Martin Luther King III thanks India for giving Gandhi to world

Friday, February 20, 2009

Posted by Snehsan

"I thank you for giving Mahatma Gandhi to the world," said Martin Luther King III Thursday during his visit to Mani Bhavan, residence of Mahatma Gandhi from 1917-1934.King, who is touring the country to trace his parents' "pilgrimage" to India in 1959, addressed media at the historical residence where his father Dr Martin Luther King Jr stayed during his tour to Mumbai, then Bombay.The civil rights activist got emotional saying he was honoured to visit the place where his parents came 50 years ago and felt the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi."My father and mother visited this place fifty years ago and now my wife and I are retracing those steps," he said."My father visited many countries as a tourist, but he visited this great country as a pilgrim," King III said. "We will return to the US more determined, more committed and more concerned to spread the message of love and non-violence in our nation and the whole world," King III, who is accompanied by his wife said.Speaking about Mumbai terror attacks, he said the world saw the tragedy and "wept and prayed for you".

Ponting may miss IPL II

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Posted by Snehsan

KOLKATA: With the second season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) set to begin on April 10, Team Kolkata management is working overtime on the possible permutations and combinations regarding their foreign recruitments and their availability depending on ICC's Future Tours Programme (FTP). The bone of contention for Shahrukh Khan's men is the availability of Ricky Ponting and David Hussey who are unlikely to arrive before the second week of May. The tentative date for the final of IPL II is May 24. If Australia's next two assignments - tour of South Africa and the ODI series against Pakistan - are any indicator, the duo may be available at the most for five matches (three league matches and semifinal and final provided Team Kolkata qualify). Australia finish their tour of South Africa on April 17 and head for Dubai where they finish their five-match series tentatively by May 10.

Abhay Deol: I was introduced to the drug culture by friends in high school

Posted by Snehsan

His Dev.D has received an overwhelming response and is also being touted as a trend-setter in Bollywood. But lead hero Abhay Deol isn’t in India to savour its success; he’s in New York doing a workshop in welding and metal work! “But I miss home badly, especially now that the film doing so well. I read whatever I can on the Net every day. Most people don’t know this, but I’m a very ordinary guy, the type who feels shy in a crowd and is overwhelmed by attention,” confesses Abhay. Hailed as the poster boy of smallbudget films, Abhay accepts that his career received only ‘a fair share’ of hype until Dev.D happened. “But things are looking much bigger now. I’m very happy and I need a little time to adjust to this new-found fame,” he says.

Not many know that a modern adaptation of Devdas was Abhay’s idea. “I was looking for a story that dealt with drugs and addiction in an urban setting. When I saw SLB’s Devdas, it occurred to me that it had exactly what I was looking for; all I had to do was set it in the present day. Which was also good because it gave the film a marketing platform, an iconic character, a story and its moments,” explains the actor. And if his portrayal of Dev has been lauded as outstanding, it’s because the actor identifies with most of the film. “It’s a film everyone would understand, most importantly, the youth.

Drugs have always been around; I was introduced to the drug culture by friends in high school. At that age, I was also madly in love with a girl, which I later realised was just an obsession,” admits Abhay. Being a Deol, doesn’t he ever miss the maar-peet and naach-gaana routine? “No, for me the challenge in doing that routine would be to do it better than those who’ve done it before me. And I know I’d fail because, to begin with, I’m not a competitive person. I’m not interested in it either. I’ve worked hard to make a place for myself in the industry, to conform to commercial norms now would be to throw it all away. The audience is also changing now as proven by the kind of films that have worked at the BO in the past couple of years,” observes Abhay. Right now, his focus is on his next film — also his debut production — titled Junction. “All my first five films were with new directors. Even Junction is being directed by debutant Atul Sabarwal, who has also written the script. I like to encourage newcomers, be it directors, actors or writers,” he signs off.

SENSEX RECOVERS INITIAL LOSSES, UP BY 55 PTS IN MORNING TRADE

Posted by Snehsan

After resuming lower below the 9K-mark on the back of distinctly weak global cues, the benchmark recovered sharply to quote in positive terrain at 9,089.72 in early deals, supported by good buying from domestic funds. Recovery in the Sensex was led by smart rise in the Reliance Industries (RIL) and ONGC. The Bombay Stock Exchange 30-share barometer initially touched a low of 8,922.31 but rebounded to quote at 9,089.72 at 1015 hours, a rise of 54.72 points, or 0.61 per cent, over the previous close. The bellwether index had lost a massive 600 points in the last two sessions due to the disappointing interim Budget. The broader 50-issue Nifty of the National Stock Exchange also recouped by 14.05 points, or 0.51 per cent, to 2,784.55 at 1015 hours from its last close. Market participants attributed lower opening to weak global cues. Most of the Asian indices were trading lower due to steep fall on Wall Street yesterday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled by 3.79 per cent and 63.70 per cent, respectively, due to worsening economic conditions and fears about the health of the financial sector as regional manufacturing data signalled the further downturn.

