News

Washington, August 09: Home alone, President Barack Obama has been enjoying what some have jokingly referred to as a bachelor’s weekend with friends – golfing, playing basketball and grilling out on the White House South Lawn.

The festivities are all part of a belated birthday celebration of sorts for the president, who turned 49 Wednesday.

With the first lady Michelle and youngest daughter Sasha, 9, on vacation in Spain and 12-year-old Malia attending camp, friends from Hawaii, Chicago, Illinois, and college joined Obama on Saturday at Andrews Air Force Base for a round of golf.

London, August 09: Experts have advised expectant mothers to stay away from liquorice, a confectionery flavoured with the liquorice plant’s root extract, as it might put their unborn child at increased risk of developing diseases.

Experts have found eight-year-olds who were exposed to liquorice in the womb had levels of the hormone cortisol up to a third higher than those whose mothers never ate it.

Cortisol helps the body deal with stress, but it is also linked to diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, reports dailymail.co.uk.

Jerusalem, August 09: Bottled mineral water will no longer be served at ministerial meetings in Israel, as a government forum said cabinet ministers will now have to quench their thirst with plain tap water.
The Forum of Water Corporation said opting for tap water can save a lot of money.

“Beyond being a waste of public money, this habit displays a lack of trust in tap water, for which the government itself is responsible,” Xinhua quoted forum chairman David Kochmeister as writing in a letter to Cabinet Secretary Tzvi Hauser.

London, August 09: A Pakistani-origin British couple have been allegedly shot dead in Pakistan, when they went to resolve a dispute over their daughter’s wedding.

Gul Wazir and his wife reportedly travelled to Pakistan to resolve a dispute over their daughter’s wedding and were gunned down in Salehana village in Nowshera province, Sky News reported.

Wazir worked as a taxi driver and lived in Alum Rock area of Birmingham.

West Midlands Police confirmed the deaths, adding that an inquiry is being carried out by Pakistani authorities.

Beijing, August 09: Over 80 people fell ill late Sunday after eating at a funeral banquet in China.

Villagers in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region ate at a dinner Saturday night following the funeral of a local man. More than 80 people, however, sought medication for stomach ache and diarrhoea since 7 p.m. Sunday, authorities said.

Though no deaths have been reported and the sick villagers were all in a stable condition, officials said it was not known how many people ate the dinner, Xinhua reported.

Tripoli, August 09: Libya will pay compensation to its citizens who have been wrongly imprisoned by authorities, a ministry statement said.

“Those who were released after being detained by authorities in connection with various security cases, including convicts who were still imprisoned after the expiry of their sentences, prisoners who were detained but later acquitted and people who were detained without trial… will be eligible to cash compensation payments,” Xinhua quoted the justice ministry as saying in the statement.

London, August 09: An Austrian bishop has described the stampede at a German music festival that left 21 people dead as a sinful event and said the incident was God’s punishment for losing faith.

Andreas Laun, the Roman Catholic bishop in Salzburg, described the Love Parade and participation in it as a “rebellion against creation and against God’s order, which are sins and an invitation to sin”, News reported.

Twenty-one people died and over 500 were injured in a stampede as revellers tried to get in to the festival in the German city of Duisburg July 24.

Melbourne, August 09: A FORMER drama teacher at an exclusive Melbourne school who chose students from the pupils’ database and filmed them undressing with a camera hidden under his desk has been jailed for 21 months.

Mark Robert Stratford, 49, who was an actor in the movie Chopper and has written for TV soap Neighbours, asked the girls to change into a “skimpy” dress in his office, the Victorian County Court heard today.

He filmed three girls, all aged under 16, between 2008 and early 2009.

London, August 09: A woman has been arrested on charges of killing four of her babies and hiding their bodies in suitcases in the attic at her house in the Netherlands.

Acting on information that the 25-year-old woman became pregnant several times but still had no children, police searched the house where she lives with her parents in Nij Beets town in the Netherlands’ northern Friesland province.

The woman told police that her babies, born between 2002 and this year, had been given up for adoption. But she could not come up with documents to prove it.

New York, August 09: Protests against the Ground Zero mosque might be one of the most talked about issues, but America seems to have been hit by a new wave of demonstrations directed against Islamic centres of worship not even close to controversial spots like the site of the fallen Twin Towers.

Protests similar to the ones being staged against a proposed mosque near the site of the World Trade Centre towers are spreading to other parts of the countries with the critics suggesting that Muslims are trying to impose Shariah Law in the US, a report said on Sunday.

Spain, August 09: Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, accompanied by Princess of Asturias Letizia, welcomed US first lady Michelle Obama and her daughter Sasha to a private luncheon before they concluded their vacation in Spain.

The wife and younger daughter of US President Barack Obama reached the Marivent Palace, the royal family’s summer residence, shortly after midday Sunday after arriving by airplane from the southern coastal city of Malaga, where they had been vacationing since last Wednesday.

Patna, August 08: US President Barack Obama’s visit to India later this year will take bilateral relationship between the two countries to a new level and demonstrate how both were working together to find solutions to pressing global challenges, US special envoy Rashad Hussain said here today.

Hussain said that the Indo-US relationship will be further strengthened with the return visit of the US president to India in November.