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A Muslim federation of over dozen organisations Friday sought a quick and fair investigation into the arrest of 11 youth suspected to have links with banned terror outfits LeT and HuJi and plotting to carry terrors attacks in the city.

“We demand a quick and fair investigation of the case, adherence to rule of law and reiteration that innocents will not be harassed,” federation convener Masood Abdul Khader told reporters, a day after police revealed that the accused were arrested Wednesday from Bangalore and Hubli.

(By Amaresh Misra – Part I) Swami Vivekanand called it the second most beautiful place on earth after Kashmir. Today, the wonder that was Assam is a mass of decomposing bodies, petty politicking, strewn hopes, unfathomable despair and a fear that says: only man is vile.

India has been the victim of divisive-sectarian violence for more than a century, more particularly after the British implemented their policy of ‘divide and rule’ and encouraged communal formations to flourish. These communal formations, mainly Muslim and Hindu, in turn spread hatred against other religious communities and violence in the name of religion came to be a tragic part of our nation. Millions of innocents lives have been in this violence, which is instrument in the hands of communal forces.

The UAE’s rapid economic and population growth over the last couple of decades has put immense pressure on its water resources. Currently, the country has a population of 5.1 million, and continues to grow at a rate of 3.28 per cent.

To meet the water demands of this escalating population and improve water connectivity, the government is looking at viable options such as desalination and infrastructure development.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that the market earned revenues of $2.75 billion in 2011 and estimates this to reach $5.61 billion in 2015.

Onetime screen diva Saira Banu relishes the time she spent with her husband, the legendary Dilip Kumar, and doesn’t regret her decision to cut down film projects after tying the knot. She says spending time with him was more important to her than anything else.

There is almost a generational 22-year age gap between Saira Banu and Dilip Kumar, but Indian filmdom’s highly regarded couple have enjoyed a blissful married life ever since tying the knot in 1966.

Their marriage is four decades old but romance hasn’t faded between Bollywood couple Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu.

The couple enjoyed a quiet dinner together at Saira’s 68th birthday, revealed yesteryear superstar Dilip Kumar.

“It was Saira’s birthday yesterday (Thursday). Her friends claimed her attention since morning,” Dilip Kumar tweeted Friday.

“But the late evening was just the two of us, for the quiet dinner at our favourite restaurant,” he posted further.

IANS

A grieving Indira Gandhi decided to join Lal Bahadur Shastri’s cabinet after her father Jawaharlal Nehru’s death when she realised he would otherwise invite her estranged aunt Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit.

So says Janak Raj Jai, then a confidant of Gandhi who saw her snub Shastri initially when he urged her to join his government on their return after immersing Nehru’s ashes in Allahabad.

Writing in his book “Strokes on Law and Democracy in India” (Universal Law Publishing Co), Jai, now 82, says he overheard Shastri tell Gandhi that one person from the Nehru family must be in his government.

An influential Christian Church organisation will hold an international conference in Geneva next month on Pakistan’s blasphemy law, after an 11-year-old Pakistani Christian was detained on accusations of defaming Islam.

Religious and secular groups worldwide have protested over the arrest last week of Rifta Masih, accused by Muslim
neighbours of burning verses from the Koran, Islam’s holy book.

(Banajit Hussain) Many Muslims from erstwhile East Bengal settled in Assam in early 20th century. But vested interests are out to prove that their descendants today are illegal migrants

Orphan, Poverty are the fate of human life but on seeing the pathetic condition of five orphan sisters, one  is forced to pray to God not to deprive the patronage of father.

In a time, when poor families become still paupers in performing the marriages of their daughters. They incur debts and face starvation. In such a family, how can one imagine wedding not only of one but five orphan girls. They not only lost their father, their mother also passed away.

Depends on the occasional support of well-wishers Mohammed Jahangir a handicap struggling to survive with wife, three children and old aged parents.

40-year-old Jahangir was a labour twelve years ago. One black day, he was working as a construction labour, suddenly a newly built concrete slab collapsed on his back, turning him into a handicap.

He can’t do anything on his own and totally depends on wife’s, father’s or mother’s support even for nature’s call.

During Ramadan, shopping for Eid in the walled quarter of Hyderabad does not end with the night. In fact, it picks up at night with the centuries-old markets doing business round-the-clock.

As such, with only a couple of days left for Eid-ul-Fitr, marking the culmination of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, all roads in the city are now leading to shops, hotels, roadside eateries and the ubiquitous vendors around Charminar, the symbol of Hyderabad and the hub of Eid shopping.

It is a pageant of rare Quranic manuscripts that not only provides an insight into the glory and richness of Islam but also sets back the clock of the religion’s advent into Kashmir by almost a century.

