The contact

THE CONTACT WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ISSUE - 641, 17 NOV. - 23 NOV. 2015 PH: (905) 671 - 4761

France wants U.S., Russia to join forces

IS threatens Washington US agencies trying to uncover plot

Then we swear that we will strike America at its centre in Washington

CAIRO Islamic State warned in a new video on Monday that countries taking part in air strikes against Syria

would suffer the same fate as France, and threatened to attack in Washington. The video, which appeared on a

website used by Islamic State to post its messages, begins with news footage of the aftermath of Friday’s Paris shootings in which at least 129 people were

killed. The message to countries involved in what it called the “crusader campaign” was delivered by a man dressed in fatigues and a turban, and identified in subtitles as

Al Ghareeb the Algerian.

“We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that,

by God, you will have a day, God willing, like France’s and by God, as

we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington,” the man said.

Continued on Page 2

Republicans seek to shut door on Syrian refugees after Paris carnage WASHINGTON More than a dozen state governors refused on Monday to accept Syrian refugees after the Paris

attacks, part of a mounting Republican backlash against the Obama administration’s plan to accept thousands more immigrants from the war-

torn country. Leading Republican presidential candidates called on President Barack Obama to suspend the plan to

accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming year and some Republican lawmakers began moves in Congress to try to defund the policy. The State

Department said the administration would stand by its plan, reiterating that the refugees would be subject to stringent

security checks, and Obama said that the terrorism problem should not be equated with the refugee crisis. But Republican leaders said it

was too risky to allow a further influx of refugees after Friday’s attacks by

the Syria-based Islamic State group that killed 129 people. The Republican

states rejecting further Syrian refugee Continued on Page 2

Identified Paris Attackers Are All European Nationals Switzerland All of the attackers from last week’s massacre in Paris so far have been identified as European Union nationals, according to a top EU official.

The announcement further casts doubt on the validity of a Syrian passport found near the bodies of a slain attacker.

“Let me underline, the profile of the terrorists so far identified

tells us this is an internal threat,” Federica Mogherini, the High

Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Continued on Page 2

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

IS threatens Washington; US agencies...

Continued from Page 1 It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the video, which purports to be the work of Islamic State fighters in the Iraqi province of Salahuddine, north of Baghdad. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security would not comment on the video but said it has not received information indicating a potential attack. “While we take all threats seriously, we do not have specific credible information of an attack on the U.S. homeland,” a DHS official said on condition of anonymity. The French government has called the Paris attacks an act of war and said it would not end its air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. French fighter jets launched their biggest raids in Syria to date on Sunday, targeting the Islamic State’s stronghold in the city of Raqqa, in coordination with U.S. forces.

Police raided homes of suspected Islamist militants across France overnight following the Paris attacks. “Al Ghareeb the Algerian” also warned Europe in the video that more attacks were coming.

“I say to the European countries that we are coming, coming with booby

Identified Paris Attackers Are...

Continued from Page 1 Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission, said after a meeting with EU foreign ministers. “It is all EU citizens so far. This can change with the hours, but so far it is quite clear it is an issue of internal domestic security.”

The majority of attackers were identified as French or Belgian nationals. An Egyptian passport was also found, but the Egyptian Ambassador to France said it belonged to a critically wounded victim and not a perpetrator. The Syrian passport caused a ruckus, with some politicians in Europe and the U.S. calling for a halt to Syrian refugee resettlement.

An increasing number of state governors are trying to defund the settlement program.

American officials told CBS News that the passport might be fake, while British-daily the Independent reported that a man was arrested in Serbia while carrying a Syrian passport with matching details to the one found in Paris.

traps and explosives, coming with explosive belts and (gun) silencers and you will be unable to stop us because today we are much stronger than before,” he said. Apparently referring to international talks to end the Syrian war, another man

expects Islamic State has more operations in the pipeline. “Security and intelligence services right now are working feverishly to see what else they can do in terms of uncovering it,” he said at a Washington think tank. The CIA chief

has in the pipeline,” he said, using an alternate acronym for IS, the militant group that has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq.

Vowing to destroy terrorism, France seeks global coalition against Islamic State

identified in the video as Al Karrar the Iraqi tells French President Francois Hollande “we have decided to negotiate with you in the trenches and not in the hotels.”

US agencies working ‘feverishly’ to uncover ISIS plot, says CIA chief Soon after the video surfaced, CIA director John Brennan warned on Monday that the attacks in Paris were likely not a “one off event” and that he

said Friday night’s attacks by gunmen in suicide vests in the heart of the French capital were carefully planned and executed.

“This was not something done in a matter of days.

This is something that was carefully and deliberately planned over the course of several months in terms of whether they had the operatives, the weapons, explosives, suicide belts. “I would anticipate that this is not the only operation ISIL

Continued from Page 1 settlements were South Carolina, Oklahoma, Idaho, Maine, Nebraska, Texas, Arkansas, Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia and Illinois. The governors of Alabama and Michigan had said on Sunday they would no longer help settle Syrian refugees. One Democratic governor, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, joined them in rejecting Syrian refugees. Experts in immigration law said the governors likely had no legal standing to block the federal government from settling refugees admitted into the country, but noted that they could obstruct the plans by cutting funding to programs and creating an atmosphere of hostility. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, for instance, said he had instructed law enforcement officials to monitor one Syrian refugee recently resettled into his state.

A Syrian passport found near the body of one of the attackers showed that its holder passed through Greece in October, raising concern that the attackers had entered Europe amid the wave of refugees fleeing that

country’s four-year civil war.

“Texas cannot participate in any program that will result in Syrian refugees - any one of whom could be connected to terrorism being resettled in Texas,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in an open letter to Obama on Monday. “Neither you nor any federal official can guarantee that Syrian refugees will not be part of any terroristic activity.”

Refugee advocates argued that the governors and other Republicans are targeting those who are overwhelmingly victims rather than perpetrators of extremist violence. “These are victims of the same terror that we’re so horrified by,” said Melanie Nezer, vice president of policy and advocacy at Jewish nonprofit refugee service HIAS. “The impact on people is going to be tragic and the impact on our reputation as a global humanitarian leader is also going to be tragic.”

LEGAL AUTHORITY UNCLEAR Republican concerns were to some extent echoed in Canada, where some provincial and municipal leaders said a plan by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the

French President Francois Hollande called on the United States and Russia to join a global coalition to destroy Islamic State in the wake of the attacks across Paris, and announced a wave of measures to combat terror in France.

“France is at war,” Hollande told a joint session of parliament at the Palace of Versailles, promising to increase funds for national security and strengthen antiterror laws in response to the

suicide bombings and shootings that killed 129.

“We’re not engaged in a war of civilisations, because these assassins do not represent any. We are in a war against jihadist terrorism which is threatening the whole world,” he told a packed, sombre chamber.

Parliamentarians gave Hollande a standing ovation before spontaneously singing the “Marseillaise” national anthem in a show of political unity following the worst atrocity France has seen since World War Two. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Friday’s coordinated attacks, saying they were in retaliation for France’s involvement in U.S.-backed air strikes in Iraq and Syria. Hollande pledged that French fighter jets would intensify their assaults and said he would meet U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the coming days to urge them to pool their resources. “We must combine our forces to achieve a result that is already too late in coming,” the president said. The U.S.led coalition has been bombing Islamic State for more than a year. Russia joined the conflict in September, but Western officials say it has mainly hit foreign-backed fighters

battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, not Islamic State. Speaking in Turkey at the same time as Hollande, Obama called Friday’s attacks a “terrible and sickening setback”, but maintained that the U.S.-led coalition was making progress.

“Even as we grieve with our French friends ... we can’t lose sight that there has been progress,” Obama said at a Group of 20 summit, ruling out sending in ground troops. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Paris late on Monday to pay respects to those killed in the attacks and stress Washington’s support for the toughened French stance. He is due to meet Hollande on Tuesday morning. Much of France came to a standstill at midday for a minute’s silence to remember the dead, many of whom were young people killed as they enjoyed a night out. Metro trains stopped, pedestrians paused on pavements and office workers stood at their desks. But in a sign of life slowly returning to normal, schools and museums reopened after a 48-hour shutdown, as did the Eiffel Tower, which lit up the night sky in the red, white and blue colours of the French flag following two days of darkness.

year does not allow for enough security checks. The United States admitted 1,682 Syrian refugees in the federal fiscal year that ended Sept.

30, a sharp jump from the 105 admitted a year earlier, while Europe is struggling with an influx of hundreds of thousands. Texas, California and Michigan accepted the largest number of people fleeing the war. Secretary of State John Kerry in September said the United States would increase the number of refugees it takes in from all nations by 15,000 per year over the next two years, bringing the total to 100,000 a year by 2017. “The federal government has the power over immigration. If they admit Syrian refugees, they’re here,” said Deborah Anker, a professor of law at Harvard Law School who specializes in immigration issues. “People aren’t going to the (state) border. The federal government is going to bring them in.” Florida Governor Rick Scott said it was unclear if a governor had the right to block refugees from entering a state.

Instead, he sent a letter to Congressional Republicans asking for their help in blocking Syrian refugees from being resettled in his state. “We are asking the

U.S. Congress to take immediate and aggressive action to prevent President Obama and his administration from using any federal tax dollars to fund the relocation ... without an extensive evaluation of the risk these individuals may pose to our national security,” Scott wrote.

Republican lawmaker Brian Babin, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, circulated a letter to the Republican House of Representatives leadership requesting that Obama’s plan be defunded as part of an upcoming spending bill.

By Monday, 14 members of the House, all Republicans, had signed the letter.

Republican presidential candidates vowed on Monday to take a tougher approach toward Islamic State, with Donald Trump saying he would consider closing some mosques and Ben Carson saying that Congress should cut funding for all programs that bring people fleeing violence in Syria. On the Democratic side, the governors of Pennsylvania and Washington State said they will continue working with the federal government to admit Syrian refugees.

“Washington will continue to be a state that welcomes those seeking refuge from persecution, regardless of where they come from or the religion they practice,” said Washington Governor Jay Inslee, in a statement.

Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, described his state, which has a large Arab-American population, as “welcoming” but said the risk associated with admitting Syrian refugees was too high. The State Department denied that admitted refugees, who are all extensively screened before being allowed into the country, present any threat and said it would seek to alleviate the governors’ concerns. “We take their concerns seriously,” spokesman Mark Toner said of the governors’ statements. “We disagree that these people, individuals frankly many of them the most vulnerable (in the region), represent any kind of real threat.”

(Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Additional reporting by Serena Maria Daniels, Doina Chiacu, Jon Herskovitz, Letitia Stein, Eric Johnson, Ben Klayman and Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Stuart Grudgings)

Republicans seek to shut door on...

Issue - 641 (3)

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Europe and America soaked in anti-Muslim xenophobia!

I’m well aware that there are people reading this who will be angry that the word “xenophobia” is even being used to refer to attitudes towards Muslims following the Paris attack. But I’m not judging anyone. I’m just reporting what’s happening, based on the analyses of what’s happening out there, and what’s happening is a big surge in anti-Muslim xenophobia. As we go deeper into this generational crisis era, and the survivors of World War II are increasingly dead and gone, ethnic and religious fault lines are opening rapidly, and xenophobia in general is growing. “Black lives matter” activists are furious that suddenly their pet cause has become irrelevant almost overnight. Positions taken last week by candidates running for president are becoming irrelevant. Even the holiest issue of all, climate change, may become

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irrelevant.

President Obama is planning to accept about 10,000 refugees from Syria in the next year. However on Monday, at least 23 state Governors, 22 of them Republican, announced that their states will not accept any Syrian refugees.

Wisconsin’s Republican governor Scott Walker said, “There may be those who will try to take advantage of the generosity of our country and the ability to move freely within our borders through this federal resettlement program, and we must ensure we are doing all we can to safeguard the security of Americans.”

CIA director John Brennan criticized the “hand-wringing” of the NSA data collection, and implied that one reason that the Paris attack was not discovered in advance was because of intelligence cutbacks, such as those resulting from “whistleblower” David Snowden.

On Monday, President Obama’s former ambassador to Iraq and Turkey wrote that American ground forces are necessary: “After almost 18 months of the Obama administration’s half-measures, it’s obvious that defeat of the Islamic State is not going to happen absent a first-class, mobile ground force being launched to mate with overwhelming air power. That ground force does not have to be large - the main U.S. assault force in the largest battle of the second Iraq war, Fallujah in 2004, counted only seven to eight battalions, with reinforcement and support, for a total of 7,000 to 8,000 troops. Nor does it have to be all American. French and other experienced Western troops could complement U.S. forces, as could effective Iraqi and Syrian formations. But without U.S. ground forces, none of this will take place. The Islamic State will hold together its “state,” and its counterattacks - as well as IranianRussian exploitation of the Islamic State for their own aggression - will destabilize much of Eurasia and expose the United States again to mass terrorist attacks.”

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? I realize that many people reading this will welcome not only talk of exterminating the socalled Islamic State but also of going farther, exterminating all jihadists, or even all Arabs and Muslims. Many people can’t tell the difference between an Arab and a Muslim anyway. If you feel that way then I can promise you that by the time the next war ends, if you even live to survive the war, then you’ll live to regret what you wished for.

Paris attack significantly worsens Europe refugee crisis Xenophobia is also surging in Europe, especially since it emerged that one of the perpetrators of the Paris attacks came from Syria among the thousands of refugees that arrive in Greece every day. Ahmad al Muhammad entered Greece on October 3. From there he moved to Macedonia, then Serbia and Croatia, where he registered in the Opatovac refugee camp. From there, he made his way to Paris, where he blew himself up last week Friday. Before the Paris attacks, there were many people stating strongly held fears that one

SUNNY BAINS

million Muslim refugees would destroy the Christian way of life for 500 million Europeans. Now however, the fear is that the refugees would present a severe Paris-like security risk to the 500 million Europeans. It is currently unclear how the passport got there, and there is mounting evidence it is a fake, as well as the possibility it was stolen. However, someone carrying the document did travel from Turkey, through Greece and the Balkans, to Western Europe.

Poland’s conservative government announced after the passport was found that it would renege on an agreement to take in thousands of refugees over safety concerns.

The debate is very sharp in Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia, along the path that refugees take after entering Greece.

Officials in these countries say that they’re on heightened alert about possible jihadists in the crowds of refugees, though no one seriously believes that there’s any reliable way of detecting them. But some political leaders and rights campaigners also issued warnings that the Paris attacks should not be directly linked to the refugee issue or used to stoke ethnic xenophobic hatred. In France, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National political party, has demanded “the immediate halt of all intake of migrants in France.” Le Pen expects to do very well in next month’s regional elections in France. France’s Socialist president, François Hollande, began a speech on Monday to a a joint session of parliament in the Palace of Versailles that with the words “France is at war.”

He promised to exterminate ISIS and he concluded the 50-minute speech with, “We will eradicate terrorism.”

Human rights experts and political analysts warn that the closed-door policies that anti-immigration supporters advocate could cause further radicalization and exacerbate an already dire humanitarian crisis. “It really is a very dangerous moment for Europe; right-wing politicians are taking advantage of this horrific massacre to try to whip up antiimmigrant sentiment, but it’s a moment for Europe to pause and really think about what lies ahead,” Peter Bouckaert, emergency director of Human Rights Watch said. “It’s simply impossible for Europe to shut the door on the flow of people trying to come to Western Europe; they will continue to come,” he continued. European nations are therefore faced with a choice between continuing the current chaos of clandestine arrivals to Europe, or establishing a unified policy to allow the

processing and resettlement of refugees, Bouckaert said.

“With a more coherent policy, you are going to be able to have people get safe and legal passage into Europe,” he said, “and you are also going to have the security controls you need to avoid these tragedies in the future.” Analysts also raise concern over what implications a backlash against France’s and Europe’s Muslim populations will have. “AntiMuslim and anti-refugee sentiment really play into ISIS’ hands,” Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an author on Islamist politics, told reporters. “The more that happens, the more French Muslims feel alienated and are susceptible to extremist recruitment. France has long had a problem with integrating its Muslim population, and France does have a disproportionately high contribution of foreign fighters to ISIS,” Hamid said. “So there’s a deeper issue here and it hasn’t gotten better, it’s only gotten worse.”

As I stated in the beginning of this article, the Paris attacks have heightened anti-immigration rhetoric outside of Europe as well, with politicians in the United States weighing in on how to deal with the refugee crisis following the Paris attacks. On Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said in an interview on CNN that U.S. aid to refugees should be based on religion - prioritizing Christians - while other candidates have called for an outright ban on resettling refugees from the Middle East. Bush also stated that the war against the Islamic State was a “fight for Western civilization,” a statement Hamid said plays directly into the group’s propaganda that frames its fight as an apocalyptic war against Western crusaders. “You hear Republicans saying clash of civilizations and civilizational war, and they don’t realize that’s exactly what ISIS wants us to be saying,” Hamid said. “It’s remarkable to me, and just shows a very basic lack of understanding of the threat that we face.”

In the end, let’s talk about what happened when France declared its war on ISIS. France’s Socialist president, François Hollande, began a speech on Monday to a joint session of parliament in the Palace of Versailles that ended with the words “France is at war.” He promised to exterminate ISIS and he concluded the 50-minute speech with, “We will eradicate terrorism.” Lawmakers from all parties gave him a standing ovation and sang “La Marseillaise,” the national anthem. La Marseillaise is an interesting song, written in 1792 during a generational crisis war, the bloody French Revolution. The song itself is extremely bloody: “Do you hear in our fields the howling of those fearsome soldiers? They are coming into our arms, to slit the throats of your sons and wives. ... Form your battalions! March! March!

And make their impure blood soak into our fields!” This song fits very well at the conclusion of a speech declaring war on ISIS.

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‘Sarbat Khalsa was a Khalistani stage and everyone there knew it’

If you want to get to a particular place, you had best plan a route. Is that easier said than done? It may be if you feel sure about where ‘there’ is but are laboring under a misapprehension about the actual location of ‘here’. No map, no matter how accurate, can help the traveler who is so lost that they don’t know their current position. And nobody is more lost than the lost person who feels sure they are not lost!

Don’t let a delusion create an illusion! Let life show you what you truly need to know. !!!

Someone is keen to let you know how a relationship needs to change. Either they want something out of it that they’re not getting, or they are getting something out of it that they don’t want!

Unless they are neither getting, nor not getting, anything because the whole thing is hypothetical, and they feel they need much more persuasion before they put it to the test. Either way, your challenge now involves showing that you can listen and that, once you have heard a message, you can respond constructively to it. !!!

We all keep long lists in our pockets or at the backs of our minds.

Things we feel we need to do, supplies we are running low on, promises we want to keep and preparations that we ought to make. And those are just on the top of the first page. Then there are the missions we feel we must pursue, the roles we yearn to play and the principles we seek to uphold. That is a lot to attend to. No wonder things get stressful at times. But soon, you will be pleasantly surprised by how much you accomplish.

!!!

Sometimes, we have to do what’s difficult. This becomes the only way to make life easy once more. That does not mean we must do anything abhorrent. How can that ever be justified?

But we may need to put up with something that we find tiresome or endure a stressful situation or make a gesture of sacrifice out of respect. The cosmos now calls on you to go beyond a boundary. You won’t have to be dreadfully brave or at least, not for long. But the positive repercussions may last for years. !!!

There are times when we begin to feel that life is one long struggle to keep a certain person sweet. Or perhaps, there are several individuals that imagine we ought to pacify. Yet are we really supposed to live in fear of those whose company we surely should be enjoying?

There is a delicate distinction to be made now between the need to make a gesture of compromise and an urge to give too much away lest all is doomed to failure. Through a mixture of sensitivity and selfdiscipline, you are about to strike the right balance. !!!

Someone holds you in high regard. Are they right to feel such admiration?

Someone else, it seems, looks upon you disapprovingly. Is their opinion ill-informed? Now, while we are assessing the relative merits of other people’s ideas, we might also pause to assess the validity of some of your own preferences and prejudices. Are you sure that you are supporting the right team and that those with whom you are finding fault, deserve all that criticism? Be led by loyalty by all means but don’t be blinded by it.

He is the man of the moment. SAD (Amritsar) president Simranjit Singh Mann has a spring in his step. The main orgainser of the radical Sarbat Khalsa, Mann, unlike many who led the gathering, is unapologetic about bringing the issue of Khalistan back to Punjab’s centre stage.

Assistant editor Chitleen K Sethi spoke to Mann about the radical Sarbat Khalsa and the politics that ensued over it.

What do you have to say about demanding Khalistan at the radical Sarbat Khalsa?

Sarbat Khalsa was a Khalistani stage and everyone present there knew it. Not just the Congress, many other parties also participated in it. There was the BSP, even SGPC members. The conversations between Congress leaders and (Satwant Singh) Manawa are not fake. (Harminder Singh) Gill and Manawa are neighbours. Why will they not talk to each other? And how is demanding a separate nation seditious?

Recently Barcelona voted for a separate nation within Spain.

Why did the original protest leaders Sikh preachers give the ‘Sarbat Khalsa’ a miss?

The abbots (Panthpreet Singh, Ranjit Singh Dhadrianwale, among

others) have aligned themselves with the state for reasons best known to them. They took the easy way out.

Other hardliner groups also

Takht jathedar?

Hawara has been made a jathedar continuing with the concept of a saint soldier.

Our jathedars have the acceptability of Sikhs. On

opposed you.

It was suggested that we not call it the ‘Sarbat Khalsa’ or postpone it by 20 days. But I did not agree. We were working towards uniting Sikhs to come on a common platform for Khalistan and also for the preservation of Sikh culture, ethos and religion. People of Punjab want Khalistan.

Your daughter, in her book, had said that you had realised that people of Punjab did not want Khalistan.

Her writing reflects her independent thinking.

Sometimes when she keeps pestering me to say something, I say such a thing.

How do you justify ‘making’ Jagtar Singh Hawara as the Akal

the day the Akal Takht jathedar addressed Sikhs at the Golden Temple, he was booed and when (Dhian Singh) Mand, our temporary jathedar, spoke, he was cheered. Pinderpal Singh could have been made a jathedar but he is not ready for Khalistan; he would not have given voice to our ideology.

Why did you not speak at the ‘Sarbat Khalsa’?

I felt it would charge up the gathering too much. The government wanted a clash there. That would have suppressed the message of the ‘Sarbat Khalsa’. I denied them the headlines they wanted.

But by speaking of Khalistan you gave the government legitimacy to crack down on the

Preacher ‘approached’ to head Akal Takht CHANDIGARH The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) is contemplating to pick eminent Sikh kathavachak (preacher) Giani Pinderpal Singh (49) as the Akal Takht jathedar to replace the beleaguered Giani Gurbachan Singh.

The development comes in the backdrop of the controversial decision taken at the radicals’ Sarbat Khalsa to ‘appoint’ former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh’s assassin Jagtar Singh Hawara as the Akal Takht jathedar. As per reports, speculation is rife in Sikh circles that a person like Pinderpal would be acceptable to Sikhs in India as well as abroad, be it moderate or hardliners, to head the highest temporal seat of the community. “A person like him (Pinderpal) can certainly help bring the Sikh community out of the current crisis, but it remains to be seen whether he would accept the post of the Akal Takht head or not,” said SGPC president Avtar

Singh Makkar, adding that it was premature to reach any conclusion. Pinderpal, who hails from Tharwa Majra village in Karnal (Haryana), lives in Ludhiana. Sources say he is being persuaded by the

SGPC and other Sikh bodies to head the Akal Takht. In August 2008, he was approached by the SGPC to take over as the Akal Takht jathedar after the ouster of then jathedar Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti, but he refused the offer. Talking to HT on the phone, Pinderpal said, “In the

current situation, there is an acute deficit of trust and faith among the Sikhs. No Sikh believes in the other. Moreover, when there are two jathedars (one appointed by the SGPC, the other by the ‘Sarbat Khalsa’), it is very difficult for both to prove who is the real one.” Evading queries on being approached to head the Akal Takht, he said a priest could not be a leader.

Pinderpal, a product of Gurmat Missionary College, Rupnagar, is known to focus on Gurbani rather than criticising the political set-up in Sikh institutions.

Considered to be in the league of preacher Sant Singh Maskeen, he has a popular slot on a Punjabi TV channel for performing ‘katha’ daily at 9am. He got upset with the SGPC when he was told late last month to wind up his scheduled 10-day ‘katha’ on the fourth day because of his comments on the Panthic crisis, made at Manji Sahib on the premises of the Golden Temple.

organisers. How can demanding Khalistan justify the repression that followed? I was under house arrest till Sunday.

And how could I not speak of something which my party has worked towards for 31 years?

Khalistan is the aim and it had to be reiterated.

Now that all your organisers and jathedars are in jail, what next?

We will intensify our stir.

What about the 2017 elections?

Our party is ready to take along anyone who does not have a problem with our ideology. The Aam Aadmi Party is a good party but its leaders have used derogatory words for Sant Bhindranwale.

There are many who want to join our party. I got a call from a Jat leader in UP who wanted the SAD (A) ticket from Ghaziabad.

So you have decided to change?

I have not changed. When the idea of Khalistan was not resolute enough, I had to be strict. Now when it is resolute, I can afford concessions.

But SAD (A) has not done well politically after 1989.

My party didn’t fare well as I refused to compromise.

People like (Parkash Singh) Badal and Amarinder Singh used the cause of Khalistan when it suited them politically.

Time for Rahul to take charge, says Amarinder PATIALA Congress deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Capt Amarinder Singh said here on Monday that time had come for Rahul Gandhi to take up the reins of the party, even as he stated that his party was open to an alliance with like-minded parties in the 2017 Punjab assembly elections.

Talking to reporters during the National Press Day function here, Amarinder said the Congress vice-president had proved his leadership skills in the Bihar assembly polls, where the party not only considerably improved upon its 2010 tally but also made immense contribution to the grand alliance’s victory. The Captain said Rahul had already proved beyond doubt that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was just a salesman, not a leader. Ironically, Amarinder had earlier been stressing that Sonia Gandhi should continue as the party president.

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‘Dangerously high’ antibiotic resistance levels worldwide: WHO GENEVA Antibiotic resistance, which can turn common ailments into killers, has reached dangerous levels worldwide, the World Health Organization warned Monday, saying users still know too little about how antibiotics work.

Antibiotic resistance happens when bugs become immune to existing drugs, allowing minor injuries and common infections to become deadly.

Overuse and misuse of the drugs increases this resistance, but WHO also published a survey of 10,000 people worldwide showing a range of dangerous misconceptions about the threat, which are allowing it to prosper.

“The rise of antibiotic resistance is a global health crisis, and governments now recognise it as one of the greatest challenges for public health today,” WHO chief Margaret Chan said in a statement, stressing that

resistance was “reaching dangerously high levels in all parts of the world.” “Antibiotic resistance is compromising our ability to treat infectious diseases and undermining many advances in medicine,” she warned.

WHO’s 12-country survey published Monday found that nearly two thirds of all those questioned (64 percent) believe wrongly that antibiotics can be used to treat colds and flu, despite the fact that the drugs have no impact on viruses.

The survey, conducted in Barbados, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Sudan and Vietnam, also showed that 66 percent believe that there is no risk of antibiotic resistance for people who take their antibiotics as prescribed.

And nearly half (44 percent) thought antibiotic resistance was only a problem for people who

1b people have nowhere to go

LONDON Some 2.4 billion people around the world don’t have access to decent sanitation and more than a billion are forced to defecate in the open, risking disease and other dangers, according to the United Nations.

Launching its World Toilet Day campaign for Nov 19, the UN said poor sanitation increases the risk of illness and malnutrition, especially for children, and called for women and girls in particular to be offered safe, clean facilities.