US quiet on Pakistan peace deal with Taliban

Posted by Snehsan

WASHINGTON (AP) — While human rights groups and European officials criticize Pakistan's truce with Taliban fighters, the United States has had little to say. The muted response Tuesday was a sign — the second in two weeks — of an Obama administration wary about weakening an already fragile government in Islamabad. The U.S. needs that government in the fight against Islamic militants, including the Taliban, that are using Pakistan to stage attacks on U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has sent a hard-line cleric to the violent Swat Valley to negotiate with the Taliban. The cleric is pressing militants to give up their arms to honor a pact that imposes Islamic law and suspends a military offensive in Swat and nearby areas. Swat is not far from the semiautonomous tribal regions where al-Qaida and Taliban long have had strongholds.
British and NATO officials have expressed misgivings about a move they said could give extremists a haven in Pakistan.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, however, was cautious when speaking to reporters in Japan. She said Pakistan's efforts still needed to be "thoroughly understood" before she could comment. "Obviously, we believe that the activity by the extremists in Pakistan poses a direct threat to the government of Pakistan as well as to the security of the United States, Afghanistan and a number of other nations," Clinton said.
The United States relies on nuclear-armed Pakistan to fight resurgent extremists operating along the Afghan-Pakistan border, and is eager to strengthen a Washington-backed government facing high inflation, a sinking currency, widespread poverty and a violent insurgency by Islamic militants.
Earlier this month, Clinton also was reticent when asked about Pakistan's release from house arrest of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist whose smuggling operation shipped nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya.
The Obama administration is conducting South Asia policy reviews and has appointed Richard Holbrooke, who settled ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, as a special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Christine Fair, a South Asia specialist with the RAND Corporation, said, "The real reason for being silent is there's really no good answer" yet in Washington for what is happening in Pakistan.
"Everyone is skeptical that this is going to work," Fair said.
At the State Department, spokesman Gordon Duguid, pressed by reporters for the administration's view of the truce, would say only that U.S. diplomats in Islamabad are "fully engaged" with the Pakistani government "to find out exactly what their strategy is."
"We'll wait and see what their fuller explanation is for us," he said.
Others have been more critical.
Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said peace deals between Pakistan and the Taliban "tend to fail and, in the interim, they tend to strengthen highly regressive, human rights-abusing forces."
The Pakistani Embassy in Washington said troops would remain "until the militant threat was completely over" and the deal is "conditioned on peace and laying down of arms by militants."

GOLD PRIZES ARE GOING TO BREAK RECORD - Rs. 15420 per 10 Gram

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Posted by Snehsan

GOLD SIZZLES TO RECORD PRICE OF RS 15,420 PER 10 GRAM

Amid continuing decline in stock markets, all-weather investment option gold zoomed past all previous records on Tuesday to set a record price of Rs 15,420 per 10 gram in the national capital. The metal surged by Rs 560, the biggest single-day rise in over one-year today in tune with rates in the global markets where gold rallied above 960 dollar an ounce. Dealers said melting stocks and forex markets left no other option for investors other than gold and they rushed park their funds in bullion. There was frantic buying by stockists and speculators on firming trend on the global front amid a plunge in equity markets, they added. Analysts had forecast that gold may touch Rs 16,000 per ten gram in short-term. The steep rise in prices, however, brought gloom to retail buyers particularly in the ongoing wedding season. A retail jeweller in Delhi said many prospective customers were postponing their buying decision as they are unable to grapple with with never-before like prices. "Retail buyers postponed their decisions to buy for the current marriage season in view of the sky-rocketing gold prices," said All India Sarafa (bullion) president Sheel Chand Jain, adding the surge was solely of speculative nature.

Laden Located?

Posted by Snehsan

OSAMA BIN LADEN MAY WELL BE IN PARACHINAR: REPORT

Fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden is most likely hiding out in a walled compound in a Pakistani border town, according to a satellite-aided geographic analysis released today. A research team led by geographer Thomas Gillespie of the University of California-Los Angeles used geographic analytical tools that have been successful in locating urban criminals and endangered species. Basing their conclusion on nighttime satellite images and other techniques, the scientists suggest bin Laden may well be in one of three compounds in Parachinar, a town 12 miles from the Pakistan border, USA Today reported. The research incorporates public reports of bin Laden's habits and whereabouts since his flight from the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in 2001.