A rare 1237 AD Quranic manuscript calligraphed by Fathullah Kashmiri, displayed at an exhibition here, is the oldest-known copy of the Islamic scripture prepared in Kashmir and reveals Islamic communities were present in the Valley much earlier than generally believed.

Egg yolks are just as bad smoking for atherosclerosis, thanks to accumulation of fat and cholesterol which causes the hardening of arteries by plaques within its walls.

Surveying 1,231 patients, David Spence, professor of neurology at Western University, Canada, found regular consumption of egg yolks is about two-thirds as bad as smoking regarding increased build-up of plaque, a risk factor for stroke and heart attack.

(By Quaid Najmi) In the early 1960s, a young and handsome student in Pune University harboured a secret ambition: to become a star in Bollywood. Over the years, the Bollywood dreams of Vilasrao Dagadoji Deshmukh crumbled although he resembled an upcoming star of those times, Shatrughan Sinha, and whose dialogue delivery he imitated to regale friends.

Instead, Deshmukh became a rising star in politics, starting with his native Latur district. The double graduate-cum-lawyer became one of the youngest sarpanches at age 29 in 1974.

A Caller From Somalia Asked A Scholar in Saudi Arabia,
We Don’t Eat For Suhr (eating before fast)
We Dont Eat For Ifthar (breaking the fast),
Would Our Fast Be Accepted ? The Scholar Cried As He Heard This Question…

How Fortunate Are We….Isn’t it Time To Thank Allah 1,000,000….Times For What We Get for Suhur and Iftar and everyday in our life. The best way to thank Allah is to help Islam. Doesn’t Islam need help today? And let’s us ask ourself what have we done for Islam and how much more we can do for it.

In this historic city where minarets of hundreds of mosques dot the sky, one mosque stands out as more than a mere place of worship. Besides the five-time prayers a day, the mosque is playing a significant role in addressing issues of health and education. It even offers interest free gold loans to the needy and pensions to the widows and the elderly.

The horrific violence in Assam has once again brought our attention to the malaise of communal violence in India. In the recent times one has witnessed such a violence in parts of UP, (Kosi Kalan, Barailly, Pratapgarh) and also in Gopalgargh in Rajasthan. In most of these acts of violence one has to confront the reality that there is a lapse on the part of state, the police and civic administration, due to which the violence sustains itself after the initial spark has been thrown by someone.

Poverty is not so painful but the feeling of poverty is! There are a large number of people who move heaven and earth to try to maintain their respectability but their needs are beyond their means. On one side of a coin there is one section of the population which gobbles down ‘Haleem’ worth more than 100 crore in a single month, and on the other, there are people whole children long for a single piece of meat for whole week.

Men usually prefer slim and younger-looking women as they appear healthier and more fertile, but during tough times stressed out men turn to larger women for comfort, says a research led by an Indian-origin psychologist.

Stress can cause men to “reassess their priorities”, and panic makes them treasure more homely qualities such as a larger body size that signifies access to basic resources like food, according to the Telegraph.

Islam is a religion of nature; ‘Deen-ul-Fitrah’. It enjoins what is good for the human being and forbids which is harmful. This has been proved by a recent study which revealed that lying could damage your physical and mental health. The study claims that the fewer the lies, the better will be your physical and mental health. It was found that people experienced about four fewer mental health complaints such as feeling tense or sad by telling three fewer lies in a 10-week period.

People with a good sense of humour are “more attractive” and have a better chance of finding a partner, a study has found.

Many people deploy a strategy and show off one’s playful side in a bid to make themselves more appealing to potential mates, the Telegraph reported.

A team of US researchers surveyed 250 undergraduate students and found that both sexes list “sense of humour”, “fun loving” and “playful” among the most important characteristics they look for in a potential long-term partner.

It was in August 1972 – 40 years ago – that nearly 10,000 people of Indian-origin fled Idi Amin’s Uganda and arrived in the depressed, deprived and unwelcoming town of Leicester on a cold, misty morning.

Officially, they were not welcome.

That year, the Leicester City Council had asked them in a newspaper advertisement that it was “in your own interests and those of your family… not come to Leicester.”

Britons, known for their love for lager, spend more than a year of their lives in the pub, a study has found.

In an average week, Britons head out at least twice, for a period of three hours and 34 minutes, The Sun reported citing the poll of 2,000 adults by pub chain Taylor Walker.

During the average drinking lifetime of 60.5 years – after the legal age of 18 – Britons spend 11,220.7 hours or 467.5 days at the bar.

A “typical” drinker spends around 125,000 pounds on their favourite drink over their lifetime. Lager was found to be the most commonly-bought drink.

Seema Mustafa