“One out of three women around the world lack access to safe toilets,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement. “As a result they face disease, shame and potential violence when they seek a place to defecate.” Even where there

are toilets around the world, some hardly warrant the name, as illustrated by Reuters in a photo essay from around the world. In a Syrian refugee settlement camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, for example, toilets surrounded by graffiticovered corrugated sheet sit right up against flimsy tents. In the Marcory district of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, a “private” stall is simply built of spare bits of lumber and metal.

The UN says that while there is sufficient fresh water on the planet for everyone, “bad economics and poor infrastructure” mean that every year millions of people - most of them children - die from diseases linked to poor sanitation, unhygienic living conditions and lack of clean water supplies.

CHANDIGARH It is not for the first time that a convicted killer has been ‘appointed’ as jathedar of the highest temporal body of Sikhs the Akal Takht. Ironically, it was the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which is now facing a similar situation, that had set the dangerous precedent in 1990.

Serving life sentence for the murder of Nirankari sect leader Gurbachan Singh in 1980, Ranjit Singh was appointed as the Akal Takht jathedar in 1990 by the

Shiromani Akali Dalbacked SGPC, then led by Gurcharan Singh Tohra. Though Parkash Singh Badal and Tohra were then on the same side, it was Tohra who had masterminded the move to get Akalis to group around him by proving his farright credentials.

In a replay of the earlier situation, former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh’s assassin Jagtar Singh Hawara has been declared

take the drugs regularly, when in fact, anyone, of any age and anywhere, can get an antibioticresistant infection. Around a third meanwhile believed it was best to stop an antibiotic treatment as soon as they felt better, rather than completing the prescribed course of treatment, the survey showed.

“The findings of this survey point to the urgent need to improve understanding around antibiotic resistance,” Keiji Fukuda, the UN chief’s special representative on antimicrobial resistance, said in the statement.

Along with its survey, WHO launched a campaign Monday called “Antibiotics: Handle with care”, aimed at raising awareness about the problem, and correcting such misconceptions.

“This campaign is just one of the ways we are working with governments, health authorities and other partners to reduce

antibiotic resistance,” Fukuda said. “One of the biggest health challenges of the 21st century will require global behaviour change by individuals and societies,” he added.

A WHO report in April showed there were “major gaps” in all regions of the world in addressing the problem and reining in overuse and misuse of antibiotics.

The UN health agency has warned that without urgent action, the world could be headed for “a post-antibiotic era” in which common infections and

minor injuries that have long been treatable once again become killers.

The survey published Monday showed a dire lack of understanding of the problem and widespread dangerous behaviour.

Broken down by country, the survey for instance showed that five percent of Chinese respondents who had taken antibiotics in the past six months had purchased them on the Internet, while the same percentage in Nigeria had bought them from a stall or hawker.

In Kenya, a digital classroom in a box NAIROBI At the Lighthouse Grace Academy in Nairobi’s downmarket Kwangware suburb, yellow school t-shirts carry the slogan ‘To Fear God is Wisdom’, but in their hands pupils clutch a more worldly path to knowledge: tablet computers. The handsized tablets are part of the ‘Kio Kit’, a digital classroom in a suitcase designed by local technology company BRCK, which two years ago launched the hardwearing, brick-sized modem that works as a wifi hotspot.

“The Kio Kit is a way to turn any classroom into a digital classroom,” said Nivi Mukherjee of BRCK Education, the subsidiary that launched the product in September. “You open the box and there are 40 tablets inside, there is a BRCK inside and on the BRCK there is a Linux [open-source] server - so we can locally cache educational content, and serve it up to the tablets.” In her crowded cementfloored, tin-walled classroom with a stopped clock on the wall,

seven-year-old Blessing taps away on her new tablet, learning to spell. Unusually for a child in school, she’s smiling. “It’s fun,” she said. Her teacher Josephine Boke, who has taught primary school for 12 years, says the kit “is nicely designed for the young

hands, and it’s easy to use and easy to adapt to the technology.”

“To the kids, they get excited when they are using it. It gives me an easy time as a teacher.”

Kenya has a thriving tech startup scene, including the enormously successful M-Pesa mobile money transfer system which allows clients to send cash with their telephones.

The tablets and the BRCK are symbiotic: the modem is fixed

into a watertight, hardenedplastic wheeled suitcase which has slots for the tablets and acts as a wireless charging station for both.

New digital learning materials are uploaded to the BRCK wirelessly during quiet times of the night when more bandwidth is available, and then shared with the tablets during classes.

Thieves with an eye on the bright yellow, tough and dustresistant tablets will be disappointed, as they cannot browse the internet nor be charged independently.

Like the BRCK, the tablets are designed to solve Kenyan problems. “Intermittent power, intermittent internet connectivity, those are just the realities of our infrastructure, so we have to build solutions for those realities, rather than import solutions from other places,” said Mukherjee.

At $5,000 (4,500 euros) a piece the price of the kit seems high, given the ambition to provide access to quality education to all in some of the world’s poorest places.

after his death penalty was commuted by the Punjab and Haryana high court in October 2010.

After appointing him as jathedar, Tohra, backed by the SAD and BJP, had lobbied hard for the release of Ranjit Singh and a petition for remission of his sentence was sent to then President KR Narayanan, who later signed the order commuting the remainder of

sentence in November 1997 during the IK Gujral regime at the Centre.

Now, it’s the release of “jathedar Hawara” that is being sought by over 20,000 people through an online petition on the White House website seeking help of US President Barack Obama.

The petition has been launched

by US-based separatist group, Sikhs For Justice. However, unlike the 1990 precedent, now it is the SGPC which is at the receiving end of radicals’ religiopolitical move.

Killer as Akal Takht ‘jathedar’? SGPC set the precedent

as the Akal Takht “jathedar” by the radicals during their recent Sarbat Khalsa. Hawara, like Ranjit Singh then, is in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, serving a life sentence

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

Mobile info superhighway super expensive in US PARIS Perhaps everything’s bigger in America, as the old saw goes, but when it comes to mobile phone calls and data usage, US consumers are certainly paying big, sometimes nearly as 20 times as much as Europeans.

If you live in France, you can pay as little as 20 euros ($21.50) per month for a monthly package

featuring 50 gigabytes of data, unlimited domestic and international calls to over 100 countries and unlimited text messages. In the United States, that much data could cost you $390 per month from one national operator.

While the above comparison may be the extreme, it dovetails with an International Telecommunications Union report last year which found US data to be up to 19.5 times more expensive than in Europe when corrected for purchasing power of

consumers. The result is that while US companies may be the pioneers with online video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, Americans have been asked to pay much more for what it takes to use them on a smartphone, which is rapidly becoming a popular platform for catching the latest episode of your TV show.

That may be changing though, as another US operator recently dropped its unlimited calls and data package from $180 to $80 per month.

So why has there been such a huge difference? “The fundamental reason is competition,” said Steven Hartley, Practice leader for Service Providers and Markets at telecoms and IT consultancy Ovum. France and Britain - where you can get an unlimited data plan for as little as £27 ($41) - each have four

World’s highest mountain bike race held in Nepal

KATHMANDU Dozens of mountain bikers donned snow goggles and braved freezing temperatures to reach the finish line of the world's highest mountain biking race in the foothills of Nepal's Himalayas Sunday, seven months after a devastating earthquake hit the country.

The annual Yak Attack, which kicked off in 2007, is a nine-daylong race over about 400 kilometres (250 miles) of rocky and snow-covered terrain, crossing the world's highest mountain pass, the Thorong La at 5,416 metres (17,769 feet), north of 8,091-metre-tall Mount Annapurna. Organisers decided to go ahead with the race despite 60 per cent of entrants cancelling this year after a 7.8-magnitude strong earthquake hit the

Himalayan nation in April, killing nearly 8,900 people. "Many were put off by the quake. But we decided not to cancel the race because it would have sent out a negative message about the country," organiser Phil Evans told AFP. Twenty-nine people from countries including Britain, the United States, Japan and Sweden took part in this year's race, with six participants from Nepal. Nepal's national champion Ajay Pandit Dixit bagged first place. "I am very happy to have won," Dixit, who has won four times before, said on reaching the finish line. "This is a difficult race and we cycle over a natural route. Even professional riders find it challenging."

Organisers describe the route as "one of the toughest endurance races" in the world.

national mobile operators. The same goes for Sweden, where the cheapest 50 gigabyte plan is roughly $46.

Meanwhile in the United States the handful of so-called national operators don’t really fully cover all of the country. At any given location only one or two may be present, plus a small regional player. “Of course where you have less choice you are going to have higher prices,” said Hartley.

The situation is in some ways ironic, given that the United States is generally seen as the paragon of free competition which is supposed to lead to lower prices while the European Union ties companies up in red tape, thus causing higher prices. But in this case “the EU has gone out of its way to encourage more competition and to regulate prices, and to regulate them down”, which has benefited consumers, said Hartley.

Sylvain Chevallier, an associate at telcoms specialist BearingPoint consultancy, agreed that competition is the issue, but believes the problem is in Europe.

“It’s not that the US market isn’t competitive, but I would say that in fact the European market is way too competitive” which has resulted in plunging prices, he said.

Video game lovers flock to ‘Fallout 4’ wasteland SAN FRANCISCO Action video game lovers are flocking in record numbers to the radioactive wasteland of freshly launched mega-hit “Fallout 4.”

Bethesda Softworks on Friday said that it shipped 12 million copies of the blockbuster game,

representing more than $750 million in sales, to meet launch day demand.

The latest installment of the beloved franchise has won praise from reviewers and racked up stellar sales since its global release on November 10.

The company said the new game “is generating record sales at retail outlets and via digital download,” with its launch sales.

Fans waited five years for a new installment in a franchise known for a trademark blend of music, humor, and action in post nuclear war settings. Bethesda Softworks president Vlatko Andonov described “Fallout 4” as “a masterpiece in game development and storytelling, providing fans hundreds of hours of fun as they explore and are challenged by this fascinating, beautifully crafted world.”

The game opens with scenes showing a young family in a setting that blends 1950s America with the future. Nuclear bomb blasts send people racing for shelter, and the main character becomes the sole survivor, emerging two centuries after the devastation.

Players have the option of playing as a man or a woman, choosing at the outset between the role of a wife or her husband.

The overall mission made clear at the start of the game is the quest of a mother or father to find a son stolen from a fallout shelter. Once in the wide-open wasteland, though, players find a cornucopia of quests from battling raiders and mutants to helping survivors build settlements. “After four years of development, it’s not complete until our fans get to play it and make it their own,” said game director Todd Howard. “We can’t wait to hear about their adventures.” A collector version of the game comes with a reallife Pip-Boy wrist-wear device, a gadget well-known by fans of “Fallout.”

The wearable Pip-Boy is designed to hold smartphones, and an application makes it an extension of the game.

The “Pip-Boy” edition sold out just hours after becoming available for purchase, according to Bethesda, part of Marylandbased ZeniMax Media.

Growing evidence shows British IS leader killed in air strike NEW YORK The United States targeted British Islamic State leader “Jihadi John” in an air strike in northern Syria and evidence was growing on Friday that he was killed.

A U.S. official said Thursday’s attack in the town of Raqqa probably killed Mohammed Emwazi, a British citizen who was nicknamed “Jihadi John” after appearing in videos showing the killings of American and British hostages.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said four foreign militants had been killed in U.S. air strikes.

“A car carrying four foreign Islamic State leaders, including one British Jihadi was hit by U.S. air strikes right after the governorate building in Raqqa city,” Rami Abdulrahman, Director of the UK-based Observatory told Reuters.

“All the sources there are saying that the body of an important British Jihadi is lying in the hospital of Raqqa. All the sources are saying it is of Jihadi John but I cannot confirm it personally.”

Emwazi participated in the videos showing the murders of U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff

and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages.The British government said it had “been working hand in glove with

that if it was it would be a strike at the heart of Islamic State.

It would come more than a year after U.S. President Barack Obama promised justice after the deaths of American hostages.

The strike came just as the

the Americans” to defeat Islamic State “and to hunt down those murdering Western hostages.”

It said Prime Minister David Cameron had said “tracking down these brutal murderers was a top priority”.

Describing Emwazi as a threat to the world, Cameron said in a televised statement that there was no certainty yet that the strike had been successful but

United States seeks to increase pressure on Islamic State fighters, who have seized parts of Syria and Iraq, and who Obama has vowed to defeat.

The pressure includes U.S. plans to deploy dozens of special operations forces to Syria, deliver more weaponry to U.S.-backed Syrian fighters and to thicken U.S. air strikes against the militant group.

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Autism rate doubles in US to one in 45 kids MIAMI Autism affects one in 45 children in the United States, almost twice the rate from a few years ago, said a survey Friday that uses a new approach to assess the frequency of the developmental disorder. The

latest figures may reflect a more accurate picture of autism spectrum disorder, said the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics, and so does not necessarily mean that there is a ballooning autism epidemic.

In fact, the study found that while autism spectrum diagnoses are more frequent than in the past, the overall number of people affected by neurodevelopmental problems has not risen, but has remained steady over time.

“What we call an autism spectrum disorder now is a much wider group of symptoms than what we called autism in the past so I think that captures a larger number of children that might have received other diagnoses in the past,” said Katie Walton, an autism researcher who was not involved with the CDC survey.

“There have been some significant changes in the way that they are asking the questions,” added Walton, a psychologist at the Ohio State University’s Nisonger Center.

The report found that in 2014, one in 45 children had autism spectrum disorder, or 2.24 percent. When the survey was

given in 2011-2013, one in 80 children was diagnosed with ASD (1.25 percent).

The prevalence of autism in the United States was just one in 5,000 in 1975, and has been rising steadily in recent years.

Autism spectrum disorder is a

developmental disability that may cause a person to have difficulty behaving, learning, communicating and interacting with people. It is believed to be influenced by genetic and environmental factors, though scientists do not fully understand all its causes. There is no known cure, but early intervention in toddlers as young as two can sometimes help. Officials changed the order of the questions posed in the latest survey, completed by more than 11,000 parents, a process that may have resulted in more of them acknowledging a diagnosis of ASD. “The question wording was expanded to include more specific details on what constituted an autism spectrum disorder,” said the report.

Since the United States does not maintain national health registries, telephone surveys are among the ways that experts assess the rate of autism.

School and medical records have also been used to project a nationwide autism rate of one in 68 children, according to another CDC report issued in 2014.

Some experts agree that these surveys do not suggest there is a worsening epidemic of autism

Human roadblock for Japanese firms developing autonomous cars TOKYO Japanese car manufacturers will have to convince the public that letting go of the wheel in a selfdriving car is safe, while also dealing with the biggest threat to

the cars' security: the humans using them. Toyota, Nissan and Honda are intent on putting autonomous cars on highways and also city roads for Nissan -

by 2020, and the triumvirate of Japan's auto industry were keen to stress the advances made so far at the recent Tokyo Motor Show.

Their stated goal - preventing deaths on the road - is laudable, but the technological arms race is also highly lucrative: consultancy firm AT Kearney has estimated the market for the self-driving car could be worth more than $566 billion by 2035.

Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn told reporters at the Tokyo show the company has high hopes the technology will save lives while altering car journeys forever.

in the United States. A study out earlier this year led by Santhosh Girirajan, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and of anthropology at Penn State, found that the rising rate of autism seen in recent years resulted from reclassifying individuals with related neurological disorders.

His study analyzed 11 years of special-education enrollment data on an average of 6.2 million children per year, and found “no overall increase in the number of students enrolled in special education.” Asked for comment on Friday’s figures, he told AFP that the CDC’s latest approach is an improvement. “When people say (there is an) epidemic of autism, I am not really sure,” he said.“It is true that they are identifying more individuals with autism because autism is occurring with other disorders,” he added. Better diagnoses - and improved strategies for estimating prevalence - may be useful to parents who want to get improved treatment for their children at an early age, added Walton. “I think people should understand that autism is a relatively common condition at this point and if you are concerned about your child there are an increasing number of services out there,” she said.

Cop stops Google driverless car for moving slow

SAN FRANCISCO Google playfully posted a photo of a motorcycle cop pulling over one of it self-driving cars on Thursday for riding along at a cautious pace. “Driving too slowly?” the self driving car team asked rhetorically in a message that accompanied a picture on its Google+ social network page.

“Bet humans don’t get pulled over for that too often.” Police in Google’s home town of Mountain View in Silicon Valley explained in an online post that an officer noticed traffic backing up behind a self-driving car going 24 mph on a street with a 35 mph speed limit. “As the officer approached the slow moving car he realized it was a Google Autonomous Vehicle,” the police department

said. “In this case, it was lawful for the car to be traveling on the street.” California law allows selfdriving cars to operated on roads with speed limits of 35 mph or slower. The officer did chat with the occupant of the car about impeding traffic, according to police. Google caps the speed of its self-driving cars at 25 mph for safety reasons.

“We want them to feel friendly and approachable, rather than zooming scarily through neighborhood streets,” Google said of the speed cap on it driverless cars. “After 1.2 million miles of autonomous driving (that’s the human equivalent of 90 years of driving experience), we’re proud to say we’ve never been ticketed!”

‘Blackboard’ painting goes for record $70.5m in NY NEW YORK It may look little more than blackboard scrawls to the untrained eye, but a Cy Twombly work fetched $70.53 million in New York on Wednesday, setting a new auction record for the painter. A smattering of applause broke out in the room after bidding concluded for the star lot of Sotheby’s main evening postwar and contemporary art auction of the season. “Untitled” was produced by the US artist as part of his acclaimed Blackboard series in 1968, using oil-based house paint, wax crayon and pencil on canvas. The former army cryptographer painted six bands of repeated loopy lines on a gray background, which was sold by a prominent US collector to benefit a reform temple in Los Angeles. Sotheby’s said the price set a new record at auction for the artist, just edging out the previous record of $69.6 million.

It marked a phenomenal investment for a picture that British collector Charles Saatchi sold for $3.7 million in 1990.

Auctioneer Oliver Barker explained the price by saying that it came from the Blackboard series largely seen as Twombly’s greatest achievement, and produced between 1968 and 1970. “They’re ones that people have a great affinity to,” he told AFP. Twombly was born in Virginia but based himself

primarily in Italy from 1957 until his death in 2011 aged 83 in Rome.

Another standout of the night was an Andy Warhol acrylic silkscreen of Mao Zedong, from the artist’s first series of the late Chinese communist leader,

those at the lower end of the market and several went for prices way over their pre-sale estimates.

“It was hugely reassuring that we did so well tonight and wonderfully exciting that so many great works were making great prices and finding such fantastic new

which sold for $47.51 million.

Sotheby’s said it was the highest price paid for a Warhol of the week of auctions at its showroom and that of archrival Christie’s. A Jackson Pollock, “Number 17, 1949,” sold for $22.93 million, at the lowest end of its estimate, as did a Lucio Fontana “Concetto Spaziale, Attese” for $16.15 million. “Portrait” by British painter Francis Bacon sold for $15.65 million, rounding out the top five lots. Ten items failed to sell, but there was frenetic bidding for many of the lots, particularly

homes,” Barker told AFP. In total, Sotheby’s parted with $294.9 million worth of contemporary and post-war art, well above its low pre-sale estimate of $254 million. Christie’s comparable evening sale on Tuesday clocked up $331.8 million in sales and set auction records for seven artists, including Fontana and French-American artist Louise Bourgeois. At Christie’s, Fontana’s “Concetto Spaziale, La fine di Dio” - a yellow egg slashed in the canvas - sold for $29.17 million.

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

A cracking sale!

Elephant egg ONE HUNDRED times bigger than hen’s egg goes for £66,000 A massive, partly fossilized egg laid by a now-extinct elephant bird has sold for more than double its estimate at a London auction. Christie’s auction house said today that the footlong, nearly nine-inches in diameter egg fetched £66,675 ($101,813). It had been valued at £20,000 to £30,000 pre-sale,

and was sold to an anonymous buyer over the telephone after about 10 minutes of competitive bidding. Elephant birds were wiped out several hundred years - but this specimen is intact and contains the skeleton of the unborn bird. The oversized ovum, laid on the island of Madagascar, is believed to date back before the 17th century.

Flightless, fruit-gobbling elephant birds resembled giant ostriches and could grow to be 11 feet high (3.4 meters).

Christie’s says their eggs are 100 times the size of an average chicken’s.The giant partly-

fossilised egg of an elephant bird is being put up for auction at Christie’s and is 30cm high and 21cm in diameter.The elephant bird, which resembled an 11-foottall ostrich, is thought to have been hunted to extinction in Madagascar between the 14th and 17th centuries.More than 260 lots went under the hammer in the Travel, Science and History sale at Christies, including curiosities of natural history, globes, scientific instruments, rare books and maps, alongside paintings and works of art from the ages of exploration. Occasionally subfossilised elephant bird eggs are found intact and the National Geographic Society in Washington holds a specimen of an Aepyornis egg which was given to Luis Marden in 1967.David Attenborough owns an almost complete eggshell, dating from 6-700 CE, which he pieced together from fragments that were given to him while making his 1961 BBC series Zoo Quest to Madagascar.In March 2011, the BBC aired the 60minute documentary Attenborough and the Giant Egg, presented by Attenborough, about his personal scientific quest to discover the secrets of the elephant bird and its egg.

Is this really human?

DNA tests on six-inch skeleton of ‘alien-looking’ creature with over-sized head prove it was actually human claim scientists in new documentary Ten years after the mummified remains of a six-inch supposed ‘space alien’ were first discovered they have been confirmed as ‘human’ by scientists in a new documentary film Sirius.

Since the remains of the small humanoid - known as the ‘Atacama Humanoid’ and nicknamed Ata - were discovered in Chile’s Atacama Desert 10 years ago there has been much speculation about its origins.

Theories have included that the bones were those of an aborted fetus, or a monkey, or even an alien that had crash-landed on earth.

In the weeks leading up to Monday’s premier of Sirius, UFO enthusiasts had grown increasingly excited that the film could announce a major breakthrough in the search for extra-terrestrial life forms, reports The Huffington Post.

The small skeleton certainly bears many of the hallmarks of what we have come to believe aliens look like, in particular a large head overshadowing a small body.

According to Chilean local newspaper, a man called Oscar Munoz found the remain

Parents who tell children to finish everything on their plates are ‘fuelling obesity’ Parents have long encouraged children to finish everything on their plates, not least because of guilt about wasting food.

But new research suggests this tactic could be fuelling the obesity epidemic.

Ever-growing portion sizes

mean children are being pressurised into eating more than they need which, experts say, means they don’t know when to stop.

Katie Loth, a dietician at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, U.S., told HealthDay: ‘I was surprised at some of the parent behaviours, like feeling that their children should clean their plates and not waste food.

‘In the 1950s, cleaning your plate meant something different.

‘Portion sizes have got bigger

over time, and if you encourage kids to rely on environmental indicators, like how much food is on their plates or the time of day, they’ll lose the ability to rely on internal cues to know whether they’re hungry or full.’

Ms Loth studied data about

2,200 teenagers and 3,500 parents.

She found that fathers were more likely to pressurise their children into eating all of their food than mothers were.

She also discovered that teenage boys were more likely to be put under pressure to finish their food than teenage girls.

Dr Michael Hobaugh, chief of medical staff at La Rabida Children’s Hospital in Chicago, believes that childhood obesity is being exacerbated by parents who are unable to

judge whether their child is the right weight.

He told the website: ‘There’s now so much obesity in the United States that when we see a child who is normal weight, inevitably, a parent will think the child is too skinny.

‘But if a pediatrician charts that child’s height and weight, he or she may even be overweight.

‘There’s a wide range of normal, and for many teens it’s normal to be slender and gangly.’

The research comes just days after Dr Brian Wansink, of Cornell University, in New York, suggested that the key to avoiding over-eating at all-youcan-eat buffets is to take a smaller plate.

Dr Wansink observed the behaviour of slim people at buffets and compared it to the behaviour of larger people. He noticed that thin people were seven times more likely to take a small plate and that the thinner diners tended to look at all of the food on offer before choosing what to have. By contrast, larger diners tended to consider each item individually.

He told HealthDay: ‘Skinny people are more likely to scout out the food. They’re more likely to look at the different alternatives before they pounce on something.

on Oct. 19, 2003 when he was looking for objects of historical value in La Noria, a ghost town in the Atacama Desert.

Near an abandoned church, Munoz found a white cloth

years.

‘I can say with absolute certainty that it is not a monkey. It is human - closer to human than chimpanzees.

It lived to the age of six to

containing, according to the newspaper, ‘a strange skeleton no bigger than 15cm [the size of a pen]. It was a creature with hard teeth, a bulging head with an additional odd bulge on top.

Its body was scaly and of dark color. Unlike humans, it had nine ribs.In the new documentary, a DNA sample from bone marrow extracted from the specimen, was analyzed by scientists at a prestigious American university.

They concluded that it was an ‘interesting mutation’ of a male human that had survived postbirth for between six and eight

eight,’ said Garry Nolan, director of stem cell biology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine in California.

‘Obviously, it was breathing, it was eating, it was metabolizing. It calls into question how big the thing might have been when it was born.’

‘The DNA tells the story and we have the computational techniques that allows us to determine, in very short order, whether, in fact, this is human,’ Nolan, who performed the DNA tests, explains in the film.

Grandfather ‘sells three-day-old baby on Facebook After telling his own daughter her child was dead A grandfather allegedly sold his three-day-old grandson on Facebook after telling his daughter that the baby was dead.Police in Punjab, India, say the man, named only as Firoz, was offered Rs 45,000 (£550) by a hospital nurse and her accomplice who were involved in a child trafficking ring.The child was later sold to a Delhibased businessman for Rs 800,000 (£9,660) through a deal arranged on Facebook.

According to local media reports, the mother, named only as Noora, gave birth to the baby boy in the city of Ludhiana on April 8 and was discharged from hospital the following day.

But on April 10 the nurse named as Sunita, and a fellow hospital employee named as Gurpreet Singh, took the baby away claiming he was ill. The following day they told her the child had died. Then On April 12 some people reportedly came to Noora’s home and paid her father Firoz Rs 45,000, after which he left the home. However the mother, who separated from her husband in February this year, had become suspicious about her father’s sudden new

wealth and reported the baby as missing to the police.Officers managed to trace Firoz to the city of Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh and during an interrogation he revealed the entire plot.The police team then returned to the hospital where they discovered the baby alive and well and returned him to his

mother.Investigators believe the nurse and her accomplice had sold the baby to a middleman for Rs 350,000 (£4230). The middleman then allegedly arranged the Facebook deal with the businessman. They arrested the nurse who they believe was involved with a child trafficking racket and are now attempting to apprehend the middleman, the Delhi-based businessman and any others involved.The accomplice Gurpreet Singh was said to have shown a picture of the baby on Facebook before the deal was struck.

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Arora Punjabi male, 60 yrs. old, 5'-7" tall, well educated, well settled Canadian citizen, divorcee, looking for a compatible life partner, between 50-60 of age, from G.T.A. only. Please send your bio-data and recent picture to: palsachdeva@hotmail.com or call: 289-242-6292 ***644*** Seeking a match for a Jat Sikh Doctor, practicing in GTA. 29 Yrs old, 5’- 10”, slim build, clean shaven, born and raised in Canada, family settled in Toronto, Family oriented, well versed in both cultures. Family is well settled in Toronto. Girl should be born and raisedinCanada, professionally compatible, slim, having similar values. Preferably family in the GTA. Please Send your biodata & recent picture to: gtamatch86@gmail.com or call: 647-295-8532 *** 643 *** Saini Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance from the GTA for their slim, fair, beautiful, 5’2"/ ’83 born daughter, born, raised, educated in Canada, Bachelors in Business Management, and employed in the Finance division of a reputable Canadian company. The boy should be clean shaven, born, raised and educated in Canada & professionally employed. Please email sub2405@gmail.com or call 416-741-0777 *** 642 *** Ramgarhia Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 25 yrs. old, 5’-8” tall, Dental Surgeon in India at present in USA on visitor visa, belongs to a very well settled family. The girl should be American Citizen, beautiful and family oriented.

