abuse on social networking sites such as Facebook, a new study has found.

Researchers found that adults with Williams syndrome - who are extremely social and trusting - use Facebook and other social networking sites frequently and are especially vulnerable to online victimisation.

Around a third of participants in the study said they would send their photo to an unknown person, arrange to go to the home of a person they met online and keep online relationships from their parents.

“You have this very social

group of people who are vulnerable in real life and now they are seeking a social outlet through the internet, communicating with people they know and do not know,” said Marisa Fisher from

Michigan State University (MSU) in the US. “They do not have the training or the knowledge to know how to determine what is risky behaviour,” said Fisher.

New Chrome 52 abandons shortcut feature of Backspace key

Williams syndrome is a relatively rare genetic disorder characterised by developmental delays, learning disabilities, excessively social personalities and an affinity for

music, researchers said.

Many adults with the syndrome live with their parents or other caregivers, they said. Nearly 86 per cent of adults with Williams syndrome use social networking sites such as Facebook nearly every day, typically without supervision, the study found.

Participants also share a

backspace button in the browser window and they end up losing everything they had just submitted.

On the code review page,developers stated that “0.04% of page views navigate back via the backspace button and 0.005% of page views are after a form interaction.”

So, in order to prevent such accidents from happening they want to delete the Backspace function in the new Chrome.

This week Facebook launched its much awaited ‘Live video’ feature globally that let users view broadcasts from around the world. The little blue dots represents the live streaming going on around the globe and you can also watch it by just clicking on it. The list of most popular broadcast appears on the left hand side.

In this interactive map, the size of the blue dot is directly proportional to the number of live viewers of that stream. This means

that a stream with largest number of users will have a bigger blue dot.

These dots will also let you know from where people are watching it from.

You can access the ‘Live video’ feature on the left side of the navigation bar of your Facebook’s timeline.

Facebook introduced this addictive live video earlier this year and currently it is available in more that 60 countries of the world, according to company’s reports.

witnessed the birth of his baby boy. “Let’s try pushing baby out,” he gave a

caption in the video.

The video mostly focused on the face of the mother and shows the medical staff instructing her and helping her give birth.

“Thank you God. I’m so happy right now,” Eiki was heard crying with joy from behind the camera as soon as the baby’s cries filled the room.

At the end, Eiki thanked the viewers and invited those in the area to “come and celebrate next weekend” with a barbecue.

Man live-streams wife giving birth on Facebook Live

Call it bizarre or being technology-savvy, a California-based man livestreamed the birth of his child on Facebook Live, a video streaming service from the social networking site, the media reported on Wednesday.

Fakamalo Kihe Eiki, who works as a comedian, streamed his wife in labour on his Facebook page on Monday morning, New York Daily News reported. The 44-minutelong video has gathered a

Google has finally made up its mind to remove Backspace keyboard shortcut that allows users to go back to the previous web page using the ‘backspace key’ .

The search engine giant made this announcement while experimenting with the latest Chrome v52.

The developers of Chromium project is taking this action because a large number users while filling their forms accidently hit

large amount of identifiable information on their social network profiles and are likely to agree to engage in socially risky behaviours, researchers said.

While the internet provides an opportunity to enhance the everyday lives of adults with Williams syndrome, it also poses threats that are arguably more dangerous than those they face in the real world, they said.

“It is time to start teaching individuals with Williams syndrome about safety, both in the real world and online,” said Fisher. “This includes what personal information they should share, how to set privacy settings and how to decide whether an ‘online friend’ should become an ‘offline friend,’ she said.

The findings were published in the Journal of Intellectual Disability Research.

Facebook’s new live video feature is now on floor!

whopping 1,77,046 views so far. Eiki invited the world to watch along as he

Merely 8 tweets can disclose your identity, office and hoMe address!

If you do not remain alert online, it is really easy for the users with very little technical knowledge to find out your identity, work and home address just by a mere glance at your Twitter page.

Reserachers from Oxford University and MIT have showcased that the location stamps on just a handful of Twitter posts, as few as eight over the course of a single day,

can be enough to disclose the addresses of the poster’s home and workplace to a relatively lowtech snooper. The tweets

themselves might be otherwise innocuous, links to funny videos, say, or comments on the news. The location information comes

from geographic coordinates automatically associated with the tweets.Twitter’s locationreporting service is off by default, but many Twitter users choose to activate it.

The new study is part of a more general project at MIT’s Internet Policy Research Initiative to help raise awareness about just how much privacy people may be giving up when they use social media.

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Apple, Google locked in battle for supremacy SAN FRANCISCO At the top of the corporate world, Apple and Google are in a back-and-forth battle to be number one.

It’s not clear which of the two Silicon Valley giants will emerge on top in a contest which highlights the contrast of very different business models. For a brief time early this year, Google parent Alphabet overtook Apple as the world’s largest company by market value. Apple then regained, lost and recovered the leader position in May in a battle that appears set to continue for some time. At the close Friday, Apple was worth some $522 billion, to $496 billion for Alphabet. The two companies have both been hugely profitable in recent years, for different reasons. Apple has delivered a line of must-have iPhones and other gadgets that have set trends around the world but now “appears to be a little bit immobile,” says Roger Kay, analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates.

Apple shares have slumped some 30 percent over the past 12 months over concerns that its stunning growth pace is slowing and that the iPhone

won’t be able to rake in profits as it has up to now.

Kay said Apple may be losing the position of innovation leader it achieved after the iPhone, with no new major hit products coming. “They haven’t really changed the nature of the game,” Kay said. “The (Apple) Watch came in, it

was kind of interesting, people liked it... but developers are still searching for exactly how to use it.”

Google, meanwhile, been evolving from a pure search engine to a leader in mobile with its Android operating system. And it has at the same time been investing in “moonshots” grand ventures that may have potential such as self-driving cars, fiber networks and Internet balloons. Google “has posi-

tioned itself well, through organic investments and acquisitions, for most of the major trends in consumer Internet: mobile, video, local,” said RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney in a research note.Kay said the Android system which powers some 80 percent of

mobile handsets is a valuable franchise that helps Google’s mobile advertising efforts.”The narrative that has boosted Google is the one about technology innovation and being at the wellhead of various important technologies,” Kay said.

“That may or may not finally pay off. But they’re looking. They’re using their money to try to find innovative things to make the next big thing, whatever it is.”For Apple, a key mo-

ment will come later this year with the expected unveiling of its iPhone 7, a test on whether it can keep up its innovation and entice consumers to trade up. The two companies have a virtual duopoly on the smartphone market, but Apple makes its own hardware and software while Google provides only the free Android software for handsets, including many made by low-cost manufacturers. Google has been taking pains to show off its software and artificial intelligence. At its just-concluded developer conference, Google unveiled a virtual home assistant as well as an upgraded messaging platform. Google claims it is ahead of its rivals in artificial intelligence, and cites as proof its victory in the ancient game of Go by its supercomputer AlphaGo. And Google also has shown its interest in virtual reality, adapting its upcoming version of Android to deliver more lifelike images, which could help in its battle against Apple.

But few are ready to count out Apple, which is known for keeping its research efforts secret, and which has a massive cash stockpile of some $233 billion.

Mysterious roar and light in the sky wake Mexican city

PUEBLA Residents in a Mexican city woke in fright before dawn on Saturday to bright light in the sky and then a thunderous noise, fearing a nearby volcano had suddenly erupted. But officials said Popocatepetl volcano had not stirred and no earthquake had registered. Instead, the phenomena witnessed by the inhabitants of Puebla de Zaragoza, a city of three million people 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Mexico City, was “most likely a meteor,” the local Astronomic Society tweeted. The rock from

space probably burned up in the atmosphere and no impact was detected, it explained. “It was horrible, we thought it was the volcano, but it wasn’t,” said one resident, Emma Chavez. ”There was a light that shone for a couple of seconds like it was daytime and then there was tremendous thunder.” Another resident, Alvaro Morales, said: “It was really strong. Windows were shaking. We thought it was an earthquake, but it wasn’t. There was a sound like an explosion.

We were truly terrified.”

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24 May - 30 May 2016

US fossils reveal two new species of horned dinos MIAMI Fossils of dinosaur skulls unearthed in the midwestern United States have revealed two

new species of unusual horned dinosaurs, researchers said Wednesday. One, nicknamed Judith after the Judith River geological formation in Montana where it was found a decade ago, is about 76 million years old.

Formally named Spiclypeus shipporum, the creature was part of the Chasmosaurine family which includes the famous Triceratops - and had “horns over the eyes, which stuck out sideways from the skull,” said the report in the journal PLOS ONE. This big, lumbering herbivore also had a “unique arrangement of bony spikes that emanated from the margin of the frill,” or neck shield. “Some spikes curled forward while others projected outward.” Researchers found a collection of bones, including parts of the skull, legs, hips and

backbone, some of which showed signs of arthritis and infection, suggesting that the animal may have suffered pain.

It lived for about 10 years, judging by the growth rings inside the bones.

“This is a spectacular new addition to the family of horned dinosaurs that roamed western North America between 85 and 66 million years ago,” said lead author Jordan Mallon of the Canadian Museum of Nature.

“It provides new evidence of dinosaur diversity during the Late Cretaceous period from an area that is likely to yield even more discoveries.”

Nine dinosaur species have been found in the Judith River Formation, some of which were also found in Alberta.

Spiclypeus, however, appears to be unique to Montana.

Its name is combination of two Latin words meaning “spiked shield,” and shipporum is a nod

Gun used to kill black teenager Trayvon Martin sold for $250,000 WASHINGTON Florida neighborhood watchmanGeorge Zimmerman said he has sold the gun he used to kill unarmed black

teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 for $250,000, television stations in Orlando and Las Vegas reported on Friday. Zimmerman could not be reached to verify the reports

by KTNV in Las Vegas and

Impotence?

416-992-5489

WOFL in Orlando. His offer to sell the Kel-Tec PF9 9mm handgun on UnitedGunGroup.com drew praise from gun rights supporters and scorn from critics who accused him of seeking to profit from the 17-year-old’s death.Online bidding for the gun ended on Wednesday.

Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the shooting, which sparked heated debates over race relations, gun control and justice in the United States.In a statement on Twitter after the bidding closed on Wednesday, United Gun Group defended its decision to host the auction and said it would have no further comments.On his own website that day, Zimmerman said the auction had “raised funds for several worthy causes.” He has said he would use proceeds to counter violence against law enforcement officers by the group Black Lives Matter and to fight Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s “antifirearm rhetoric.”As of Friday afternoon, he had not posted an update on his website about the sale.

to the man who found the fossil on his land, Bill Shipp.

“Little did I know that the first time I went fossil hunting I would stumble on a new species,” said Shipp, a retired nuclear physicist.

“As a scientist, I’m really pleased that the Canadian Museum of Nature has recognized the dinosaur’s value, and that it can now be accessed by researchers around the world as part of the museum’s fossil collections.”

