Ali Khan Baghdad, March 13: Under Saddam Hussein, women in government got a year’s maternity leave; that is now cut to six months. Under the Personal Status Law in force since Jul. 14, 1958, when Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy, Iraqi women had most of the rights that Western women do.
Occupied Jerusalem, March 13: A total of 50,000 new homes for Jewish settlers in mainly Arab east Jerusalem are in various stages of planning, according to a report published on Thursday by an Israeli anti-settlement group.
Plans for 20,000 apartments are in advanced stages of approval, while plans for the other 30,000 still need to be submitted to planning committees, the Ir Amin group said.
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Patna, March 12: SHARDA Devi’s family was distraught when the woman was declared dead by doctors at a top Bihar hospital.
But their grief turned to shock when the 45- yearold woman “ came back alive” at her funeral pyre minutes before she was to be cremated.
While her family was happy to term it “ God’s miracle”, this was more a case of sheer apathy by negligent doctors at the hospital, whose almost indecent haste to declare the woman dead without proper tests paints a sorry picture of hospitals in the state.
Sharda was a resident of Daniyawan, about 40 km from Patna.
New Delhi, March 12: Normalcy returned to the Lok Sabha on Thursday after three days of acrimony that sent Rs 3.2 crore of public money down the drain.
In a bid to clear the confusion that the Bill, party president Sonia Gandhi hosted a dinner on Thursday night. This was the first time spouses were also invited. Some partymen saw it as a bid to reinforce her bonhomie with the MPs at a time when the Yadavs and some BJP leaders were covertly inciting a revolt against the Bill.
Washington, March 12: The Obama Administration was supposed to be flying high this week on news that the Israel-Palestinian peace process had finally been restarted in the form of indirect talks brokered by the United States. Even the Arab League was on board. It didn’t work out that way.
Baghdad, March 12: A cross-sectarian, secularist list headed by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on Thursday alleged major fraud in Iraq’s national election this week.
Members of Allawi’s Iraqiya list called a news conference four days after the national polls as initial results trickled in. They complained of widespread fraud and said ballots were discovered in the garbage.
“We have recorded dozens of violations and there is interference from some officials,” Adnan al-Janabi, a senior member of the Iraqiya bloc, told reporters.
–Agencies
Paris, March 12 :They always seemed a rather mismatched couple. But now it appears that 5ft- 5in Nicolas Sarkozy and his supermodel wife Carla Bruni may have found something in common. They are, if the rumour mill is to be believed, both having affairs.
The 55- year- old French president is said to be romancing his 40- year- old ecology minister, who is alaso a karate champion. Bruni, 43, is rumoured to be involved with a pop star six years her junior.
New delhi,March 12 :Wedding photos of Anoop Kumar Sahai, the Ghaziabad godman who is on the run after the police turned the heat on him, has given a new twist to his tale.Sahai, alias Swami ji , is alleged to have kidnapped a 25- year- old MBA student from Ghaziabad.
But on Wednesday, the Greater Noida police found wedding photos of the 40- year- old Sahai with Priyanka Srivastava, who was allegedly kidnapped by him.Sahai is already married and has a seven- year- old daughter. His wife and daughter live in Gorakhpur.
(By Ram Puniyani) RSS is one of the major organizations in the country which influences and controls different political and semi political organizations, calling themselves as Sangh Parivar. It does claim to be a cultural organization, but it is implementing its political agenda of achieving Hindu Nation by creating organizations, which implement its ideology and political agenda at different layers, by different means.
Riyadh, March 11: Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz presented Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with one of the country’s most prestigious prizes on Tuesday for his ‘service to Islam’.
Erdogan earned the King Faisal International Prize for having “rendered outstanding service to Islam by defending the causes of the Islamic nation, particularly the Palestinian cause and the just rights of the Palestinian people,” said Abdullah al-Uthaimin of the prize-awarding group.
New Delhi, March 11: There is good news for gold lovers. The price of the yellow metal, which has corrected by nearly Rs 15,000 per 10 gm in the last two months, may fall by a further Rs 500 to Rs 1,000.
The price of gold in November, 2009 was at a historic high of Rs 18,000 per 10 gm. On Wednesday, it was trading at Rs 16,780 per 10 gm.