The results, reported in the MIT International Review, are being greeted with polite but skeptical interest among people involved in the hunt for bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader behind 9/11. Bin Laden's whereabouts are considered "one of the most important political questions of our time," the study notes.
"I've never really believed the sitting-in-a-cave theory. That's the last place you would want to be bottled up," Gillespie says. The study's real value, he says, is in combining satellite records of geographic locations, patterns of nighttime electricity use and population-detection methods to produce a technique for locating fugitives.

Essentially, the study generates hiding-place location probabilities. It starts with "distance decay theory," which holds that the odds are greater that the person will be found close to where he or she was last seen.
Then the researchers add the "island biographic theory," which maintains that locales with more resources — palm trees for tropical birds and electricity for wealthy fugitives — are likelier to draw creatures of interest.

"Island biographic theory suggests bin Laden would end up in the biggest and least isolated city of the region," Gillespie says, one among about 26 towns within a 20-mile distance of Tora Bora.
"To really improve the model, you would need to include intelligence data from 2001 to 2006," Gillespie says. "It has been eight years. Honestly, I think it is time to be more open. This is a very important issue for the public."

The study also makes assumptions that bin Laden might need:
• Medical treatment, requiring electricity in an urban setting.
• Security combining few bodyguards and isolation that requires a walled compound.
• Tree cover to shield outdoor activities from aircraft.
"Of course, it all depends on the accuracy of the information on most recent whereabouts," Gillespie says. "I assume that the military has more recent information that would change the hiding place probabilities."

Says geographic-profiling expert Kim Rossmo of Texas State University in San Marcos, who has worked with the military on adapting police procedures for finding criminals to counterterrorism: "It's important to think outside the box, and this is an innovative idea worth more pursuit. However, the authors are much too certain of their conclusions.
"The idea of identifying three buildings in a city of half a million — especially one in a country the authors have likely never visited — is somewhat overconfident."

The researchers contacted the FBI with their findings, and USA TODAY asked Defense Department officials for reaction, before publication of the study.
"The combination of physical terrain, socio-cultural gravitational factors and the physical characteristic of structures are all important factors in developing an area limitation for terror suspects," say John Goolgasian of the federal National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Bethesda, Md. His spy satellite agency "looks forward to reviewing the article once it is published."

Gillespie is an expert on finding endangered species on remote islands, typically birds. A co-author, UCLA's John Agnew, is an expert on satellite-based population estimates. The study grew out of an undergraduate seminar on applying geographic profiling to real-world problems.
"We are all wondering where bin Laden is hiding," Gillespie says. "We just wanted to offer the techniques we have to help."

Shah Rukh's surgery successful, doing well

Monday, February 16, 2009

Posted by Snehsan

According to latest reports, Shah Rukh Khan's shoulder surgery at the Breach Candy Hospital went successful. The surgery lasted for three hours. A team of three doctors led by Dr. Sanjay Desai performed the surgery on Shah Rukh's left shoulder.
Shah Rukh Khan is doing well and is conscious now. He is expected to be discharged in two days. However, he will be out of action for a period of six months. Shah Rukh won't be doing any shooting during that period.
Thousands of fans of Shah Rukh Khan wished him a speedy recovery and prayed for his good health.

Death for Pandher, Koli in Nithari rape-murder case

Friday, February 13, 2009

Posted by Snehsan

Ghaziabad : Businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surinder Koli were sentenced to death by a special court on Friday for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar, one of the 19 victims in the Nithari serial killings.
Pronouncing the sentence, Special CBI judge Rama Jain held the crimes committed by 55-year-old Pandher and 38-year-old Koli to be the ‘rarest of rare’ deserving capital punishment. Pandher broke into tears while Koli remained unmoved. While Khalid Khan, the counsel of the victim's family, called the verdict a "slap on the face of the CBI" which had given a clean chit to Pandher, the businessman's son Karandeep Singh said his father was innocent and he would appeal against the judgement in the Allahabad High Court. In a statement, the CBI said it was satisfied with the judgement pronounced against Koli but further action in Pandher's case, if any, would be taken only after examining the judgement and on the basis of legal advice. The court had on Thursday convicted Pandher and Koli under various sections of the Indian Penal Code for murder, rape, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence. "No more penalty could be awarded to the accused persons otherwise they deserve more punishment as their act of murder and rape in this particular case was beyond all the canons of humanity," the judge said. During final arguments, the CBI counsel had argued that Koli had no right to live in society because even today he had no remorse. "He continues to be a threat to the society," the CBI counsel said, pointing out that Koli was a rare combination of a person indulging in paedophilia (having sex with children) and necrophilia (having sex with the dead) and there was no chance of his becoming reformed and rehabilitated.
Reacting to the court verdict which had not taken into account the CBI's contention that Pandher was away in Australia along with his wife when Rimpa was raped and murdered in February 2005, the CBI said in a release that the opinion formed by it in all the 16 cases in Nithari was based on legally admissible evidence and the result of probe. CBI investigations revealed that Pandher, owner of the house, was away when the incidents took place. "This is borne out from the documents, statement of witnesses and mobile phone records." "When the first incident of abduction, rape and murder of Rimpa Haldar took place on February 8, 2005, Pandher was out of the country in Australia. The opinion formed by the CBI in all the 16 cases was based on legally admissible evidence and result of investigation," CBI said in the release.