Another horned dinosaur uncovered in the Wahweap Formation in Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monument in southern Utah was adorned with two spikes rising out of its neck shield.This one, newly named Machairoceratops cronusi, lived around 77 million years ago and weighed one to two tons.

Its skull features showed it was unlike any previously known centrosaurine, a subfamily of ceratopsids which were characterized by parrot-like beaks, facial horns and ornate neck shields.“Machairoceratops is unique in possessing two large, forward-curving spikes off of the back of the neck shield,” said Eric Lund from the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.He said each spike contained a “channel extending from the base of the spike to the tip, the function of which is currently unknown.”

2016 likely to be hottest year ever

MIAMI On the heels of two recordsetting years for global heat, 2016 is likely to set a new high for the planet in modern times, US scientists said Thursday.

Experts revealed their predictions a day after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that a new global heat record had been set in April for the 12th consecutive month.NOAA also said that the first four months of the year have been the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1880 - at 2.05 Fahrenheit (1.14 Celsius) above the 20th-century average.

Even the arrival in coming months of La Nina, the equatorial Pacific Ocean cooling trend, is not expected to bring 2016 below last year’s record, said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA.“We are so much above 2015 that 2016 is likely going to be the new record holder in terms of warmest year for the globe,” Crouch told reporters during a conference call.He cautioned, however, that “it is a little early for me to put a percentage on how likely it is. I know some folks have done

that.”At NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, climate scientist Gavin Schmidt did suggest a percentage - he put the likelihood at 99 percent, according to his Twitter page.The El Nino weather phenomenon, which tends to warm up equatorial waters in the Pacific, has boosted the long-term trend caused by increasing greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels.

The last four months were hotter than the comparable period in 2015, and also hotter than 1998, the last time a similar strength El Nino was observed, by 0.8 degrees F (0.45 C), NOAA said.

“During El Nino years, the global temperature tends to be warmer than the trend,” said Crouch. “So we do have a long-term warming trend, and when we have El Nino on top of that, it tends to boost us to these extremely high record levels.”

El Nino has been particularly strong in 2015 and the first part of this year.

But the cooling effects of La Nina when it arrives means 2017 may not set a new global heat record, Crouch said.

presented to a person who has ten or more years of teaching experience and has made sustained and significant contributions to education.

As the founding director of the

Iyer has been part of the college since 2005 as a credentialed associate professor was named Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies in 2014.

Her research is in the area of

biotechnology programme in the College of Technology since its inception, Iyer is well regarded for her strong commitment towards impacting students who benefit from her efforts to incorporate hands-on experience with problem-based learning and lectures.

The students receive lecture format training on diverse biotechnology systems and develop presentation skills, enabling them to thrive in the workplace.

environmental biotechnology with applications in bioremediation. She has received many recognitions, awards and grants for her outstanding contributions. Iyer was recommended for the Fulbright Specialist Roster in 2015 after receiving the endorsement from the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Institute of International Education’s Council for International Exchange of Scholars.

Indian-American receives Uty of Houston’s highest teaching award

Houston An Indian-American biotechnologist has received University of Houston’s highest teaching award for her sustained and significant contributions to education.

Rupa Iyer, IndianAmerican Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Houston’s College of Technology, has been presented the “Distinguished Leadership in Teaching Excellence Award”.

It is the highest award given in teaching and the only one given in this category by the varsity. “My journey from being an international graduate teaching assistant to having the privilege and honour to lead the biotech programme at UH has been extremely humbling and rewarding,” Iyer said.

“My students continue to inspire me and motivate me to seek new ideas and strategies to develop and foster their academic success,” Iyer told PTI. The award is given to a previous recipient of the varsity’s ‘Teaching Excellence Award’,

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‘India’ survives, in California textbooks WASHINGTION India has survived in California school textbooks. Nothing calamitous was going happen to the country itself, but a

predated it historically, geographically, and cartographically. They ridiculed the South Asianists, saying they will next want the Indian Ocean

Indian-American doctor indicted on three murder counts in US

pedagogical and academic battle over use of the term “India” over “South Asia” has been resolved to the satisfaction of overseas Indian nationalistic groups and Indophiles.At the heart of the battle was a tussle between the nationalist groups and a few academics of sub-continental origin over using the term “South Asia” in place of India in certain contexts in school text books in California. Some leftist historians had petitioned for a change, maintaining among other views, that “India” was a post-colonial entity, and the term “South Asia” would be better suited while teaching ancient history of the region.Indian nationalist groups had scoffed at the argument, essentially saying South Asia was a recent and artificial coinage, and ancient India

to be renamed South Asian Ocean and the Indus Valley Civilisation as South Asian Valley Civilisation.Privately, some of them alleged that the South Asianists were Pakistani stooges who wanted to undermine the well-established entity and identity of India and subsume it under an artificial western-created South Asia rubric. The wrangle led to a protracted campaign from both sides, resulting in an overwrought hearing by the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC), which reviews pedagogical issues once every 10 years, on Thursday.In testimony that was emotionally charged at times, nationalist and Hindu groups presented young students, who said they felt their identities and heritage were under

attack through the dilution of their Indian identity.Eventually, most of the edits petitioned by the South Asia Faculty Group, including a demand to delete “Hinduism” and replace it with “religion of ancient India,” were rejected.”Scholars for People is happy to announce that India will not be replaced with ‘South Asia’ in the California history frameworks. The Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) voted today to let the name of the ‘Ancient India’ chapter remain as it was, and will not change it to ‘South Asia’ or ‘India/South Asia’ as previously announced,” Vamsee Juluri, a professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco, who was among the defenders of the ‘‘India’’ entity, said in a statement. “For years, the American perception of Hinduism and India has been overly simplistic and inaccurate, in part due to the content of California textbooks,’’ said Samir Kalra, senior director for the Hindu American Foundation, which joined nationalist groups in challenging efforts to “South Asianise’’ the region’s history.

“There are nearly a million Indian and Hindu Americans who call California home, so it’s important for them to see their cultural and religious heritage represented with accuracy and parity.’’“This is an important moment for everyone who rose up spontaneously to make the Scholars for People petition a powerful symbol of the aspirations and hopes of the people of India and the diaspora,’’ Juluri added.

WASHINGTON US lawmakerson Thursday approved amendments to a defence bill that seeks to bring India on a par with NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) allies for sale of defence equipment and technology transfer, even as they voted to increase restrictions on military assistance for Pakistan , including immediately blocking $450 million in aid, unless certain conditions are met.

The passage of the National Defense Authorisation Act (NDAA), 2017, was the scene of much action relating to the Indian subcontinent and Asia Pacific region, as lawmakers moved to

codify Washington’s Asia pivot, a strategy that includes strengthening New Delhi’s military muscle implicitly aimed at countering Beijing’s expansionism.Sponsored by

India . It encourages the executive branch to designate an official to focus on US-India defence cooperation, facilitate the transfer of technology, and maintain a special office in the Pentagon

partnership forward,” US Congressman Holding said while moving the amendment, that, among other things, requires the administration to take “such actions as may be necessary to

George Holding and Ami Bera (House India Caucus chairs) and the chair and ranking member of House foreign affairs committee, Ed Royce and Elliot Engel, respectively, the amendment (enhancing defense and security cooperation with India) seeks to promote greater defence trade and encourage additional military cooperation between the US and

dedicated exclusively to the USIndia Defense Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI), the centrepiece of the military tie-up between the two countries.“Given the dynamic nature of the IndoPacific region and its importance to our own national security and future economic growth, now is the time to build on recent successes and propel the US-India strategic

recognise India’s status as a major defence partner of the US”.

“The secretary of defence and secretary of state shall jointly, on an annual basis, conduct an assessment of the extent to which India possesses strategic operational capabilities to support military operations of mutual interest between the US and India,” the amendment advised,

Washington An Indian-American psychiatrist, dubbed by local media as “Dr Death” for his alleged role in the deaths of 36 patients, has been indicted on three counts of felony murder and 57 charges of unauthorised distribution of controlled substances in the US.Dr Narendra Nagareddy from Atlanta was arrested in January.

He is being held in a county jail without bond. The indictment was charged against him on Wednesday.“Nagareddy has regularly prescribed excessive amounts of controlled substances for no legitimate medical purpose, resulting in the abuse and diversion of the prescribed controlled substances,” the indictment alleged.According to the court papers, these drugs were given to patients without presenting previous medical records, MRIs, X-rays, or prescription records.The indictment alleged that drugs were powerful painkillers that were outside the scope of his practice.

At least 12 patients have died

from overdose deaths and another 36 deaths have been directly linked to his practice, it alleged.

“He became well known to addicts on metro Atlanta’s south side as a doctor that you could score drugs from without a hassle. Nagareddy regularly prescribed Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Fentanyl and Methadone, as well as other highly addictive drugs,” the indictment said.

“What it means is there will no longer be prescriptions issued by D. Nagareddy that result in the deaths of any innocent people,” Clayton County district attorney Tracy Graham-Lawson told local Channel 2.

In early March, Nagareddy had told a local news channel that he was innocent.

“I’m explaining to you, sir, I’m an honest man. I look after all the severely mentally ill patients, please understand, sir,” he was quoted as saying by CBS46 news.

A court date has been set for July 7.

while calling for “approving and facilitating the transfer of advanced technology , consistent with US conventional arms transfer policy, to support combined military planning with the Indian military for missions such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, counter piracy, and maritime domain awareness missions”.The bill is by no means law yet. A similar bill, introduced

by Senators Mark Warner and John Cornyn, and cosponsored

by Senator Marco Rubio, is making it way through Senate, and after the two versions of the larger NDAA are reconciled, it will go to the White House for President Obama’s signature of approval. However, the omnibus $602 billion NDAA also contains severe unrelated strictures on Pakistan and recommends restrictions on the country that the US administration is not entirely comfortable with.

Expressing frustration with Pakistan’s failure to crack down on terrorist groups, lawmakers moved to squeeze military aid for Pakistan, including blocking a $450 million tranche, unless certain conditions are met.

US lawmakers seek NATO ally status for India

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14 Indians indicted in fake marriage visa fraud case in US Washington Fourteen people of Indian descent are among 19 charged with involvement in visa fraud through fake “green card” marriages or by falsely making

claims of being crime victims, according to officials.

Investigating authorities said these people would enter into a fraud marriage with the citizens of the US for the purpose of entering the country and then also fraudulently apply for a special category of U-visa which is normally given to victims of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse and are helpful to law enforcement.