Please email recent picture and bio-data to: piarausa@hotmail.com Or Call: 1-662-347-9532 ***641*** Mazbi Sikh parents living matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 37 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall, Bechelor in Computer Science from Canadian University, well employed in govt.sector as senior Analyst, never married before.

The boy should be professionally educated and employed, with family values. Caste no bar.

Please send your bio-data and recent picture to: joginder1943@icloud.com Or Call: 416-885-3265 ***641*** Ramgarhia Sikh family invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 34 yrs. old, 5’-9” tall, teetatoler, Bechelor in Computer Application, Working with Multinational Company (MNC, IT) in India, mutually divorced after short marriage, at present in Canada on visitor visa belongs to a well settled family. The girl should be Canadian/American Immigrant/Citizen, educated and family oriented. Brother is well settled in Canada. Boy has already applied for Immigration.

Please email recent recent

17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

picture and bio-data to: soisukhdeep@gmail.com Or Call: 647-203-6979 ***641*** Tonk Kashtriya familly seeking a suitable match for their Canadian Citizen daughter, 28 yrs. old, 5’3” tall, CGA, B.Com, working in Govt. Job. The boy should be well educated, professionally settled.

Caste no bar. Toronto based family is preffered. Please send your bio-data and recent picture to: singhjag_@hotmail.com Or Call : 1-416-722-9771 ***641*** Mair Rajput parents seeking a suitable match for their son, 32 yrs. old, 5’-11” tall, Canadian Citizen, Certification in computer networking and graphic designing, working as a manager in a reputed company in Surrey, divorced (No Kids). The girl should be bearutiful, educated and family oriented. Parents are Canadian PR. Caste no bar.Please email recent picture and bio-data to: ikdesigns999@gmail.com Or Call: 1-604-551-0523 ***641*** Ramgarhia Sikh family from Toronto seeking a well educated, suitable match for their 29 yrs. old, 5’-10” tall, Unversity graduate with honor’s bachelor degree in human resources management persuing C.H.R.L. designation, Ontorio only. Please send your bio-data & recent picture to : skb4531@gmail.com Or Call: 289-752-5031 ***641*** Jat Sikh Atwal parents looking for a suitable match for their son 1984 born, 6’-4” tall, Canadian Immigrnat, M.Com degree holder.

The girl should be family oriented, educated, Candian Immigrant, Citizen, Strudent visa may also be considered. The boy’s family is settled in catgory Canada. Call: 403-615-4958 ***641*** Businessman/Professional from respectable, well established in Canada /USA Sikh family match for Slim Beautiful Tall 25yrs age doing Masters belonging to a highly respectable well established and reputed Khatri Sikh business family based in Canada. Please send your biodata & recent picture to: inderwoodbridge@gmail.com or call: 416-831-2300 *** 641*** Toronto based Ramgharia Sikh parent seeks Doctor match for their M.D. girl (Passed USMLE 1and 2), height 5 feet 3 inches, born 1984, waiting for residency, working as research assistant in USA now. Please send your biodata & recent picture to:ajitjhita@rogers.com or call: 905-672- 0411 or 416-274-4196 *** 641*** Well educated Jatt Sikh Gill family seeks highly qualified professional match for Vancouver based Canadian PR daughter, born 1984, 5'-8" tall, never married, Convent Educated, Registered Nurse from Canada, Working as RN, born & brought up in India. Parents settled in

USA. Divorcee please excuse.

Early and simple marriage.

Serious inquiries only. Respond with bio-data including family details and recent photographs to: matrimonial1907@gmail.com or call: 1-510-303-9173 *** 641*** Thind Kamboj Sikh parents seek matrimonial alliance for their Canadian Immigrant daughter, 28 yrs. old, 5’-2” tall, graduate in B.Sc. Nursing, working as a registered practical nurse. The boy should be well educated, Canadian Immigrant or Citizen, working in Canada & from Kamboj Sikh family only. Uncle’s family is well settled in Canada.

Please send your bio-data & recent picture to : b.s.thind@hotmail.com Or Call : 647-281-9450 Or 011-91-9872117801 ***641*** Professionally Qualified Match for Canadian immigrant, Mechanical Technologist, 25 yrs. old, 5'-10" tall, Ramgarhia boy, Non Drinker , family settled in Canada, B.Sc. Nursing prefered.

Please Send your biodata & recent picture to: surinderplaha@gmail.com or call: 1-778-387-4860 or 16049627031 ** 641*** Arora Sikh family seek a suitable match for their daughter, 30 yrs. old, 5’-7” tall, Canadian Immigrant, B.A., working as a manager in private company, innocently divorced, (one Daughter). The boy should be educated family oriented, tall, well settled, from Canada/America, caste & religion no bar. Please send your recent picture and biodata to: kharneet85@gmail.com Or Call :647-877-4399 ***641*** Well settled Jat Sikh Gill family seeks a suitable match for their daughter, 33 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, college gradute with diploma in Business administration and accounting. The boy should be 30-37 yrs. of age, well qualified and raised in Canada. Please Call: 905-874-0721 ***641*** Ramdasia Sikh family seek a suitable match for their daughter, 37 yrs. old, 5’-3” tall, Innocently divorced, Issue less, M.A.B.Ed, living in India, Punjab. The boy should be Canadian Immigrant or citizen, educated family oriented, Caste no Bar. Sister is well settled in Canada. Please send your biodata & recent picture to: neeti6@hotmail.com Or Call : 416-877-0947 ***641*** Jat Sikh Sekhon parents invite matrimonial alliance for their son, 27 yrs. old, 5’-9” tall, B.Com degree holder, living in India, non drinker/ non smoker, belongs to a very reputable business/politically strong family. The girl should be Canadian Immigrant/Citizen, educated, beautiful with family values. Please email recent picture and bio-data to jaspreet_manan@yahoo.com Or Call : 1-978-020-5330

***641*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their beautiful daughter, never married, B.Sc. Nursing (Specialist in Emergency Nursing), Working in Hospital, 37 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall. The boy should be Jat Sikh, educated handsome & well settled.

Call: 1-778-242-9250 ***641*** Ahluwalia Sikh family invites matrimonial alliance for their son, 25 yrs. old, 6’-2” tall, Canadian Immigrant, M.S. mechanical, working as an engineer in a reputed firm in Toronto, belongs to a very good family. The girl should be beautiful, atleast 5’-6” tall, educated, family oriented from Canada/America. Please email recent recent picture and bio-data to: jasvirsingh603@gmail.com Or Call: 011-91-98143-42503 Or 1510-604-2926 ***641*** Arora Gur Sikh parents looking for a suitable match for their son 31 year old, 5’-8” tall, Canadian Citizen, graduate in IT, working as IT specialist, Non-alcohalic. The whole family is well settled in Canada. The girl should be well educated, family oriented, Canadian Citizen/Immigrant, Student Visa, work permit holder.

Please send your recent picture and bio-data to: harsimran99@gmail.com Or Call : 905-755-1244 ***641*** Seeking a suitable matrimonial alliance for a beautiful, fair, slim, Jat Sikh Sidhu girl, 30.4.1986 born, 5’5” tall, highly educated (B.Sc., M.Sc. Botany, B.Ed., PDCA), working as a Lecturer Botany in a reputed college in Punjab, well cultured, pure vegetarian, good status family. Many respectable, well establshed close relatives in Surrey, B.C. Eearly Marriage.

Please send your bio-data and recent picture to : sidhugurpreet91@yahoo.ca Or Call : 1-604-825-4276 (Before 9 A.M. or After 8 P.M.) or : 011-9194644-19612 (India) ***641*** Jat Sikh girl, 32 yrs. old, 5’-6” tall, Canadian Citizen, working in a Bank, divorced after short marriage, seeking a suitable match. The boy should be Canadian Citizen, professionally employed, well educated. Please send your biodata and recent picture to : gill.roop@hotmail.com Or Call : 604-832-3422 ***641*** Ramgarhia Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their beautiful daughter, 26 yrs. old,

5’-4” tall, partialy manglik, very pretty, family oriented, M.B.A. degree in Accounting and presently living in India. The boy should be Canadian Immigrant/Citizen, professionaly qualified and employed. Brother is well settled in Canada. Please email recent picture and biodata to: navtejsingh@hotmail.com Or Call : 647-701-5157 ***641*** California based educated Punjabi family, seeks educated, U.S.A. green card/ citizen & family oriented girl for 33 yrs. old, 6’ tall, handsome, M.B.A., B . Te c h .

SAP Certified, Canadian Citizen, Innocently divorced, Engineer boy, Now in U.S.A. Caste no Bar. Please send your biodata & recent picture to: svk.live@live.ca Or Call :1-916539-5484 ***641*** Jat Sikh parents seek a suitable match for their son, Canadian Citizen, 30 yrs. old, 6’-2” tall, born in India, University degree holder from Canadian University, running his own successful business.

The girl sould be tall, educated from good family. Please send your bio-data and recent picture to : manpreetgill48@yahoo..com Or Cal : 1-778-344-0303 ***641*** Jat Sikh parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 27 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall, Canadian Citizen, beautiful, v e r y f a i r, s l i m , d e n ta l lhygienist, family oriented and well versed in both cultures.

The boy should be handsome, Jat Sikh, Cle an Shaven, professionally qualified and employed, settled businessman with good family values, preferably from GTA (Toronto). Respond with biodata and recent picture to : sarjeet_dhugge@hotmail.com Or Call : 647-502-4220 ***641*** Jat Sikh Brar parents invite matrimonial alliance for their daughter, 28 yrs. old, 5’-4” tall, B.Sc. Nursing working as Registered Nurse well versed in both culters and family oriented. The boy should be professionally qualified with family values from Jat Sikh faimily, Canada only. Please email recent picture and biodata to avtar.brar@hotmail.com Or Call :416-930-3261

Housekeeper Wanted Everyday duties include: Cleaning the house on 3 levels, kitchen, dishes, counter, floor, fridge, cupboards, dishwashers, washing, drying clothing and ironing, preparing lunch & dinner, grocery shopping, keeping the household supplies fully stocked, receiving & serving guests, bed making, linen changing, daily massage for elderly woman, etc. Driving license a must. Livein only. Serious inquiries please. Be prepared to state your salary expectations. Must have 1-2 yrs. of working experience in a fast paced environment.

Please call: 647-632-3999

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

Millions more using contraception, ISIS supporters laud Paris especially in South Asia, Africa attacks on social media NEW YORK A record 290.6 million women and girls in the world’s poorest nations are using modern methods of contraception, averting

millions of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions, a global family planning rights group said on Thursday.

The biggest jumps in contraceptive usage since 2012 showed up in South Asia, up 47 percent, and eastern and southern Africa, up 22 percent, 2012, the global partnersip FP2020 said in a report.

However, while the overall number of contraceptive users has risen 24.4

million since FP2020 launched its effort three years ago, the rate of increase is falling short of its goal of adding 120 million users by 2020, the

group said. The present number of users is 10 million fewer than it had hoped for by now, the Washington, D.C.-based group said. “Family planning saves lives and unlocks the potential of women, their families and communities. But while we have made progress, the latest data show that we’re not yet meeting our goals,” the report said. The effort was launched in 2012 in 69 focus countries. Looking at

the countries’ typical rates of unintended pregnancies, the use of modern contraception by 290.6 million women and girls averted an estimated 80 million pregnancies, 28.6 million unsafe abortions and 111,000 maternal deaths this year, it said. Among nations showing progress was Kenya, where contraceptive use rose to 58 percent of married women in 2014 from 46 percent in 2009. Much of the improvement can be traced to Kenya’s community-based distribution of injectable contraceptives, it said.

Zambia’s contraceptive prevalence also improved, rising to 45 percent from 33 percent in 2012, partly because the nation doubled its budget for family planning, the report said. Ten nations that are home to half the women of reproductive age in the 69 focus countries are not showing marked advances, among them India, Pakistan and the Philippines, it said.

Portrait of Camilla’s ex sells for $34.89m in NY

NEW YORK A Lucian Freud portrait of the ex-husband of Britain’s Duchess of Cornwall, Andrew Parker Bowles, sold for $34.89 million in New York on Tuesday, Christie’s said.

The giant oil painting smashed its pre-sale estimate of $30 million. The British artist created it between 2003-04, shortly before Camilla married the Prince of Wales, her longtime lover. Called simply “The Brigadier” in honor of Parker-Bowles’ career in the British Army, it was the runner-up lot in the evening sale of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s. Top lot was “Four Marilyns” a silkscreen acrylic painted

by US pop art genius Andy Warhol in 1962 and sold for $36 million. The evening

netted $331.8 million in sales and set new auction records for seven artists, including Italian 20th century painter Lucio Fontana and FrenchAmerican artist Louise Bourgeois. Fontana’s “Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio” -- a yellow egg slashed in the canvas -sold for $29.17 million and Bourgeois’ giant “Spider” sculpture for $28.17 million, the auction house said.

“Untitled” -- an installation

by Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres comprising small, individually wrapped green candies -- sold for $7.67 million, Christie’s said.

It set a world auction record for Gonzalez-Torres.

The total weight of the candies are 50 pounds (22.7 kilos), representing the weight of his partner

just before he died of an AIDS-related illness. It was created in 1991, the year his partner died.

Christie’s says the work “evokes the fragility of life and the artist’s remarkable talent for creating joy in a moment of sorrow.”

Bidders from 39 countries took part in the sale, with a very strong showing from Asia competing against demand from Europe and America. It came one day after Christie’s sold a sensuous nude by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani for $170.4 million, making it the second most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.

It was purchased by taxi driver turned billionaire Liu Yiqian, one of China’s biggest art collectors, who founded two museums in Shanghai.

Paris With France reeling from the series of attacks that struck the heart of the city in Paris with bombings and multiple shooting that have left over 150 dead, many supporters and sympathisers of ISIS took to social media to celebrate the brutal carnage using the hashtag ‘parisisburning’.

A tweet said, “God is great and thank God for these lone wolf attacks. At least 100 hostages and countless wounded.”

There were messages boasting predictions of similar horrific attacks in Washington DC and London.An ISIS sympathiser tweeted after the attack saying the attack would be imprinted on the minds of every Parisian they way it has been established in the minds of Americans after 9/11.However, the extremist terrorist organisation is yet to officially take responsibility for the deadly attacks. Their customary method of doing so usually includes the circulation of a video

or an audio recording justifying their attack or execution. Eyewitnesses reportedly saw gunmen shout out ‘it’s for Syria’ and

was yet to ‘decapitate’ their command and control structures.

In an attack that is being touted as the deadliest of

‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great) before opening fire and slaughtering around 100 people inside the Bataclan concert hall where music fans were attending a concert.Co-incidentally, the attacks came in the wake of emerging reports that British ISIS terrorist ‘Jihadi John’ known for beheading prisoners (mostly American) in mass circulated videos, had been killed by a US drone strike in Syria.U.S President Barack Obama had said in an interview on Friday morning that his government had managed to ‘contain’ the ISIS but

its kind that Paris has faced since World War II which has left the nation reeling from grief, French President Hollande in a strong message swore to the country that he intends to take revenge on those who committed the ‘barbaric’ act.The deadly attack reportedly began in the French capital at a soccer stadium where a match was underway as explosions set off.

Simultaneously, terrorists armed with AK-47s and bombs strapped to them began attacking in different sites throughout the city.

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

US senators plan roadblocks ‘Indiana Jones’ wins against Indian guest workers coveted TED Prize WASHINGTON Two US Senators have introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at reforming the controversial H1-B and L-1 visa programmes under which more than a million

professional guest workers have come to America since it was introduced in 1991, many of them eventually becoming permanent US residents and citizens.

Arguing that the original intent of the guest worker visas were being consistently violated and abused, Senators Chuck Grassley (Republican) and Dirk Durbin (Democrat), two of the foremost critics of the programmes, have introduced a bill that will effectively institute greater check and roadblocks against companies that they say have gamed the system to take away American jobs using wage arbitrage. Alhough they are not explicitly cited or named, it is wellknown that Indian IT services companies and US companies and their subsidiaries with extensive IT engagement in India bag more than 50% of such visas every year. Among other provisions, the Grassley-Durbin bill will prohibit companies from

hiring H-1B employees if they employ more than 50 people and more than 50% of their employees are H-1B and L-1visa holders. The bill also gives the department of labour enhanced

authority to review, investigate, and audit employer compliance with programme requirements, as well as to penalise fraudulent or abusive conduct. It requires the production of extensive statistical data about the H-1B and L-1programmes, including wage data, worker education levels, place of employment and gender. The bill clarifies that working conditions of similarly employed American workers may not be adversely affected by the hiring of the H-1B worker, including H-1B workers who have been placed by another employer at the American worker’s worksite. In addition, it explicitly prohibits the replacement of American workers by H-1B or L-1visa holders.“The H-1B visa programme was never meant to replace qualified American workers, but it was instead intended as a means to fill gaps in highly specialised areas of

Indian doctors in US seek Bill Clinton’s help on India’s health issues

WASHINGTON Indian-American doctors have sought assistance from former US President Bill Clinton and his foundation to find lasting solutions to pressing health problems affecting millions of people in India. “President Clinton expressed keen interest on AAPI’s Obesity Campaign and was appreciative of the healthcare initiatives of AAPI and its members for their ongoing support and collaboration,” said Seema Jain, president American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI). “We are looking forward to working with

the Clinton Foundation that builds partnerships of great purpose between businesses, governments, NGOs, and individuals to work faster, better, and leaner, will work with AAPI in realising some of the noble goals we have set before us,” Jain said after she led a delegation of AAPI officials to meet Clinton.

Jain highlighted the importance of AAPI’s initiatives launched for working towards health issues that are of importance to India, particularly on diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, trauma & head injury and mental health issues, including depression.

employment that cannot be filled

by Americans. The abuse of the system is real, and media reports are validating what we have argued against for years, including the fact that Americans are training their replacements,” Senator Grassley said in a statement upon introducing the bill.“For years, foreign outsourcing companies have used loopholes in the laws to displace qualified American workers and facilitate the Altoutsourcing of American jobs.

The H-1B and L-1Visa Reform Act would end these abuses and protect American and foreign workers from exploitation,” added Durbin. The Indian IT industry has maintained that the guest worker visa programmes eventually improve the bottom line of American businesses. Many H1B visa holders also go on to become productive and high tax-paying green card holders and citizens of the US. They point out that Washington has already instituted a high bar and many roadblock, including huge visa processing fees, in steps that some argue is tantamount to unfair trade practice since India regards its skilled and knowledgeable guest workers as a resource. The Grassley-Durbin reform bill will however allow foreign students continued stay and passage in the US by prioritising, for the first time, the annual allocation of H-1B visas.

The new system would ensure that the best and brightest students being educated in the United States receive preference for an H-1B visa.

SAN FRANCISCO A technology-wielding archaeologist billed as a modern world “Indiana Jones” won a coveted million-dollar TED prize Monday for her work tracking antiquities and the looting of such wonders. Sarah Parcak was named winner of a 2016 TED Prize that provides a million dollars to kickstart a big-vision “wish” and opens a door to call on the nonprofit organization’s innovative, influential and ingenious community of “tedsters.” Parcak is to reveal her wish at an annual TED

Conference in Vancouver in February. “I am honored to receive the TED Prize, but it’s not about me; it’s about our field - and the thousands of men and women around the world, particularly in the Middle East, who are defending and protecting sites,” Parcak said.

“The last four and half years have been horrific for archeology.”

Parcak bemoaned extensive looting and destruction at archaeological sights that she has mapped using a method she created for processing satellite imagery.

Indian-American appointed to key university position in Texas Padma Shri awardee IndianAmerican Ashok Mago has been appointed as a member of Board of Regents of the University of North Texas in the US. Dallasbased Mago was appointed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott for a six-year term ending on May 22, 2021, said a statement issued

by the Governor’s office on Monday. Mago is the founding chairman of the Greater Dallas Indo American Chamber, now known as the US-INDIA Chamber, and board member of the Primary Care Clinic of North Texas, advisory board member of BBVA Compass Bank in Dallas.

3 Indian-origin CEOs in Fortune’s list of global biz leaders NEW YORK Three Indian-origin CEOs, including Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and MasterCard’s Ajay Banga, have been named among the top 50 global business leaders by Fortune magazine, a list that is topped

by Nike’s Mike Parker.

While global payment solutions provider MasterCard’s Banga is ranked at the fifth position, Cognizant’s chief Francisco D’Souza has been ranked 16th followed by software giant Microsoft’s Nadella at the 47th spot. Other people on the list includes Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg at the second place, followed by Electronic Arts’ CEO Andrew Wilson (3), Apple’s Tim Cook (4), Ulta Beauty’s Mary Dillon (6), Xiaomi’s Lei Jun (7), Uber’s Travis Kalanick (8), Chipotle’s Steve Ells and Montgomery Moran (9) and Biogen’s George Scangos (10).

All of them are Chief Executive Officers.About Banga, the magazine said that under him, MasterCard has doubled profits

and revenue in five years.

Besides, he has been aggressively acquiring companies to build its technological edge.“This year, Banga signed a 10-year deal that

locks in almost all Citi cards as MasterCards and a similar 20year deal with Itau Unibanco in Brazil. Shares are up 40 per cent in the past two years as MasterCard swipes its way toward USD 10 billion in revenue,” it noted.Fortune said D’Souza has kept Cognizant on the “cutting edge” not only with digital services, analytics and cloud services but also by expanding its health care segment and its biggest acquisition to date of health care IT-services provider called TriZetto.“The son of an Indian diplomat, he taught himself

programming in high school, joined Cognizant in 1994, and has been CEO since 2007,” it said.The rankings are based on ten metrics including financial results -- which formed the backbone of the analysis along with stock performance and total shareholder returns over the same periods and factored in each’s ratio of debt to capital, Fortune said.According to the magazine, Nadella faces the unpleasant task of grappling with the slow decline of the company’s once impregnable bulwarks as he tackles the challenge of shifting from a world-centered around the PC and purchased software to a universe of mobile devices and streamed (or even free) software.“But Nadella is rising to the task. Microsoft’s Surface tablet/PC passed USD 1 billion in annual sales, can be seen on the sidelines in NFL games, and feels like a bona fide offering (as opposed to an embarrassing me-too like the Zune),” it added.

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

New bluetooth devices Chinese collector snaps up track down lost items $170.4m Modigliani in New York

SAN FRANCISCO French tech startup Wistiki late Thursday presented new hightech devices to track down lost items from your smartphone, produced in collaboration with renowned designer Philippe Starck. Wistiki, founded last year, is known for its small tiles that can be attached to items that are constantly misplaced - a set of keys or a purse, for example.

These lost items can then be tracked down via Bluetooth on an app that works on Apple and Android smartphones.

Bruno Lussato, one of the three brothers behind the company, held a San Francisco press conference to showcase the new line of gadgets, which include a slim card that fits inside a wallet and a medallion-shaped tag for a pet’s collar. If any of these items are lost they can be tracked down via the smartphone app, with a find radius of about 100 meters. The new gadgets can be pre-ordered via the Indiegogo crowd-funding

website, for delivery in March 2016.Award-winning designer Starck is known for, among other things, designing Apple founder Steve Jobs’s yacht, as well as high-end hotel and restaurant interiors and more humble items like furniture and thermostats.

Starck, who was supposed to be at the event but instead was stuck in South America, may have benefitted from using a Wistiki device. “He lost his passport, he’s still in Ecuador,” Lussato said.

NEW YORK A Chinese collector snapped up a sensuous Modigliani nude for $170.4 million in New York, setting a new world record price at auction for the Italian artist in a bumper Christie’s sale. The evening auction also set world auction records for US pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, whose “Nurse” fetched $95.37 million, as well as for 19th century French painter Gustave Courbet. It raked in a total of $491.35 million, busting pre-sale estimates of $443 million marking a return to form after a sluggish opening auction at Sotheby’s suggested that bumper profits might be levelling off. Modigliani’s “Nu Couche” or “Reclining,” painted in 1917-18, sold after a frantic nine-minute bidding war between seven would-be buyers on the first time the painting has ever come to auction. It was the second highest price ever achieved at auction for a work or art and applause erupted in the

packed room when the sale concluded - clinched by a Chinese buyer on the telephone, Christie’s said. It was just $9

luscious red couch and blue cushion, and provoked a scandal when it was first exhibited by the Italian artist in Paris.

million shy of the world record of $179.4 million for Picasso’s “The Women of Algiers (Version 0)” which the auction house sold in New York last May in a recordbreaking spring season. The Modigliani oil on canvas depicts a naked woman reclining on a

A crowd gathered outside the window and outraged police ordered the exhibition to shut down immediately. “We are in a masterpiece market,” said Jussi Pylkkanen, who led the auction, adding that the rare and important works on offer “created a huge amount of energy and biding.” The painting has exhibited in some of the finest art galleries all over the world including at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The previous record for a Modigliani was $70.7 million set in November 2014 for a sculpture. The evening sale entitled “The Artist’s Muse” also set a new record at auction for Lichtenstein, with his “Nurse” selling for $95.37 million. That made it a shrewd investment for the seller, who acquired the iconic piece of American pop art and comic book-inspired portrait for $1.65 million in 1995. The price reached for the shocked looking blonde with sexy red lips smashed the previous record for a Lichtenstein - $56 million paid for “Women with Flowered Hat” in 2013. Simple yet mysterious, the painting, measuring 48 by 48 inches (122 by 122 centimeters) appears as fresh today as when it was painted in 1964, and the image remains popular across the world. It comes from the height of the US pop art movement and is a regular in retrospectives on Lichtenstein, who died in 1997. Monday’s sale follows record-breaking sales in New York in May, when more than $2.6 billion of art was sold in 10 days.

A Courbet “Femme Nue Couchee” sold for $15.29 million - four times higher than the artist’s previous record of $3.74 million. Another highlight was a work in wood by Paul Gauguin, “Therese,” which fetched $30.97 million, setting a new world auction record for a sculpture by the French artist. Another standout was a Paul Cezanne, “L’homme a la pipe” which went for $20.89 million. But 10 lots failed to sell, including a nude portrait of Bella Freud, the fashion designer daughter of British painter Lucian Freud, which was estimated to be worth $20-30 million.

Seattle cleans up sticky situation at infamous Gum Wall SEATTLE A gum-covered wall in the US city of Seattle that had become a major tourist draw is finally getting a cleanup after more than two decades, officials said Wednesday. A three-man crew began removing the more than one million gum wads with highpressure steam cleaners on Tuesday and were expected to finish the job on Thursday, Emily Crawford, a spokeswoman for Pike Place Market, where the infamous Gum Wall is located, told AFP. She said the wall, started in an alley in 1991 by patrons of a nearby theater, had spread over the years as people sought space for their

masticated mess. “Visitors started wanting to find clean space to put their gum so instead of adding to the wall they would walk down the alley and find their own brick or clean space,”

Crawford said. “It’s very sticky and goopy and it has just gotten to the point where over the summer there was just so much gum down there that it’s ending up on the alley floor and it has

Obama launches Facebook page, sends message on climate WASHINGTON The White House launched a Facebook page on Monday for President Barack Obama and used the social media platform to send a message on climate change.