Haryana cops do Google search to solve porn mystery

Posted by Snehsan

Chandigarh: Search giant Google has been approached by the Chandigarh police after apparently morphed pornographic photographs of leading Haryana politicians were posted on the Internet. The police have asked Google to trace the source of the pornographic photographs, believed to be morphed, following a complaint from Haryana Congress secretary Mahinder Singh. The pictures pertain to three senior Haryana politicians: Finance Minister Birender Singh, Education Minister Mange Ram Gupta and senior legislator and former state Congress chief Shamsher Singh Surjewala. All three are senior Jat leaders, the politically dominant, land-owning community in the state. "The cyber crime cell is investigating the matter. The message seems to have originated from a Gmail account and we have asked Google to conduct a trace. Their report should be available to us within the next few days," Chandigarh's senior superintendent of police S S. Srivastava said.

Plane crashes into house in NY, 48 dead

Posted by Snehsan

New York : New York state police say a passenger plane with 50-seats capacity has crashed into a home in suburban Buffalo. Reports said that the plane hit a house in Clarence around 10:10 pm EST (0310 GMT) Thursday. (That would make it Friday in India.)

As the plane hit the house, it engulfed in flames. A huge fire broke out and thick smoke spread throughout the suburb. Reports said there were 48 commuters or passengers on the plane. Some other reports said that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as saying that the plane had 48 people onboard, and their fate remained unknown. It could be seen on TV footage that a massive fire broke out at the scene of crash, while firemen and police rushed to the scene for rescue. Reports said the plane may have been headed to Buffalo Niagara International Airport. He says authorities have called the Federal Aviation Administration. It was reportedly a Continental Airlines commuter plane travelling from Newark, New Jersey to Buffalo.
As last heard, the state police had secured the scene and fire fighters were fighting the blaze. Those found injured on the ground were rushed to nearby hospitals and civic officials were evacuating 12 homes near the area of accident.

Valentine's Day

Posted by Snehsan

Chinese paramilitary police recruits stand around forming a heart shape pattern on a basketball court in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang province, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 ahead of Valentine's Day. (AP Photo/Color China Photo) ** CHINA OUT **

Shah Rukh Khan's house attacked in Mumbai

Posted by Snehsan

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan's bungalow in Mumbai's Bandra was attacked early Friday by some unidentifiedmen."Around 0230 hours, motorcycle-borne miscreants threw the bottles filled with kerosene and fled from the scene. The security men at the residence 'Mannat' chased the miscreants but in vain," Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Niket Kaushik told PTI.When the incident occurred, Khan was not in the house and nobody has sustained any injuries, he said adding that a complaint has been registered and further investigation is on in the matter.

Madonna shoots for mag with naked Jesus

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Posted by Snehsan

Pop Queen Madonna, who is said to have turned to Jesus after her marital split with Guy Ritchie, has appeared in a raunchy magazine shoot with the 22-year-old Brazilian toyboy model. 50-year-old Madonna is pictured in a series of steamy shots with Jesus, who is rumoured to be her new boyfriend, in the new issue of W magazine which carried out the photo spread in Rio de Janeiro, according to 'The Daily Telegraph'. While Madonna keeps her clothes on throughout the shoot, wearing a succession of black dresses with a crucifix necklace, Jesus appears naked, modesty protected with a white towel, in some of the images.

In one, Jesus lies spread-eagled on a hotel bed in a pair of black briefs while Madonna locks the door; in another, they're writhing around on the sheets and sharing a passionate kiss in a black and white photo, the report said.

Madonna, who recently divorced husband Guy Ritchie and has moved to New York, was earlier linked to a baseball player Alex Rodriguez who was in the news this week after admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs earlier in his career.

India to study Pakistan's response to dossier

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NEW DELHI: India on Thursday said it will react to Pakistan's response to the dossier on Mumbai attacks after receiving and studying it.

"Our High Commissioner to Pakistan will be going to the Foreign Office later in the day when we expect to receive a formal report. When the response is available, we will study it and react further," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash told reporters.

He said Indian officials had seen media reports on the statements made by Pakistan's interior minister Rahman Malik.