The indictment alleges that Simpson Lloyd Goodman, a licensed attorney, submitted fraudulent documents to US Citizenship and immigration Services for the purpose of

obtaining U-Visas for other codefendants.The false documents submitted to USCIS included falsified police reports allegedly prepared by Officer Ivory Lee Harris of the Jackson Police

Department.Other defendants engaged in and caused various acts which enabled defendants to attempt to obtain U-Visas from USCIS. Those charged under UVisa fraud are Sachin Girishkumar Patel, Tarunkumar Purushottambhai Patel, Simpson Lloyd Goodman, Ivory Lee Harris, Sanjay Rathilal Patel, Maheshkumar Mangaldas Patel, Ashaben Mukeshbhai Patel, Rajan Nareshkumar Patel, Gopaldas Khodabhai Patel, Sachin Khodidas Patel and Baldevbhai Ramabhai Patel.In the 16 count marriage fraud indictment, it is alleged that they would enter into marriages

between persons who were already citizens of the US solely for the purpose of obtaining immigration status to which the aliens would not otherwise be entitled.“These marriages were not entered into because of mutual love and affection between the parties, but solely to create a legal status that would provide a basis for immigration status for the alien partner and usually for some economic benefit to the United States citizen,” the Department of Justice said.The individuals indicted under marriage fraud are Sachin Girishkumar Patel, Tarunkumar Purushottambhai Patel, Simpson Lloyd Goodman, Chirag Nilesh Patel, Dana Cheetara Adams, Brandy Nicole Edwards, Terilynn Rankin, Sejal Sanjay Kakadia, Jayantibhai Kalidas Chaudhari, Virendra Rambachan Rajput, and Javona Shanice Rajput.“The defendants allegedly circumvented the laws and submitted fraudulent documents that are critical to obtaining immigration status,” said US Attorney Gregory K Davis.“These arrests were made as a result of the great work of our law enforcement partners who stopped 19 people who sought to undermine the integrity of our nation’s immigration system,” he said.

Playboy’s Hugh Hefner gives deposition in Cosby sex abuse case

LOS ANGELES Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has given a sworn deposition in a lawsuit brought by a woman who has accused comedian Bill

Cosby of sexually abusing her as a minor at the Playboy Mansion, her lawyer said on Friday. Hefner, 90, submitted to questioning under oath in a videotaped session on Wednesday at the famed Los Angeles mansion, where the creator of the adult entertainment empire still resides.

But due to a gag order issued by the judge in the case, lawyer Gloria Allred said she was not at liberty to discuss any details of the deposition, including the

rationale for questioning him.

The deposition was ordered at Allred’s request in the lawsuit brought by Judy Huth, now in her 50s, alleging that Cosby plied her

with alcohol and molested her in 1974 at the Playboy Mansion when she was 15.

A spokesman for Cosby declined to comment on the case, while representatives for Hefner could not immediately be reached.

Huth is one of more than 50 women who have come forward over the past two years to accuse Cosby of rape and other sexual wrongdoing, mostly involving encounters said to have occurred a decade ago or more.

He was criminally charged in

December with sexually assaulting a woman in Pennsylvania in 2004.

The 78-year-old comedian, who personified the model American family man in the longrunning hit sitcom “The Cosby Show,” has acknowledged marital infidelity but denied engaging in any non-consensual sexual behaviour.

Several women have said they were victimized by Cosby at the Playboy Mansion, a Gothic Tudorstyle estate in the Holmby Hills of west L.A. that has served as a backdrop for some of Hefner’s most lavish, hedonistic parties over the years. One of those accusers, in a separate lawsuit filed on Wednesday, names both Cosby and Hefner as defendants, alleging that the comedian drugged and raped her at a party thrown by Hefner at his mansion in 2008 when she was 17. The plaintiff, Chloe Goins, said it was Hefner who suggested she and a friend have drinks with Cosby there.

The five-acre compound, which encompasses a tennis court, swimming pool and grotto, was put up for sale by Playboy Enterprises in January, with an asking price of $200 million, on condition that it would remain Hefner’s home and workplace.

Armed man shot at by US Secret Service outside White House

Washington An armed man was shot at and critically injured by the US Secret Service outside the White House even as the official residence of the American President was put on lockdown for more than an hour.

The incident took place at around 3.06 pm (local time) yesterday when the a person, carrying a firearm, approached an outer perimeter checkpoint accessible to the general public on E Street near the White House, the Secret Service said.

The Secret Service agents gave numerous verbal commands for the accused to stop and drop the firearm.

“When he failed to comply with the verbal commands, he was shot once by a Secret Service agent and taken into custody,” Deputy Assistant Director Office

of Government and Public Affairs, United States Secret Service, David A Iacovetti said.

“The Secret Service recovered a firearm at the scene,” he said, adding the man has been admitted to a nearby hospital.

As a precautionary measure, the White House was immediately put under lock down. President Barack Obama was not present on the premises at the time of the incident as he had gone to play golf at Andrews Airforce Base. The Secret Service agents also rushed to Vice President Joe Bide for additional security.

During a search of the man’s vehicle parked near 17th Street and Constitution Avenue, federal agents found ammunition for a .22 caliber weapon.

No law enforcement personnel and bystanders were injured during the incident.

MIAMI Scientists have said they have solved a long-standing mystery about what makes some birds red - a colour that, when found in beaks and feathers, shows strong sex appeal.

The genes affecting colouration belong to a wider family of genes involved in detoxification, said the study in the journal Current Biology. That means redness may be a sign of a robust, quality mate who can easily cleanse harmful substances from his body. ”In many bird species, the redder the male, the more successful it is at finding mates,” said co-senior author Joseph Corbo, an associate professor of pathology and immunology at

Washington University in St. Louis.Birds like canaries and zebra finches eat seeds, fruit and insects that provide yellow pigments, known as carotenoids.Some birds are able to convert the yellow molecules to red ones - known as ketocarotenoids - using enzymes that are active in the eyes of red and yellow birds, as well as in their feathers and skin.“It was quite a surprise that the same genes are involved both in seeing red colours and making red colouration,” said co-author Nick Mundy from Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.“Our findings fill this gap and open up many future avenues for research on the evolution and ecology of red colouration in birds.”

Researchers solve mystery of red colour in birds

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US at risk of losing military technological dominance says McCain Washington The US is at “real and increasing risk” of losing its military technological dominance that it

had taken for granted in the aftermath of the end of Cold War, senator John McCain said, ruing that America’s monopoly is now being challenged by countries like Russia and China.

“For years after the Cold War, the US enjoyed a near monopoly on advanced military technologies.

That is changing rapidly,” McCain, chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, told a Washington audience.

“From China and Russia, to Iran and North Korea, we see militaries that are developing, fielding, and employing longrange precision guided weapons,

advanced fighter aircraft, antiaccess and area-denial systems, growing space and cyber capabilities, and other

advanced weapons,” he said speaking at the Brookings Institute, a top American thinktank. “The result is that we are at real and increasing risk of losing the military technological dominance that we have taken for granted for thirty years,” he said.McCain said the US is now struggling to innovate against an acquisition system that too often impedes their efforts. The F-35 jets, he said, has been in development for 15 years.

“I get a new smart phone every 18 months. We should be able to upgrade our weapons on a similarly rapid turn,” he said.

Meanwhile, US defense

Six American independence war maps up for auction

TOURS Six maps from the American War of Independence, which helped convince George Washington to make a crucial change in strategy, go up for auction in a French chateau next month.

Descendants of the Count of Rochambeau, who led the French expeditionary force to support the Americans in the war against the English, discovered the meticulously drawn maps in an attic.

They include detailed renderings of New York, Boston Harbour, Chesapeake Bay and Portsmouth. The maps will go up for auction on June 13 in the spectacular surroundings of the Chateau d’Artigny at Montbazon, near the central town of Tours.

“With these maps you can smell the gunpowder,” said auctioneer Aymeric Rouillac. “These are the maps that allowed Rochambeau

to convince George Washington of the superiority of the English positions...,” he explained. The maps showed the fortifications and the positions of the English forces. Washington abandoned plans to attack New York and instead moved on Virginia, where the French fleet gave the independence forces a strategic advantage, Rouillac added. In 1781, Washington’s soldiers, with the support of the French force, won a series of key battles, including the ones at Chesapeake and Yorktown. The maps come with a certificate from the French authorities clearing them to be taken abroad.

The starting price for each of them is 10,000 euros ($11,200).

Among the other items from that period up for auction will be a sword thought to have belonged to General La Fayette, the French aristocrat who fought on the American side in the war.

secretary Ashton Carter expressed his deep concerns regarding proposals included in the National Defense Authorisation Act which passed the House a day earlier.

“This legislation includes a budget gimmick that would underfund the Department of Defense’s overseas warfighting accounts by 18 billion dollar and spend that money on programmatic items that are not our highest priorities for national defense,” Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said.

This approach is deeply troubling for several reason.

“First, it’s gambling with warfighting money at a time of war, proposing to cut off funding for ongoing operations in the middle of the fiscal year. Second, it’s a step in the direction of unraveling the bipartisan budget agreement agreed to just seven months ago, which has provided critical stability the department of defense needs,” he said.

This provision threatens US’ readiness to respond to the challenges of a complex world.

“Buying force structure today without the resources to sustain it tomorrow is not a path to increased readiness. It’s a path to a hollow force and exacerbates the readiness challenges we currently have,” Cook added.

US House blocks $450mn aid to Pakistan, ignores White House objection Washington Ignoring objections of the White House, the Republican majority House of Representatives has approved the National Defense Authorisation Act that blocks $450 million aid to Pakistan for failing to take action against the dreaded Haqqani network.

The NDAA 2017 (H R 4909) was passed by the US House of Representative (277-147) on Wednesday night. The act included the approval of three major amendments reflecting the strong anti-Pak sentiment prevailing among the US lawmakers.As a result, as per the House version of the Bill, the Obama administration must certify that Pakistan has met before releasing $450 million in aid.Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s amendment adds an additional requirement that the secretary of defence certify to Congress that Pakistan is not using its military or any funds or equipment provided by the US to persecute minority groups seeking political or religious freedom.The NDAA-2017 also includes the sense of the Congress that Shakil Afridi is an international hero and that the Government of Pakistan should release him immediately from prison.NDAA-2017 now needs to be passed by the Senate, before it can be sent to the White House for the US President Barack Obama to sign it into law.

Early this week, the White House had expressed strong objections to several provisions of the bill, including the one related to $450 million in aid to Pakistan.“The Administration objects to section 1212 (of HR 4919), which would

make USD 450 million of CSF (Coalition Support Fund) to Pakistan ineligible for the Secretary of Defense’s waiver authority unless the Secretary provides a certification to the Congressional defense committees,” the White House said in its statement. “We share the Committee’s concerns regarding the threat posed to our forces and interests in Afghanistan by the Haqqani Network, and we continue to engage with Pakistan at the highest levels regarding the need for concerted action specifically against the group,” the White House said.However, Congressman Mark Thornberry, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee late on Wednesday night decided to ignore the White House’s objection to this and asked the members of the House to approve these amendments in block, for which no voting took place.

Oppenheimer blue diamond sells for record $57.5 million GENEVA A dazzling blue diamond once owned by mining magnate Philip Oppenheimer etched a record $50.6 million (45 million euros) at auction in Geneva, auction house Christie’s said.

The 14.62-carat “Oppenheimer Blue” is the largest stone in the exceptionally rare Fancy Vivid Blue category ever to go under the hammer, according to Christie’s. The anonymous buyer will have to part with a total of $57.54 million, all fees and commissions included, a Christie’s spokesman said.