Organizing for Action, the political organization that helped elect Obama, has long used an account under the name “Barack Obama.” But the new page allows the president to speak in the first person, much like the Twitter account the White House launched for Obama in May. Striking a conversational tone, Obama’s first post was a video message on climate change that depicted the president walking around the South Lawn of the White House and marveling at the beauty of nature. “Hello, Facebook! I finally got my very own page,” Obama said in the post. “I’m kicking it off by inviting

you to take a walk with me in my backyard - something I try to do at the end of the day before I head in for dinner.” In the video, Obama called on Americans to do their part to fight climate change. “I want to make sure that the whole world is able to pass onto future generations the Godgiven beauty of this planet,”

Obama said, citing his upcoming trip to Paris to meet with world leaders on climate change. “If all of America is joining around this critical project, then we can have confidence that we’re doing right by future generations and passing onto our kids all the blessings that we’ve received,” Obama said.

quite an odor.”

Crawford added that while the much-photographed wall was colorful and drew visitors, it was also germ-infested. “From a distance it can look colorful but once I’m close it repels me,” she said. “Looking at a bunch of gum with a cigarette butt in it isn’t very attractive.” Local artists have been invited to decorate the cleaned-up space on Saturday except for the area of the original brick Gum Wall, which will remain empty in order to welcome more gooey gum. “We expect people to come back and contribute to the wall again and that’s fun,” Crawford said.

“People love it.”

Pepsi cans act as a disguise for Heineken in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia with an exception of Dubai is severely restricted.

Legally Alcohol is banned in Saudi Arabia. However, there are people in Saudi Arabia who drink.

Saudi Arabia like every other country in the middle east is severely restricted however there are people in the country who drink. If you were wondering how they get the alcohol. Smugglers often have to resort to creative measures. One such case is how multiple reports from Saudi Press describe how Saudi authorities caught a man with 48,000 cans of Heineken disguised as Pepsi Soda. Al Batha Border General Manager Abdul Rahman Al Manhna said, “A truck carrying what first seemed to be ordinary cans of the soft drink Pepsi was stopped.

After the standard process of searching the products, it became apparent that the alcoholic beers were covered with Pepsiâ•™s sticker logos” as reported by Al Arabiya news.

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

AAP leaders in Canada to woo NRI Punjabi diaspora New Delhi With eyes set on the 2017 Punjab assembly polls, a delegation of AAP leaders has flown to Canada to woo the NRI Punjabi

diaspora settled in the North American country in a bid to strengthen the party’s voter base in the state as well as attract overseas donation.

Top AAP leaders Sanjay Singh, also the party’s Punjab affairs in charge, and Ashutosh along with leaders from the state have started holding dialogues with the Punjab natives. Incidentally, it is Singh’s second visit to Canada this year.

“The trip is meant for interaction and engagement with those who belong to Punjab,”

Ashutosh said over phone.

When contacted, a party leader said, “Canada is to the people of Punjab what Delhi and Mumbai are to Biharis and UPiites. A lot

of migrant population from the state is settled in Canada and therefore, households in each village will have have someone or the other working in Canada.”

“The Indians working in Canada not only hold economic power because of the money they send back, but can also influence voters. More importantly, they are also a major source of fund for the party,” the AAP leader said.

Of the overseas donation received by the AAP, major contributors are from the

US and Canada. The party had sought to reach out to Punjab natives in Canada during the Lok Sabha polls as well. “During such visits, we canvas support for the party and such delegations also help spread party’s tentacles. In fact all the parties do this,” the AAP leader said.

Apart from Canada, a lot of natives from Punjab are also settled in Australia, the US, the UK and Malaysia. AAP is planning to send party delegations in these countries in coming days to garner support and raise funds.

With an aim to wrest power in Punjab after having made its presence felt in the state during the Lok Sabha elections, AAP had recently made structural changes in the state unit, which irked many in the party. AAP had opened its account in the Lok Sabha by winning four seats in Punjab in 2014 general elections.

However, two of its MPs Dharamvira Gandhi and Harinder Singh Khalsa have been suspended on the charge of anti-party activities.

Canada’s Sikh defence minister faces racial abuse TORONTO Canada’s newly-appointed Sikh defence minister Harjit Sajjan has allegedly faced racist remarks by a soldier on social media, prompting the Canadian Armed Forces to launch a probe.

The military declined to identify the soldier or

three tours of duty for the Forces in Afghanistan, and one in Bosnia, and worked as a detective in the Vancouver Police Service.The incident of disrespect to the minister prompted Chief Warrant Officer Kevin West to send an e-mail to soldiers warning against such

precisely what was written, but a source said the noncommissioned member from Quebec, made an “inappropriate statement” on Facebook about Indiaborn Sajjan’s “ethnic background”, The Globe and Mail reported.Sajjan immigrated to Canada from India when he was a young boy. The offensive post, which was written in French, was quickly removed. A Forces spokesman said the army’s chain of command is probing the matter.

Sajjan is a decorated military veteran who served

conduct, the newspaper said. He lamented the fact a high-ranking member of the forces made “negative” comments about the minister and warned them

against disrespectful behaviour, adding that to say he is angry would be an understatement.The Forces issued a strong statement on Wednesday condemning the behaviour.

“We are very much aware of an incident in which a Canadian Armed Forces member wrote inappropriate comments on social media about the new minister of national defence,” Forces spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier said.

“Racist attitudes are not compatible with military ethos and with effective military service. Any conduct that reflects such attitudes will not be tolerated,” he said. “As previously stated by chief of the defence staff Jonathan Vance, bullies have no place in the organisation.”

Shooting wounds policeman, 2 Indian nationals in Saudi Arabia RIYADH Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry says gunmen shot at a security patrol in the country’s predominantly Shiite eastern region, wounding a policeman and two Indian nationals passing by.

Ministry’s spokesman,

Maj. Gen. Mansour alTurki, says the attack took place on Monday evening as the patrol was checking on the security situation in al-Khuwaildiya district in the predominantly Shiite eastern region of al-Qatif.

He says the wounded were taken to a hospital.

Indian boy in UAE becomes youngest affiliate of global body of chartered accountants London A graduate from the Indian High School, Dubai, Ramkumar Raman has to complete three years of qualified work experience in order to attain the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) membership, Khaleej Times reported.

Raman has been recognized by officials in the ACCA Middle East as the youngest ACCA affiliate ever registered among all other candidates, affiliates and members. “As of now, Raman holds the record for the youngest ACCA affiliate amongst our records,” Herriot Fitgerald, the ACCA

academic adviser in Middle East was quoted as saying by the newspaper. ACCA candidates generally start their qualification journey at

the age of 18. The examinations are split into three levels namely Knowledge Module, Skills Module and the Professional Module totally making 14 papers. These

papers are attempted over a span of three years. “I began coaching for examinations in September 2012 and I wrote the final exam in June 2015,” Raman said.

“As far as my earlier previous exams are concerned, I don’t think I performed that well. When it comes to marks, I scored a 8.6 CGPA in grade 10 and an 87 per cent in 12th,” said Raman. Founded in 1904, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants is the global professional accounting body offering the Chartered Certified Accountant qualification.

state. Having termed the event as a Congress handiwork, Sukhbir also

accused the party of sending its leaders and workers to the congregation.

In a statement here, Sukhbir urged the Sikh community to understand the “entire conspiracy which is hatched to take Punjab back to an era of turmoil”.

He said the community needed to understand who had indulged in wanton acts of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib.

Ex-terrorists have reunited against moderates says Sukhbir

CHANDIGARH Punjab deputy chief minister and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday dubbed Simranjit Singh Mann and other Sikh radical leaders who were part of the November 10 congregation as “former terrorists who have reunited to finish the moderate Sikh leadership in Punjab and impose an ISI-Taliban-like rule” in the

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

Salman Khan impresses with his Barjatya act Cast: Salman Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Anupam Kher, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Swara Bhaskar, Armaan Kohli, Deepak Dobriyal Direction: Sooraj Barjatya Ratings: 3 Stars Blood is thicker than water. That’s what Sooraj Barjatya films are mostly about. Family ties, the stresses and tensions that every family needs to go through and the likes. If you’ve watched this director’s films in the past, you’d get the

drift. If not, there’s always Salman Khan to fall back on.

Prem Ratan Dhan Payo is touted as Salman Khan’s return to the onscreen Prem, to the prelapsarian Eden where the superstar was still human and not a super-

hero-human hybrid that Wanted had turned him into. This year, Khan has already checked that Acting Human box with Kabir Khan’s Bajrangi Bhaijaan. With Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, he just does it twice as much.

Prem Dilwala (Salman Khan) makes a living narrating the Ramleela in Ayodhya. His troupe consists of Kanhaiya (Deepak Dobriyal), who plays Sita in the Ramleela. Prem is in awe of Rajkumari Maithili (Sonam Kapoor), who

runs the Uphaar Foundation, an NGO which helps calamity-affected people. Prem donates all his earnings from the show to this foundation, and expresses his desire to meet Maithili. When he is told that she is to travel to Pritampur for the

coronation of Prince Vijay Singh (Salman, again), Maithili’s fiance, Prem decides to go and hand over his donations to Uphaar to the lady.

Meanwhile, in Pritampur, Vijay lives with his loyal Diwan Sa’ab (Anupam Kher) and half-brother Ajay (Neil Nitin Mukesh).

His half-sisters Chandrika (Swara Bhaskar) and Radhika (Aashika Bhatia) haven’t spoken to him in years.

There’s an attack on Vijay’s life, and the prince is left incapacitated. What ensues is a

case of mistaken identities, family battles and so on.

As both Prem and Vijay, Salman Khan does a commendable job. He mostly tries to not be Salman Khan, and is immensely enjoyable when he does not do so.

Just the fact that the theatre erupted in claps, wolf-whistles and shouts every time Salman entered the screen is a reminder of the superstar’s popularity.

However, while Salman nails his role as the happy-go-lucky Prem Dilwala, his dialogues as Vijay seem to miss a note. Sonam plays her coy-at-times, confidentat-others Maithili with elan. There are times her acting comes across as a bit forced, though.

Among the supporting cast, Anupam Kher is

largely believable as the ageing, loyal Diwan who has dedicated his life to guarding the royal family.

Neil Nitin Mukesh, Swara Bhaskar and Aashika Bhatia are believable in their characters. Armaan Kohli looks like he’s

ambled to Prem Ratan Dhan Payo from his Jaani Dushman sets, albeit in better clothes.

His intense dialogues come across, if anything, as funny.

Barjatya’s story is all to do with the family. The grandness of the sets and the lavish props make the film unbelievable at times. Along with talk of maharajas and rajtilak, one is forced to suppress a sigh of disbelief at times.

The cinematography helps gloss over a lot of flaws in the film. The shot where there’s an attack on Vijay’s life is captured exceptionally well. V Manikandan’s camera deserves much praise for the same.

The abundance of songs in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo is a major hin-

drance to the pace of the film. Sure, Barjatya is known for the number of songs in his films, but maybe he needed to realise that it’s 2015.

The audience’s patience with songs has reduced a lot from the last time he went behind the camera. Speaking of the songs, the title track doesn’t let any other song come even close to being an earworm. All one remembers of Himesh Reshammiya’s music after exiting the theatres is Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. In all, the film works for both Salman Khan and Sooraj Barjatya’s specific audience bases. While a Salman fan might miss his super-human antics at times, he does a great job otherwise. Watch the film for Salman.

Kamal Haasan fans will feel fulfilled, but only in parts Cast: Kamla Haasan, Trisha, Prakash Raj, Sampath, Yugi Sethu, Kishore Direction: Rajesh M Selva Ratings: 2 Stars The film begins with Siripu Varthu Varuthu, a classic Chandra Babu song, running in the background.

You see the words ‘Kamal Haasan’ in a simple font, fading in without any CG gimmicks. And even the film title flickers in without any noise. If these things don’t surprise you, Kamal Haasan’s intro scene might.

Kamal Haasan’s remakes

have always justified the originals, and in some cases, they have gone a notch higher in the making and success. But not in case of Thoongaavanam, which is a remake of the French thriller Nuit Blanche (Sleepless Night). In spite of retaining almost much of the original script, the film fails to make an impact.

Diwakar, who seems like a corrupt cop from the Narcotics Control Bureau, along with his colleague, steals cocaine from Vital Rao (Prakash Raj), a gangster. Vital Rao, in turn,

kidnaps and holds Kamal’s son hostage to get back his cocaine. In the sleepless night spent inside the pub, Diwakar struggles hard to get his son back.

In the process of adding a tone of humour to the film, the villains are humanised to a level that the audience doesn’t empathise with the agony of Diwakar. Even when the bodies drop dead, you don’t feel the intensity or the seriousness of the situation. Though the witty dialogues make you laugh, they are not in consonance with the story. It all looks

contrived and inserted.

Thoongaavanam, which should have been done and dusted in 90 minutes, is dragged to fit the conventional time-expectations of the Indian audience. The French film’s script doesn’t stick with the three-part film grammar, which is prevalent here. The interval block becomes fatal to the flow of the film. But Kamal has broken many conventions of Tamil cinema with Thoongaavanam. There are moments in the film which are unheard of in Tamil films.

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

As a celebrity, it is our responsibility to have an opinion these days says Sonam Kapoor

Sonam Kapoor’s big Bollywood debut had happened in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya. Despite Salman Khan’s cameo and being the launch vehicle of two star kids (Sonam and Ranbir Kapoor), the film turned out to be a damp squib.

Eight years later, Sonam is a lot more confident, and has grown as both an actor and a person, she believes. As an actor, she is playing a role across Salman Khan in Sooraj Barjatya’s Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, which has a hefty ‘Rs 90-crore’ tag attached to it. An

indicator of her growth as a person is that she feels celebrities have a certain responsibility to be speaking about issues that matter, about issues beyond their immediate work. Even at the cost of being trolled? She has a way to deal with the attacks too, ‘I mostly ignore them.’

Ahead of the release of Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, Sonam speaks to IndiaToday.in about her choices, the pressure of being a star kid, her fears of being a Salman Khan heroine and more.

Excerpts from the gigglepunctuated conversation:

The last time we saw you on screen with Salman Khan, you were a newcomer to the industry. Now, you’re paired alongside him for Prem Ratan Dhan Payo.

What would you say is different?

What has changed... I don’t know, I guess it’s been eight years of me in this industry. Hopefully, I’ve grown as an actor, I’ve grown as a person. I guess that has changed.

Change is the only constant in life... everything changes! (laughs) Does the weight of being a Salman Khan /

Katrina Kaif doesn’t want to talk about ex-boyfriend Salman Khan. Here’s why Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan had kept the grapevine busy for a long

time when the two were dating. From friends to lovers and back to a cordial relationship, Salman and Katrina have been tracked all along

by Bollywoodgossip-consumers. Once the two parted ways, the grapevine went into a tizzy.

Reams of papers were filled left, right and centre about Salman and Katrina’s relationship at that point in time: whether they were on talking terms or avoiding each other. While Katrina always maintained that

Salman was a dear friend, it was left to people to draw their own inferences from what she said. It was in 2012 that Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan stunned all their fans when the two got together for Kabir Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger. As of 2015, while Katrina is in an inthe-public-eye relationship with Ranbir Kapoor, Salman continues to elude all talk of relationship and marriage.

In a recent appearance on a talk show, Katrina was asked about her relationship with the Prem Ratan Dhan Payo actor. To that, Kaif’s response was, “He is an amazing person and everyone in and out of the industry knows that.

Sooraj Barjatya heroine scare you in any way whatsoever?

Yes, of course it scares me. But I’ve tried my best and I’ve worked my hardest. And hopefully, that’s enough. But ya, you need to work hard and try to do what you can do. You’ve been compared to Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan both, as far as being paired with Salman is concerned. Salman even went ahead and said that he found you more beautiful than Aishwarya... (laughs) He’s just... he’s silly! He’s just saying

that to make me feel happy. I guess when you’re promoting a film, because it’s Salman... It was really very sweet of him to say that, but I honestly feel like I’m not even as close to being as beautiful as Aishwarya. I don’t think that’s true.

So... beauty is in the eyes of the beholder! (laughs).

Salman has said it out loud that he found it quite difficult romancing you in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. Did the same happen with you too?

No, no, not at all! I think it’s very interesting...

when you have the biggest superstar of the country, who’s incredibly good-looking and incredibly nice, it’s very easy to romance someone like that. It’s easy.

You were not intimidated by him, even a bit!?

Initially, I was. But the kind of comfort we had with Sooraj ji (Barjatya) on sets and with Salman... They are really nice people and they just wanted me to be comfortable. Eventually, after 200 days of working with someone, you form a comfort level and you understand each other.

There is nothing like Ranbir needs to prove himself again, says Deepika Padukone

Ranbir Kapoor, who has had three-back-to-back flops in his kitty, is set to

return to the silver screen with his ex-flame Deepika Padukone in Tamasha.

The Imtiaz Ali directorial has caught the fancy of the fans ever since the film went on floors but at the same time, Ranbir’s fans are skeptical over the film’s box office success keeping in mind his previous debacles.

But his ex-girlfriend Deepika has come to rescue of the Besharam actor and says that she doesn’t feel that Ranbir needs to prove himself to anyone.

“Sorry, but there is nothing like Ranbir needs

to prove himself again.

Every actor or individual goes through ups and downs in his or her career. I am sure his intentions have never been to make a flop film.

When he does a film, he does it with the right intention but sometimes the way the story is interpreted by the director or the execution goes wrong or the movie is not that relevant at that point of time and it does not click with the audience,” Deepika told PTI. Deepika said she has never seen someone as passionate about acting and filmmaking as her Tamasha co-star.

“His heart is in the right place.

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When Julia Roberts met nine other Julia Roberts Lady Gaga says acting Actress Julia Roberts was taken by surprise when she met nine women who share her name, on a late night talk show.

When she

“I guess I am selfcentered and it never occurred to me that anybody else would be named Julia Roberts. I didn’t think no one would be; I just never thought

name with the A-list celebrity, including posh hotel rooms and convenient dinner reservations.

However, being named Julia Roberts also had its quirks.

group, told the actress that having her name at times can be very inconvenient.

“They ask me to verify who I am,” she said of any occasion where she

took the stage on Jimmy Kimmel Live! alongside host Kimmel for a planned introduction to nine women who share her name, the actress admitted she never really dwelled on the fact that there could be another woman sharing her name.

about it,” she said.

On the show, Roberts came face-to-face through a live video conference to at least nine women who share her title across the continent. One by one, the women shared the unexpected conveniences of sharing a

One woman from Canada told the Hollywood Alister she recently took a trip to an ashram in India where they called her by a different name entirely.

“Nobody called me Julia,” she shared. “They called me Eat Pray Love.”

Another woman, the oldest Roberts in the

has to use her credit card or debit card. She often has to show her driver’s license to prove that it is, in fact, her name.

The Mother’s Day actress offered an alternative approach to people’s doubts. “Say, ‘I’ll call Richard Gere and he will tell you,’” she joked.

has helped her fight depression and anxiety

Lady Gaga, who has previously spoken about battling depression, has now revealed how acting has helped her cope, preventing her from becoming an emotional wreck.

The Born This Way singer, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, has taken medication for depression and anxiety for several years, but admitted her recent role in hit TV show American Horror Story: Hotel has been incomparable in battling issues.

“I am an actress now and that helps a lot. I

Adele cries to her music Emotional Justin Bieber

bursts into tears onstage

Oscar-winning singer Adele feels confident with her new material only when it “really moves” her and leaves her needing a moment alone to compose herself. “That’s how I know that I’ve written a good song for myself it’s when I start crying. It’s when I just break out in tears in the vocal booth or in the studio, and I’ll need a moment to myself,” she said. The 27-year-old crooner admits she used to “drown” in her emotions when writing her second album, 21, but loved the drama of “falling apart”. “I just used to let myself drown. If I was sad, if I was confused which I

would say were the running themes for most of my records so far I’d just go with it,” she recalled. “I’d let myself fall apart, and I’d sit in darkness, and I’d feel sorry for myself, and I wouldn’t accept any help to get out of it, in terms of going out with my friends to cheer me up, or staying busier. “I loved the drama of it all,” she added. But the Someone Like You hitmaker said she never wants to bring herself so low again, because of her responsibilities to her partner Simon Konecki and their three-year-old son, Angelo.

Singer Justin Bieber, who was in tears in an emotional outburst on stage, shared that he had lost his “purpose”, but he’s now “happy”. He is convinced that there’s “light at the end of the tunnel”. During a performance last week, the “Baby” star wept onstage while hosting a fan live question and answer session, reports dailymail.co.uk. The 21year-old star appeared to find the candid experience and the support from his fans slightly overwhelming during the evening, which also saw him perform tracks from his latest album “Purpose”. Addressing his tears on Twitter following the gig, the Sorry hit maker gushed: “You guys just got me crying. Damn. I missed this and u. Thank u so much. Thank you. #Purpose.” Bieber, who vowed to combat his public temper tantrums, discussed his vandalism case as well as dealing with some attendees throwing objects including a smartphone onto the stage. One excited fan told the baseball hat wearing star that she skipped school to attend the event and asked him for a photo. He said: “I would say school is

important, but this is probably a little more important,” joked the Sorry singer, and said: “Stay in school, kids”.

Bieber, who briefly removed his hat to reveal his peroxided hair, answered affirmatively to both questions, telling the audience: “I’m happy overall, I’m a little stressed out, but I’m happy. I’m just being honest.”

He also explained his state of mind after he damaged a neighbour’s house with eggs and was sentenced to community service. “I just felt like I lost my place for a while. I lost my purpose, and I wanted to just be light and let people know that whether you don’t feel like you have a purpose, whether you’re just trying to figure it out, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.

have tried to get off (my medication), but my doctor always tells me not to; that it’s not safe for me.

I have tried a lot of things, but there is something about acting that has really helped. I am a Stefani-Gaga hybrid and I want you to know the real me,” she told a newspaper.

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Teen raped, cousin killed in Delhi A 17-year-old girl was allegedly raped and her minor cousin murdered at their rented room in NorthWest Delhi’s Swaroop Nagar area on Saturday.

According to police sources, the elders of the family had gone to meet some relatives when the incident took place. The girl was home with her two minor brothers.

The accused reportedly stayed in a rented room adjacent to the victim’s room.

At the time of the incident, the girl’s seven-year-old brother was present at home but was sleeping.

When he woke up and saw his sister crying in pain, he

alerted the landlady as their parents were not present at home,” a senior police officer said.

The landlady then called the PCR. She told the police that the girl was bleeding and wrapped in a bedsheet while her younger brother was strangled with another bedsheet.

The girl also had an injury just below the eyebrow.

A senior police officer said when the cops reached the spot, a girl was lying on the floor bleeding profusely

and a boy was lying dead in the same room. When they rushed both the victims to a nearby hospital, doctors declared the boy dead.

The girl is undergoing treatment at the hospital.

The accused, identified as Raju, is on the run.

According to the landlady,

he had moved in with the victim’s family on November 2. She told the cops that Raju used to work in a clay oven unit and the girl’s parents had told her that they would get their daughter married to him.

“We are investigating the matter.

The medical reports are yet to come out.

We can confirm the rape allegations only once the reports are prepared. Meanwhile, we are hunting for the accused,” a police officer added.

A similar incident was reported from North-West Delhi last month when a 28-year-old tutor was arrested for allegedly raping two minor students for several days. The crime was reported from Bhalswa Dairy area where the accused Raj Kumar offered tuitions to around 20 schoolchildren at his home, including 11 girls aged between five and 10.

Prejudices are dividing the world says Amitabh Bachchan

Amitabh Bachchan spoke about the contribution of India cinema in creating an environment of communal amity and love when “cultures are being questioned and prejudices against communities are dividing the world”. “The Indian cinema from its beginning has taught us the lessons of finding love, justice and social unity.

And most importantly the banishment of communal prejudices and hatred,” Bachchan said in his speech at the 21st Kolkata International Film Festival.

Amitabh Bachchan’s comments come when there is an ongoing debate

on intolerance in the country which has led to several eminent artists returning their awards. “It is essential to recall the lessons of equality and cultural diversity taught by Rabindranath Tagore at a time when cultures are being questioned and prejudices against communities are dividing the world,” Bachchan said. He quoted Tagore’s poetry and said the Bard’s lines should be remembered for “signifying Mother India’s unconditional love for all children and are relevant in holding together India’s diversity and the spirit of equality.”

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Ban on Sardar Jokes Every house in Punjab hatched Sarbat Khalsa conspiracy: Congress Comedians Santa-Banta exit CHANDIGARH Congress deputy leader in Lok Sabha, Capt Amarinder Singh on Sunday rejected Akali Dal’s charges of Congress support to Sarbat Khalsa and said the government was trying to deflect public attention while the core issue of desecration and killing of peaceful protestors remained unaddressed.

He questioned CM Parkash Singh Badal for his continued silence.

Reacting to Akali charges that Congress supported Sarbat Khalsa, he said they need to start looking within themselves to realize why so many people attended the grand assembly on November 10 instead of trying to trace its origins to Moti Bagh Palace or 10 Janpath.

“And let me tell those who accuse us of hatching the ‘conspiracy’ of Sarbat Khalsa that it was hatched in every house across Punjab that has been hit and hurt by your misgovernance, corruption, failure of agriculture, closure of industry, drug smuggling, subversion of the SGPC and Akal Takht authority, desecration of Guru Granth Sahib, killing of peaceful protestors and framing of innocent youth in false cases,” he said. Amarinder said the Sarbat Khalsa may have been hijacked by a handful of radicals, but the participation of people was an expression

of deep anger against the Badals, who have looted and robbed not only the state, but even grabbed sacred Sikh institutions and misused them for personal benefits.

Referring to the purported voice recording of some

Congress leaders, he said the matter of the fact was that the government had failed to identify the culprits behind the sacrilege and punish the officers responsible for killing two peaceful protestors, and has now fabricated and doctored the voice records in a crude attempt to put the blame on the Congress. He said that while the CM had himself gone into hiding, he had left his ministers and other leaders at the mercy of crowds. He pointed out how one of his ministers was not allowed to lay the foundation stone in his own assembly

segment, Maur in Bathinda district. Meanwhile, Congress Legislative Party (CLP) leader Sunil Jakhar challenged deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal to recommend a special session of the state assembly and discuss the law and order situation besides the agrarian crisis, which had abetted many farmers to commit suicides. He said that SAD BJP government can’t escape from its administrative and moral responsibility by trying to put Congress in the dock. Millions of people across the country were reasonably pointing accusing fingers on SAD for creating political, religious and social mess in Punjab, regretfully BJP had become a silent spectator and continued to extend support to its big brother, people believe.

Claiming that even chief parliamentary secretary Dr Navjot Sidhu, who belonged to ally BJP, had endorsed Congress stand by holding chief minister and his deputy responsible for the unrest in the state, Jakhar said Congress is ready to take the government to task on the floor of the Vidhan Sabha over the agrarian crisis and deteriorating law and order situation following the unfortunate desecration incidents and the consequences thereof.

SGPC to diSCuSS removal of akal takht jathedar AMRITSAR The executive committee of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) will contemplate on removal of jathedar of Akal Takht Giani Gurbachan Singh

appointed as the jathedar.

Sikh groups have been protesting against the present jathedar for pardoning Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who was accused in 2007 of imitating

at a meeting to be held by the end of the month. Though SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar has denied changing of Akal Takht jathedar, sources said the committee had started sending feelers for a right candidate who could be

the 10th Sikh master Guru Gobind Singh after which the Akal Takht had ordered that Sikhs should sever ties with the dera. Sikhs’ prominent seminary Damdami Taksal chief Baba Harnam Singh Khalsa told TOI on Sunday that

Taksal will stick to its demand to remove the jathedars since the Panth had lost faith in them after their controversial decision of pardoning the dera chief. Given the stand of the Damdami Taksal, whose chief is also president of Gurmat Sidhant Parcharak Sant Samaj that has significant clout among various deras, the SGPC may think of replacing Giani Gurbachan Singh. Khalsa said some corrective measures were required to restore the faith of Sikh clerics in the Panth. “Yes, there is a possibility of some decisions on the jathedar of Akal Takht, but I can’t give you any details now,” said an executive member of the SGPC. SGPC’s additional secretary DS Bedi confirmed that a meeting would be held after November 20 but denied the possibility of removal of the jathedar. “So far there is no such agenda,” he said.

