Gali Nagaraja

Singing legend Lata Mangeshkar celebrates her 83rd birthday Friday and her younger sister Asha Bhosle paid rich tributes to her in Shiv Sena party mouthpiece Saamna.

“A singer that can equal Lata didi has not been born yet. She is only one such piece created by god. There will never be someone like her ever – has not been in the past, will never be in the future,” Asha said in her tribute that appeared in Saamna Friday.

She said she is indeed privileged to have been born as Lata’s sister.

Amitabh Bachchan was speechless when one of his fans from Gujrat got his autograph tattooed on his hand. He says that it is humbling to see such an expression from his followers.

“Intense well-wisher from Gujarat met up and took my autograph on his hand. Today at KBC (‘Kaun Banega Crorepati 6’) he showed me that it had now been tattooed,” the 69-year-old tweeted Friday.

“The extremes that fans will go to express devotion is the most humbling experience for me, ever. I feel blessed! Beyond words,” he further tweeted.

The BJP said Friday the Congress-led UPA government had forfeited the mandate to govern, adding that the BJP could give a new direction to the country.

“The nation is at the crossroads. The Congress-led UPA has clearly forfeited its mandate to govern,” BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi said while moving the political resolution at the party’s national council meeting in this town, bordering Delhi.

Party chief Nitin Gadkari said: “It is time to give a new direction to the country’s politics.”

Filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh will start shooting for the sequel to his successful thriller “Kahaani” next year with Vidya Balan in the lead role.

Ghosh told IANS: “The film will definitely go on the floors by next year… The film is in its scripting stage. I have just started writing it so we have a long way to go.”

The 46-year-old said all the characters will be the same in the sequel and added: “Of course, we will have Vidya Balan in the film and rest of the characters will also be the same.”

trooper of the elite Tripura State Rifles (TSR) kidnapped his senior colleague and a driver at gunpoint before opening indiscriminate fire and later shooting himself with his service weapon late Thursday, police here said Friday.

“A police team, led by sub-inspector Debasish Saha, was doing routine vehicle checking in the city Thursday night when a TSR trooper, Thakur Das Paul, fired two rounds and forced Saha in a vehicle and compelled the driver to speed up,” Inspector General Nepal Das said.

Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman has teamed up with Yash Chopra for the first time for the veteran filmmaker’s much-talked about directorial venture “Jab Tak Hai Jaan”. The music maestro says with the project his Hindi film career is complete.

“Yashji saw one of my concerts in London. We had invited him and I think may be he felt that I should be in his film and was kind enough to call me. So it was a great honour for me because I had not worked with him. My whole Hindi film career is now complete,” the 46-year-old said here Thursday at the announcement of Royal Stag Mega Music event.

This is probably one of the biggest health myths: that it’s just men who are at risk of heart disease. Researchers have now busted that myth.

Doctors note that statistics prove that women, especially those who have attained menopause, are prone to heart ailments, and also less likely than men to recover.

There is an Australian twist to “Dhoom 3” with model-turned-actress Tabrett Bethell joining the likes of Aamir Kahn and Katrina Kaif in the action thriller, which marks her debut in the Hindi film industry.

“Please welcome the lovely Tabrett Bethell who joins the cast of ‘Dhoom 3’ today,” co-star Uday Chopra tweeted Thursday night.

“Dhoom 3” is the third instalment of the successful action-adventure “Dhoom” franchise and it also stars Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra who were in the first two films.

Political parties across the spectrum in Jammu and Kashmir today welcomed President Pranab Mukherjee’s speech, saying they were hopeful that steps will be initiated by the Centre and the state government to address the grievances of people of the state.

“It was a welcome speech. When a person no less than the President of the country admits that there are grievances, it indicates that the grievances of the people are genuine,” ruling National Conference spokesman Tanvir Sadiq told PTI.

President Pranab Mukherjee has asked Vice Chancellors and educationists to imbibe Nobel laureate poet and writer Rabindra Nath Tagore’s spirit of universalism and pluralism.

Mukherjee made these remarks during an interaction with a group of intellectuals at the Raj Bhavan last evening after receiving a briefing on higher education scenario in Jammu and Kashmir.

The President called upon them to not just achieve high standards but also maintain them on a sustained basis.

Five people were killed when a fire broke out at a gold mine pit in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, authorities said Friday.

The accident occurred Thursday as welding sparks ignited the fire on wooden scaffoldings at the mine run by Xinglong Mining Co. in Tongguan county, reported Xinhua.

Six miners trapped underground by heavy smoke were pulled out by Friday morning. Four of them died.

One rescuer was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning during the rescue operation.

—IANS

Pakistan Friday braced for anti-Islam film protests as the US military chief, General Martin Dempsey, postponed his planned visit to Pakistan over demonstrations against the movie.

General Dempsey was scheduled to meet Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Parvaiz Kayani this week, reported Xinhua citing media reports.

The visit of the US general was postponed at a time when rallies are planned across Pakistan, including capital Islamabad, after Friday prayers against the anti-Islam film.