Before the auction experts ad said it was in with a chance of beating the record of $48.4 million set by Sotheby’s in November with Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau’s purchase of the 12.03-carat “Blue Moon of Josephine”.

It did so after more than 20 minutes of bidding to become the most expensive polished diamond ever sold at auction, easily topping its pre-auction valuation of $38-45 million. “This is the cut diamond and the jewel of all the record,” a Christie’s spokesman said after the auction attended by hundreds of people in a Geneva palace.

Sotheby’s fetched a record price in the Fancy Vivid Pink Category on Tuesday, when a private buyer in Asia scooped up a 15.38-carat

stone for $31.6 million.

Ehud Laniado, president of Cora International which sold the stone dubbed “Unique Pink”, said he was “very happy with the sale price”, and voiced confidence that the gem’s value would rise

over time.

“When you buy a Picasso, you pay a lot, but you know you are going to sell it for even more,” Laniado told AFP. Sotheby’s also sold a blue diamond, weighing 7.32 carats, for $17.1 million.

A recent spate of eye-popping bids at Geneva’s semi-annual magnificent jewel auctions has highlighted the surging value of precious stones, with some of the world’s ultra-rich increasingly investing in hard assets as a safeguard against stock market volatility.Britain’s Sir Philip Oppenheimer (1911-1995) led a powerful cartel called the Central Selling Organization for 45 years, tightly controlling roughly 80 percent of the international diamond trade in a bid to prevent wild price swings. Among his major credits was convincing the Soviet Union to sell its significant

diamond reserves through his London-based cartel.

De Beers, the giant mining company built by the Oppenheimer family, also flourished in the latter half of the 20th Century, thanks in part to Sir Philip’s outsized influence in the sector. The blue stone has passed through several hands since Oppenheimer’s death and Wednesday marked its first appearance at public auction.

“As a general rule, these stones are quite small,” Christie’s diamond expert Jean-Marc Lunel told AFP, noting that a Fancy Vivid Blue weighing just five carats typically generates considerable buzz in the diamond market. Last week Canadian mining company Lucara Diamond on announced the sale of a huge 813-carat uncut diamond for a record $63 million (55 million euros).

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Pioneer puts tiny Nevada town up for sale CAL-NEV-ARI Nancy Kidwell is a modern-day pioneer of the American desert, a rough-riding frontierswoman who built an entire town amid the lonely Yucca trees and sturdy sagebrush, where nothing existed before. A halfcentury ago, Kidwell and first husband Slim turned a triangleshaped gravel airstrip abandoned by the US military into a thriving community that featured a casino, store, camper van park, motel, bar and restaurant that drew highdesert wanderers from thousands of miles around.

Many travelers landed in private planes to frequent this gambling state’s first-ever fly-in gaming emporium, that once advertised “seven hours of fun” where onearmed bandit aficionados could touch down in the late afternoon and taxi out that same night.

Now it’s all up for sale a couple’s dreamscape of 350 hardy residents, carved from hardscrabble land an hour south of Las Vegas, where Nevada’s narrow southern tip comes within 10 miles of both California and Arizona.

Asking price: $8 million.

For the 78-year-old Kidwell, the sale is bittersweet. This patch of desert is all she’s known

since she and Slim first flew over the arid expanse in 1965, gawking at the isolation and sheer beauty of the spot they’d chosen to make a break from the California rat race.

what you do after you spend 51 years of your life working in one place,” she said, “when you suddenly don’t have to wake up at 5 am each day to get the work done.” Kidwell is selling a

- A new beginning .

But now her beloved Slim is long gone a victim of Alzheimer’s disease in 1983 and Kidwell has grown weary of working seven-day weeks supervising 22 employees, playing the role of the town’s mayor, police chief and sole businesswoman. She wants to travel, maybe buy another airplane for a tour of the nation’s parksYosemite, Yellowstone and Gettysburg included. “I’m going to find out

full square mile along US Highway 95, with 500 acres (202 hectares) of the parcel ready for immediate development. After all, she and Slim already did the backbreaking work of building the infrastructure, bringing in utilities and digging the wells.

Years ago, when Kidwell put the town up for sale at $17 million, two developers got into a bidding war before the real estate market collapsed and her well-laid plans turned back

Pear-shaped pink diamond sells for $31.5m

GENEVA A rare pear-shaped vivid pink diamond fetched 30.8 million Swiss francs ($31.46 million) at

auction on Tuesday, Sotheby’s said, but several other large stones failed to reach the reserve prices set by the sellers.

The “Unique Pink”, weighing 15.38 carats and mounted on a ring, sold to an Asian private collector bidding by telephone, the auction house said. It was the star lot at the saleroom’s semi-annual auction in Geneva, with a pre-sale estimate of $28 million-$38 million.

“The Unique Pink set a new world record for a fancy vivid pink diamond ... It’s the highest price ever paid for a fancy vivid pink

diamond,” David Bennett, worldwide chairman of Sotheby’s international jewellery division, told reporters.

The “Sweet Josephine”, a fancy vivid pink diamond weighing 16.08 carats, held the previous record since selling for $28.5 million at rival Christie’s in November, and still retains the price per carat record in the category.Overall, the Sotheby’s sale netted $175.2 million, “setting a new world record for any jewellery auction”, Sotheby’s said in a statement. It eclipsed $160 million set a year ago.

In all, 83.2 percent of the 488 lots on offer found new owners, but “The Emperor Ruby” was among those stranded, with a bid

of 3.6 million francs.

“There were a few stones that were disappointing but overall the sale was a huge success,” Bennett said. A British collection of 29 jewels by French jeweller Cartier sold for $3.4 million, doubling its low estimate, he said.

A “new world record” was set for a jewel by the late Parisbased jeweller Alexandre Reza - a fancy intense blue diamond brooch surrounded with diamonds sold for $13.4 million, he said. “We’ve made a great effort to put together a sale that we thought was suitable for this particular market which is strong for the right things,” Bennett said. “It seems to have paid off.”Ehud Arye Laniado, chairman of New York-based Cora International LLC, which cut, polished and sold the pink diamond, told Reuters in the showroom: “It was the time to sell. It is quite a strong price. “We think slowly the market is grouping together with people who do believe in strong prices for fancy coloured diamonds. It is a good sign because we see people who do believe in the resale value of those stones, like art,” he added.

“The trend will move to white diamonds.”

to dust. Now, at a mere $8 million, Kidwell is seeing sizable interest: “My broker says the whole thing has gone viral.” She has no idea what her town will become once it’s sold, but has received calls from people who want to turn it into everything from a renewable energy project, motorsports park, guest ranch, survival school or shooting range.

Recently, Kidwell sat in the casino restaurant, drinking coffee and eating a biscuit and gravy, her frame still beanstalkslim, her reddish hair worn in the same coiffed swirl she’s kept for, well, forever. Kidwell was born in rural Utah and later moved to Southern California, where the young adventuress made enough money in her airfield secretarial job to take flying lessons. That’s when she met Slim Kidwell she was 28 and he was 62, and the couple launched on a spring-autumn relationship that would provide the adventure of two lifetimes.

One day, Slim got lost flying back to Torrance from Minnesota and passed a windswept desert airfield, an outpost where he decided to stake a claim for his future. To take ownership from the government under a landsettlement act, the couple had

to develop a water source and grow some kind of crop for at least one season. They moved into an odiferous old trailer abandoned by some Wyoming cowboys. While they worked the land, they hauled in their water in 55-gallon drums as Kidwell dealt with her new neighbors - the rats, squirrels, jackrabbits, coyotes and freerange cattle. People laughed at their foolishness - friends had a good cackle over Slim Kidwell and his “blue-sky dreams” which just made the couple work harder. Slowly, the desert came to life. They built a mobile home park and gas station, then opened the Cal-Nev-Ari Casino, building backyard hangars for pilots to stash their planes. They opened what they lovingly called the Blue-Sky Motel. Eventually, people moved here. The government put in a post office and a fire depot. When Slim got sick with Alzheimer’s, a son from a previous marriage, Ace, came to help care for his father. After Slim’s death, Nancy and Ace eventually fell in love, and the couple married. She says she knew what a sacrifice he’d made, selling his business in California, and wanted to make sure he’d be set financially if she were to die.

Global life expectancy up five years since 2000: WHO

GENEVA Global life expectancy increased by five years between 2000 and 2015, the World Health Organization said Thursday, crediting progress in Africa against HIV, AIDS and malaria.

The gains made over the last 15 years are the largest since the 1960s, when the world especially Europe and Japan saw broad socio-economic improvements linked to the recovery from World War II, WHO said. On average, a child born in 2015 can expect to live 71.4 years - with females (73.8 years) having better prospects than males (69.1 years), according to data published in WHO’s annual World Health Statistics report.

Director-general of the UN agency, Margaret Chan, said major strides had been made against “preventable and treatable diseases”, especially through widened access to antiretroviral therapy for HIV. The last 15 years have helped reverse the regressions seen

through 1990s, when the AIDS epidemic ravaged much of Africa sparking declining health indicators across the continent.

Despite progress in the world’s poorer countries, WHO stressed that there remain significant life expectancy gaps between developed and developing nations.

The data indicates that a female child born in Japan currently has the longest average lifespan at 86.8 years. For men, Switzerland offers the most promising outlook, with a life expectancy of 81.3 years.

Sierra Leone ominously holds last place for both women and men, at 50.8 years and 49.3 respectively. WHO pointed to several key areas where advances were essential in order to raise the average lifespan further, including reducing the number of smokers worldwide - currently 1.1 billion - and providing clean water to the 1.8 billion people who drink contaminated water on a regular basis.

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Curry politics in UK as Indian origin MPs spar over Brexit London After foreign office minister Hugo Swire ridiculed ministerial colleague Priti Patel for linking a severe shortage of chefs in Indian restaurants to immigration from within the EU, it was the turn on

Friday of senior Labour MP Keith Vaz to take her on.Patel, who is minister of state for employment and one of six ministers in the David Cameron government in the Brexit camp, believes it is unfair that restaurant owners cannot recruit from the Indian subcontinent while chefs from Europe can move to Britain freely.She said on Wednesday: “Our curry houses are becoming the victims of the European Union uncontrolled immigration rules.

By voting to leave the EU we can take back control of our immigration policies, save our curry houses and join the rest of the world.”After Swire remarked Patel was “making up Home Office policy on the hoof”, Vaz, who has often espoused the cause of India’s restaurant industry, reacted with fury.“So I was furious to see Priti Patel claiming that leaving the EU and shutting the door on immigrants from Poland and elsewhere would save Britain’s curry houses. This is divide and rule

politics of the worst kind,” he said.“The truth is that the stoking of anti-Eastern European sentiment is a new form of racism that is no less bad than that experienced by previous waves of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent.“I will defend to the hilt the right of those who come here and contribute to our society, wherever they come from. Giving in to rhetoric that sets one community against another would be to take a step towards a less tolerant and more mean-spirited Britain,” Vaz said.Vaz accused Patel of not acting on demands that, as employment minister, she could easily lower the salary threshold required to recruit chefs from the Indian subcontinent.

