London, October 31: Israeli envoy to the United Nations has accused the Human Rights Council of being ‘obsessed with demonizing Israel’ ahead of a special discussion of a report on the regime’s war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
Gabriela Shalev accused the Geneva-based body of ‘constant and exclusive discrimination against Israel’ during the discussion of the Rights Councils’ annual activity report on Friday, Haaretz reported.
Islamabad, October 31: The Swat valley tribal elders have called on the government to ban all religious organizations to help stop growing militancy in the region.
At a press conference in Makaan Bagah area of the Swat valley, tribal elders urged the government in Islamabad to ban all Jihadi groups to maintain peace in the region.
The elders said that there is a need to expel militants in order to eliminate terrorism.
Tehran, October 31: Iran is ready to continue talks on a UN-brokered nuclear fuel deal based on its economic and technical concerns, IRNA quoted an informed official as saying.
“The Islamic Republic has announced its positive viewpoint towards the talks, noting that it is ready to continue negotiations on providing (nuclear) fuel for Tehran reactor based on economic and technical concerns,” the informed official was quoted as saying by IRNA news agency on Friday.
Washington, October 31: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has acknowledged that the Taliban insurgents are gaining power despite the oversized American military presence.
In a Friday interview with the ABC television, Clinton admitted that ‘the Taliban has momentum’ in what analysts denounced as an understatement of the unprecedented insurgent control over the war-torn country.
Why are people on Gaza so unhappy? Well, if you had to live in a prison, wouldn’t you be unhappy?— Former CIA officer Robert Baer
It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in… it’s a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa.– Professor Edward Said 1993
They may be living but they’re not alive. – Journalist Philip Rizk
Mumbai, October 31: Megastar Amitabh Bachchan knows the trick to feel the pulse of audience. Therefore the movie in which he acts becomes a hit one. Directors know it well.
A movie like Aladdin was impossible without him. He took up challenging role of a genie and efficiently played it. In yet another movie, he proved it that he is uncrowned Shahnsah of Bollywood.
From beginning to end, Amitabh, who plays role of The Genie, put an impressive show. He enlivens characters of a genie on screen.
Mumbai, October 31: Why was Kareena Kapoor not part of the music video that was shot by Rensil D’Silva on Tuesday although she is very much part of Kurbaan and when she was in fact shooting for another film by the same producers (Dharma Productions)?
Kareena says she wasn’t needed. But Saif Ali Khan and Rensil, after shooting with the actor alone decided she was needed after all. Images of Kareena were finally included in Saif’s music video.
Mumbai, October 31: On Tuesday evening when Neil Nitin Mukesh, Manoj Bajpai and Madhur Bhandarkar walked the ramp for designer Renu Tandon in Delhi dressed as jailbirds, along with Mugdha Godse, they felt like nervous novices.
“We all forgot we were senior to Mugdha. She was the queen of the ramp much before I made Fashion,” chuckled Madhur Bhandarkar.
Mumbai, October 31: 50-year old Sanjay Dutt has been shooting with 20-something Kangana Ranaut. And if they were looking super-compatible in spite of Kangana being half the age of Dutt, it’s all because of Dutt’s special ketosis-based diet.
Says a source close to Dutt, “Sanjay went on this special diet in June. It required him to take lots and lots of fattie food and no carbohydrates at all. In fact carbs would’ve been potentially lethal for this diet. In no time Sanjay started losing weight. And that too without Sanju having to give up his favourite food.”
Gaza, October 31: Tens of thousands of Palestinians have held a demonstration in the Gaza Strip in honor of the founder of Islamic Jihad movement who was assassinated about 15 years ago.
During the Friday rally, a leader of the group, Nafez Azzam, called on demonstrators to reject the Palestinians negotiations with Israel The Jerusalem Postreported.
The Islamic Jihad resistance movement was founded in the Gaza Strip in 1970s by Fathi Shikaki and Abd Al Aziz Awda as a branch of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad — an organization currently led by Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah.
Seoul, October 31: South Korea will send troops to Afghanistan to protect its civilian aid workers there, WAM news agency reported citing the Korean foreign ministry.
The decision came as Seoul plans to increase the number of its reconstruction workers to at least 130 in the war-torn country and operate an independent Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT).
Moscow, October 31: A 112-year-old Somali man has married a 17-year-old girl in central Somalia.
The wedding took place in the village of Guriceel in central Somalia, one of the poorest countries in the world.
Ahmed Muhamed Dore already has 18 children from five wives. He said he would like to have more children with his new teenage wife, Safia Abdulleh, who is young enough to be his great-great-granddaughter.
“Today God helped me realise my dream,” Dore said after the wedding ceremony in the region of Galguduud.
Bangalore, October 31: She’s been married for nearly three decades and has two grown-up children, but her marriage is not as rosy as it seems on the outside. Bangalore resident Vidya Desai’s husband has been subjecting her to physical torture and mental harassment for 15 years.
