Asian News International

Reliance Industries will invest about USD 16 billion in expanding petrochemical production capacity and lower feed and fuel costs to boost profits.

RIL, according to a report by Barclays Equity Research, is investing USD 4.6 billion in an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) project that will convert captive petrocoke to synthetic gas (syngas) which can be used to generate power, steam and hydrogen, which currently are being produced using expensive imported LNG.

A new scan of French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes’ brain has revealed that he had a tumor in his right sinus.

French medical anthropologist and forensic expert Philippe Charlier, who ran scans using computed tomography, by which many thin slices of images are compiled to form a 3-D image, found a tumor measuring nearly 1 square inch in Descartes’ right sinus, Newser reported.

However, the ‘ osteoma’ reportedly never bothered Descartes, as he never complained of the typical symptoms that includes, include weepy eyes, excess mucus, and an altered sense of smell. (ANI)

Chaos prevailed as a helicopter that had brought BJP MP Hema Malini for an election rally here today was mobbed, leaving one person injured who was hit by a blade of the chopper.

As the helicopter carrying Hema landed at Barwala village in the district, people rushed towards it to have a glimpse of the actress from close. In the melee, the blade of the chopper at its end hit the neck of Jagwinder Singh, a resident of Sarsod village in the district, police said.

Taylor Swift has been named Billboard Woman of the Year 2014 which makes her the first artist to receive the award twice.

Janice Min, co-president and chief creative officer of Guggenheim Media’s Entertainment Group, which includes Billboard, said that as one of the most influential artists of her generation, Swift had seen incredible success on the Billboard charts, BBC reported.

The Grammy Award winning singer will receive the prize at the Billboard Women in Music award ceremony in December in New York.

Previous winners of the award include Pink, Beyonce and Katy Perry. (ANI)

State-owned Punjab National Bank on Friday realigned interest rates on fixed deposits of Rs 1 crore-Rs 10 crore by up to 2 percent.

Term deposits of 7-14 days would now earn an interest rate of 6 percent, an increase of 2 percent, PNB said in a statement.

Further, fixed deposits in the maturity bucket of 15-29 days would attract an interest rate of 6 percent, up from 4.50 percent.

The realignment is with immediate effect.

A woman software engineer has gone missing after leaving for office and special teams have been formed to trace her, police said Friday.

Bhavya Sri Charitha, an employee of Open Texts located in Hitec City, had left for the office from her house at KPHB Colony Thursday morning.

The US has reportedly destroyed 16 cargo planes worth nearly half a billion dollars that were purchased for the Afghan Air Force, and sold it as scrap metal for 32,000 dollars.

According to ABC News, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) is asking the Air Force why the fleet of G222 aircraft were turned into scrap metal this past August.

A huge fire broke out early this morning in a Titan jewellery showroom in Mumbai. Fire tenders were rushed to douse the flames and no one was reported injured.

Divisional Fire officer Abhay Kale told ANI, “We are trying to control the fire, but it will take time to find out the reason behind the fire. Till now there is no information of anyone being injured or trapped. The fire is under control.”

The four-floor building has a restaurant and two basements. (ANI)

Scientists have revealed that new measurement of dark matter in the Milky Way suggests that there is half as much of the mysterious substance as previously thought.

According to Australian astronomers, who used a method developed by British astronomer James Jeans in 1915, found that the weight of dark matter in our galaxy is 800 000 000 000 (or 8 x 1011) times the mass of the Sun.

The scientists probed the edge of the Milky Way, looking closely, for the first time, at the fringes of the galaxy about 5 million trillion kilometres from Earth.

Drinking decaffeinated coffee is good for your liver, shows a study.

Higher coffee consumption, regardless of caffeine content, was linked to lower levels of abnormal liver enzymes.

This suggests that chemical compounds in coffee other than caffeine may help protect the liver, showed the study.

“Prior research found that drinking coffee may have a possible protective effect on the liver. However, the evidence is not clear if that benefit may extend to decaffeinated coffee,” said Qian Xiao from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

CPI(M), RSS activists clash at Pothencode on late Thursday. Sub-inspector J. Rakesh struck on the head with a rod suffered head injuries who was trying to bring the situation under control.

A CPI(M) protest march was followed in the area involving nearly 100 activists in the clash.

Rakesh was shifted to the Government Medical College Hospital (MCH), where his condition is said to be stable. The situation was gradually returning to normal. The Bharatiya Janata Party has declared a hartal at Pothencode.

The state government has made it mandatory that pensioners under various welfare schemes may not get their pension if they don’t have the Aadhaar card and if they intend to avail these services, they can apply for the same before October 15.

On Thursday, Raymond Peter, Principal secretary to government, Panchayat Raj department held a video conference with district collectors and tehsildhars to apprise them about steps to be taken in implementing the welfare schemes.