“This (curry crisis) could easily be solved in a stroke of Priti Patel’s pen by lowering the minimum salary requirement for chefs, something I have campaigned for long with MPs from all parties. But Priti Patel has failed to address this vital issue and is now conveniently using the EU as a scapegoat,” he said.The curry industry in Britain is worth more than £3.6 billion and employs more than 100,000 people.“It is deeply alarming that on average two curry houses are closing every week. But this has nothing to do with the EU and everything to do the policies espoused by Priti Patel, who just happens to be an employment minister and the Government’s ‘diaspora champion’,” Vaz added.

Oklahoma governor vetoes billoutlawing abortion LOS ANGELES The governor of the US state of Oklahoma on Friday vetoed a bill outlawing abortion, saying it was too vague and would not stand up to legal challenges. “The bill is so ambiguous and so vague that doctors cannot be certain what medical circumstances would be considered ‘necessary to preserve the life of the mother,’” Governor Mary Fallin said in a statement that labeled the measure “unconstitutional.”

“The absence of any definition, analysis or medical standard renders this exception vague, indefinite and vulnerable to subjective interpretation and application,” she added. Fallin, who is known for her anti-abortion views, has been mentioned as a

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potential running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Her veto came barely

24 hours after lawmakers in Oklahoma passed the legislation which would have made performing abortions a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. The measure, which was sure to face legal challenges, was introduced by Republican Senator Nathan Dahm, who has said he hoped it would lead to overturning Roe v.

Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States. Fallin said in her statement that the best way to challenge Roe v. Wade would be to appoint “a conservative, pro-life justice to the United States Supreme Court.”

Next stop on Rome’s new underground: Hadrian’s barracks ROME Frescoed barracks which once housed the cavalry of the Emperor Hadrian’s bodyguard have returned to light 19 centuries on, during excavations for a new underground train line in Rome. In a find hailed as “unique” by archaeologists, weapons rooms, dormitories, kitchens and stables where some of ancient Rome’s crack troops once lodged now lie open to the sky near the Colosseum, where the “Amba Aradam” stop of the Metro C line is being dug.

Uncovering broken pots, Roman coins or that archaeological staple, a series of low walls, is all in a day’s work for head engineer Andrea Sciotti, particularly near the ancient forums and gladiator battling ground and training schools.

“But this time, the effect was different. The emotion crept up upon us,” he told AFP over the noise of concrete-mixers and drills, marvelling at the excellent state of preservation of the vast site which covers 900 square metres (9,700 square feet).

Work here is steaming ahead to create the first “archaeological station” in Rome, which Francesco Prosperetti, the capital’s superintendent of archaeology, hopes will outdo other impressive metro “museums” from Athens to Naples, Porto and Vienna. “We will keep as much of the site as possible in the future station so that, when you’re on your way to catch a train, you can look down on it all and enjoy the view,” said Sciotti.The digs for Rome’s much-needed third metro line, which will connect 30 stations in

the tourist-heavy Eternal City, began in 2007 but have been delayed repeatedly by the discovery of buried artefacts and it is not expected to be fully open

frescoes in Pompeian red can be seen on some of the remaining walls.“When the call came they left their rooms, went along a corridor to the weapons room to

before 2021. “The challenge will be to create a space which will speak of Rome’s underground to those on the move,” Prosperetti said.Amid the diggers and scaffolding lie the remains of 39 rooms of barracks where hundreds of soldiers - the socalled “equites singulares augusti”, one of the elite corps of the Praetorian Guard - were housed during the 2nd century AD.Archaeologists also found a collective grave on the site, where they have so far unearthed 13 adult skeletons and a bronze bracelet.The cavalry guard, which escorted the Roman emperor whenever he left the city, were so fierce they were used by successive leaders to quash unruly mobs in street battles and boost military campaigns abroad.Black and white mosaics decorate the barracks floors, and

collect their arms and headed off to where they were needed,” said archaeologist Rossella Rea, describing the ruins as a “unique discovery”.The find brings the total number of known military garrisons in the area to five, with one of the most important resting under the nearby Saint John Lateran basilica, the pope’s seat in Rome.“In ancient times, this area was the Campus Martius, where, during the months of February and March, ceremonies and festivities were organised in honour of Mars, the god of war,” Rea said.While Romans celebrated with chariot races, dances and feasts in the street, the cavalry slept six to a room, ready to be called at any minute to seize their swords and shields, decorated with their emblem, the scorpion, and saddle up.

LONDON The days of branded cigarette packets in Britain and France are over as new plain packaging laws came into effect on Friday, hailed by campaigners despite resistance from tobacco firms.

The logos and distinctive colours on new cigarette packets will be replaced with neutral packaging, a move hailed by health campaigners as a major step in reducing demand for a “deadly and addictive product”. The new packs will be introduced in both countries over the coming months following similar legislation in Australia credited with helping to cut down on smoking rates, especially among young people.

British retailers will have a year to sell existing stock and those in France have until January 1, at which point branded packets will become a thing of the past.

“For too long glitzy, cleverly designed packaging has lured young people into smoking,” British Lung Foundation chief executive Penny Woods said.

“Australia introduced plain

packaging in 2012 and has already seen a decline in smoking rates. “If just a fraction of the 200,000 children in the UK who start smoking a year are discouraged, thousands of lives

JTI has said it intends to appeal.

“The fact remains that our branding has been eradicated and we maintain that this is unlawful,” said Daniel Sciamma, JTI’s UK managing director.

Simon Clark, director of the British smokers’ group Forest, said the packaging rules “treat adults like children and teenagers like idiots”, adding that “no-one starts because of the packaging”. There were also sceptical reactions on the streets of London. With cigarette in hand, passerby Faheem Malik said: “When you’re addicted to smoking, you’ll ignore it. I already ignore the warning on the packs”.

“Kids look at the toy, not at the packaging,” he added. Tudor Bugor, a construction worker, said: “I stopped smoking two years ago because I wanted to stop, not because of the way the cigarette pack looks... nothing will change.” Shopkeeper Pankit Desai said the main deterrent would be the high price of cigarettes in Britain. The new rules “won’t affect our sales. A smoker is a smoker.”

Plain cigarette packs become law in UK, France

will be saved.” French Health Minister Marisol Touraine said: “Plain packaging is ugly and intentionally so. The aim is to destroy the attractiveness of many cigarette packs”. The packs in Britain and France will all have to be a drab green colour and, as in the rest of the European Union, 65 percent of the pack will be taken up by health warnings. Tobacco giants Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International (JTI) failed in a lastditch legal challenge against the British legislation on Thursday.

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UK Supreme Court upholds press ban in celebrity threesome case London Britain’s Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an injunction preventing the English press from naming a celebrity who was involved in a much publicised

extra-marital threesome.The ruling means media in England and Wales remain banned from naming the people involved, even though their names have been widely reported on the internet since a US magazine published the full story on April 6.In a fourto-one majority ruling, the Supreme Court held that the story was not in the public interest and publication of the names would be a serious breach of privacy.The court said that even though the story was easily

accessible on the internet and social media, for it to be splashed all over the English papers would lead to “potentially more enduring invasions” of privacy.

The ruling will anger London-

based tabloid newspapers which had argued the injunction was absurd when the details were easily available on the internet.The case has stirred a wider debate in Britain about whether injunctions, court orders banning publication of private information, serve any purpose in the internet age.The person at the heart of the story is in the entertainment industry and married to a person in the same business. The couple have two children, who would also be at

Google piecing together a modular phone

SAN FRANCISCO Google on Friday showed off a modular Android-powered smartphone it said is on track to hit the market next year.

Word that Project Ara was moving ahead, and not shelved as some had speculated during the past year, came on the final day of Google’s annual developers conference in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View. Developers interested in creating applications for the devices will get access to early versions of Ara, which provides a frame in which modules such as cameras, speakers, and sensors can be re-arranged by users like game pieces so as to customize handsets.

Google said that a consumer version of Ara should be available next year. When the first Ara

prototype was unveiled early last year at World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Google expressed hope the approach would provide easier access to smartphones for people in developing countries. The principle is simple: basic structures are designed to hold screen modules, batteries, cameras, sensors, 3G, Wi-fi or other components snapped into place with the help of magnets. If a mobile phone breaks or an updated model is released, instead of buying a new handset a user could simply swap out components.Pricing of Ara had yet to be revealed, but Google last year referred to an entry-level model with a production cost of $50. Plans to launch Ara in Puerto Rico last year were scrubbed.

risk of an invasion of their privacy, the court said.The couple testified to the lower court that originally granted the injunction that theirs was an open relationship in which extra-marital flings were acceptable and did not call into question their commitment to each other and their children.The Sun on Sunday, the tabloid newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch which bought the story from the other participants in the threesome, argued it was in the public interest because it exposed the couple’s public image of marital commitment as hypocritical. “There is no public interest (however much it may be of interest to some members of the public) in publishing kiss-andtell stories or criticisms of private sexual conduct, simply because the persons involved are wellknown,” said Supreme Court judge Lord Mance, reading a summary of the ruling.“The courts exist to protect legal rights, even when their protection is difficult or unpopular in some quarters,” wrote Supreme Court President Lord Neuberger. “If parliament takes the view that the courts have not adapted the law to fit current realities, then, of course, it can change the law.” The injunction was issued by a lower court on January 22. After the U.S. magazine article in April, The Sun on Sunday went back to court arguing the injunction no longer made sense.

Convicted murderer admits trespassing into UK’s Buckingham Palace

London A man with a conviction for murder pleaded guilty to trespass on Friday after scaling a perimeter wall of Queen Elizabeth’s Buckingham Palace in London and then asking if the monarch was at home, the BBC reported.Dennis Hennessy, 41, climbed over the wall surrounding the queen’s home on Wednesday night and walked for about 10 minutes around the grounds of the palace where 90year-old Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip were staying.Hennessy, who cut his hand scaling the wall, was arrested about 10 minutes later after an alarm was activated. prosecutor Tom Nicholson said when detained by officers he repeatedly asked them “Is Ma’am in”, the BBC reported.

In an interview with police, Hennessy said he had walked through the garden to enjoy the view.Hennessy, who was convicted of murdering a homeless man in 1992, admitted one count of trespass on a protected site and one count of criminal damage and was jailed

for four months, the BBC said.

The incident occurred hours after the queen had returned to the palace having earlier carried out the State Opening of Parliament.

“I am content that our security measures worked effectively on this occasion and at no time was any individual at risk,” Commander Adrian Usher, head of London police’s Royalty and Specialist Protection unit, said.

A spokesman for the queen said the palace did not comment on security issues.