Vidya, a 52-year-old living in an upscale locality, is married to a businessman who plays the role of a perfect husband outside home. But behind closed doors, he turns into a brute who has been beating and abusing Vidya at the slightest excuse.
Mumbai, October 31: At a time when his contemporaries were doing film after film, Manoj Bajpai was sitting at home nursing an injured shoulder and missing out on coveted projects. The actor, who will be seen in “Jail”, says he was going through a frustrating time when Madhur Bhandarkar offered him the movie.
Washington, October 31: India and the United States have started a dialogue to put in place a formal arrangement to promote partnerships between their institutions of higher learning before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh comes here in November.
The US education secretary Arne Duncan had responded positively to India’s proposal for setting up an India-US Education Council much on the lines of India-US Business Council (USIBC), Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said at a news conference here Friday.
Washington, October 31: US President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package has created or saved more than 640,000 jobs since it was enacted earlier this year, the White House said Friday.
The numbers indicated the US was on track to create 3.5 million new jobs by next year through government spending on infrastucture projects, education, health care and green technology, spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Islamabad, October 31: Meeting the same fate during her public diplomacy tour in the Muslim country, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed Friday, October 30, to win support of Pakistan’s tribal northwest for Washington’s anti-terror policies.
“It was a futile exercise (meeting),” Munir Orakzai, the head of a 18-member tribal parliamentary delegation, told IslamOnline.net on Friday, October 30.
“To me, any meeting or exercise, which yields no results, and aims to just talk for the sake of talk, is worthless.”
San Francisco, October 31: The organisation that oversees the internet has authorised the use of non-Latin characters in domain names in a move that should help the web grow around the world.
The adoption of the Internationalised Domain Names system will allow domain names to be written using native character sets such as Chinese, Arabic and Greek.
The move by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was hailed as the “biggest technical change” to the internet since its birth 40 years ago.
Washington, October 31: The US called on Iran Friday to immediately release three Americans who were arrested in July after they wandered into Iran while hiking in Iraq.
Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal should be released under an international agreement because they have been held for more than 90 days without charges or legal representation, a US State Department spokeswoman said.
“We urge the Iranians to release these three Americans without further delay,” she said.
New Delhi, October 31: Hollywood screenplay writer-director Paul Schrader says “Xtrme City”, his first Indian collaboration dealing with the Mumbai mafia and slums, is also about romance, families and obligations.
“The script that I am dealing with is about two men who’ve worked together – an American policeman and an Indian ex-bhai. But it’s not a gangster film. It’s not a ‘Satya’, ‘Company’ or ‘Sarkar’. It’s a different kind of film,” Schrader told IANS in a telephonic interview from Mumbai.
Geneva, October 31: More than 700 people have died of swine flu this week raising the number of fatalities from the viral disease to 5,712 worldwide, Xinhua reported citing the UN health agency Friday.
Of all the deaths, 4,175 occurred in the Americas, 605 occurred in South-East Asia and 465 occurred in the West Pacific. Europe, East Mediterranean and Africa reported 281, 111 and 75 deaths respectively, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a latest update Friday.
Moscow, October 31: A 112-year-old Somali man has married a 17-year-old girl in central Somalia.
The wedding took place in the village of Guriceel in central Somalia, one of the poorest countries in the world.
Ahmed Muhamed Dore already has 18 children from five wives. He said he would like to have more children with his new teenage wife, Safia Abdulleh, who is young enough to be his great-great-granddaughter.
“Today God helped me realise my dream,” Dore said after the wedding ceremony in the region of Galguduud.
Forty-five weekly schools that teach the Arabic language are gaining popularity among Ukrainian intellectuals and are helping introducing them to Islam and its civilization.
“Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, has become a window for many Ukrainians to know Islam,” Dr. Shadi Shawer, the head of Human Development Department at the Federation of Social Organizations in Ukraine (Arraid) and the schools supervisor, told IslamOnline.net.
He said the weekly schools help many Ukrainians to better understand the Muslim faith.
New Delhi, October 31: At a time when his contemporaries were doing film after film, Manoj Bajpai was sitting at home nursing an injured shoulder and missing out on coveted projects. The actor, who will be seen in “Jail”, says he was going through a frustrating time when Madhur Bhandarkar offered him the movie.
Bangalore, October 31: She’s been married for nearly three decades and has two grown-up children, but her marriage is not as rosy as it seems on the outside. Bangalore resident Vidya Desai’s husband has been subjecting her to physical torture and mental harassment for 15 years.
Vidya, a 52-year-old living in an upscale locality, is married to a businessman who plays the role of a perfect husband outside home. But behind closed doors, he turns into a brute who has been beating and abusing Vidya at the slightest excuse.