Month: March 2010

Baba ran a sex racket in UP

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Lucknow,March 02: Shiv Murti Dwivedi, the self-styled godman arrested by Delhi Police on Friday, had spread the tentacles of his high-profile sex racket in Uttar Pradesh (UP), too.

Teams of Delhi Police have swooped down on Kanpur and Chitrakoot to probe Dwivedi’s local contacts. Initial investigations have startled the top brass of UP Police, as it emerges that many top politicians, including some from the ruling BSP, and bureaucrats have links with the impostor baba.

NRI Saudi contribution is big source for India

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Jeddah,March 02:Saudi Arabia is a major source of income for India as a result of remittances from Indian expatriates, who form one of the largest foreign community in the Kingdom of 25 million people, a report said on Sunday.

Indians form Saudi Arabia’s largest expatriate workforce, working in fields from information technology to construction, with most employed as blue-collar workers, the Banque Saudi Fransi report said.

CRPF recovers Maoist weapons in Vishakhapatnam

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Hyderabad, March 01: A CRPF team nabbed a suspected militant and unearthed a cache of arms allegedly belonging to the Maoists near a village in Chintapalli agency area of Visakhapatnam district today, police said.

Based on specific information, the CRPF team carried out the combing operation and found the weapons dump. The team recovered 18 landmine cases, explosives and other material used to set off landmines, a senior police officer told PTI over phone.

The suspected militant is being interrogated and would be arrested soon, the police officer said.

–Agencies

Zambian woman held at Mumbai airport with drugs

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Mumbai, March 01: A Zambian woman was arrested with contraband drugs valued around Rs 6.5 crore at the international market by the Air Intelligence Unit of the international airport here, a top customs official said today.

34-year-old Matapo Ajar Twambo, who was to leave for Addis Ababa by an Ethiopian Airlines flight on February 27, was intercepted by the AIU officials and seized cocaine weighing around 5,420 grams, and 95 grams of heroin concealed in the amplifier of multimedia speaker system, Additional Commissioner of Customs B S Nunwal said.

Govt drivers threaten to go on indefinite strike

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Bangalore, March 01: The Karnataka Government Drivers Federation today threatened to launch an indefinite strike if the state government does not suspend IAS officer Rajeev Chawla, accused of harassing drivers, send him to the Centre.

Opposing the transfer of Chawla from Land Revenue Survey Department to the Cooperation Department, the office-bearers of the federation at a press conference here demanded that the official should be suspended and sent to the Centre.

In polyglot Lebanon, Arabic falls behind

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Beirut, March 01: Lebanon, a tiny, vibrant Mediterranean country, prides itself on its polyglot society but for the country’s youths native Arabic is not very “cool.”

“Hi, kifak? Ca Va?” — or “Hi, how are you doing? Okay?” — is a typical multi-linguistic Lebanese greeting so popular it now appears on bumper stickers and teeshirts sold around the world.

English and French often replace the local dialect in conversation, especially among the urban youth, and one organisation has launched a campaign to preserve Arabic in Lebanon.

Al Qubaisi joins Team Abu Dhabi for 2010 Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup

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Abu Dhabi, March 01: Emirati Khaled Al Qubaisi has joined Team Abu Dhabi’s three driver line-up in a formidable challenge for the 2010 Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup.

The 35-year-old UAE national will join Briton Sean Edwards and 31-year-old German Sascha Maassen in a competitive team set-up chosen for blend of experience, international profile and ambition.

Oman’s Misfah, magic in the mountains – delightful dream of an oasis

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Oman, March 01: “Whosoever obeys God shall be admitted to the gardens beneath where rivers flow.” – Holy Koran.

This image of paradise taken from the holy Koran reflects the dream of a people who for thousands of years have had to keep body and soul together in the desolate wastes of the Arabian Desert. The dream of an oasis is surrounded by shady palm trees.

160 kilometres from Muscat, the capital of Oman, is an earthly manifestation of this paradise, the oasis village of Misfah, with a population of some 300-400 people.

Dubai murder suspects ‘hiding in Israel’

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Dubai, March 01: Dubai’s police chief said he was sure that all the suspects in the killing of a Hamas chief in a hotel room in the emirate are now hiding out in Israel to avoid arrest.

Mahmud al-Mabhuh, a founder of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20. Police said he had been drugged then suffocated.

“I am sure that all the suspects are in Israel,” police chief Dahi Khalfan told a media conference in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi.

Serb cause in Bosnian war ‘just and holy’

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London, March 01: The Serb cause in the Bosnian war was “just and holy”, Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic told a UN court today as his genocide trial resumed in The Hague.