There have been a number of security breaches at the palace over the years. In October 2013 a man armed with a knife tried to enter the palace through one of its gates and was later jailed for 16 months.That took place just a month after two men were arrested following a break-in at the palace in one of the most serious security breaches there for about 30 years.One of the biggest security breaches at Buckingham Palace happened in 1982 when an intruder, Michael Fagan, climbed a wall and wandered into a room where the queen was in bed.

other fish if it were to escape into the environment. They also criticized a lack of labeling. “We find it deplorable that the

genetically modified foods if there is a proven health risk, such as an allergen in it, or its nutritional value has been

(Canadian) population is now faced with the commercialization of the first GM animal in the world, approved in Canada without consultation and without independent studies,” said Thibault Rehn of Vigilance OGM. He cited an Ipsos Reid poll commissioned by the group last year that found 45 percent of Canadians would not want to eat genetically modified fish, and 88 percent supported mandatory labeling. Health Canada only requires labeling for

significantly changed. “GM salmon production threatens the future of wild Atlantic salmon,” said Calinda Brown of the Ecology Action Centre.

“Retailers can protect consumers and the environment by making sure this GM fish never makes it to grocery store shelves,” she said. The FDA in November, however, noted that the fish are “reproductively sterile” and so would be unable, if they escaped from hatcheries, to breed with others or establish populations in the wild.

Canada approves genetically modified salmon for food

OTTAWA Canada’s health ministry has approved a type of genetically modified salmon as safe to eat, making it the first transgenic animal destined for Canadian dinner tables. This comes six months after US authorities gave the green light to sell the fish in American grocery stores.

The decisions by Health Canada and the US Food and Drug Administration follow two decades of controversy over the fish, which is an Atlantic salmon injected with genes from Pacific Chinook salmon and a fish known as the ocean pout to make it grow faster. The resulting fish, called AquAdvantage Salmon, is made

by AquaBounty Technologies in Massachusetts, and can reach adult size in 16 to 18 months instead of 30 months for normal Atlantic salmon.The company is raising them in contained, landbased hatcheries in Canada.

Health Canada said in a statement that testing over the past three years found the altered salmon “to be as safe and nutritious as conventional salmon.” Consumer groups, however, raised concerns that it could be dangerous to human health and may pose risks to

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‘Moon, Mars veggies’ grow in Dutch greenhouse WAGENINGEN Establishing a human colony on the Moon and travelling to Mars has been the stuff of dreams since the dawn of the space age.

But these visions face many hurdles. How can humans survive for months or years in the ultrahostile environment of space?

What, for instance, will they eat?Agricultural researchers at a Dutch university say they are taking the first steps towards providing an answer. They are growing vegetables in soils similar to those found on the Moon and Mars, looking for ways of helping space pioneers grow their own crops. “When people go to the Moon and Mars they also have to eat, and it’s easiest for them to grow their own food,” said Wieger Wamelink, surrounded by several dozen plants in a special greenhouse at Wageningen, an agricultural university in central Netherlands.

“We wanted to use real Martian and lunar soil,” to see if plants would actually grow in it, Wamelink told AFP. Of course, getting real lunar and Martian potting soil is an impossible ask. But an Internet search revealed an unlikely supplier: NASA. The US space agency makes ground similar to that on the Moon from sand found in an Arizona desert, while Mars’

crimson “soil” is scooped from a volcano in Hawaii, Wamelink told AFP.The first experiments started in 2013 after Wageningen received an order of

100 kilograms (220 pounds) of NASA’s imitation “space soil” at a hefty price of 2,000 euros ($2,285).

Wamelink stuck tomatoes, peas, cress and other plants in pots containing the simulated soil... and crossed his fingers.

To work in this soil “was very special. Nobody, not even NASA, could tell us what would happen,” even just by simply adding water, he said. The imitation ground at first was a little “reluctant” to absorb water, but soon turned out to be good potting soil. Like the actor Matt Damon in the science fiction movie “The

Belgian mother jailed 7 years for freezing baby to death

France A French court on Thursday sentenced a Belgian woman to seven years in jail for killing her baby by putting him in the freezer.Nathalie De Mey, 32, was convicted by an all-female jury in the southwestern French city of Carcassonne for the February 2, 2011, murder.Murder of a minor is normally punishable by a life sentence, but De Mey’s term was reduced because she was deemed to have had a temporary loss of judgement.

On Wednesday when De Mey was asked why she did not choose a “more violent” method to kill the infant, she replied: “I didn’t want to hurt him.”Her lawyer Pierre Calvet’s argument of temporary loss of judgement was confirmed by a psychiatric

assessment. De Mey, who has two living daughters, said she had gone on several alcoholic binges during her pregnancy.

“When I realised I was pregnant, I tried to get help... but it was too late,” she testified.She recounted how she gave birth to the child over a toilet.“When the baby came out, I caught him by the head so he wouldn’t fall in the water, then I cut the cord with scissors.”

Hours later, she said, she placed the baby, swaddled in a blanket, in the freezer.The dead baby was discovered by the father of De Mey’s two daughters three months later.Her lawyer said before the trial that De Mey had been afraid of admitting to her estranged companion that the third child was not his.

Martian”, Wamelink watched with amazement as his “space veggies” grew bigger day-by-day.

“Especially in the Martian soil, plants were growing very fast and

very good.

They even started to flower, something that we never anticipated,” Wamelink said. The 50-day experiment was written up in the science journal PLOS One in August 2014.An essential question however remains whether these unusual vegetables are safe to eat.

Martian and lunar soil, including NASA’s own imitation, may contain heavy metals that are harmless to plants but could prove deadly to humans.

Wamelink has come up with a

possible solution.If analyses show that the vegetables contain arsenic, mercury or iron making them unfit for human consumption, the soil can be purified by growing other plant species such as violets which absorb the poisons.

Wamelink concedes that the experiment has a drawback - it is being conducted in non-sterile conditions on Earth where only the nutrient quality of the soil is being assessed. “There’s much more to test,” Wamelink admitted.

Extremely cold temperatures dropping to minus 62 degrees Celsius (minus 79 Fahrenheit)

on Mars - as well as a lack of oxygen means that lunar or Martian vegetables and fruit could only be grown in a closed and controlled environment.

The facility would have to be pressurised to normal atmospheric conditions on Earth, heated and lit, and protected from cosmic radiation, which damages plant DNA. That points to a “space greenhouse” - a type of container, buried underground and kitted out with solar panels and LED lighting. Water should be no problem as it is found as ice on both the Moon and Mars, said Wamelink.

Italy Naples has reclaimed the world record for the longest pizza after more than 200 chefs rolled out and cooked a mile-long margherita on the waterfront of the doughy delicacy’s home city.

The record-breaking snack measured up at exactly 1,853.88 metres (6,082 feet), smashing the previous record of 1,595.45 metres (5,234 feet) set at last year’s World Expo in Milan, Italy’s food and agriculture board

Coldiretti said. Hundreds of chefs from all over the world spent most of Wednesday assembling the pizza from raw ingredients of 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) of flour, 1,600kg (3527 pounds) of tomatoes, 2,000kg (4,400 pounds) of mozzarella cheese, 200 litres (53 gallons) of oil and 30kg (66 pounds) of basil.It was then baked in line with the city’s best tradition by wood-fire in five custom-made motorized ovens.

Story of the Lost Child” by Italian sensation Elena Ferrante and “A Strangeness in My Mind” by Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk. “This is a book of tenderness and terror,”

22 I decided to teach myself Korean... I felt that I was limited by only being able to speak English. I’d always read a lot of translations, and you get the

Boyd told guests at the award ceremony dinner at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Han Kang’s first book to appear in English, “The Vegetarian” was described by newspaper The Guardian as a shock to the system. “Across the three parts, we are pressed up against a society’s most inflexible structures expectations of behaviour, the workings of institutions - and we watch them fail one by one,” Daniel Hahn wrote in a review.

For the first time this year, the award went jointly to the translator, Deborah Smith, 28, who only started learning Korean three years before she embarked on the translation.

“This was the first book that I ever translated, and the best possible thing that can happen to a translator has just happened to me,” an emotional Smith told AFP. “When I was

sense of this whole world being out there, very different perspectives, different stories,” she said.“It felt as thought I looked up almost every other word in the dictionary. It felt a bit like climbing a mountain. But at the same time just falling into this world that was so atmospheric and disturbing and moving - it was a wonderful experience.”The international edition of Britain’s Man Booker Prize was introduced in 2005 and up to now has been awarded in recognition of a body of work by a living author whose work was written or available in English. But from this year, it will be presented annually for a single work of fiction that has been translated into English and published in Britain. Once the poor relation in the English-language literary world, translations are becoming increasingly popular.

Home of pizza smashes record with mile-long margherita

S Korean wins Man Booker Int’l Prize

LONDON South Korean author Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize on Monday, sharing the £50,000 ($72,000, 63,500 euros) award with her translator - who had only taught herself Korean three years before.Han Kang, 45, an author and creative writing teacher who is already successful in South Korea, is likely to enjoy a spike in international sales following the win for “The Vegetarian”.

“I’m so honoured” she told AFP. “The work features a protagonist who wants to become a plant, and to leave the human race to save herself from the dark side of human nature. “Through this extreme narrative I felt I could question... the difficult question of being human.”

She was the first South Korean to win the prize. Described as “lyrical and lacerating” by chairman of the judges Boyd Tonkin, the tale traces the story of an ordinary woman’s rejection of convention from three different perspectives. It was picked unanimously by the panel of five judges, beating six other novels including “The

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Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Shami in Team India for West Indies Tests Virat Kohli will lead a 17man squad to the West Indies this summer for four Test matches, with the BCCI selectors naming a relatively unchanged pool of players. From India’s previous Test assignment - four matches at home versus South Africa late last year - the players to get the axe are Varun Aaron and Gurkeerat Singh, and in their place come Mohammed Shami

and Mumbai pace bowler Shardul Thakur .

R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Amit Mishra complete the spin bowling facet of India’s bowling attack, with Ishant Sharma , Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar , Shami and Thakur the five fast bowlers picked.

Shami, 25, last played a Test in January 2015. He made a comeback to India’s T20I squad in

BCCI to advertise for coach’s post

March, having twice been forced out of the squad with a persistent injury over the past six months.

This is the first representative call-up for Thakur, 24. The seamer has been the leader of Mumbai’s pace attack in domestic cricket and contributed 41 wickets at 15.48 apiece during the storied team’s 41st Ranji Trophy title this year. Overall, Thakur has 133 wickets in 37 firstclass matches.

He replaces Aaron, who managed two wickets in two Tests against South Africa last year, and who overall looks a muddled figure in whites. His 18 wickets in nine Tests have come at a cost of 52.61 runs apiece and his strikerate is a high 66. In his past two Test series , he averaged 90 and 36 with the

ball, with strikerates of 150 and 60.

Bhuvneshwar did not play against South Africa but now stands a chance to be picked in the Caribbean, where his style of bowling should be effective on slow and low surfaces.

Equally effective in such conditions should be Jadeja, who returned to the Test squad in November and finished the South Africa series with 23 wickets at 10.32.