JALANDHAR Santa-Banta have made way for Shugli-Jugli. You got it right, the plea seeking a ban on Sardar jokes online has claimed its first casualty in Punjab. Two Sikh comedians, who have been performing under the names of Santa and Banta for the last 18 years, have announced to drop their stage names and adapt new ones.

Jalandhar-based Gurpreet Singh and Prabhpreet Singh adopted the names Santa and Banta, respectively, in 1997 and rose to fame with their stage shows on social issues; their video productions especially famous among the urban population.

However, a recent plea seeking a ban on sardar jokes egged on them to give up their famous names and choose new ones. They will now be known as Shugli (Gurpreet) and Jugli (Prabhpreet). Together, they would be known as Shugli Jodi translated as the comic pair.

So, are they hurt? Not really, they say. “For the last few years, we too have been feeling that jokes

on sardars are intended more at ridiculing the community and showing it in a bad light; it is no more about healthy humour. We also felt that people might be thinking of us when they read or saw distasteful jokes online,” they said while announcing their decision here on Sunday. And this wasn’t an unfounded doubt. “So many times have we received calls and messages from people asking us if we were churning the jokes,” they said. “After the petition was filed in the Supreme Court, the issue precipitated for us also and we finally decided to drop these names,” said Parbhpreet. He said that some local Sikh organizations also advised them to take a call on the issue.

They said they always believed in healthy comedy. “We never failed to make people laugh and did so without having to resort to show the community in a bad light.

Negative stereotyping of a community is not good and comedians must refrain from doing that,” the comedians said.

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¶7KH ZRUOG PXVW VSHDN LQ RQH YRLFH· Pressing for the need to delink terror from religion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said some countries still use terrorism as “an instrument of state policy” and the world must act against radicalisation without any political consideration.

Modi said terrorism is the main global challenge today and “from regions in conflict to the streets of distant cities, terrorism extracts a deadly price”. Speaking here at the G20 Summit, being held against the backdrop of deadly Paris attacks, the Prime Minister said, “Old structures of terrorism remain. There are countries that still use it as an instrument of state policy.”

“The world must speak in one voice and act in unison against terrorism, without any political considerations. There should be no distinction between terrorist groups or discrimination between states.

“We must isolate those who support and sponsor terrorism; and, stand with those who share our values of humanism. We need to restructure the international legal framework to deal with the unique challenges of terrorism,” he said.

He was making an intervention at G-20 Working Dinner last night on the issue of ‘Global Challenges Terrorism and Refugee Crisis’.

Modi said the world is seeing a changing character of terrorism with “global links, franchise relations, homegrown terrorism and use of cyber space for recruitment and propaganda”.

While there is a new level of threat to pluralist and open societies, the territory of recruitment and the target of attacks are the same, and that is society, he added.

Modi said the global framework for security was

defined for another era and for other security challenges and there was no comprehensive global strategy to combat terrorism.

“And, we tend to be selective in using the instruments that we have,” he said and asked G20 leaders to adopt a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism “without any delay”.

He also pressed for increased international

cooperation in intelligence and counter-terrorism.

“We should strengthen efforts to prevent supply of arms to terrorists, disrupt terrorist movements, and curb and criminalise terror financing.

“We have to help each other secure our cyber space, and minimise use of the Internet and social media for terrorist activities,” he added.

French jets have launched a series of ‘massive’ air strikes on ISIS in Syria as the country started its ‘pitiless’ retribution for the terror attacks on Paris.

The blitz was conducted by ten fighter planes which dropped 20 bombs on the terror group’s capital of Raqqa, destroying a key command centre, training camp and munitions dump, throwing the city into panic.

The bombardment came just two days after President Francois Hollande said the co-ordinated attacks in Paris that killed up to 129 people was an ‘act of war’ and vowed to strike ISIS in Syria ‘without mercy’.

In France, police carried out around 150 co-ordinated anti-terrorism raids across the country this morning, arresting dozens of suspects and seizing a cache of weapons including a rocket launcher.

A huge manhunt is also underway for accomplices of the Islamist cell including one of the bomb plotters who is still on the run today after police let him go in a string of incredible security blunders before and after the atrocity on Friday night.

A French official has also identified the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks as Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, meanwhile, has warned that authorities believe new terror attacks are being planned in France and in other European countries following the carnage.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has also called for the dissolution of mosques ‘where hatred is preached’ in comments made on French television.

The air strikes in Syria, carried out in co-ordination with U.S. forces, struck a command centre, recruitment centre for jihadists, a munitions depot and a training camp for fighters, it said.

Activists inside Syria have suggested that no civilian casualties have been sustained in the Raqqa bombings.

Water supplies and electricity have reportedly been cut as a result of the air strikes, with activists claiming there has been ‘panic’ inside the city.

‘The raid... including 10 fighter jets,

was launched simultaneously from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.

Twenty bombs were dropped,’ the French Defence ministry statement said last night.

Meanwhile, heavily armed tactical units launched more than 150 predawn raids at addresses in Toulouse, Lyon, Grenoble, Calais and two suburbs of Paris.

French media reports a rocket launcher, flack jackets, several pistols and a Kalashnikov assault rifle were among the cache of weapons seized in Lyon overnight, with five people arrested.

They were among dozens of arrests in areas linked with radical Islamists who may have helped seven suicide bombers carry out the carnage.

French security sources said a fourth terrorist had now been identified as Frenchman Samy Aminour, 28, after raids on addresses in the Parisian suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis and Bobigny linked to his family overnight. Aminour, thought to be one of four jihadis who massacred 89 fans at the Bataclan rock gig, is said to have been known to French antiterror police since 2012 when he was prosecuted for trying to flee France for Yemen.

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By Abhishek Bhalla India has offered help to France in fighting terror following the savage attack by ISIS in Paris.

Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said people of India are no strangers to the pain and suffering inflicted by such senseless acts of violence as the country has been a victim of terror for the last four decades.

“We share your pain in this hour of tragedy and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you. We are ready to assist the government and the people of France in facing this tragedy and ensuring that such assaults on humanity do not recur anywhere,” said Rijiju, while addressing a gathering in the French Embassy in Delhi on Monday.

The event was attended by French nationals living in Delhi and Embassy staff to mourn the victims of terror attacks in Paris on November 13.

Calling ISIS a “global threat” French Ambassador to India Francois Richier said a worldwide coalition is needed to be combat it.

Asked about the possibility of Indians living in France having joined ISIS or being sympathisers he said, he was not aware of it but did not rule out the possibility

completely. “Not that I know of, but who knows,” he said.

“We expect a possibility of more attacks on European soil and there is a need for enhanced cooperation within the European Union,” he said.

“It’s going to be a long war and a global war,” Richier added.

Richier appreciated the sentiments by Indians after the Paris attack, but said he was saddened on the comments of Uttar Pradesh Minister Azam Khan that Paris terror attack could have been a reaction to the killing of innocents in Arab countries by superpowers, including the US. Richier said India and France share information on terror and the mechanism can be strengthened.

Rijiju meanwhile stressed on the need to significantly step up the cooperation in

intelligence and disrupt all forms of support to terror groups, calling them a common threat to the cherished values and to humanity itself.

“We need to urgently put in place a comprehensive global strategy to combat terrorism, including a suitable international legal framework to deal with the growing threat,” he said. Referring to Prime Minister

Narendra Modi’s statement at the G-20 summit, Rijiju said the time has come for the world to speak in one voice and act in unison against terrorism without any narrow considerations or specious selectivity in distinguishing between terrorist groups.

“We must isolate those who support and sponsor terrorism and stand with those who share our values of humanism.

Open democracies and pluralistic societies that value individual freedoms and liberties like ours are increasingly threatened by terror groups,” he said. The Union minister said India shares special ties with France and her people.

France has been India’s long standing strategic partner and an all weather friend.

India greatly cherishes and values this close and enduring partnership, he said.

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Nathuram GodSe waS No hero, SayS rSS ideoloGue mG vaidya Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse was no hero, RSS ideologue MG Vaidya said on Sunday while criticising Hindu groups for commemorating his death anniversary as

Groups such as the Hindu Mahasabha, Hindu Sena and Maharana Pratap Battalion marked Godse’s death anniversary as “Shaurya Diwas” during an event held at Panvel near Mumbai.

Members of the Sanatan

“Shaurya Diwas” (bravery day).

Vaidya further said he was opposed to honouring and showing respect to Gandhi’s assassin.

“I don’t know which organisation it is. But I am against honouring and giving respect to Nathuram Godse. He is a murderer. The fight of thoughts should be fought with thoughts only. It is not right to kill anyone as was done by Godse,” Vaidya told ANI.

Sanstha, which came into the limelight after one of its activists was accused of murdering rationalist Govind Pansare, also participated in the ceremony to eulogise Godse.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power last year, several Hindu groups have backed moves to refurbish Godse’s legacy.

But Vaidya said Godse’s act of killing Gandhi was an insult to Hindutva.

“Some people think that by

doing so (killing Gandhi), they have encouraged Hindutva, but that is wrong.

In fact, they have insulted Hindutva. I think it was an evil to kill Gandhiji, who was such a respected figure in India,” he said.

The comments by the 92year-old Vaidya assume significance as he is considered one of the foremost ideologues of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The Hindu Mahasabha had made it to the headlines last year when it announced its plans to build temples for Godse.

The organisation marks Godse’s death anniversary as “Shaurya Divas” across Maharashtra every year.

The Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha launched a website “Nathuram Godse – The Real Forgotten Hero” on Sunday morning to inform the public about his “good deeds”. Godse, a Hindu nationalist, shot and killed Gandhi on January 30, 1948. “I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus,” Godse, a member of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, told the court during his trial.

In Meerut, Hindu group launches Nathuram Godse website Leaders of a Hindu group launched a website at an event in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut on Sunday to commemorate the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse, who was hanged to death on November 15, 1949.

Akhil Bhartiya Hindu Mahasabha (ABHM) and its frontal organisation Vishwa Hindu Peeth also performed a yagna at the Mahasabha office at Sharda road on the occasion.

ABHM’s national general secretary Munna Kumar Sharma, patron Ashok Sharma, Viswa Hindu Peeth’s national president Acharya Madanji, Nathuram Godse Brigade president Swami Omji, Mahasabha’s city president Bharat Rajput, district president Abhishek Aggarwal and other leaders and activists offered ‘ahuti’ in the yagna in the presence of police officials.

The website www.nathuramgodse.in has been designed by the IT cell of Vishwa Hindu Peeth, said Acharya Madanji, who launched the website. “The objective of

the website is to make people aware about Godse and the facts behind assassination of Gandhi.”

“Godse was not a criminal”, said Ashok Sharma, emphasising that people must know his statement recorded in the court after his arrest on charges of assassinating Gandhi . “He sacrificed his life at the age

Red Fort by a special court, constituted by an order of the central government. Godse and co-conspirator Narayan Apte were hanged for the murder of the Father of the Nation on November 15, 1949.

“I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action

of 39 and we call him a criminal”, he said.

On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi fell to his assassin Nathuram Vinayak Godse’s bullets during an evening prayer ceremony at Birla House in Delhi. Perched atop a gate of Birla House, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru announced to the world the “light has gone out of our lives”.

Eight men were convicted in the murder trial inside

had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus,” Godse, an active member of the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, had told the court during his trial.

“I bear no ill will towards anyone individually, but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy, which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims.

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Govt seeks help from foreign agencies to count Indians in IS Security agencies have asked their US, European and West Asian counterparts with technical or human surveillance in Islamic State-held territory in Iraq and Syria to help estimate the number of Indians fighting for the so-called caliphate of Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi.

As of now, a total of 23 Indians, mostly from the southern states, are fighting for IS, which has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks .

While the home ministry’s multi-agency centre (MAC) issued terror alerts to all states, missions and consulates as soon as the attacks began in Paris, New Delhi is worried about the similarity between the

14/11 and 26/11 Mumbai attacks with indiscriminate targeting of innocent civilians. Another

Mujahideen led by one Yusuf Al Hindi, Sultan and Shafi Armar from Bhatkal in Karnataka, are

Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal.

Although intelligence agencies have been intercepting comm-

reason for Indian concern is that terror organisation Ansar-ul-Tawhid, a splinter group of the Indian

operating with the IS in Syria and Iraq.

This group is a breakaway faction of the IM headed by

unication within India in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks, there has been no evidence of any

celebration or linkage.

Tamil Nadu resident Haja Fakruddin was the first Indian to join the IS, and another 22 are now serving the so-called caliphate in Syria. “Of the 23 fighters, four are from Maharashtra, five from Karnataka, four from erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, four from Kerala, three from Tamil Nadu, two from UP and one from Jammu and Kashmir. We detect the most radicalization in the name of IS in Kerala where the state government is planning to set up an Arabic university,” said a top counter-terror operative.

Compared to the thousands from France and England, far fewer Indians are joining the IS but the Modi government is

worried as New Delhi has far less technical or human resources than its Western counterparts. There is also heightened concern as IS radicals are knocking at the Khyber Pass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border with Baghdadi’s followers led by Hafeez Saeed Khan taking on Taliban head on in Nangarhar, Kunar and Nuristan provinces. “Since IS recognized Khorasan, of which even Gujarat is a part, as part of the socalled caliphate, there is serious fighting going on in Afghanistan with IS trying to take out the Taliban. If IS enters the Af-Pak region in a big way, India will be the frontline state against Baghdadi,” said a senior home ministry official.

Sikh man’s image photoshopped to Bihar election shows that a majority of Hindus make him look like Paris attacker still believe in harmony says Dalai Lama

This Sikh man from Canada was left dumbfounded when he discovered that his image was photoshopped and

him look like a terrorist, immediately grabbed the attention of the social media users.

The Sikh man, whose real

shared by a Twitter handle @abualut8 with a caption “BREAKING”, said a report on the online edition of India Today. The report

was being circulated on the social media as one of the terrorists involved in the bomb and gun attack in Paris two days ago.

The image shows him wearing an explosives vest and holding a Quran. The image, which was actually photoshopped to make

name is Veerender Jubbal, is actually not a terrorist and had no role in the Paris attacks. A viral social media post which accompanied the image, reads: “One Islamic State attacker in the Paris Attack was a Sikh convert to Islam”. The image was first

further said that the tweet was deleted after the users questioned its authenticity.

The real story came to light when Veerender Jubbal posted his original image on Twitter. He defended himself saying that he had never been to Paris and is a resident of Canada.

Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama on Saturday said India is a nation of non violence and noted that a majority of the Hindus believe in peace and amity.

“India has a long tradition of peace and amity.

The people of Bihar in the recent Assembly polls have proved that a large section of the Hindu community still believes in peace and amity,” the 14th Dalai Lama said without naming any political party or leader.

“It is because of this amity that India is known worldwide as a country of religious tolerance.

All religions and individuals are given equal respect here,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.

“Religious tolerance not only means respecting all religions but also the people. Buddhism too started in this nation and because of this, India is

tolerance is the need of the hour and should be done through schools and universities.”

Speaking on climate change, the Dalai Lama

the guru and all Buddhists are students,” he said.

Asked about terrorism, the Tibetan spiritual leader said, “First we must create an atmosphere of peace and it should be initiated from one’s own home.

Encouraging religious

said, “This is everyone’s responsibility.

We all need to work together and give primacy to it. The big nation gives main importance to its own profit while the issue of climate change comes way down its agenda.”

but will soon do that. But the decision is up to the jail authorities.” Asked whether any special application for granting pardon or early release has been made by Dutt, Jain said, “No such application has been made.” Yerawada

Central Prison superintendent U T Pawar said, “He (Dutt) is entitled to some days of remission every month, like any other convict. He may be released early as per rules.

No exception has been made in this case.” Dutt

has stayed out of jail for 118 days on paroles and furloughs in the first one year of his term at Yerawada, prompting many to raise questions whether the government was granting favours to him.

Actor Sanjay Dutt due for early release? Buzz gets only louder The five-year jail term for Dutt, currently lodged in Yerawada jail, ends in November next year Actor Sanjay Dutt, who is currently serving the remaining 42 months of his five-year prison term in Pune’s Yerawada jail following his conviction in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, may be released months before his sentence ending in November next year, the actor’s lawyer and jail authorities told on Saturday. While Dutt’s wife had Manyata earlier said he could be released

early considering a convict’s right to remission, his co-star in Munnabhai series, Arshad Warsi, made similar claims on Saturday, saying he had heard that Dutt would be out by February next year and that they would start shooting on the sequel of the movie after that.

Since May 2013, the 56year-old actor has been serving the remainder of his jail term for illegal possession of arms in a case related to the 1993 serial blasts, in which over 250 people were killed and several were wounded.

The actor had served 18 months of his jail term around 2007-08, before he was convicted in the case.

When contacted, Dutt’s lawyer Hitesh Jain said, “All these statements are being made based just on conjectures, subject to his right to remission being considered. Every convict is entitled to a maximum of eight days of remission every month during his term based on his conduct. If all the conditions are fulfilled, he may be released a few months early. We are yet to make the calculations,

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New projects and ideas have been gaining strength, so this might be a good time to test the waters and see if it feels right to go ahead. Romance fairly sizzles as passions intensify. You could just as easily close a lucrative deal if you put your mind to it. Balance excitement with a realistic appraisal of the facts for best results over the days ahead.

A conversation may set you thinking about the potential for romance with someone.

Try to avoid obsessive thinking, as it won’t be helpful. When Mars moves into your sign on Tuesday you’ll feel energized and ready to tackle those projects that have been on the back burner. Even so, it pays to listen to your intuition over the days ahead.

You know what you want and people admire you for taking decisive action. Go about your business quietly, as this week’s influences indicate you’d do best in the background plotting your next move carefully. When it comes to socializing you’ll be very much upfront and eager to enjoy yourself wherever possible.

If you’re looking for love, this week spotlights romantic possibilities. One person may entice you with an offer you can’t refuse.

Moderation should be your mantra. Have fun, but use your common sense, too.

Your social life perks up as Mars zips in on Tuesday. This is a grand opportunity to expand your network of friends and have more fun.

You may be very confident that you can carry off your latest idea or project as Mercury glides into Aries on Monday. This is a good time to get the advice of others, especially if they’ve succeeded with similar plans. Where career matters are concerned, the presence of Mars in Taurus gives you staying power, meaning that you’ll be happy to work hard now.

The focus zeroes in on matters associated with finances and shared resources. Perhaps it’s time to discuss important issues with your bank or financial adviser, especially if your cash situation has been edgy lately. If you’ve been hard at work, you may be inspired to make travel plans this week - finally.

An item you’ve coveted for some time could be calling out to you. Perhaps it’s time to make that special purchase!

Your love life and social life seem very upbeat this week. You may get an invitation to go on a date or to a delightful get-together. If someone comes to you with a plan or idea, check the facts before you commit.

If someone has a proposition for you, give it careful consideration. It may be a worthwhile option. In the main, this week seems to be a busy one as Mercury heads into your work zone. You’ll likely be in a fiery mood and determined to beat off the competition. This could stand you in good stead if you don’t overdo it.

This week you’ll feel more like your usual self, ready to take charge and blaze a new trail. Mars in Taurus could be the catalyst that shakes up your routine just enough to revive your enthusiasm in a plan or task. Creative activities and pleasure options call out to you, too, so dive in and have fun in whatever way suits you best.

A dating opportunity sizzles, but you’ll need to be quick to take advantage of it. You can make a lasting impression if you spread on the charm thick enough.

Life at home seems rather hectic, and could involve plans for redecorating or remodeling. Don’t jump into action without planning ahead first. Leisure and pleasure options show up.

Home-based activities may appeal for the chance they afford to unwind and let go. If issues have bugged you and left you feeling tired recently, then a retreat might do you a world of good. You’ll need the peace and quiet because you’ll be busy planning, discussing key issues, and negotiating terms for much of the week.

You might have mixed feelings if you’re meeting with an old pal or ex. If you’re willing to chat, you could be pleasantly surprised at how much he or she has changed.

Regarding goals and ambitions, it might be a good idea to proceed with caution until you’re certain you want to continue.

A review of your priorities can help you out here.

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Technology Could 2016 See the firSt Cyber attaCkS oN wearableS? Intel’s annual McAfee Labs Threat Predictions Report forecasts that Ransomware, in-car infotainment systems and even smartwatches could be at the top of hackers’ and cyber criminals’ lists

in the coming year.

When a tech device starts growing in popularity, so does its appeal to the more nefarious of web users.

And, with 2015 finally becoming the year of the smartwatch, thanks to new products from everyone from Apple to Tag Heuer, it’s very likely, according to Intel, that 2016 will be the year that cyber criminals

start testing wearables for vulnerabilities.

Although they contain little if any personal data most smartwatches offer just 4GB of storage they could be the way into accessing the smartphone or tablet

that is tied to it via an app.

But before panic sets in, Intel concedes that it’s still very early days and that such devices and the Internet of Things more generally won’t start seeing substantial threats until the end of the decade.

Looking five years into the future is essential for combating cyber threats.

“The best hockey players

navigate within the ice rink, grapple with opposing players, take advantage of opportunities when available, and, critically, as Wayne Gretzky said, always skate to where the puck is going to be not

where it has been,” said Vincent Weafer, vice president of Intel Security’s McAfee Labs.

The increasingly connected car is also going to be increasingly attractive as a target.

Intel says that’s why security researchers will be focused on finding holes and exploits first and on working with car

companies to beef up security and reduce risks.

However, one threat that is much more difficult to defend against is ransomware.

A form of malware that, once installed on a computer, locks its owner out via encryption until a ransom for the passcode is paid, ransomware is proving to be a perfect crime. So much so that it’s increasingly being offered as an off-the-shelf service to aspiring cyber criminals.

The only way to protect a computer from ransomware is to make sure it is fully up to date in terms of virus protection and software patches, that suspicious attachments are avoided and that suspect websites or services are bypassed.

“Keeping pace with, anticipating and preempting adversaries requires that we match the intelligence exchange, cloud computing and delivery power, platform agility, and human resource assets that cybercriminals regularly leverage,” Weafer said.

900 hackers arrested in China’s online crackdown

China has arrested more than 900 hackers in an online campaign launched in July amid criticism from the US over increasing hacker attacks originating from the Communist country and targeting top American commercial firms. The suspects were involved in 400 cases and are accused of a wide range of cyber crimes including swindling money from individuals and banks, the Ministry of Public Security said today. In one case from March, five suspects hacked into the email accounts of a Vietnamese company planning to purchase goods worth USD 75,000 from a Chinese company, and gained pertinent trade information. The five, including three foreigners, used that information to pose as staff of the

Chinese company and obtained the money for the deal from the Vietnamese, state-run Xinhua quoted the Ministry’s statement as saying. In another case, a group of 31 suspects from China and South Korea stole bank card information from Korean citizens via Trojan programs and phishing websites. Later the Korean suspects called the victims in the name of banking staff and transferred their deposits after luring them to remove the security settings, according to the statement. The ministry said it had established 300 specialist facilities across the country to improve monitoring of cybercrime and evidence collection and will strengthen international law enforcement cooperation in this area.

aims to take advantage of its quirky possibilities by offering artists’ original tracks alongside cover versions, live footage and user-generated content.

T. Jay Fowler, the director of product development who was involved in earlier services Beats Music and MOG, said he hoped to draw more people to streaming instead of simply competing with other companies.

“I’m excited about being additive to the market, rather than just moving users through an ecosystem of apps,” he told AFP. The video behemoth on October 28 launched YouTube Red, a premium service that allows advertisement-free access to subscribers.

YouTube Music which was announced alongside YouTube Red without full details or a launch date is compatible both with Google’s Android system and Apple and will initially be available only in the United States.

The streaming service will be free but will come without advertisements for subscribers to YouTube Red, which costs $9.99 a month.

Facebook tests vanishing messages YouTube enters music streaming with eye on casual fan Facebook users in France were able to send vanishing missives with its smartphone Messenger application on Thursday, ramping up the challenge to

Snapchat.

“We’re conducting a small test in France of a feature that allows people to send messages that disappear an hour after they’re sent,” Facebook told AFP. “Disappearing messages gives people another fun option to choose from when they

communicate on Messenger.” Tapping an hourglass icon on the top right of the screen in Messenger will allow users to send messages designed to vanish an hour

after they are sent. The feature is being tested on versions of the Messenger application for mobile devices powered by Apple or Android software. If it proves successful, the feature would likely be made available in other countries.

Making ephemeral messages an

option in Messenger is a direct challenge to smartphone-messaging rival Snapchat.

Snapchat’s appeal has been the premise that messages disappear shortly after being viewed, providing users a sense of being able to keep pictures or videos private and ephemeral.

Los Angeles-based Snapchat rocketed to popularity in the United States, especially among teenagers, after the initial app was released in September 2011. Snapchat rejected a $3 billion takeover offer from Facebook in 2013.

Facebook earlier this year began testing a Messenger app virtual assistant that the leading social network said goes beyond artificial intelligence programs already on the market.

YouTube on Thursday entered the increasingly crowded field of music streaming, hoping to reach a new audience through a user-friendly service that seizes on the video giant’s vast variety.

Called YouTube Music, the platform will offer songs both with and without video, and users will be able to switch instantly to an audio-only mode.

In a feature it hopes to be a key selling point, YouTube Music will create non-stop stations tailored to users, who can finetune how much variety they want.

YouTube, the world’s third most popular website after its parent company Google and Facebook,

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India’s IS catch Majeed saw training up close The Paris attackers could have been part of Islamic State’s ‘Ishteshadi’ force, members of which are trained to first exhaust all ammunition at the target site from an area weapon like an AK-47 assault rifle and then blow themselves up on the spot like a ‘Ighemasi’ (suicide bomber).

The form and function of the ‘Ishteshadi’ (fight unto death) force was revealed to Indian interrogators by Kalyanborn Areeb Majeed who was part of this elite force till he returned to India on November 28, 2014. Majeed is currently in Arthur Road jail serving a sentence of waging war against friendly countries.

With evidence emerging that the Paris attackers were part of a module from Syria, it is evident that war against France was planned by IS leaders in held territories of Iraq and Syria. According to principal interrogators of Majeed, the Paris attack is a standard operating procedure for the ‘Ishteshadi’ force. Majeed

was part of four-man Kalyan group that entered Iraq on May 23, 2013.

While Shaheen Tanki was killed in an ‘Ighemasi’ operation on November 28, Majeed tried to blow

himself four times during IS operations in Syria and Iraq. The remaining two, Aman Tandel and Fahad Sheikh, are not part of fighting and work in military research departments in Raqqa, Syria.

According to Majeed, IS commanders hand over an assault rifle to each recruit who come to the so-called Caliphate of Syria and Levant at Raqqa, sometimes with their families. This is followed

by basic military training for 40-50 days. It is from this training that the ‘Ishteshadi’ fighters are selected for urban guerrilla warfare with training in use of hand-held missile launchers, M-16 and AK-47 assault rifles and assembly of explosive devices using military-grade explosives. As IS fighters do not use their real names, Majeed who went by the name of Abu Ali Al Hindi in Iraq and Syria, says he saw some Indian youth “from north India” in the suicide squad.

Given the military training and capabilities of IS fighters, a broad consensus has emerged at the top level of Indian police on counter-retaliation in case of a 26/11 or 13/11 attack in India. “If French police had waited like the Indian NSG did for 60 hours to complete 26/11, then all would have died in Bataclan in Paris. Hostage or no hostage, retaliation will be immediate. The Paris attack is validation of a 26/ 11 terror model,” said a national security expert.