Vatican, March 11: If a devil can rule the Churches, where do you think a man should live?
According to the Holy See’s chief exorcist: Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”.
Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”.
New Delhi, March 11: After almost a year of mild warnings, the government has decided to shift to more powerful messages. Tobacco products will now carry pictures of mouth cancer, showing rotting teeth and lips.
A notification was issued by the health ministry on March 5 and the new warnings will come into force from June 1. These would be implemented under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products ( Packaging and Labelling Amendment) Rules, 2010.
Washington, March 10: The U.S. State Department apologized on Tuesday for dismissive comments its spokesman made about Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s call for “jihad,” often translated as “armed struggle,” against Switzerland.
“I understand that my personal comments were perceived as a personal attack on the president,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who made the comments, told reporters. “These comments do not reflect U.S. policy and were not intended to offend. I apologize if they were taken that way.”
New Delhi,March 09: The Supreme Court on Monday issued a notice on a petition by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena ( MNS) leader Raj Thackeray seeking transfer to Delhi of three fresh cases filed against him in various parts of the country.
The apex court has already transferred to Delhi seven cases registered against him in Bihar and Jharkhand for his hate speeches against North Indians.
New delhi,Maech 09 :The Supreme Court on Monday issued a notice on a petition by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena ( MNS) leader Raj Thackeray seeking transfer to Delhi of three fresh cases filed against him in various parts of the country.
The apex court has already transferred to Delhi seven cases registered against him in Bihar and Jharkhand for his hate speeches against North Indians.
New Delhi,March 09: The guru, who allegedly abducted an MBA graduate to forcibly marry her, is a member of the ministry of labour and employment’s central advisory committee.
The police on Monday issued look- out notices against Anup Kumar Sahai alias Swamiji, 40. The godman — who is married and has a seven- year- old daughter — had allegedly abducted 25- year- old Priyanka Srivastava from Raj Nagar in Ghaziabad on February 15.
San Francisco, March 06: The Open Net Initiative (ONI) on Friday said Microsoft’s search engine Bing is more prudish than government censors when it comes to sex-related online queries.
A January test of a Bing version tailored for users in Arab countries showed that it filtered Arabic and English words for sexually explicit content along with queries related to gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgender material.
” A more targeted approach, either country-based or preferably, defined by the user, is more generally consistent with minimizing the impact on freedom of speech ”
Indore, March 06: Terming as “very unfortunate” Qatar’s conferring citizenship on renowned Indian painter M F Husain, Congress leader Digvijay Singh said here today that he (Husain) was forced to accept it due to harassment from people having communal ideology.
“Acceptance of Qatar’s citizenship by famous artist like Husain is very unfortunate. It is a big defeat of those people whose ideology is liberal and who believe in communal harmony,” Singh told reporters here.
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Islamabad, March 06: Relations between the United States and Pakistan often have a through-the-looking-glass quality, where almost nothing appears quite the same from the other side. The latest example is the case of Aafia Siddiqui.
She has become a symbol of honor and victimization in Muslim World so potent that politicians of all stripes, Islamists, the news media and an increasingly anti-American public have all lined up to champion her claim of innocence.
New Delhi, March 06: YOGA guru Baba Ramdev has landed in trouble for allegedly using derivatives of a protected plant in his Ayurvedic medicines.
A consignment of Baba Ramdev’s pharmacy was among those recently confiscated by the authorities for flouting rules.
“ Twenty- three consignments, worth crores of rupees, have been seized at different airports and seaports in the country during an international operation against illegal wildlife products, coordinated by Interpol,” wildlife department officials said.
Fallujah, March 05: A high number of children are being born with birth defects in an Iraqi city where U.S. forces may have used chemical weapons during a fierce battle in 2004.
Children in Fallujah are being born with limb, head, heart and nervous system defects. There is even a claim that a baby was born with three heads.
The number of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than the rate in Europe.
New Delhi, March 05: While many people are already spending thousands of rupees to repair old air conditioners or even more to buy new ones, M. B. Lal prefers a cheap solution and a green one in that.
Harnessing ice as a cooling agent, the retired journalist converted his humble desert cooler into a rudimentary yet effective air conditioner.
Though the unique machine decreases the average room temperature by as much as seven degrees more than a cooler, it consumes the same electricity and costs between just Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000.