Mishra, the veteran legspinner, could also get a look-in should India choose three spinners in the West Indies. He was excellent in India’s landmark 2-1 series win in Sri Lanka last year, taking 15 wickets at 15 apiece - his most successful series, statistically - and then took seven wickets in two

Tests at home versus South Africa. As against S o u t h A f r i c a , I n d i a ’s squad contains three openers in Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul. Rohit Sharma has been retained despite averaging 6.50 in the South Africa series.

Bengal’s Wriddhiman Saha remains the pref e r r e d w i c k e t k e e p e r, though his batting will be under scrutiny after he

averaged 16.60 across four Tests with South Africa last year. Stuart Binny keeps his place too. Kohli, 27, became I n d i a ’s f u l l - t i m e Te s t captain in January 2015 after the retirement of MS Dhoni. Since then, he has led India in nine matches with a 5-1-3 record. Under him, India won series in Sri Lanka and at home over South Africa last year.

Gayle says sexism row was just a ‘little fun’ The Indian cricket team that gets selected on Monday afternoon, to tour Zimbabwe for three one-day internationals and three Twenty20 Internationals, will not head to the African country with a new coach.

Instead, the same set of assistant coaches who worked with the Indian team until the World T20 in March are likely to accompany the cricketers on an extended one-tour contract, possibly minus team director Ravi Shastri .

India’s regular limitedovers skipper MS Dhoni and his deputy Virat Kohli, both, are expected to be rested for the tour of Zimbabwe. The BCCI will float an advertisement on Monday, listing out vacancies in the coaching depart-

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ment - in both, men and women’s teams - and has decided to keep a June 10 deadline to finalise the recruitments. A four match away Test series against the West Indies would be the new coaching staff’s likely first assignment.

The new coaches, especially in the men’s team, are likely to be handed 10month contracts and will be free for the remaining two months of the year during the Indian Premier League - to work with franchises looking to hire their services. The BCCI has made it very clear that just because a potential coach is employed with an IPL franchise for two months every year, it’ll not be considered as a conflict.

Shastri, who was the team director until the World T20, can apply for the role of the coach and so can former New Zealand cricketers Daniel Vettori and Stephen Fleming - now with the Royal Challengers and Rising Supergiants.

“Shastri’s contract ended with the World T20. Anybody interested, including him, is free to apply.

West Indies star Chris Gayle has insisted controversial comments he made to a female television reporter earlier this year were “just a little fun” as he turned on critics including Andrew Flintoff and Ian Chappell. Gayle, 36, came under fire for asking Australian broadcaster Mel McLaughlin out on a date in a live television interview during a Big Bash Twenty20 game in January.

“I wanted to see your eyes for the first time, hopefully we can win this game and then we can have a drink after as well,” said star batsman Gayle, before adding: “Don’t blush, baby.”

Chappell and Flintoff, former captains of Austra-

lia and England respectively, were among those to criticise Gayle’s conduct.

But Gayle, in an extract from his autobiography published in The Times on Monday, said of his remarks during the Melbourne Renegades’ match against Hobart Hur-

ricanes: “I meant it as a joke. I meant it as a little fun. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful and I didn’t mean it to be taken serious.”

‘INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT’ “Channel 10’s commentary team could be heard laughing in the background... but

someone above them clearly decided to step in, and a throwaway comment in a fun format escalates and blows up and within hours it has turned into a major international incident.” Flintoff responded on Twitter by saying Gayle had made himself look a “bit of a chop”. But Gayle, in his autobiography, said: “The only chop Freddie (Flintoff) knows is when he used to bowl short to me and I would chop him past backward point for four.” As for Chappell, Gayle said: “Ian Chappell, calling for me to banned worldwide, a man who was once convicted of unlawful assault in the West Indies for punching a cricket official.

Pankaj Advani creates history, wins Asian 6-Red Snooker Advani thus became the first in the world to hold both world and continental titles in 6-red snooker at the same time, according to information received here. The double IBSF World Six-Red Snooker Champion stamped his authority again in the short format of the game, defeating top seeded Malaysian Keen Hoh Moh 7-5 last night. Advani won the final in a battle of fluctuating fortunes by keeping his nerves intact.

With a confidence boosting 6-1 semi-final victory

against compatriot Aditya Mehta to book his spot in

the finals and coming closer to winning his first continental title, Advani clearly walked to the table with the utmost poise winning the first frame 39-4.

With a loss of the second frame, 6-51 to the Malaysian who scored a break of 51, Advani won the third frame 40-14 before losing the fourth frame, 37-0. The fifth and sixth frame belonged solely to the 30year-old Advani who cleared the table 41-7 and 44-8 respectively.

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Chile zoo kills lions to protect suicidal man in their cage SANTIAGO A zoo in Chile’s capital said it was forced to kill two lions to protect a suicidal man who had entered their cage in front of aghast visitors. Security protocols kicked in immediately when staff saw the man climb down with a rope into the African lions’ enclosure, the head of Santiago Zoo, Alejandra Montalva, told television network TVN. The carnivorous felines, a male

and a female, instinctively attacked and had to be put down. Anesthetic darts would not have stopped the attack in time, she explained.

“We’re shaken by this because the animals in the zoo are part of our family,” Montalva said. “These were lions that had been with us for more than 20 years.” The man, in his 20s or 30s, was taken to a hospital with critical injuries.

Taliban leader’s death a milestone for Afghan peace, says Obama Hanoi President Barack Obama says the death of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour marks an “important milestone” in the longstanding effort to bring peace to Afghanistan.

Obama says Mansour’s death removes the leader of an organization that has continued to plot and unleash attacks on U.S. and coalition forces and that has

waged war against the Afghan people. In a written

statement issued as he travelled in Vietnam,

Obama says the U.S. will continue to take action against extremist networks that target the United States. Mansour was killed when a U.S. drone fired on his vehicle in the southwestern Pakistan province of Baluchistan. He had emerged as the successor to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, whose 2013 death was only revealed last summer.

Pope embraces Imam in historic Vatican meeting Pope Francis embraced the grand Imam of Cairo’s AlAzhar Mosque at the Vatican on Monday, in a historic encounter both sides hope will lead to greater understanding and dialogue between the two faiths.

The first Vatican meeting between the leader of the world’s Catholics and the highest authority in Sunni Islam marks the culmination of a significant improvement in relations between the two faiths since Francis took office in 2013.

“Our meeting is the message,” Francis said in a brief comment at the start of his meeting with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, shortly after he had hugged and kissed his guest, Vatican officials told a small pool of reporters covering the event.

In a statement on the trip, Al-Azhar, an institution that also comprises a prestigious seat of learning, said the two sides had agreed to convene a

“peace conference”.

A statement quoted Tayeb as telling Francis: “We need to take a joint stance, hand in hand, to bring happiness to humanity. Divine religions were revealed to make people happy, not to cause them hardship.”

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Health Hypertension woes? Control the condition by avoiding these seven foods!

Hypertension or high blood pressure is a condition that is not to be taken lightly.

Considered to be a “silent killer” by medical professionals across the globe, hypertension is a cardiovascular disease whose detection is a bit complex, due to its subtle signs and

symptoms.

Hypertension is also a major cause for heart disease and stroke, also increasing the risk for other heart-related problems as well.

However, aside from being a major risk factor for heart conditions, hypertension is also the most preventable disease. But, if not brought under control, it can elevate the risk of life-threatening diseases and conditions.

The good news, though, is that blood pressure can be brought down and controlled easily, just by making a few changes in your diet.

So, today, we tell you seven such foods or food

items that you should avoid if you have high blood pressure.

1. Table Salt: Beginning with the most common food item in the house, salt or excess of it is most dangerous when it comes to hypertension. It is also one of the first

arteries.

2. Deli Meat: Deli meat, also known as

sels, red meat should be avoided at all costs. If you really feel the need, then

things that doctors will advise you strictly against.

Avoid adding extra salt in your food and cease consumption of dishes that

processed meat, comprises of the meats that you buy to prepare your sandwiches. Let it be known, that lunchmeats, as they are also called, are packed with sodium. They are often cured, seasoned and preserved with salt in order to increase their shelf life.

3. Red Meat:

have excessive salt. Furthermore, restrict your daily sodium intake to 1,500mg per day. This is because sodium has a strong impact and causes direct damage to the heart and

Red meat contains trans fats and saturated fats and are high in cholesterol which is a strict dietary nono for those suffering from hypertension. Bad for both the heart and blood ves-

Lesser known health benefits of cycling!

Cycling is often considered as one of the best physical activities. We all might have done cycling as kids or teenagers but nowadays, we hardly ride a bicycle as we find a four wheeler or two wheeler more comfortable. One thing we need to understand is that cycling pro-

motes good health and gives many health benefits at all ages.

Here are some reasons why you should take up cycling: Good for heart One should do cycling everyday atleast for 15-30 minutes as it helps in improving the cardiovascular fitness and also decreases the risk of developing coronary heart disease.

Burns calories If you want to lose weight then cycling is the perfect exercise as it helps to burn calories.

Promotes good mental health Besides promoting good health, it has been linked to improved mental health.

Boosts immune system Cycling helps in boosting your immune system and also reduces the risk of developing certain kinds of cancers.

Toned muscles Cycling is great for toning and building your muscles, especially in the lower half of the body.

tion to your blood pressure? We think not.

5. Whole Milk: This may come as a surprise, but its true. No doubt, milk is an excellent source of calcium, but whole milk, that is high in fat content, provides you more fat than what your daily requirement calls for.

One cup serving of whole

Understandably, it adds that zing and flavour to your food and satisfies your palate. But did you consider the amount of sodium content it hides, before con-

limit yourself to as little as possible.

4. Alcohol: Happy hours can become gloomy if alcohol is consumed on the regular by a hypertension patient. Alcohol actively causes the blood pressure to rise. It also damages the blood vessel walls, while simul-

milk has about 8 grams of fat, 5 grams of which are saturated and we don’t

suming it? Three medium pickles, about 3.75 inches long, can have about 2,355 mg of sodium, more than the recommended sodium limit of 2,300 mg for an entire day. It would do you better to avoid it.

7. Coffee: Last but not the least, you need to get rid of indulging in your daily caffeine kicks.

For those who aren’t in the know, your morning cup of

taneously increasing risks of further complications, making it a terrible choice for people with high blood pressure. Also, they promote weight gain. Do you want a beer belly in addi-

think you need reminding what saturated fats can do to your body.

6. Pickles: Everyone loves to eat pickles as accompaniments to whatever they’re eating.

“energy” can actually cause a temporary spike in your blood pressure.

Hepatitis C: Follow these self-care tips to live better!

Hepatitis C is prevalent worldwide with the most affected regions being Africa and Central and East Asia.

Hepatitis C is an infection caused by the hepatitis C virus, leading to inflammation of the liver. As per the WHO, about 130 150 million people globally have chronic hepatitis C infection.

Currently there is no vaccine for hepatitis C, antiviral medicines can cure approximately 90% of persons with hepatitis C in-

fection, thereby reducing the risk of death from liver cancer and cirrhosis.

Many people with hepatitis C have no symptoms.