A day after the controversy over the death of Sunanda Pushkar, the wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, took a new twist, her family on Friday claimed that it knew her death was planned.

In an exclusive conversation with Zee Media, Ashok Kumar, a cousin of Sunanda Pushkar, suspected Tharoor’s involvement in the case.

When asked about the statement made by Sunanda’s son, from a previous marriage, dismissing the speculation of Tharoor’s role in her death, Kumar said Shiv was scared to speak the truth.

After a fresh report by AIIMS doctors revealed that Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar had died due to poisoning, her cousin Ashok Kumar has demanded a CBI probe into her death, saying he already knew that it wasn’t a natural death.

“We want justice. Earlier it was said that it was overdose and now it’s clear that it was due to poisoning. We want a CBI probe,” Sunanda Pushkar’s cousin Ashok Kumar told ANI.

An influential US newspaper has suggested that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s educational reform could be used to promote an ideology that sees “India’s history through the prism of the Hindu right wing”.

Modi “has promised India’s youth a bright future”, the New York Times wrote in an editorial published on Thursday, with his Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2014 Election Manifesto calling education “the most powerful tool for the advancement of the nation”.

Scientists are looking at ways to develop tomatoes that have higher antioxidant traits, just like wild tomatoes that have such properties in abundance.

Wild tomato species have been used for improvement of tomato disease resistance but have not been extensively explored for health-related traits.

“Our work shows that wild tomato species harbour alleles that could be useful for improvement of antioxidant traits in cultivated tomato,” said professor Sami Doganlar from department of molecular biology and genetics at Izmir Institute of Technology in Turkey.

Six people, including women and children, died Friday in a cylinder blast in south Delhi, police said.

The incident was reported at 11.15 a.m. from Jasola area in south Delhi.

More details about the incident were awaited, police said.

—IANS

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Friday said India should not misunderstand his desire for peace and immediately halt firing across the borders.

Sharif asked India to immediately honour the sanctity of Line of Control (LoC) and the International Border and stop firing for durable peace, the Dawn reported.

He was addressing a high-level National Security Committee meeting attended by select cabinet members, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, the three services chiefs and ISI chief.

Former Union Minister and BCCI official Rajeev Shukla will continue to be a member of the Hero Hockey India League’s advisory board.

Shukla has also been the Chairman of Indian Premier League.

“It is a very proud feeling and I am committed towards continuing to put in the extra efforts for the welfare of the sport in India,” he said.

Hockey India League is scheduled to kick-start from January 22.

—IANS

With villagers at the border bearing the brunt of firing by Pakistani troops, J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah has directed authorities to construct community bunkers in hamlets along the International Border in Jammu frontier.

Over 32,000 people have been forced to flee from their border homes leaving 113 hamlets deserted along the IB.

Invoking Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the world should recall his message of peace and non-violence at a time of increased sectarian violence and destruction of cultural sites, particularly in Iraq and Syria.

In his message on the occasion of ‘Music for Peace’ event held in the United Nations yesterday, the UN chief said that Gandhi, one of “history’s greatest-ever proponents” of non-violence, “fervently believed that peaceful protest can accomplish so much more than military aggression.”

India is among the top five contributers to the UN Ebola response with a contribution of $ 12.5 million, according to a fact sheet released by US Secretary of State John Kerry here.

The US with $ 113.8 million tops the list to the UN Ebola response. It is followed by the European Union ($ 55.5 million), Canada ($ 31.9 million), Netherlands (21 million) and India with $ 12.5 million.

At a joint news conference with his British counterpart Philip Hammond, Kerry lamented that not (rpt) not many nations have contributed to this global effort to fight the deadly disease.

A new study has revealed that females take just 15 minutes to decide on mate. And a single gene may be behind how they choose mates.

In a study of fruit fly brains, the final decision about whether to accept or reject a male’s courtship comes down to the option that is the most exciting and the decision appears to be generated by a very small number of excitatory neurons that use acetylcholine as their neurotransmitter located in three brain regions.

Moving your furniture from one place to another is the easiest way to give your house a new look, without buying a single thing. There are some more merits.

Huffingtonpost.com shares a few more reasons to try something new with your furniture arrangement:

Ingredients

1. 100 g cottage cheese, grated
2. 2 Tbsp condensed milk
3. 2 cardamom, crushed
4. 2 tsp ghee
5. 4 pistachios sliced (optional)

Method:

1. Put ghee in a thick-bottomed pan on low flame. Add cottage cheese and condensed milk cook for 10 minutes or until mixture starts leaving the sides of the pan.

2. Add cardamom powder. Take off the fire.

3. Spread on to a greased tray and allow to set.

4. Garnish with sliced pistachios.