If speaking truth is revolt then I am a rebel says Shatrughan Sinha Continuing his tirade against the party leadership, BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha fired fresh salvo saying he has done nothing to be sidelined and ignored by the party. Speaking to reporters in Nagpur, the disgruntled leader reiterated that he still is a loyal worker of the BJP. “I have already said whatever I had to. Now, the seniors are speaking on matters facing the party. Was I wrong in saying that dal price rise should be controlled? If speaking truth is considered as revolt, then yes, I am a rebel,” the Patna Sahib MP said amid reports that the BJP may take strict action against him soon for “anti-party activities”. The axe is also likely to fall on other two Bihar BJP MPs RK Singh and Bhola Singh.

The actor-turned-politician, who had been sulking after he was left out of the Bihar Assembly election campaign, said it was

because of the “aggressive campaigning” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that BJP fetched 53 seats.

Sinha also said that Bihar voters had understood that the announcement of economic package by

chances in the just concluded Assembly election.

Unless action is taken against these leaders, who caused extensive damage to the party in the crucial election, discipline would

Modi was a “poll gimmick”.

“All the credit goes to Modiji for the number seats won by BJP in Bihar and there should not be any doubt about it,” Sinha said earlier in the day while taking a jibe at the PM. According to reports, BJP’s Bihar unit has conveyed to the party leadership in Delhi that it was important to take action these three Lok Sabha MPs as they worked to dent party’s

become a major issue within the party, sources quoted the state leadership telling top BJP leaders. Begusarai MP Bhola Singh even went to the extent of working against the NDA nominees in the district, which he represents, sources said.

In the recently held elections to the 243-seat Bihar Assembly, the grand alliance won 178 seats, including RJD-80, JD(U)71 and Congress-27.

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

‘Nationalist’ new catchword for SAD; Cong makes secular pitch CHANDIGARH Going by the numbers, the recent radical Sarbat Khalsa should have alarmed the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal, but it ended up helping the party latch on to the new catchword of “nationalist”.

The naming of Jagtar Singh Hawara, convicted of assassination of former Congress chief minister Beant Singh, as the Akal Takht jathedar and the demand for a separate Sikh state has alarmed the Congress that hoped to ride the strong wave of Panthic anger against the ruling Akalis over a spate of sacrilege incidents of Guru Granth Sahib and police firing at protesters in the 2017 state elections.

Leaders from both the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had shared the stage with Sikh outfits at the bhog ceremony of the two Sikhs killed

in the police firing held at Bargari village in Faridkot on October 25. A statement from Congress deputy leader in Lok Sabha, Capt Amarinder Singh, showing solidarity with the Sikh bodies

was read out at the gathering by party leader Harminder Gill.

AAP’s Punjab convener Sucha Singh Chhotepur, in his address, had called for “freeing Sikh institutions from the stranglehold of the Badals”.

But fringe religious and political groups taking centre-stage at the radical Sarbat Khalsa and

laying bare their secessionist agenda have forced the Congress to make a secular pitch. The SAD not only tried to outwit opposition parties by terming itself “as a repository of nationalist and patriotic sentiments, which will remain in the forefront of unity of the country and harmony in Punjab” but also accused the Congress of courting extremists.

Amarinder, who had been whipping up antiBadal sentiments among angry Sikhs and Panthic bodies, at a meeting with his loyalists over dinner before the event had expressed the apprehension that a huge gathering at the radical Sarbat Khalsa would not be a good sign for Punjab.

In his statement after it, Amarinder said this way (of appointing jathedars) would only kill the institutions that had been

set up after a lot of struggle and sacrifice and would set a “dangerous trend”. When contacted, Amarinder made a secular pitch to reject the radical Sarbat Khalsa. “We are a secular party and our stand is clear. The presence of our leaders at the Bargari bhog was to show solidarity for hurt sentiments of Sikhs due to incidents of sacrilege and firing at Sikh protesters. But we cannot agree with the way the radical Sarbat Khalsa was convened that tried to appoint jathedars,” he said. On his loyalist MLA Ramanjit Sikki participating in the event, Amarinder said Sikki might not be aware of the resolutions expected to be announced there.

BAJWA ECHOES CAPT’S VIEWS Punjab Congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa, who had so far refrained from speaking on the radical Sarbat Khalsa, saying the party could not comment on

religious affairs of Sikhs, also toed Amarinder’s line. “Sikhs went to the radical Sarbat Khalsa with hurt religious sentiments.

The announcements made by radicals came as a rude shock to the people and have helped the ruling Badals. The resolutions were disruptive and do not reflect the aspirations of Sikhs in Punjab and other parts of the world who want peace and unity,” Bajwa said.

Congress Legislature Party leader Sunil Jakhar, who too had not voiced his disapproval for the resolutions at the radicals’ show, reacted by saying the party rejected them outright. “The extremists have tried to come forth but who has given them the environment to push their agenda after so many years by meddling with religious affairs? The Congress seeks ouster of the SAD-BJP government to stop extremist elements from disrupting peace,” Jakhar said.

would gather five times the number of people who attended the radical Sarbat Khalsa at its Sadbhawna rallies, beginning November 23. “I invite and want

government in the state. He said the state government would give `30 crore to each assembly constituency in 2016 for development of villages.

Punjab. There is no possibility of any grand alliance here.”

Regarding party’s poll preparations, Chhotepur said: “AAP was lying low to focus on organisational set up. We will soon announce the programs for Punjab.”

On setback to the party’s image following rebellion that resulted in suspension of MPs Harinder Singh Khalsa and Dharamvir Gandhi and allegations levelled against Bhagwant Mann, Chhotepur said, “AAP is based upon ideologies and is above individual interests. Thus, indiscipline is unacceptable.

Whereas the Bhagwant Mann case is concerned, it was a false propaganda against him.”

SANGRUR Accusing the Congress of conspiring to disturb peace in Punjab, deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Monday claimed that the radical Sarbat Khalsa was a “well-planned” ploy of the party to discredit the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).

Addressing a gathering at Gurdwara Nankiana Sahib, Sukhbir said, “The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has got vital clues into the sacrilege cases and its report will be out in four months.”

He claimed that Congress leaders had provided transportation to people reaching the radical Sarbat Khalsa. Taking a dig at the ‘appointments’ made at the November 10 event, he said, “The opposition-backed radical Sarbat Khalsa seems to have appointed the so-called jathedars based on a seniority list drawn up on the basis of the number of FIRs registered against them. Jagtar Singh Hawara, who faces cases of serious criminal nature, has been given the highest seat at the Akal Takht.” He claimed that the SAD

all residents of the state to attend the SAD’s Moga rally on November 28,” Sukhbir said, adding that Congress leaders Capt Amarinder Singh and Partap Singh Bajwa were concerned with only short-term political gains rather than the state’s welfare.

Sukhbir claimed that people of Punjab had made up their mind that the SAD would form the next

Meanwhile, police arrested around 50 men who were raising slogans of ‘Sukhbir go back’ and had gathered near the stage. Two men even managed to climb up the stage.

‘CONG LEADERS HELPED FOREIGN AGENCIES’ Deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal on Monday said hardliners would face strict action if they tried to disturb rallies of the Shiromani Akali Dal. Addressing Akali workers and leaders here, Sukhbir said, “Hardliners will be dealt with strictly if they try to show black flags to Akali leaders. Who are these hardliners to disturb our rallies as well as other development programmes? They will have to face strict action.”

He accused Capt Amarinder Singh and state Congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa of helping foreign agencies disturb peace in Punjab through Sikh hardliners. He said, “German and Pakistani agencies were behind the so-called Sarbat Khalsa and both Amarinder and Bajwa had helped these agencies.”

AAP rules out alliance CBI report into sacrilege with any party in state cases to be out in 4 months

LUDHIANA Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday said it won’t enter into alliance with any party for the 2017 assembly elections in Punjab.

“We won’t join hands any party, be it the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress or Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD). Also, we won’t allow any criminal, corrupt and characterless individual to enter the party,” said Punjab AAP convener Sucha Singh Chhotepur after paying tributes to Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha here.

On AAP’s support to Nitish Kumar and the Congress in Bihar polls, Chhotepur said: “It’s altogether a different scenario in

NRI driver breaks all barriers, gatecrashes into Pakistan AMRITSAR In a major security breach at the Attari international border on Monday, a disturbed-looking Canadian NRI (nonresident Indian) drove his SUV through two barriers and the zero line gate at between 120 and 140 kilometres an hour and stopped a few inches into Pakistan.

The man, Surinder Singh (45), belongs to Mehatpur village near Nakodar in Jalandhar district originally. On November 9, he arrived in India on fivemonth visa.

Around 3.45am, his Mahindra Scorpio car first ran through the

customs gate, then two barricades at intervals of 100 meters each before Swarn Jayanti Dwar, and then the Indian

gate at the zero line, 70-odd metres ahead. Finally, he rammed the Pakistani gate and his car stalled.

Surprised how an unauthorised vehicle came so deep into the highly sensitive area, the Border Security Force (BSF) froze instead of reacting; though it, later, caught the man and secured the car from the Pakistani border guards by making request. It has

handed the driver over to Punjab Police but kept the Scorpio. “We are yet to find out why the NRI did it, but he seems to be disturbed,” said Amritsar senior superintendent of police (rural) Jasdeep Singh, adding: “Even during questioning, he kept singing songs.”

Had Surinder Singh driven through even the Pakistani gate, it would have been a major embarrassment for the Indian troops. With the vigil increased since the terror attacks in Paris, the BSF would not have expected it to happen.

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

Indian bid to reclaim jewel in British crown Chile breaks ground on LONDON A group including an Indian businessman and a Bollywood actress are attempting to mount a legal bid to force Britain to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond from the crown jewels to India,

reports said Monday. The group have instructed lawyers to attempt to begin proceedings in England’s High Court, British newspapers said, in a move timed to coincide with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Britain this week.

Modi heads to Britain on Thursday and will have lunch with Queen Elizabeth II during his trip, as well as hold talks with his British counterpart David Cameron. Satish Jakhu, of the Rubric Lois King law firm, was quoted as saying they would claim under the common law doctrine of “trespass to goods”,

arguing that Britain had stolen the stone, one of the world’s biggest diamonds.

They are also seeking to take the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, he added. Rubric Lois King did

not respond to requests to comment when contacted by AFP. The stone is “one of the many artefacts taken from India under dubious circumstances”, David de Souza, from the Indian leisure group Tito’s, was quoted as saying by The Independent newspaper. He is partly funding the action. Bollywood actress Bhumicka Singh said the stone was “part of our history and culture and should undoubtedly be returned”. The diamond was presented to queen Victoria in 1850 after the Anglo-Sikh wars in which Britain gained control of the Sikh empire of the Punjab,

which is now split between Pakistan and India. Newspapers said the precious stone was worth £100 million ($150 million, 140 million euros). Historically it had been in Mughal and Afghan hands.The 105-carat diamond is set in the crown made for the queen Elizabeth, the wife of Queen Elizabeth II’s father king George VI, for their 1937 coronation. Its name translates as “Mountain of Light”.

Traditionally the diamond is only worn by a queen and it is said to bring bad luck to any man who wears it. The crown jewels are held by Queen Elizabeth II as the sovereign head of state rather than in a personal capacity.This means that if ever negotiations were to take place over the diamond, Queen Elizabeth II would only ever act on the advice of her government.

Cameron is against returning the diamond.“If you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty,” he told NDTV television in 2010. “It is going to have to stay put.” And on a 2013 visit to India he said: “I certainly don’t believe in ‘returnism’.” In 1976, prime minister Jim Callaghan refused a request to concede it, citing the terms of the Anglo-Sikh peace treaty and concluding: “I could not advise Her Majesty the Queen that it should be surrendered.”Historian Andrew Roberts told The Mail on Sunday newspaper that the prospective lawsuit was “ludicrous”, saying Britain had a “watertight” case for keeping the stone, based on a legallybinding treaty.

world’s largest telescope

London Chile broke ground Wednesday on a massive telescope that is set to be the world’s largest and will allow astronomers to look back to the earliest moments after the Big Bang. The Giant Magellan Telescope, an international project designed to take astronomy into the next decade, will begin operations in 2021 and provide images 10 times clearer than the Hubble space telescope, organizers said. “The Giant Magellan Telescope will revolutionize our view and understanding of the universe, and allow us to see and study objects whose light has been traveling for over 13 billion years to reach us,” said Taft Armandroff, the head of the consortium behind the project, at a groundbreaking ceremony attended by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. The $500 million telescope is being built in the Atacama Desert in northern

Chile, whose exceptionally clear skies have already drawn some of the world’s most powerful telescopes and leading stargazers. It combines seven enormous mirrors, each 8.4 meters (27.5 feet) wide, to create a single telescope 25 meters in diameter. “Astronomy is a longterm science. We will continue down the path of surprises the universe sets out for us,” Bachelet said at the ceremony at the Las Campanas Observatory. The telescope will help scientists answer fundamental questions about the cosmos by studying planets outside our solar system, watching galaxies and stars form, and collecting evidence on the existence of dark matter and dark energy, said the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization. It will allow them to see galaxies whose light has been traveling toward Earth since shortly after the Big Bang - 13.8 billion years, said the 11-member consortium.

Homeopathy could be blacklisted British Museum treasures go online in Google partnership LONDON Thousands of artefacts from the British Museum’s priceless collections went online Thursday in a partnership with Google that will allow webusers to take a virtual stroll through its galleries. The deal with the Google Cultural Institute, which has 800 partners from over 60 countries, also allows objects to be scrutinised by researchers around the world thanks to high-definition Gigapixel technology. Among artefacts viewable online is the famous Rosetta Stone, which helped unlock the secret of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and sculpture from the Parthenon in Athens.

“The world today has changed, the way we access information has been revolutionised by digital technology,” British Museum director Neil MacGregor said in a statement.

“It is now possible to make our collection accessible, explorable and enjoyable not just for those who physically visit, but to everybody with a computer or a mobile device,” he said. There will also be a “Museum of the World” accessible through the site - a way of viewing the artefacts mapped to a timeline to allow users to make connections between cultures around the world. Google and British Museum said in a statement that the collections would be “the largest space to be captured on indoor Street View”.

Highlights from the museum’s temporary exhibitions will also be available online, including two currently running on the Celts and ancient Egyptian religions. Google announced a similar initiative last month that will allow users to view 500,000 works in French museum collections.

London It is being considered whether homeopathy should be put on a blacklist of treatments GPs in England are banned from prescribing, the BBC has learned.

The controversial practice is based on the principle that “like cures like”, but critics say patients are being given useless sugar pills. The Faculty of Homeopathy said patients supported the therapy. A consultation is expected to take place in 2016. The total NHS bill for homeopathy, including homeopathic hospitals and GP prescriptions, is thought to be about £4m. Homeopathy is based on the concept that diluting a version of a substance that causes illness has healing properties. So pollen or grass could be used to create a homeopathic hay-fever remedy.

One part of the substance is mixed with 99 parts of water or alcohol, and this is repeated six times in a “6c” formulation or 30 times in a “30c” formulation. The end result is combined with a lactose (sugar) tablet.

Homeopaths say the more diluted it is, the greater the effect.

Critics say patients are getting nothing but sugar. Common homeopathic treatments are for asthma, ear infections, hay-fever,

depression, stress, anxiety, allergy and arthritis. But the NHS itself says: “There is no goodquality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition.” The Good Thinking

have now confirmed this will take place in 2016.

Simon Singh, the founder of the Good Thinking Society, said: “Given the finite resources of the NHS, any spending on homeopathy is utterly

Society has been campaigning for homeopathy to be added to the NHS blacklist - known formally as Schedule 1 - of drugs that cannot be prescribed by GPs. Drugs can be blacklisted if there are cheaper alternatives or if the medicine is not effective.

After the Good Thinking Society threatened to take their case to the courts, Department of Health legal advisers replied in emails that ministers had “decided to conduct a consultation”. Officials

unjustifiable. “The money spent on these disproven remedies can be far better spent on treatments that offer real benefits to patients.” But Dr Helen Beaumont, a GP and the president of the Faculty of Homeopathy, said other drugs such as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) for depression would be a better target for saving money, as homeopathic pills had a “profound effect” on patients.

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

World’s biggest online shopping day nets over $14b SHANGHAI E-commerce giant Alibaba said Thursday that Chinese and international consumers spent more than $14 billion in the world’s biggest online shopping day, as it sought to soothe worries over China’s slowing

economy. The November 11 “Singles Day”, which fell on Wednesday, has evolved into the globe’s biggest online shopping festival since Alibaba began using the date in 2009 to promote sales through its platforms. The $14.3 billion worth of merchandise volume

this year smashed through last year’s tally of $9.3 billion, according to figures from Alibaba.

“This day demonstrates the power of domestic China consumption and the Chinese consumer’s strong demand for international

products,” Alibaba chief executive officer Daniel Zhang said in a statement.

The total was more than double the $6.6 billion recorded last year in online buying during the peak US retail period, the five days from the Thanksgiving holiday to the following

For a happier life, give up Facebook

Monday, according to Internet analytics firm comScore.

Alibaba’s New York-listed stock has been hammered by worries over the Chinese economy, serving as a proxy for slowing growth. It closed down 1.94 percent at $79.85 on Wednesday despite the shopping festival. Chinese growth hit a 24-year low in 2014 and has slowed further this year, as it tries to shift from investment and exports to domestic consumption. Under what leaders call the “new normal”, the country logged its worst economic performance since the global financial crisis in the third quarter, with the economy growing just 6.9 percent. In a bright spot, October retail sales - a key indicator of consumer spending - jumped 11.0 percent from a year earlier, the fastest increase since December last year, official figures showed Wednesday. Alibaba stands to benefit as its Taobao platform dominates the consumer-toconsumer online market, while its Tmall platform is believed to command more than half the Chinese market for businessto-consumer transactions.

Alibaba’s online payment unit, Alipay, processed 710 million transactions during the shopping festival, the statement said, peaking at almost 86,000 per second. The number of buyers using mobile devices a key priority for Alibaba reached 95 million through Taobao and Tmall, it said, without giving a figure for total buyers.

Indian-origin Maoist leader charged with slavery and rape in the UK

LONDON A 75-year-old Indian-origin Maoist revolutionary leader in the UK who has been charged with modern day slavery, sexual assault and imprisonment of his own daughter will appear in a court here this week.

Aravindan Balakrishnan, referred to as “Comrade Bala”, raped female followers and imprisoned his own daughter for 30 years after brainwashing them into believing he was an all- powerful and all-seeing leader, Southwark Crown Court was told.Balakrishnan ruled over a dwindling band of women supporters in his south London communist collective using threats and violence as he pursued his goal of overthrowing the “fascist state”, jurors were told.His daughter - whose mother was another member of the collective - was beaten, bullied and rarely left the house with Balakrishnan using her fear of the outside world to terrify her into submission, the court heard.“She was hidden from the outside world, except as a tool with which to terrify her into subjugation.

“Her freedom of movement was

restrained to the extent that even though she could have left physically, the power that the defendant exercised over her meant that she could never leave,” said Rosina Cottage, counsel for the prosecution, opening the case for the prosecution.

Balakrishnan is also charged with child cruelty and false imprisonment of his own daughter.He denies the charges against him.Balakrishnan, a charismatic and energetic speaker, was the organiser of a communist group in the 1970s based in Brixton, known as the Workers Institute, the court heard.He is accused of raping and indecently assaulting two women members of the group, including one who was allegedly attacked seven times over a period of about 12 years from 1980, ‘The Independent’ newspaper reported.“This case concerns the brutal and calculated manipulation by one man to subjugate women under his control,” said Cottage. He bent them to his will using mental and physical dominance, violence and sexual degradation, she said.

“It is also possible we may use piranhas, and because the number of personnel at the prison might not be enough, we can also use tigers,” he was cited as saying in local reports.

Indonesia already has some of the toughest anti-narcotics laws in the world, including death by

Despite the harsh laws, Indonesia’s corrupt prison system is awash with drugs, and inmates and jail officials are regularly arrested for narcotics offences. Anti-drugs agency spokesman Slamet Pribadi confirmed Waseso was also weighing the possibility of tigers and piranhas as guards, and hit back at suggestions the prison island plan was a joke.

“This is serious, this is not a joke,” Pribadi told AFP. “Drug trafficking is an extraordinary crime and therefore the fight must also be extraordinary, we cannot fight the usual way.” The idea is still in the early stages, and the agency is in discussions with the justice ministry about it.

Neither a location nor a potential opening date has been decided.

The plan has echoes of the Bond movie “Live and Let Die”, when the secret agent escapes from an island surrounded by crocodiles by using the reptiles as stepping stones.

Tigers, piranhas may join crocodile guards at Indonesia jail

COPENHAGEN Always envious? Got a nonexistent social life and struggle to concentrate? All this might be down to Facebook if you believe a study showing those who go a week without using the social network feel happier than others.

Carried out by the Happiness Research Institute, the study involved a sample of 1,095 people in Denmark who were divided into two groups, half of whom continued using Facebook while the others stopped. “We focused on Facebook because it is the social media that most people use across age groups,” Meik Wiking, HRI’s chief executive told AFP Tuesday in Copenhagen, the Danish capital.

After a week, those people who hadn’t been on Facebook said they were more satisfied with their lives, with 88 percent of

them describing themselves as “happy” compared with 81 percent from the second group.

Some 84 percent said they appreciated their lives compared with 75 percent in the other group, and only 12 percent described themselves as dissatisfied, compared with 20 percent among those who continued using Facebook. At the end of the experiment, the abstainers reported having a richer social life and fewer difficulties in concentrating, while the others reported no such change.

“Instead of focusing on what we actually need, we have an unfortunate tendency to focus on what other people have,” the authors of the study wrote. In other words, Facebook users are 39 percent more likely to feel less happy than non-users.

JAKARTA After sparking ridicule with a proposal to build a prison island for drug convicts surrounded by crocodiles, Indonesia’s antidrugs czar has now gone further - revealing on Friday he also wants tigers and piranhas as guards.In an idea that seemed to come straight out of a James Bond film, Budi Waseso this week unveiled the prison island plan, explaining that crocodiles can’t be bribed by drug traffickers seeking to escape jail. He embarked on a tour of the country to find “the most ferocious type of crocodile” to guard the jail, which is to be for drug convicts who have been sentenced to death.

The head of the national antidrugs agency faced widespread mockery over the plan. But far from backing down, Waseso said Friday he was considering the addition of man-eating piranhas and tigers as guards.

firing squad for traffickers, and sparked international uproar in April when it put to death seven foreign drug convicts. But President Joko Widodo has insisted that drug dealers must face death as the country is fighting a “national emergency” due to rising narcotics use.

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17 Nov. - 23 Nov. 2015

2m copper coins found inside 2,000-year-old tomb Beijing Archaeologists have unearthed more than two million copper coins from an ancient complex of tombs in the Xinjian District of China. The 2,000-year-old money, which bears Chinese

symbols, characters, and a square hole in the centre, was found at a dig site in the city of Nanchang. The value of the coins is said to be around £104,000 ($157,340) and experts believe the main tomb is that of Liu He the grandson of Emperor Wu, the greatest ruler of Han Dynasty.

The dynasty ruled between 206 BC and 25 AD. Experts hope the discovery - which also includes 10,000 other gold, bronze and iron items, chimes, bamboo slips, and tomb figurines - may now shed more light on the life of nobility from ancient times.

The find follows a five-year excavation process on the site which houses eight tombs and a chariot burial site.It covers

(430,550 sq ft (40,000 square metres) with walls that stretch for almost 9,690 ft (900 metres) and experts believe Liu’s wife is buried in one of the tombs, RT reported. Xin Lixiang of the China National Museum said the next

step is to look within the tomb for items that will give a clearer idea of the occupant. ‘There may be a royal seal and jade clothes that will suggest the status and identity of the tombs occupant,’ he said. Chinese people started using coins as currency around 1,200 BC, where instead of trading small farming implements and knives, they would melt them down into small round objects and then turn them back into knives and farm implements when needed. It meant early coins were known as ‘knife money’ or ‘tool money’, and as people began to rely on them more for commerce they were replaced by copper coins which were of a very low value

and often had holes in the middle.

The hole meant the coins could be strung together to create larger denominations, with typically around 1,000 coins on a single string being worth one tael of pure silver. At face value they would be valued at around £104,060 ($157,340), but because of their age and history are believed to be worth far more.

A single coin can in fact sell for thousands of pounds, although at the time copper coins had a very low value. The Western Han was regarded as the first unified and powerful empire in Chinese history.While there are many theories behind the fall of the Western Han Dynasty, recent research suggests human interaction with the environment played a central role in its demise. A census taken by China in 2 AD suggests the area struck by the massive 14-17 AD flood was very heavily populated, with an average of 122 people per square kilometre, or approximately 9.5 million people living directly in the flood’s path.

By AD 20-21, the devastated region had become the centre of a rebellion that would end the Western Han Dynasty’s fivecentury reign of power. Along with the tonnes of coins found were also chimes, bamboo slips, and tomb figurines, all of which accompanied deceased nobles of the past when they were buried underground. The items discovered have promised to help fill in more gaps as historians try to complete the puzzle of ancient Chinese burial customs.

Biggest-ever crystal model built

Vienna The world’s biggest crystal structure model - a 3D chemical illustration made from little balls and sticks - is being assembled in Vienna’s city hall.

It replicates the repeating lattice of sodium and chloride ions found in a crystal of salt (NaCl).

Standing more than 3m tall, the model was built by Dr Robert Krickl from nearly 40,000 balls and 10km of sticks.

The world record attempt will be adjudicated by the Guinness Book of Records on 23 November. It will be on public display until 30 November, and has already been commemorated on an Austrian postage stamp. “I want to show - to visualise - how our world looks when it’s magnified about a billion times,” Dr Krickl, a crystallographer turned science communicator, told Science in Action on the BBC World Service.Because of the regular pattern it is built up from, which causes hundreds of the “ions” to

form precise lines from multiple angles, the huge model has a rather dazzling appearance. It also has particular significance this week, Dr Krickl said. “This week it’s the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize for discovering what I show with this model: the arrangement of atoms in crystals.”The British father-andson team of William and Lawrence Bragg won the physics Nobel in 1915 for originating the technique that is now known as X-ray crystallography. “This discovery really had a major impact on science and our understanding of the world,” Dr Krickl said. “It led to the determination of the structure of DNA, of viruses, of proteins - and on the other hand, of materials used in our daily lives, for technology to build faster, better lighter machines.” To mark this anniversary, on Thursday he welcomed representatives from the British Council and the British Embassy to view the nearly completed structure.

Italian has 2nd lucky China two-child policy to add 3m babies a year escape after 30 years

PARIS An Italian tourist had a second lucky escape on Saturday when he emerged from the bloodiest scene of the Paris attacks with only a slight injury, 30 years after surviving the deadly Heysel stadium disaster in Brussels.

Massimiliano Natalucci's family told Italian newspaper Corriere Adriatico that the 45-year-old had escaped with only scratches on one leg in the Bataclan attack, which left 89 people dead.

A friend who attended the concert by the California rock band Eagles of Death Metal with him was not so lucky, and had to undergo an operation on Satur-

day after being hit in the shoulder.

"The terrorists were just three metres from them the whole time," Natalucci's father told the paper. Almost exactly 30 years ago, on May 29, 1985, Natalucci, aged 15, was with his father and uncle at the Heysel stadium in Brussels for the European Cup final when a wall collapsed, killing 39 people.

Then, as on Friday, Natalucci was unhurt. His sister Federica has a theory about her brother's luck: A kiss from Pope Jean Paul II in Rome when he was eight has protected Natalucci during both disasters.