But if they do, they develop fatigue, nausea, loss of appetite, jaundice (yellowing of the eyes and skin), stomach apin.

Here are a few steps that you can take to hep protect your liver and boost your well-being: • Eat a healthy diet that includes plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, dairy, lean protein, etc,.

• Even if you aren’t hungry, eat small meals or snacks throughout the day.

• Try taking a walk before meals as this might help you to feel hungrier and less nauseous.

• Avoid alcohol that may harm your liver.

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Daily meditation can slow ageing too For those who do meditation regularly, here is another good news. Researchers report that apart from reducing blood pressure and heart disease risk, Transcendental Meditation technique and lifestyle changes can slow cellular death too.

The new study examined what was happening at the level of DNA, showing that the Transcendental Meditation technique increases telomerase gene expression which may contribute to the cardiovascular and aging benefits.

Specifically, this was found to activate two genes that code for telomerase --

which adds molecules to the ends of chromosomes or telomeres - protecting them from deteriorating.

“The finding that telomerase gene expression is increased with a reduction in blood pressure in a high-risk population suggests that this may be a mechanism by which stress reduction improves cardiovascular health,” said Robert Schneider, from Iowa-based Maharishi University of Management (MUM). Earlier research on the Transcendental Medi-

tation technique found lower rates of high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and early death.

For this trial, the partici-

pants included 48 men and women with high blood pressure who were recruited and studied at Howard University Medical

Center. Half were assigned to a group that learned the Transcendental Meditation technique and received a basic health education course.

The other half were assigned to a group that focused on achieving significant lifestyle modifications such as weight reduction, reducing salt intake, engaging in regular physical activity and moderating alcohol. After 16 weeks, both groups showed significant increases in telomerase gene expression and reductions in

blood pressure.

“These findings are very encouraging for prevention.

They show that both the Transcendental Meditation technique and active lifestyle modification can contribute to heart health,” said Schneider, director of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at MUM. “The result is valuable new information, relevant both to cardiovascular disease and to the molecular mechanisms involved in Transcendental Meditation,” noted John Fagan, professor of molecular biology in a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Top five benefits of stretching exercise! What happens to your body if you exercise ‘too much’!

Nowadays, everyone can easily workout at home by doing simple exercises instead of going to gym. One such physical activity is stretching exercises.

Though we all know the benefits of daily exercise but many are not aware of what benefits regular stretching exercises provides to our body.

Regularly stretching is just as important to health and body functioning as regular exercise.

Here are some health benefits of stretching exercise:

Relieve stress One can easily relieve stress by doing simple stretching exercises as it help to relax tense muscles that sometimes accompanied with stress.

Increased flexibility If you are doing stretching exercise daily then flexibility in your body will increase and help improve your daily activities and tasks.

Improves circulation Stretching exercise helps in increasing the blood flow and improved the circulation required to heal injuries

Lesser-known health benefits of leftover raisins’ water!

Do you know that water used for soaking raisins is good for health? Well, many people might not know leftover raisins’ water can actually promote good health.

Here are some benefits of raisins’ water: Regular intake of raisins is good for health as it helps you to get rid of constipation, hyperacidity and fatigue.

Drinking raisins water regularly helps in keeping the

cholesterol level normal.

Raisins water is also good for skin as it contains rich amount of flevenoids antioxidant which stave offs wrinkles.

Regular consumption of raisins’ water is good for digestive system as it helps you to get rid of digestions problems like constipation.

Daily intake of raisins’ water helps in proper functioning of liver and also controls metabolism.

to your muscles.

Warm up muscles It is often advised to do stretching before doing any exercise or sports as it helps to warm up the muscles. Streching helps to facilitate minimize injury and provides wider vary of motion throughout the activity.

Reduces back pain One can easily reduce their lower back pain and injury by doing stretching as it helps to stay muscles loose and prevents modification of the muscles.

Everybody knows that exercise is good for maintaining overall wellbeing, but overdoing it can be just as unhealthy as not being active at all.

Studies have revealed excessive exercise can be bad for you.The fact is that about half an hour of exercise each day is enough to keep you healthy and prevent the invasion of various diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, etc,. Anything more than that could do more harm than good.

Effects of excessive exercise on your body When you push yourself too hard, you may encounter the following harmful consequences: • You get sick more often – too much exercise can weaken the immune system.

• You become exhausted

instead of energised.

• Sleep problems - when you work out too hard, your

as depression, mood swings.

• Injuries – excessive ex-

body actually releases more cortisol, the primary stress hormone) – high cortisol levels can disrupt sleep.

• Heart failure – strenuous exercise can lead to heart attack.

• Eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia.

• Mental disorders such

ercise strains your ligaments, tendons, joints.

To lesseon your risk or avoid these health complications, make sure that you eat some nutritious food before workin gout. Also, make a point of hydrating by drinking enough water before you head out for a workout session.

Genes linked with stress disorder identified conducted in a massive analysis of DNA samples from more than 13,000 US soldiers. “Further research will be needed to replicate the genome-wide significant association we found with the gene ANKRD55 and clarify the nature of the added another researcher Robert.J.Ursano, professor at Uniformed Services University in the US.

Impotence?

Scientists have identified two statistically significant genetic variants that may lead to an increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental health condition triggered by experiencing or seeing a terrifying event.

“We found two notable ge-

netic variants,” said Murray.B.Stein, professor at University of California in the US. “The first was in a gene (ANKRD55) on chromosome 5 and the other variant was found on chromosome 19,” he added. In previous research, this gene was also found to be associated with various autoim-

mune and inflammatory disorders, including multiple sclerosis, type II diabetes, celiac disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. Also, a genetic overlap was observed between PTSD and rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, the researchers said.

The study, published online in JAMA Psychiatry, was

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IRISH COFFEE SODA BREAD Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting 2 cups whole-wheat flour 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar 1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt 1 tsp. baking soda 4 tbsp. chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes 1 1/2 cups buttermilk 1/4 cup Irish whiskey 3 tbsp. instant espresso powder 1 large egg, lightly beaten Instructions: Heat the oven to 375°. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, whisk both flours with the sugar, salt and baking soda to combine. Add the butter and mix on medium-low speed until the

STIR-FRIED CHICKEN WITH CASHEW NUTS butter is the size of peas.

In a large measuring cup, whisk the buttermilk with the whiskey, espresso powder, and egg until smooth. With the stand mixer on low speed, pour the buttermilk into the dry ingredients and mix just until the dough comes together.

Scrape the dough onto a lightly floured work surface, form into a ball, and then transfer to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Using a serrated knife, cut a cross into the top of the dough ball and bake until the bread puffs and is dark golden brown on the outside, 50 to 55 minutes. Let the soda bread cool completely before slicing.

HOMEMADE RICOTTA Ingredients: 5 qt. whole milk 5 cups full-fat buttermilk 3 cups half & half Instructions: Heat milk, buttermilk, half & half in a large heavy-bottomed pot over high heat; cook, stirring occasionally, until curds begin to form, 6–8 minutes. Reduce heat to medium; simmer, without stirring, until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the milk reads 175°, about 25 minutes. Let cool; cover and chill completely. Set a cheeseclothlined sieve over a bowl. Ladle curds into sieve and cover with plastic wrap; chill overnight, and then transfer ricotta to a container. Discard whey or save for another use. Chill up to 1 week.

add cashews and chiles and cook until cashews are lightly toasted, about 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer cashews and chiles to a bowl.

Add garlic to wok and cook until pale golden, about 1 minute. Increase heat to high and add chicken; cook 3-4 minutes or until brown. Add reserved cashews and chiles, the mushrooms, oyster sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, corn, and spring onions and cook until the chicken has cooked through, about 3 minutes more.

Transfer to a serving plate and garnish with cilantro. Serve with rice.

ROAST LEG OF LAMB

SPICY CUCUMBER SALAD Ingredients: 2 large hot house cucumbers (about 1 1/2 lbs.)

3 tbsp. rice wine vinegar 2 tbsp. kosher salt 1 tbsp. sugar 1/4 cup vegetable oil 5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped 1 tbsp. crushed red chile flakes 1 tsp. Sichuan peppercorns 1 tsp. toasted sesame oil Instructions: On a work surface, use a rolling pin or heavy can to gently pound each cucumber until it begins to split. Cut each cucumber lengthwise into quarters and then cut crosswise into 1-inch pieces. Transfer the cucumbers to a bowl and toss with the vinegar, salt,

Ingredients: 1 tbsp. canola oil 3/4 cup cashew nuts 15 dried chiles 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped 1 1/2 lb. chicken breast (about 4), cut into 1-inch pieces 5 oz. button mushrooms, quartered 3 tbsp. oyster sauce 1 tbsp. fish sauce 1 tbsp. soy sauce 1 tsp. sugar 1 (7-oz.) jar baby corn, drained and halved 1 bunch scallions, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces 1/2 cup cilantro leaves, to garnish cooked white rice, for serving Instructions: Heat oil in a wok over medium heat;

and sugar until evenly combined. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, heat the vegetable oil and garlic over medium-low and cook, stirring, until fragrant, 12 to 14 minutes. Stir in the chile flakes and peppercorns and remove the pan from the heat. Let the oil cool and then strain into a medium bowl, discarding the solids. Remove the cucumbers from the refrigerator, lift the cucumbers and squeeze lightly to drain, and then transfer to the bowl with the chile oil; discard the liquid.

Toss the cucumbers with the chile oil and the sesame oil until evenly coated before serving.

Ingredients: 2-3 garlic cloves 7-8 lb. leg of lamb handful of extra-virgin olive oil coarse salt freshly ground black pepper Instructions: Preheat oven to 450°. Peel and slice 2–3 garlic cloves.

Make small incisions all over a 7 – to 8 – lb. leg of lamb with the tip of a paring knife, inserting a piece of sliced garlic in each slit as you go.

Rub lamb with a handful of extra-virgin olive oil, some coarse salt, and freshly ground black pepper.

Put lamb in a heavy roasting pan, meatier side up, and roast in oven for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 325° and continue roasting until internal temperature reads 130° for medium rare, about 30– 40 minutes more.

URUGUAYAN STEAK SANDWICH Ingredients: 1 tbsp. canola oil 1 (1/4") boneless strip loin steak 2 tbsp. mayonnaise 1 milk bun or kaiser roll 2 slices bacon, cooked 1 (1-oz.) slice fresh mozzarella 1 hard-boiled egg, cooled, peeled, and sliced 2-3 pickled hot peppers Lettuce, to serve Tomato, to serve Instructions: Heat oven broiler. Heat oil in a 12? skillet placed over medium-high flame.

Season steak with salt and pepper; cook, flipping once, until browned and cooked through, 3–4 minutes. Spread mayonnaise on insides of a sliced milk bun or kaiser roll; broil until lightly

toasted, 1–2 minutes. Place bacon and fresh mozzarella over one half of roll; broil until cheese is melted, about 1 minute.

Add reserved steak; top with egg, pickled peppers, lettuce, and tomato. Serve with french fries, if you like.

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