The BJP national council Friday approved an amendment to the party’s constitution to allow a second consecutive term for its president. Hitherto, a BJP president could only serve a single three-year term.

The amendment to Section 21 of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s constitution says that any eligible member can hold the post of the president for two consecutive terms of three years each.

However, former BJP chief Venkaiah Naidu, who moved the amendment, clarified that this does not mean that the term of any president will automatically be extended for a second time.

(Siasat News)Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the California man behind a controversial anti-Islam film which sparked a wave of violent protests, was taken into federal custody on suspicion of violating terms of his probation.

After 2010 conviction, Nakoula was sentenced to 21 months in prison and was barred from using Internet for five years without an approval from his probation officer.

His 14—minute trailer for the film “Innocence of Muslims” was posted on You Tube in July, leading to protests around the world killing dozens.

(Siasat News)Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the stay order of AP High Court on the online admissions for Management quota seats in engineering colleges.

Government on August 25 issued GOs 66 and 67 to make mandatory for all the engineering college management to make admission of the management seat online to keep the transparency.

After the G.Os released management of the engineering approach A.P. High Court and taken a stay order. According to the A.P. High court norms can’t be change in the middle of the admission process.

Pakistan must have a “very large stick” in the form of a whistle-blowing law that would allow any citizen to expose a tax evader and persuade those with wealth in offshore accounts to bring it back to the country, a daily said Friday.

An editorial in the News International said that “tax havens are one thing but tax heaven entirely another, and it appears that the government is determined to pander to those who frequent the former in the hope of persuading them into the latter – courtesy of tax amnesty schemes”.

At 93, she still does the rounds of the hospital she founded. S.I. Padmavati, India’s first woman cardiologist, says cardiology is a very demanding field that was keeping women away, but things are changing.

Padmavati, chief consultant in cardiology at National Heart Institute, said: “There is no routine, no fixed hours.. it is a very demanding field… so not many women choose to become cardiologists.

“But things are changing now, many women are coming forward as heart specialists,” Padmavati told IANS in an interview.

Some passengers in the aircraft that crashed near the international airport here Friday were heard “wailing and screaming”, said an eyewitness who recalled the horror.

Tulasa Pokharel, an eyewitness whose house is located barely meters away from the crash site, said she saw the plane with black smoke landing on an open space on the bank of Manohara river, reported myrepublica.com.

“That time I could hear some people inside the plane wailing and screaming.

The West Bengal government has adopted a policy to ensure single-window clearance in agriculture by setting up a coordination committee of various ministries concerned, said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Speaking at the state assembly Thursday, Banerjee said various projects concerning farmers come under the ambit of different ministries.

The number of corruption-related crimes in Russia has risen by almost one-third during the first six months of 2012, year-on-year, according to Investigative Committee (IC) spokesperson Vladimir Markin.

“During the first half of 2012, IC investigators handled 15,800 cases on corruption-related crimes, which is more than 5,000 than in the same period last year (10,400),” Markin said, citing Committee head Alexander Bastrykin.

China has completed a cultural project aimed at building at least one reading room for people in every village in the country.

At the end of August, China had invested over 18 billion yuan (around $2.8 billion) in the construction of 600,449 upto-standard reading rooms in rural areas, Xinhua reported.

The rooms have 940 million books, 540 million copies of newspapers and 120 million copies of audio and video products, according to a government document.

Some of the reading rooms have been equipped with film projectors.

A married couple died of suffocation after an unidentified suspect set a passenger bus on fire in downtown Moscow Thursday, the investigation committee said in a statement.

“According to witnesses, an unidentified man who later fled the scene was sitting in the back of the bus and set on fire two plastic canisters with gasoline,” the statement said.

Urvashi Rautela, who was crowned Miss Universe India 2012 recently, said that she is proud of her journey from a middle class family in Uttarakhand to being a national beauty pageant winner.

Urvashi won the I Am She Miss Universe India 2012 on September 21. She was crowned by her predecessor, Vasuki Sunkavalli.

The 18-year-old model, who will represent India at the Miss Universe 2012 pageant, was at her home town Kotdwara for few hours before leaving for Mumbai.

New Zealand won the toss and elected to bat against Sri Lanka in the first Super Eight match of the World Twenty20 Championship here at Pallekele International Stadium Thursday.

Teams:

New Zealand: Rob Nicol, Martin Guptill, James Franklin, Brendon McCullum, Ross Taylor (captain), Jacob Oram, Daniel Vettori, Kane Williamson, Nathan McCullum, Tim Southee, Kyle Mills

Sri Lanka: Tillakaratne Dilshan, Mahela Jayawardene (captain) , Kumar Sangakkara, Lahiru Thirimanne, Angelo Mathews, Jeevan Mendis, Thisara Perera, Kumar Kulasekara, Lasith Malinga, Ajantha Mendis, Akila Dananjaya

Responding to a presidential reference following the verdict on the 2G spectrum allocation, the Supreme Court Thursday said the auction route was not the only method for allocating natural resources.

The five-judge apex court bench headed by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia said auction could be a better option where the aim is maximisation of revenue, but then “every method other than auction of natural resources cannot be shut down”.