BEIJING Around three million extra babies will be born each year after Beijing abolished its hugely controversial “one child” policy to allow all couples to have two offspring, officials said Tuesday.

Decades of strict, sometimes brutal enforcement left the world’s largest population 1.37 billion people - ageing rapidly and with a shrinking workforce that has heightened the challenges of slowing economic growth.

The rule change, announced after a key Communist Party meeting last month, will allow 90 million more Chinese women a second child, said Wang Pei’an, a vice minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

But half of them are aged between 40 and 49, he added, limiting their desire or ability to bear children.

Some might be “reluctant” to have more children, he said, while some might be “unable to give birth” even if they wanted to.

Before the change, he added, 50 million women were already entitled to have a second baby under various exemptions - rural families whose first child is a girl,

couples where one is an only child and ethnic minorities.

The announcement of the change prompted speculation of a baby boom giving the economy a boost, but analysts warn that many Chinese couples do not want more children, particularly

given the expense, and the effects of the change remain unclear. Relatively few have taken up the opportunities presented by reforms allowing some people more children in recent years.

There were nearly 17 million births in China in 2014 and Wang said the policy liberalisation will see around three million extra babies born each year over the next five years. It would add a total of about 30 million people to the labour force by 2050, he told a briefing. “The across-theboard two-child policy in the short term will drive consumption for housing, education,

healthcare, housekeeping and daily necessities, stimulate investment in relevant sectors and increase job offerings,” he said.

“It will have even stronger positive impact on economic expansion in the long run,” he said, adding China’s “potential growth rate” was expected to rise by 0.5 percentage points. But after the change was announced, Edward Hugh, an independent economist based in Spain, warned: “There is a huge time lag, 15 years plus, before this has any impact.” China’s family planning policy was instituted in the late 1970s, restricted most couples to only a single offspring and for years authorities argued that it was a key contributor to China’s economic boom and had prevented 400 million births.

It was enforced under a system of fines for violators and often forced abortions, leading to heartrending tales of loss for would-be parents. Wang said the two-child policy will be implemented after the law is revised by the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber stamp parliament that meets in March annually.

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Putin’s older daughter is a specialist in biomedical science Washington Vladimir Putin’s elder daughter, Maria, has kept out of the spotlight even more than her sister. Reuters was unable to find any recent, confirmed photographs of Maria. Born on Apr. 28, 1985, Maria studied biology at St. Petersburg University and medicine at Moscow State University. According to Russian and Western media reports, she married a Dutch businessman called Jorrit Joost Faassen. Some reports claimed she lived in the Netherlands for a while, but this could not be confirmed. Earlier this year, Putin said both his daughters were living in Moscow, but gave no further details. Maria now uses the surname Faassen, and under that name she is pursuing a biomedical career specialising in the endocrine

system, which controls the body’s hormones, according to academic listings and publications. On the website of Istina, a directory of scholars and their work at Moscow State University, she is listed as co-

author of five studies published in the past two years, with titles including “The status of blood antioxidant system in patients with active acromegaly.” She is also the co-author of a book about “Idiopathic stunting” in

children, published earlier this year by Lambert Academic Publishing.

Maria is a PhD candidate at the Endocrinology Research Centre in Moscow, which runs a charity project, Alfa-Endo, that helps children affected by endocrine ailments.

The project’s website includes a presentation by Maria. Maria told Reuters in an email that requests for information about the centre should be directed to its leadership. She did not respond to questions about when she was married or whether her father’s position had affected her career.Alfa-Endo is funded by

Alfa Bank, a large Russian bank with subsidiaries in the United States, Britain and Cyprus.

The largest shareholder is Mikhail Fridman, a billionaire with interests in banking, energy and telecoms. An official at the bank said: “Alfa Bank, and broadly speaking Alfa Group, act as financial sponsors for the project and that’s it. We are not aware who else is participating in the project otherwise.”Maria’s husband used to work for Gazprombank, a large lender with strong links to the elite around Putin. And until at least August this year, Jorrit Joost Faassen was listed on the website of MEF Audit, a Russian consulting group, as its deputy chairman. He no longer appears on the website and did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Sexist’ sandwich shop served humble pie

German woman admits killing ‘several’ babies Paris A German woman has admitted to police that she had killed “several” of her babies immediately after they were born.The 45-year-old woman was arrested on Saturday as the possible mother of eight babies whose mortal remains were found in the home where she had lived in Bavaria state, Efe news agency reported. The suspect who was sentenced to imprisonment without bail on suspicion of multiple murders, was located from the small town of Wallenfels where the little bodies were found wrapped in

towels and plastic bags.

The case came to light on Thursday when a neighbour found human remains, which turned out to be those of eight babies, though as yet neither their sex nor date of death has been established.The babies’ remains were found “in bad condition”, according to sources close to the investigation.The woman said that once when drunk she told how she hid the bodies of babies in her house, something she yelled out loud about in her last argument with her husband before disappearing.

ISLAMABAD With a tagline suggesting “if she won’t make you a sandwich we will” and menu items named after unsavoury celebrities, one cafe in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad thought it had the perfect ingredients for clientele with an appetite for sexist humour.

Instead, Table No 5 restaurant was forced to eat its words on Thursday after a roasting on social media and a visit by city officials - a small victory for feminism in this conservative Muslim country where women’s rights activists are becoming increasingly vocal.

The brouhaha began when the cafe, which opened last month, began uploading images to its Facebook account that were deemed “misogynist” by critics.

Their tagline was followed up by a menu of sandwiches named after the likes of US singer Chris Brown, who was convicted of beating his former girlfriend Rihanna, and convicted rapist Mike Tyson.

Other celebrities featured on the menu included Bill Cosby, who has been accused by dozens of women of committing sexual abuse. One picture “defined” the word sandwich as “an edible form

Gurdwara in Pakistan reopens for worship after 73 years PESHAWAR A gurdwara in northwest Pakistan was reopened today for worship after remaining closed for 73 years following a consensus among the Sikh community, local residents and the administration at a jirga

here.

Deputy commissioner of Peshawar Riaz Mehsud, who chaired the jirga, called for a discussion on the reopening of the gurdwara in Jogiwara area in interior Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.Advisor to KhyberPakhtunkhwa chief minister on minority affairs Sardar Suran

Singh was also in attendance, besides representatives from the police and the local administration.The local residents assured the jirga that they did not have any objection over the reopening of the gurdwara if proper arrangements were made for ensuring the ‘Purdah’ system.

Mehsud said a new boundary wall would be constructed around the gurdwara so that the local population does not face have to any problem from Sikh community during their worship.The gurdwara was closed in 1942 after the local population raised objection over lack of proper ‘Purdah system’ around the religious site.

of happiness, usually served by women to men as a holy offering”, and described it as being synonymous to “Men

telling AFP that a heated discussion in her office had divided workers along gender lines.The furore has also roiled

rights”.But the jokes left a bad taste in some people’s mouths.

“Poor you, this reeks of insurmountable insecurity. I hope you boys find some love in your life and manage to grow up a little bit,” said commenter Rabayl M. Mirza on the restaurant’s Facebook page. Some male users hit back. “Feminazis!” declared user Sajjad Ali. The fierce debate spilled over offline, with one female lawyer who asked to remain anonymous

city officials, who are investigating if the campaign was offensive. A visit to the venue in the city’s outlying F-11 neighbourhood revealed a chic establishment styled along the lines of a Parisian cafe with a price range that caters to city’s well-off middle and upper classes. The owner, a woman named Nadia Ali, was out of Islamabad on business though her husband said she may comment on the issue later.

French TGV high-speed train derails near Strasbourg The locomotive plunged into a canal alongside the track after

derailing. A high-speed TGV train has derailed near the eastern French city of Strasbourg, killing at least 10 people, officials say.The crash happened during a test run in the town of Eckwersheim, on a new Paris-

Strasbourg line. The train was carrying 49 railway technicians when it derailed, caught fire, and plunged into a canal. Eleven people suffered serious injuries.The derailment was due to “excessive speed”, officials say.Pictures showed the locomotive partly submerged.

Wreckage was also scattered in a field beside the track. Reports say the Paris-Strasbourg highspeed line is scheduled to open next year.Junior transport minister Alain Vidalies and Ecology Minister Segolene Royal will visit the scene, French media reported.

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Baby with two heads born in Bangladesh

DHAKA Doctors at a Bangladesh hospital were treating a baby girl born with two heads on Thursday, medical officials and the newborn’s father said. The baby was born late Wednesday and is now being treated for breathing difficulties after being shifted to the intensive care unit of the country’s largest hospital in Dhaka. “When I saw my baby, I was awestruck. She has two fully developed heads.

She is eating with two mouths and breathing with two noses,” her father, Jamal Mia, said. “Still, I thank Allah that she and the mother are now okay,” Mia told AFP. Abu Kawsar, owner of the

Standard Hospital of Total Healthcare where the baby was born by Cesarean section, said initial tests showed she only has one set of vital organs. “Except for having two heads, the newborn has the rest of her organs and limbs like a normal newborn,” Kawsar told AFP. Thousands of people thronged the hospital in Brahmanbaria, where she was born, some 120 kilometres (75 miles) east of Dhaka, after news spread of the “miracle newborn”. “The entire town poured into the clinic. There were thousands of people with some of them coming from the nearby villages,” he said.

Our world formed with water already on it Glasgow It covers roughly 72 per cent of the Earth’s surface, helps to give our planet its distinctive blue colour and was one of the essential ingredients needed for life to flourish here. But the origin of Earth’s water has remained a mystery for scientists, with many believing it was carried here by icy comets that collided with our planet 3.8 billion years ago. New analysis of tiny fragments of glass carried up in lava from deep within the Earth’s mantle, however, suggests water may have been present on the planet at its ‘birth’.

The finding suggests watersoaked dust particles present in the early solar system were incorporated into the Earth as it formed.This raises the prospect that other planets in the solar system could also have formed with water present.

Dr Lydia Hallis, a planetary scientist at the University of Glasgow who led the work while working at Nasa’s Institute of Astrobiology at the University of Hawaii, said: ‘We found the composition of hydrogen in the water in the deep mantle of the Earth is different from the composition of hydrogen that we find in the oceans on the surface of the Earth. ‘We can look at different bodies in the solar

Stonehenge monument in Golan Heights fuels mystery GOLAN HEIGHTS Driving past it, one of the most mysterious structures in the Middle East is easy to miss.

The prehistoric stone monument went unnoticed for

centuries in a bare expanse of field on the Golan Heights.

After Israel captured the territory from Syria in a 1967 war, archaeologists studying an aerial survey spotted a pattern of stone circles not visible from the ground. Subsequent excavations revealed it was one of the oldest and largest structures in the region.

Known as Rujm el-Hiri in Arabic, meaning the “stone heap of the wild cat”, the complex has five concentric circles, the largest more than 500 feet (152 m) wide, and a massive burial

chamber in the middle. Its Hebrew name Gilgal Refaim, or “wheel of giants”, refers to an ancient race of giants mentioned in the Bible. It is up to 5,000 years old, according

to most estimates, making it a contemporary of England’s Stonehenge. Unlike the more famous monument built with about 100 huge stones topped by lintels, the Golan structure is made of piles of thousands of smaller basalt rocks that together weigh over 40,000 tons. “It’s an enigmatic site. We have bits of information, but not the whole picture,” said Uri Berger, an expert on megalithic tombs with the Israel Antiquities Authority.

“Scientists come and are amazed by the site and think

up their own theories.” No one knows who built it, he said.

Some think it might have been a nomadic civilisation that settled the area, but it would have required a tremendous support network that itinerants might not have had.

There could be an astrological significance. On the shortest and longest days of the year the June and December solstices - the sunrise lines up with openings in the rocks, he said.

Standing on the ground inside the complex, it looks like a labyrinth of crumbling stone walls overgrown with weeds.

From on top of the five-meterhigh burial mound, it is possible to make out a circular pattern.

Only from the air does the impressive shape of a massive bull’s-eye clearly emerge.

Shards of pottery and flint tools were found in various excavations to help date the site, Berger said. Scholars generally agree that construction started as early as 3,500 BC and other parts may have been added to over the next two thousand years. The complex is in an area now used for training by Israel’s military, but visitors can explore the walls and crawl into the 20-footlong burial chamber on weekends and holidays.

system such as comets and asteroids and they all have different hydrogen compositions.

‘This suggests the water (in the deep mantle) didn’t come from comets and it is more likely to have come from very early in the

solar system before planetary bodies formed. ‘The composition of hydrogen back then is very similar to the composition we see in the deep mantle today.’

Dr Hallis and her colleagues, whose work is published in the journal Science, examined minute pockets of glass contained within volcanic basalt rocks on Baffin Island in Canada and the Holuhraun lava field in Iceland. These glassy fragments have been preserved in the mantle beneath the Earth’s crust for around 4.5 billion years, meaning they are almost as old as the planet itself.

Using an instrument known as an ion microprobe they were able to measure tiny amounts of

water trapped inside. They used this to study the ratio of different isotopes of hydrogen in the water by comparing the levels of deuterium, known as heavy hydrogen, to normal hydrogen.

While hydrogen has an atomic mass of one, deuterium has an atomic mass of two, meaning they can be distinguished from each other. The researchers found that the water trapped inside the early rocks contained very little deuterium. They then compared the hydrogen isotope ratio found in these rocks to levels seen in asteroids, comets and meteorites. Many geologists believe these objects carried water to the Earth between 3.8 and 4 billion years ago during a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. They have claimed that before this Earth was likely a dry planet and any water on it would have evaporated under the heat coming from the young sun.

But the new research suggests there was in fact water on the Earth from the moment it formed and not all of it was vapourised by the sun. ‘Water molecules were likely carried on the dust that existed in a disk around our sun before the planets formed.

Over time this water-rich dust was slowly drawn together to form our planet,’ said Dr Hallis.

Phones need ‘bed mode’ to protect sleep

London Smartphones, tablets and ereaders should have an automatic “bedtime mode” that stops them disrupting people’s sleep, says a leading doctor.

Prof Paul Gringras argued the setting should filter out the blue light that delays the body clock and keeps people awake later into the evening.

The doctor, from Evelina Children’s Hospital in London, said every new model was “bluer and brighter”. He said manufacturers needed to show more “responsibility”.

As it gets darker in the evening, the body starts to produce the sleep hormone melatonin - which helps people nod off. Certain wavelengths of light, those at the blue-green end of the spectrum, can disrupt the system.

Prof Gringras was part of a study, published in Frontiers in Public Health, analysing the light emitted by devices. It concluded there was a clear trend for new

devices to be bigger, brighter, have higher levels of contrast and emit more blue light.

The professor of children’s sleep medicine told the BBC News website: “That is great for use in the day, but awful for use at night. “There is converging data to say if you are in front of one of these devices at night-time it could prevent you falling asleep by an extra hour.”

He said some sleep-aware apps had already been designed to reduce blue-green light emissions. And that a bedtime mode could automatically filter out the blue as software such as f.lux already does.

He said there needed to be “more responsibility from manufacturers” and the “key is to automate it”. Prof Gringras added: “It’s not good enough to say do less and accept this is the world we live in, they’re fun devices but we do need some protection on what they do at nighttime.”

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Rare pink diamond sells for $28.5m GENEVA A spectacular pink diamond, the largest of its kind to ever appear at auction, sold for $28.5 million (26.6 million euros) on Tuesday, narrowly beating auction house Christie’s projection.

An unidentified bidder snatched up the 16.08-carat rare gemstone, kicking off a week of auctions that could see another coloured diamond set a new world record. That stone, a 12.03carat blue diamond described by experts as flawless, is being sold by rival auction house Sotheby’s on Wednesday, and could fetch a record $55 million. The pink diamond, owned by an American family for the past 15 years, is the largest cushion-shaped stone classified in the elite “fancy vivid” category to ever come to auction. Christie’s had listed the projected sale price between $23 and $28 million. “This is an absolutely top price for a stone of this quality,” the head of Christie’s luxury division, Francois Coriel, told journalists after the final hammer of the night fell. Rahul Kadakia, the International Head of Jewellery at

Christie’s, had previously told AFP that the stone had the potential to fetch more than $30 million. Christie’s said that only three pink stones classified by the Gemological Institute of America as “fancy” and weighing more than 10 carats have been up for sale in 250 years. Coloured diamonds have been the centre of attention in the run up to the this week’s magnificent jewel sales in Geneva, with experts insisting that the market for such rarities has grown increasingly robust.

“Coloured diamonds...have seen sustained growth during the last few years.

Partly because of their great rarity, but equally because of their beauty,” said David Bennett, head of Sotheby’s international jewellery division.–AFP Another 7.07-carat fancy pink sold for 3.4 million Swiss francs, below Christie’s estimate of 4.5 million francs, possibly suggesting this season’s market for coloured stones is more tepid than expected. All eyes will turn to Sotheby’s on Wednesday, when its prized lot, dubbed “Blue Moon,” will aim to

shatter the record for a stone sold at auction.

Discovered in South Africa in January last year, the Blue Moon is the largest cushionshaped blue stone in the fancy

the current world record for sale at auction, set by Sotheby’s in November 2010 in Geneva, when a 24.78-carat pink diamond sold for $46 million.The current record for a blue diamond

vivid category to ever appear at auction. Sotheby’s has put its estimated sale price between $35-$55 million which, at the top end, would break the auction record. A pink diamond holds

belongs to the Zoe Diamond, which in November 2014 fetched $32.6 million in New York.

Among the other highlights at Christie’s sale, was a 50.48carat white diamond, which sold

for $6.8 million, excluding commission. In total, Christie’s 409 lot auction brought in $110 million. Geneva’s auction season, which began at the weekend, has already seen a number of high-profile lots snatched up, albeit at prices that seem ordinary compared to the enormous values attached to this week’s coloured stones. A Rolex watch worn by Roger Moore in the James Bond film “Live and Let Die” sold at a Philipps auction on Sunday for 365,000 Swiss francs ($363,000). The estimated price for the stainless steel watch, made in 1972, was between 150,00-250,00 Swiss francs. In the film, the watch is used to create a magnetic field which deflects bullets. At Wednesday’s Sotheby’s auction, two pieces owned by another ex-Bond star will go under the hammer. Scottish actor Sean Connery is selling a 15.4-carat pink and orange diamond, which could fetch above $2 million and a ring boasting 5.18 carats of diamonds, with an estimated sale price of $250,000.

Mobile phones making childbirth safer in Ethiopia Man who can suck lollipops through cheeks London Some Guinness World Records are impressive feats of skill while others are down to the grace of God but perhaps the most memorable are the strange ones.

Joel Miggler holds the record for the most flesh tunnels in the face - 11 as of 2014 - and boasts more stretched piercings than anyone else on the planet. Speaking ahead of Guinness World Records Day - the 11th annual celebration, which will see 650,000 people try and break new records - the 22-year-old reveals where his obsession began. The Germanborn record holder explained that at the age of 13 he started with a single, regular earpiercing and decided that he liked that look. He then slowly began adding flesh holes fitted with expanders to his lips and nose - saving the largest two for his cheeks. These measure a very painful 34mm but Joel has plans to increase them to 40mm, despite them already acting as a window to the teeth inside his mouth. He said: ‘I think body modification is a very addictive process. ‘When I make something new I have one week in a little bit of pain, after this week I am very proud

to have a new thing. I am very happy and want to go to the next one.’

Joel also discussed his world record and explained that while he was not the first person to cut his cheeks and fit flesh holes, he was the first to cut them three times. He noted that the process involves a lot of bleeding, but that eventually it does heal very well and he then begins thinking about getting another.In terms of eating Joel said that he does not have many problems, although he is required to take small bites and of course soup is liable to leak out the side. Showing off what he can do with his body modifications, Joel is filmed sucking a lollipop through the large hole in the side of his mouth.He also places a strawberry lace through one cheek before pulling it out the other side and holding either end of it. Joel is even able to poke his tongue, which has been surgically split down the middle, through the flesh holes in his mouth. In the future Joel plans to stretch his face even more and would also like to get an eye-ball implant - a piece of decorative jewellery placed within the superficial, interpalpebral conjunctiva of the eye.

ADDIS ABABA In Ethiopia where almost nine in every 10 women give birth at home after pregnancies with little or no medical support, a mobile phone app is coming to the rescue with lifesaving guidelines when things go wrong.

The “Safe Delivery App”, created by the Danish development organisation the Maternity Foundation, provides simplified instructions and animated films to deal with emergency situations, be it haemorrhaging, birthing complications, resuscitating newborns or infections.

“Midwives may have skills and knowledge,” said Mesfin Wondafrash, the Maternity Foundation’s program manager in the Horn of Africa state. “But they may not apply the right procedures when complications arise -even simple complications.” At the touch of a button, the app can give crucial guidelines to birth attendants, who are often traditionally educated and may lack training in up-to-date procedures that could save lives.

The initiative is proving even more vital in rural areas, where the only help many mothers get is from family members or a local woman.

Described as an “emergency training tool”, the app is available in local languages and in English. And a key asset: it can be pre-installed on a mobile telephone so it works even without a network connection or Internet access. Officially, 85 percent of Ethiopian babies are born at home. The hospital is

often seen as an option only when major complications arise -- often too late to save a life.– AFP “Pregnant women wait at home and if a complication occurs, like bleeding, it may be too late to access care,” Mesfin told AFP. In a promising trial run, testing started last year in the small town of Gimbie in the Oromo region, some 450 kilometres (280 miles) west of the capital Addis Ababa. A total 78 mobile phones with the “Safe Delivery App” were given to midwives attending local women.

“After a year, the capacity of the app users to manage bleeding rose from 20 to 60 percent, and for new born resuscitation, from 30 to 70 percent,” Mesfin added.

“If all health care providers could use this app, safe delivery would increase.”

The Maternity Foundation says the preliminary results “show a remarkable improvement in the skill and knowledge level of the health workers.”“The advantage of the app over a medical book is that it is easy to understand, easy to access and easy to

update,” said foundation chief Anna Frellsen. Every year, five million babies and 289,000 mothers die from complications related to childbirth worldwide, with the majority of the deaths in developing countries such as Ethiopia. The foundation -whose motto is “no women should die giving life” -- aims to tap the sharp rise in mobile phone users in Africa, a technology, it said, that offers “abundant unexplored potential” to quickly reach otherwise hard to access areas.

“With the Safe Delivery App, we can overcome one of the biggest barriers to preventing maternal mortality: the lack of trained childbirth support. We can reach health workers that are otherwise difficult to reach,” she said. The app is also being tested in Ghana and will soon be deployed in Tanzania, Guinea and elsewhere. The foundation’s goal is to equip 10,000 health workers by 2017.

“If we achieve that, we will have ensured a safer birth for approximately one million women,” said Frellsen.

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Peru’s ancient city Caral inspires modern architects CARAL Architects seeking solutions for sustainable living in the 21st century are taking notes from the ancient city of Caral in Peru, an engineering marvel built some 5,000 years ago.

Caral’s builders created a city of

pyramids, sunken amphitheaters, seismically resilient buildings and underground ducts that channeled the wind to keep their fires burning -- all with basic tools. It was the site of the oldest known civilization in the Americas, the Caral or Norte Chico civilization, which developed from 3000 to 1800 BC almost as old as Ancient Egypt.

Today, architects from around the world have convened in Caral to seek inspiration in its sandy brown ruins and discuss the

challenges facing humankind five millennia later. The International Union of Architects met at the UNESCO World Heritage Site last weekend and signed a document called the Caral Letter, which hails the ancient city as an example of

sustainable urban planning and living in harmony with nature.

The letter from the 124-nation group will be presented next month at high-stakes UN climate talks in Paris, where countries will seek a comprehensive agreement on curbing the carbon emissions warming the planet.

The world’s architects had previously met in Athens in 1933 to sign a landmark manifesto on urban planning and in Venice in 1964 to call for the preservation of the world’s monuments.

“We turn to the past to see how

Japanese hid in gutter peeping Tom

TOKYO A man in Japan who hid in a drain for five hours, allegedly to snap photos up women’s skirts, was given away when passers-by spotted his hair sticking out of a grate, police and reports said.

Yasuomi Hirai, 28, allegedly squeezed himself in a section of a gutter 28 centimetres (11 inches) wide, with his head under a piece of iron grating, a police spokesman said Wednesday.

“His hair got caught at the edge of the grate, which drew the attention of some pedestrians,” the spokesman with the Hyogo prefectural police in Kobe told AFP.The alleged offence took place in the port city August, but police said that Hirai’s arrest on Monday came after a lengthy investigation. Police did not elaborate but the Sports Hochi

tabloid reported Tuesday that Hirai kept himself in the small space for about five hours, holding a smart phone to take photos from under the grate.

Local reports said it was not the first time Hirai has been arrested for the same offence, which violated a local ordinance preventing nuisance acts. He was nabbed two years ago after squeezing himself into a gutter allegedly for the same purpose, Sports Hochi said. Hirai reportedly told police at the time that he wanted to be reborn as “part of pavement in the next life.”

Peculiar offences involving the harassment of women and girls are frequently reported in Japan.

In 2012, several high school girls from a small neighbourhood reported to police that they were tackled by a sock-stealing thief.

civilization was organized 5,000 years ago, thinking about their commitment to nature, their cosmic vision,” said Jose Arispe, one of Peru’s leading architects and an adviser with the International Union of Architects.

He marveled at engineering feats like the ducts Caral used to supply air to fires used in religious ceremonies and keep them burning. The system relies on what physicists now call the Venturi effect, the reduction in pressure when a fluid flows through a constricted space.

“We are rediscovering the work of architects and engineers at the time, when there were no instruments like the level or the plumb line. It’s high engineering,” he told AFP. Buildings in the city, which is in a seismically active area, also feature flexible foundations called “shicras” that resemble large baskets filled with stones -- a technique to minimize earthquake damage. Caral’s inhabitants apparently had no weapons and no city walls to keep out neighboring peoples.

“It was a peaceful culture and serves as a reference for future generations,” said Arispe. They also built the city on arid land to preserve fertile ground for farming. “This society was very interested in developing in harmony with nature. They never occupied the valley, they didn’t settle on productive land.

Chimps care for disabled infant

TOKYO A chimpanzee mother cared for her disabled infant in the wild in Tanzania, Japanese researchers reported in a study published this week, research they hope will help in understanding the evolution of social care in humans. A team of Kyoto University researchers discovered that a “severely disabled” female chimpanzee baby was born in a group in Tanzania’s Mahale Mountains National Park in 2011, and recorded behaviour of the group for about two years.

“The observed infant exhibited symptoms resembling Down syndrome, similar to those reported previously for a captive chimpanzee,” they said in an abstract of the study published Monday in the online edition of Primates, an international journal of primatology. “The mother’s compensatory care for her infant’s disabilities and allomothering of the infant by its sister might have helped it to survive for 23 months in the wild” when the infant

disappeared and was believed to have died, they said.Allomothering refers to care of infants performed by those other than the biological mother. The mother and the sister of the chimpanzee supported its body with their arms when the mother was breastfeeding it, Michio Nakamura, associate professor at Kyoto University’s Wildlife Research Center, told AFP on Wednesday. “Usually, a chimpanzee baby can hang onto their care-giver by itself, but this infant’s legs were not powerful enough,” he said.“It is the first time it was observed in the wild that a disabled chimpanzee was receiving social care.” “We believe the study offers a fresh clue as to how human society, which socially cares for disabled members, has evolved,” he said. Signs of social care for the disabled have been discovered in research on human ancestors, and “there has been discussion that the ability to give care was probably obtained when our ancestors became humans,” he noted.

of 43.2 million Swiss francs. It also fetched the highest-ever price per carat, he said, with the buyer shelling out 4.02 million Swiss francs per carat. The previous world record for a jewel sold at auction was held by the 24.78-carat “Graff Pink” diamond,

attempt to purchase a prime development site. Lau, who was not in Macau for the sentencing, is unlikely serve time as the two semi-autonomous Chinese cities do not have an extradition agreement. He was locked in a telephone bidding war for eight

which was sold by Southeby’s for $46.2 million in November 2010.This is not the first time Lau has bought rare jewels for his daughter. In 2009, he reportedly spent $9.5 million on another blue diamond, which he renamed the “Star of Josephine”.

Josephine is his daughter with girlfriend and former aid Chan Hoi-wan, according to local media. The 64-year-old also has two children with long-time partner Yvonne Lui. In March last year, he was found guilty of bribing a former minister in the gambling enclave of Macau in an

minutes for “Blue Moon” before the hammer went down, with the precious jewel staying within its pre-sale estimate of $35-55 million.The diamond was discovered in South Africa in January last year and was the largest cushion-shaped blue stone in the fancy vivid category to ever appear at auction.

Experts say the market for coloured diamonds has grown increasingly robust and both the blue and pink diamonds garnered a lot of attention in the run up to this week’s jewel sales in Geneva.

Tycoon buys daughter $48m diamond

HONG KONG A Hong Kong billionaire spent a record $48.4 million buying a 12.03-carat diamond dubbed “Blue Moon” for his daughter in an auction in Geneva, his spokeswoman confirmed to AFP Thursday. Property tycoon Joseph Lau, who last year was found guilty of bribery in neighbouring Macau, bought the rock at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday and immediately renamed it “The Blue Moon of Josephine” after his seven-yearold daughter.

The sale comes the day after he spent $28.5 million buying a rare 16.08-carat pink diamond - the largest of its kind to ever go under the hammer - from rival auction house Christie’s, which he rebaptised “Sweet Josephine”. A Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Lau confirmed the two purchases to AFP. “The first was the pink one ‘Sweet Josephine’ and the second one was the ‘Blue Moon of Josephine’,” she said. David Bennett, head of Sotheby’s international jewellery division, said the “Blue Moon” sale broke several records, making the gemstone “the most expensive diamond, regardless of colour, and the most expensive jewel ever sold at auction”.

The jewel, set in a ring, was sold for 48.6 million Swiss francs ($48.4 million, 40 million euros), including fees, with a starting bid

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I have Increased my bowlIng Umar Akmal denies load says Ishant sharma any wrongdoing

Not the least bit concerned about the storm he kicked off due to an overtly aggressive demeanour during the Sri Lanka tour, Indian pacer Ishant Sharma says he does not even think about the outburst which led to a onematch ban on him.

Back in the team after serving the suspension in the opening Test against South Africa in Mohali, Ishant said he prefers to look ahead instead of dwelling on whether he could have done anything differently in Sri Lanka.

“Many times in life we look back and think of a moment in the past, and wonder, ‘If I had done this or not done that, would things have been different’? There is no answer to that. When I got banned for the Mohali Test, I decided I would not look back and wonder about what would or could have happened. What happened in Sri Lanka is the thing of the past, and I prefer not to think about it,” Ishant told bcci.tv.

The pacer was criticised by several former cricketers for his outbursts during the

tour with the showdown with Dhammika Prasad catching the most attention. “Dhammika Prasad

was bowling bouncers to me. In an over you can only bowl two, but he bowled a third one. I knew that he was doing it because he got hit on his hand off my bowling earlier. Anyway, when he bowled a third bouncer, it did not come up,” he recalled. “So, I just told him, ‘You are too slow to hit me on the helmet’.

He got offended and other Sri Lankan players got in-

need to do something to charge you up and spur you on to achieve something special. It was that moment for me. I know many people believe what I did was very wrong because I got banned (for one Test). I did not get banned because of my spat with Prasad, which everyone was criticising me for. I got banned because I celebrated in the batsman’s

In a brutal incident, a young promising South African Indian intellectuallyimpaired cricketer has been beheaded in a ritual sacrifice, prompting police to start a probe and arrest three persons including his best friend in connection with the murder.

Nawaz Khan, 23, was allegedly lured to a forest near his home by his best friend Thandowakhe Duma, 21 and a traditional healer to a forest near his home, where he was attacked with a bush knife and beheaded, police said.

His friend Duma was charged with murder after he led the police team to the site of the head at the weekend after confessing that a traditional healer had requested him to bring along a human head to

address problems that he (the friend) was facing.

Police also lauded the actions of the community at

chased from his alleged killers.

Khan was named Cricket South Africa’s award for the intellectually impaired Cricketer of the Year in 2013 and lived for the sport, his mother, Zakia Khan said.

“He was thrilled when he received his award from his ideal, Hashim Amla, calling it the happiest day of his life,” said the mother, adding that her son could not read or write but had excelled in sport despite being mocked about his disability.

Albert Warnick, spokesman for the South Africa Sports Association for the Intellectually Impaired, told media here that Khan had been looking forward to going overseas with his cricket team.

volved too. Things heated up from there and got carried on when I came on to bowl. “As a fast bowler, you

Disabled Indian-origin cricketer beheaded in South Africa

a housing settlement in the coastal town of Umzinto, who helped nab the traditional healer after he went on the run following the investigation.

Two more people were arrested after being found in possession of Khan’s mobile phones, which they claimed they had pur-

face after getting him out.

That is not allowed. It was the heat of the moment,” he asserted. Talking about the changes he has made to his technique to become a better bowler, Ishant said he has primarily focussed on bowling more and a shorter run-up.

“I haven’t done much work on my bowling, just increased my bowling load. Everyone says that pacers will not get wickets in Asia and it is all about the spinners.

But there are phases when nothing is happening and wickets are not coming easily.

That’s when as a fast bowler you have to say, ‘I will get a wicket for my captain’. For that you need self-belief. I got that from increasing my workload,” he said. “I shortened my run-up a bit because when I used to run, I didn’t feel free.

Umar Akmal has denied any wrongdoing at a party, which led to his axing from the Pakistan Twenty20 International team for the three-match series against England later this month.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced last week that Umar was not going to be considered for selection for the series after an incident in Hyderabad (in Pakistan) in which he is alleged to have “misbehaved” with women at a party. Haroon Rashid,

the chief selector, made the announcement, saying, “Umar Akmal had been pencilled in for selection, but he has subsequently been dropped on instructions from the Board, as he has been issued with a show cause notice for bringing PCB and Pakistan cricket into disrepute.” The PCB also served a show cause notice to Umar, the 25-year-old wicketkeeperbatsman, whose career has been chequered with disciplinary problems.

No question of playing in India says Shaharyar Khan A day after revealing the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s offer to host Pakistan for a bilateral series in December, Shaharyar Khan, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman, is adamant that the series would be possible only if it is played in the United Arab Emirates where they get to play ‘host’.

“There is no question of playing in India,” Khan told ESPNcricinfo on Monday (November 16). “I (am) still awaiting the reason of not playing in UAE. “We went there in 2007 and 2012. This time not again. It is our series and we will play at our home venue which is the UAE,” he reiterated, quashing BCCI’s idea to host the event.

For security reasons, Pakistan was forced to move the home games to the UAE after the 2009 militant attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team outside the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore.

Ever since, the UAE, a neutral venue was used to

host Pakistan’s international encounters.

As per a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the BCCI and the PCB in 2014, Pakistan are due to host India in December for

Also adding that the Indian government was unlikely to permit the team to play in the UAE. However, since the appointment of Shashank Manohar, the new BCCI chief, the pros-

just the limited-overs leg of the series which was originally supposed to include two Tests as well.

Anurag Thakur, the BCCI secretary, who is also a BJP MP, had earlier stated that a bilateral series in the wake of the sustained political tension between the countries was impossible.

pect of the neighbours facing off seemed a more viable prospect. Khan, on the other hand, wanted BCCI to explain its stance of its refusal to play a bilateral series in the UAE despite having it as a venue for the first leg of the cash-rich Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2014.

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Russian woman acid attack: Accused held, victim shifted to Delhi The accused in an alleged acid attack on a Russian national in Nand Nagar colony area, has been arrested in Varanasi even as the victim was shifted to Delhi for better treatment.

Siddharth Srivastava, who had fled to Allahabad after

committing the crime, was nabbed on Friday when he came back to visit the 23-year-old victim in the hospital , Varanasi SSP, Akash Kulhary said.

Addressing a press conference in Varanasi on Saturday, Kulhary clarified that the victim had dual citizenship of Russia and Bulgaria and was

living with the accused as his friend, and not as a paying guest.

A guilt-ridden Srivastav who was also present at the conference said, “I really feel shameful for my act, I don’t know whether I would ever be able to meet her in my life.

“I threw acid on her in a fit of rage as she was not willing to talk to me. I was disappointed with her decision to go back to her nation. Though she had turned down my marriage proposal, I was fine with it, but I did not want her to go away,” he said.

Meanwhile, the victim, who suffered 46 per cent

burn injuries on her face and body in the attack, has been shifted to New Delhi for better treatment.

“The foreign national, who was undergoing treatment at Sir Sunder Lal Hospital of BHU, has been shifted by an air ambulance from Varanasi airport this evening to Safdarjang Hospital in Delhi,” Varanasi District Magistrate Rajmani Yadav told PTI. The District Magistrate also said Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav sanctioned Rs 5 lakh from the CM Relief Fund for the woman’s treatment, adding that the state government was ready to support her financially.

The woman was shifted after consultations between the Russian Embassy, the state government and the Centre to provide her better medical care, said Yadav.

Indian writer’s granddaughter recounts tale of Paris horror

By Subarna Gangopadhay I am fine and safe but in a state of extreme shock in wake of the tragic events of Friday evening here in Paris. I am a Bengali living in France for the last seven years. Paris is home away from home. The city is a beacon of light, life and love and is a symbol of the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Now, yet again Paris is under attack and Parisians who had barely healed from the January attacks on Charlie Hebdo have to come to terms with this unprecedented tragedy.

I work with Infosys France.

On Friday evening, even as the terrible events were unfolding, I was at an Infosys Diwali evening for our employees at our headquarters in La Defense, the business district of Paris. We were celebrating life, positivity and all the good spirit that Diwali stands for, unaware of what was happening in other parts of the city between 9 and 10 pm.

Around 9.30 pm I took the public transport to return home and still had no idea and didn’t notice anything amiss. But, soon after, news started pouring in, frantic calls and messages from friends and family

three days of mourning.

The capital is still in shock and in lock down mode, the streets are empty, shows, theatres, shops, schools, gyms closed.

People are putting candles in their windows to show

from around the world. The rest of the night was a blur...watching the horrifying developments on the news, messages and calls, trying to get news on whether all our 163 Parisbased employees and their families are safe, it has been an extremely distressing time.

Our lives have come to a standstill, a state of emergency declared and

solidarity and an eerie silence prevails.

My heart bleeds for my fellow Parisians and all victims and families. This was a sad day for humanity and a dark cloud of grief and anger hangs over the city of lights...

(The author is granddaughter of Narayan Gangopadhay, the creator of Tenida. She lives and works in Paris)

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Health A handful of walnuts secret to better sperm The simple way to boosting male fertility, a major problem across the world, could be gobbling a handful of walnuts, researchers say.

“The initial research we conducted regarding walnuts and male fertility found improvement in sperm parameters after adding walnuts to the diet and has set the stage for us to further explore the impacts of walnuts on male fertility and reproductive health,” Professor Wendie Robbins, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Nursing.

“New projects are underway that we hope to be able to share with you in the near future,” she told PTI. Infertility and subfertility affect a significant proportion of humanity and the burden in men is

relatively unknown.

Infertility is defined as a “disease of the reproductive system” and results in disability.

in a group of healthy young men between 21-35 years of age.

These findings, published in the journal Biology of

to the male partner, and in the US the prevalence of men seeking help for fertility is estimated at 3.3 - 4.7 million.

Commenting on the study in 2012 by a team led by her, Robbins said that 75 grams of walnuts consumed daily improved sperm vitality, motility, and morphology (normal forms)

Reproduction, are of particular interest to the over 70 million couples worldwide who experience sub-fertility or infertility.

In fact, 30 to 50 per cent of these cases are attributed

This research suggests that walnuts provide key nutrients that may be essential in male reproductive health.

According to Robbins, “the positive finding of walnuts

A new study has revealed that a few minutes of physical activity can lower blood pressure for people with Type 2 diabetes.

Author Bronwyn Kingwell of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes said that they saw some marked blood pressure reductions over

participants were on medication to control blood pressure during the study.

Researchers checked blood pressure and blood norepinephrine levels at regular intervals across the day.

For light-intensity walking, participants took a slow,

and simple resistance activities were associated with an average 12-point drop in systolic blood pressure.

Kingwell said that muscles activated when you move, increase blood sugar uptake, which was especially important among people with Type 2 diabetes since their bodies couldn’t make enough insulin to maintain healthy blood sug ar levels.

He added that the parallel lowering in norepinephrine levels were also an intriguing candidate in relation to the blood pressure.

Kingwell concluded that light activity breaks were not meant to replace regular, purposeful exercise. However, they might be a practical solution to cut down sitting time, especially if you were at your desk all day.

Researchers have identified a drug that works to limit the spread of glioblastoma the most common primary tumour of the brain and central nervous system which is also regarded as one of the most aggressive of all cancers.

The drug propentofylline or PPF, targets a protein called TROY. It also increases the effectiveness of a standardof-care chemotherapy drug called temozolomide (TMZ), and radiation, to treat glioblastoma.

“We showed that PPF decreased glioblastoma cell expression of TROY, inhibited glioma cell invasion, and made brain cancer cells more vulnerable to TMZ and radiation,” said the study’s senior author Nhan Tran from Translational Genomics Research Institute (Tgen) in Phoenix, US. “Our data suggests that PPF, working in combination with TMZ and radiation, could limit glioblastoma invasion and improve the clinical

on sperm may be a result of their unique nutrient profile.”

Today, the Ayurvedic herbal system of medicine is followed and accepted all over the world.

SurajvanshiDawakhana has many useful preparations to treat male sexual dysfunction.

Suranvanshi’s herbal system has a number of remedies that not only provide symptomatic relief but attacks the root cause without any side effects.

For all your male health issues, please call 416992-5489. Suranvanshi can cure your erectile dysfunction. Erectile dysfunction refers to problems with achieving and maintaining an erection for satisfactory sexual intercourse (impotence), or problems with “ejaculation too early” (premature ejaculation), Of

all the conditions men face, erectile dysfunction is the most personal, It is extremely common, afflicting and estimated 30 million North American men. This does not mean that erectile dysfunction is inevitable of permanent, and today, there are many permanent remedies available that have been tried & tested from the time immemorial. No matter how long a man has been experiencing these problems, he can be treated successfully. We use Ayurvedic treatments to restore your natural bodily functions. Products are 100% natural herbal supplements you can trust., Rooted from Ayurveda, it is the world’s oldest system of natural solutions, originating more than 5000 years ago in India.

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outcome for brain tumor patients,” Tran noted. One of the primary treatments for glioblastoma is surgical removal of the tumour.

However, because of the aggressive way glioblastomas invade surrounding brain tissue, it is impossible to remove all

protein that enables glioblastomas to invade normal brain cells, and resist anti-cancer drugs.

One of the fundamental challenges in treating brain cancer with drugs is what is known as the blood-brain barrier that separates circulating blood from the

parts of the tumours, and the cancer eventually returns and spreads. This insidious cancer invasion also limits the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs and radiation therapy. The new study found that PPF works to limit the spread of glioblastomas by targeting and knocking down the expression of the TROY

brain extracellular fluid in the central nervous system.

This barrier works to protect the brain from toxins.

However, this security system is so effective at protecting the brain that it prevents many life-saving drugs all but some small molecules from being able to treat cancer and other diseases of the brain.

Light walking can lower Drug that could limit spread blood pressure in diabetics of deadly brain tumours

trial days when people did the equivalent of walking to the water cooler or some simple body-weight movements on the spot.

In the study, participants were men and women, average age 62, who were overweight or obese. About two-thirds of the

easy stroll on a treadmill.

For simple resistance activities, they did halfsquats, calf raises, knee raises, or gluteal muscle squeezes.

The researchers found that light walking was linked to an average 10-point drop in systolic blood pressure

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Are you a diabetic? Try these 5 power foods Fighting cancer Studies have revealed that diabetes is growing at an alarming rate in India, mostly resulting from unhealthy eating habits, stress and lack of physical activity. In case you are a

diabetic, stick to these 5 power foods to help you fight against it.

Citrus Fruits: Studies show that people with diabetes tend to have

lower levels of vitamin C in their bodies, so antioxidant-packed citrus fruit is a great snack choice.

Grapefruit, oranges, lemons and limes have insulin-like properties

which check Type-2 diabetes.

Wild salmon: Wild salmon is the perfect medicinal food for people with diabetes. It is an

extremely high source of Omega-3 essential fatty acids that are crucial for reducing inflammation and lowering blood sugar levels.

The presence of Omega-3s also reduces one’s risk of

developing cardiovascular diseases.

Dark green leafy vegetables: A diet high in green leafy vegetables can reduce

Vanilla yoghurt makes us feel good Eating vanilla yoghurts with lower fat content gives people a stronger positive

emotional response, says a new study. “We were surprised to find that by measuring emotions, we could get information about products independent from whether people like them,” said lead author Jozina Mojet from Food & Biobased Research, Wageningen University in

the Netherlands.

The researchers used a new method called an

emotive projection test to determine the effect of different yoghurts on people’s moods.

Three groups of at least 24 participants were each given a pair of yoghurts to taste. The pairs of yoghurts were of the same brand and were marketed in the same way, but had

different flavors or fat content. The team then tested their emotions using four methods, including the new emotive projection test.

The researchers found that vanilla yoghurt elicited a strong positive emotional response, supporting previous evidence that a subtle vanilla scent in places like hospital waiting rooms can reduce aggression and encourage relationships among patients and between patients and staff.

The team also looked at the sensory effect of the yoghurts. There was no difference in the emotional responses to strawberry versus pineapple yoghurts, but low-fat versions led to more positive emotional responses.

depressIon can damage your memory

Once they enter memory, depressive thoughts can linger for long in affected people, and this extended

duration may reduce the amount of information that these individuals can remember, suggests new research.

The findings have farreaching implications for understanding how depression damages

memory, as well as how depression develops and persists over the course of an individual’s lifetime.

“People with depression or

even healthy people with a depressed mood can be affected by depressive thoughts,” explained researcher Bart Rypma from The University of Texas at Dallas in the US. “We have known that negative thoughts tend to last longer for those with depression. However, this study is unique in showing that these thoughts, triggered from stimuli in the environment, can persist to the point that they hinder a depressed person’s ability to keep their train of thought,” Rypma noted.

your risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Spinach, collards, kale turnip green, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce – these powerhouse foods are extremely low in calories and carbohydrates. Research reveals that eating at least a serving and a half of green leafy vegetables every day reduces diabetes risk by 14 percent.

Oatmeal: Diabetics could have a much better chance of keeping their blood sugar levels under control most of the day if they begin their day with oats. A type of fiber found in oats Betaglucan has shown beneficial effects in people who have diabetes. Hearthealthy oatmeal is packed with soluble fiber which slows the absorption of glucose from food in the stomach keeping bloodsugar levels under control.

Nuts: Recent studies reveal those who eat peanuts every day cut their risk of developing diabetes by as much as 21 percent. An ounce a day of walnuts, almonds, or cashews can work wonders.People who eat nuts regularly have lower rates of heart disease than people who don‘t eat them. An ounce of nuts can go a long way in providing key healthy fats along with hunger management.

with tomatoes

In a new study, a team of scientists has traced the activity of the cancerfighting tomato component.

Years of research in University of Illinois scientist John Erdman’s laboratory have demonstrated that lycopene, the bioactive red pigment found in tomatoes, reduces growth of prostate tumors in a variety of animal models. Until now, though, he did not have a way to trace lycopene’s metabolism in the human body.

The team found that plant biofactories can incorporate heavier carbon atoms into cancer-fighting phytochemicals, which can be used to trace their movement in the human body. This process allowed the researchers to study human

metabolism of lycopene.

They showed that when consumed, lycopene undergoes a change in its chemical structure that potentially influences health.

The results provide novel information about absorption efficiency and how quickly lycopene is lost from the body.

Researchers determined its half-life in the body and now understand that the structural changes occur after the lycopene is absorbed, John W. Erdman Jr. explained.

In the future, these new techniques could help researchers to better understand how lycopene reduces prostate cancer risk and severity. They will be able to develop evidencebased dietary recommendations for prostate cancer prevention, Erdman said.

Advanced kidney disease may make you poor Advanced chronic kidney disease are the significant predictors of falling into poverty, as are the black ethnicity, low educational attainment, single adult household and low income, according to a recent study.

The study stated that advanced stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD) may cause considerable financial strains for patients and their families.

The impact of CKD on a patient’s household income is unclear. To determine whether CKD severity and side effects associated with the disease and its treatment were associated with a fall into poverty, Rachael Morton from the University of Sydney and her colleagues examined information on individuals with moderate-to-severe

CKD who were participating in the Study of Heart and Renal Protection (SHARP) and were followed for a median

ethnicity, low educational attainment, single adult household and low income at the start of the study were also linked with a fall

of 5 years.

The researchers found that CKD severity, but not side effects, was a significant predictor of a fall into poverty. Participants who received kidney transplants were 52 percent less likely to fall into poverty. Black

into poverty.

Patients in advanced stages of CKD are at an increased risk of falling into financial hardship, the authors concluded, adding that kidney transplantation may have a role in reducing the risks of household poverty due to CKD.

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CHICKPEA AND PASTA SOUP

porterhouse wIth lemon Ingredients: 1 (3-lb), 2?-thick porterhouse steak, at room temperature Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 2 tbsp. canola oil 4 tbsp. unsalted butter 6 sprigs thyme 1 lemon, halved crosswise Instructions: Season steak heavily on both sides with salt and pepper; let sit for 30 minutes. Heat oven to 500°. Heat a 12? cast-iron skillet over high heat until it begins to smoke. Add oil and steak; cook until lightly charred on one side, about 5 minutes. Flip steak, and transfer skillet to oven; cook until mediumrare and an instant-read thermometer reads 135°, about 10 minutes. Transfer steak to

a platter, and let rest for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, pour off pan drippings and return skillet to stove over high heat.

Add butter and then thyme and lemon halves, cut sides down; cook until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat. Slice steak around the bone. Transfer to plates, and drizzle with butter from skillet. Serve with the lemon for drizzling.

Ingredients: 3 tbsp. olive oil 2 stalks celery, roughly chopped 1 carrot, roughly chopped 1 small yellow onion, roughly chopped 3 sprigs rosemary, minced 6 cups vegetable stock 1 (15-oz.) cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed 8 oz. cavatelli Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 2 tbsp. minced parsley Parmesan cheese, for serving Instructions: Heat oil in a 6-qt. saucepan over medium-high; add rosemary, celery, carrot, and onion and cook until soft, 8-

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

GARLICKY SKILLET GREENS WITH HAM

Ingredients: 3 1/2 cups flour 1 1/4 tsp. fine sea salt 3/4 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. baking powder 16 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 cup sugar 1 cup packed brown sugar 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract 2 egg yolks (reserving whites for another use) 12 oz. semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped 1 1/2 cups almond flour Instructions: Heat oven to 350°. Whisk flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a

Ingredients: 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar 1/4 cup sorghum 2 tbsp. Sriracha hot sauce 1 smoked ham hock 1 small yellow onion (1/2 roughly chopped, 1/2 minced) 1 cup rendered bacon fat 1 1/2 lb. each collard and turnip greens, stems discarded, leaves thinly sliced Kosher salt, to taste 12 cloves garlic confit, sliced, plus 2 tbsp. garlic oil Instructions: Boil vinegar, sorghum, and Sriracha in a 1-qt. saucepan; let gastrique cool.

Boil ham hock and roughly chopped onion in a 4-qt. saucepan of water un-

bowl. Combine butter, both sugars, and vanilla in a large bowl; beat on mediumhigh speed with a hand mixer until smooth and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add yolks, one at a time, beating after each addition; add dry ingredients; beat on low speed until just combined. Add chocolate and almond flour and mix until combined. Roll dough into 1 1/2 tbsp. sized balls and place on a parchment paperlined baking sheet about 2” apart. Bake for 8 minutes; using a metal spatula, gently press cookie down slightly. Bake 7 minutes more and cool slightly before serving.

til ham is very tender, 1 1/2–2 hours. Let ham cool in water. Drain ham; finely shred meat, discarding bone.

Melt bacon fat in a 12" cast-iron skillet over medium-high. Cook reserved ham until browned and slightly crisp, 3–4 minutes. Stir in minced onion; cook until soft, 4–6 minutes. Increase heat to high, add both greens, and season with salt; cook, stirring constantly, until greens are wilted, 1–2 minutes. Stir in reserved gastrique, the garlic confit, and oil.

SEARED SNAPPER WITH NETTLE SAUCE

roast ducK wIth plums Ingredients: 1 (5 1/2–6-lb.) Long Island or Pekin duck Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 4 medium yellow onions, cut into 1" wedges 4 sprigs thyme 4 whole cloves 1 stick cinnamon 2 lb. ripe plums, halved and pitted Instructions: Heat oven to 350°. Season duck generously with salt and pepper and place breast side up in a roasting pan. Add 1 cup water to pan; roast duck for 1 hour. Scatter onions, thyme, cloves, and cinnamon around duck; roast, basting occasionally with pan drippings, for 1 hour. Increase oven to 450°

10 minutes. Add stock and chickpeas; simmer 5 minutes. Remove half the chickpeas and purée until smooth; return chickpeas to pan. Add pasta and cook until al dente, 10 minutes; season with salt and pepper. Stir in parsley and serve with parmesan cheese.

and add plums to pan; roast until skin of duck is browned and crisp and an instantread thermometer inserted into thickest part of leg reads 165°, about 30 minutes.

Transfer duck to a cutting board; let rest 10 minutes before carving. Using a slotted spoon, transfer plums and onions to a bowl; set aside.

Strain pan juices into a 4-qt. saucepan; simmer over medium, skimming fat as needed, until sauce is slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Stir in reserved plums and onions; cook until warmed through, 1–2 minutes more. Carve duck and arrange on a serving platter. Using a slotted spoon, place plums and onions around duck; pour sauce over duck.

Ingredients: 1/3 cup grapeseed oil 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced 2 shallots, thinly sliced 6 cups picked nettles or spinach leaves (about 12 oz.)

1/2 cup chicken stock 3 tbsp. fresh lemon juice, plus 1 lemon quartered Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1/4 cup canola oil 4 (6-oz.) boneless, skin-on, fillets red snapper, halved crosswise Instructions: Heat oven to 350°. Heat grapeseed oil in a 6-qt. saucepan over medium. Cook garlic and shallots until soft, 4–6 minutes. Increase heat to medium-high and add 4 cups nettles; cook, stirring oc-

casionally, until liquid is released, 2–3 minutes. Add stock and bring to a boil; cook for 3 minutes. Remove from heat; add lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Using an immersion or regular blender, purée sauce until smooth; keep warm. Toss remaining nettles with 1 tbsp. canola oil on a baking sheet and spread in an even layer; bake until crisp, 10–12 minutes. Heat remaining oil in an ovenproof 12" skillet over medium-high. Working in batches, cook snapper, skin-side down, until skin is crisp, 3–4 minutes. Season flesh side of snapper with salt and pepper; flip. Squeeze lemon quarters around snapper and drop into skillet; cook 2 minutes more. Serve snapper, skin-side up, over nettle sauce; garnish with crispy nettles.

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