“I will defend that nation of ours and their cause that is just and holy,” Karadzic told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

“We have a good case. We have good evidence and proof.”

Karadzic stands charged as the “supreme commander” of an ethnic cleansing campaign of Croats and Muslims in the 1992-95 Bosnian war in which 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million displaced.

Straight-A student Chelsea King, 17, missing after routine jog

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San Diego, March 01: More than a thousand volunteers scoured a California lake overnight for signs of a missing teenager in what San Diego authorities called an unprecedented response to a missing persons case.

Chelsea King, a 17-year-old honor student at Poway High School in Poway, about 40km north of San Diego, disappeared Thursday while on an after-school run through Rancho Bernardo Community Park, Fox5SanDiego.com reported.

Vayalar Ravi fully recovers from injury

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New Delhi, March 01: Overseas Indian affairs minister Vayalar Ravi, who had met with an accident last month while on an official visit to Liberia, tonight returned to the national capital after fully recovering from his injury.

Ravi, who was injured in a car accident in Monrovia on February 4, was initially admitted to a private hospital in Cote D’ Lvoire and after a week’s treatment there, he was airlifted to Chennai on February 11 by a special IAF flight.

In Chennai, he had undergone treatment at the Madras Medical Mission Hospital.

PM rules out rollback of petrol and diesel price hike

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On Board PM’s Special Aircraft, March 01: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today ruled out any rollback in hike in petrol and diesel prices, saying the economy has the capacity to absorb the increase without triggering an inflationary spiral.

Singh also made it clear that following populist fiscal policies for long harmed the economy, two days after key UPA allies Trinamool Congress and DMK made a strong pitch for the rollback.

Police zero in on techie’s possible abductors

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Kolkata March 01: Police have zeroed in on a group that could have abducted Capgemini employee Sandipan Das though further investigations would be done to ascertain their involvement, West Bengal Home Secretary Ardhendu Sen said today.

“The police are saying they have zeroed in on a group, but further probe is necessary to ascertain its involvement,” Sen told newsmen when asked about the progress of investigations about Das’ alleged abduction.

Das, who returned yesterday, claimed he was kidnapped on Friday.

Hotel hit squad ‘hiding out in Israel’

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Israel, March 01: The hit squad that assassinated a Hamas chief in a luxury hotel in Dubia are hiding in Israel to avoid arrest, Dubai’s police chief claims.

Mahmud al-Mabhuh, a founder of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, was found dead in his hotel room on January 20.

He had been drugged and then suffocated.

“I say (the suspects) are in Israel. Israel says they are in Israel,” Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan told reporters. “If they stay in Israel, they won’t be arrested.

Spider-Man gets the sack

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London, March 01: Even a resume that boasts of saving the city from Doctor Octopus and sparkling references from the likes of Captain America cannot keep Spider-Man off the unemployment line.

The wall-crawler’s hard-luck alter ego, Peter Parker, will get fired by boss J. Jonah Jameson and join the country’s out-of-work millions in a storyline that starts in Amazing Spider-Man No. 623.

“He couldn’t have lost his job at a worse time,” said Marvel editor Steve Wacker.

One in four Germans wants microchip under skin

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London, March 01: It sounds like something from a sci-fi film, but one in four Germans would be happy to have a microchip implanted in their body if they derived concrete benefits from it.

The survey, conducted by German IT industry lobby group BITKOM, was intended to show how the division between real life and the virtual world is increasingly coming down.

In all, 23 per cent of around 1000 respondents in the survey said they would be prepared to have a chip inserted under their skin “for certain benefits”.

Claim Aussies bought kidneys from Dr Horror Amit Kumar

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Sydney, March 01: Australians bought kidneys from an Indian medic accused of running illegal clinics that duped poor labourers into selling their organs, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Quoting legal sources involved with the case in India, the newspaper reported that Australians were among the many foreigners who paid Amit Kumar, known as Dr Horror, for transplants.

The charge sheet against Kumar – accused of peddling organs to wealthy clients – has been prepared by India’s top law enforcement agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Britain’s Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe bids for freedom

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London, March 01: One of Britain’s most notorious serial killers, dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, has begun a bid to be freed from prison.

Peter Sutcliffe, who was jailed for life in 1981 for the murder of 13 women and seven counts of attempted murder, has applied to the High Court in London to grant him a finite minimum sentence.

The 63-year-old is being held at the high-security Broadmoor Hospital, west of London, after being transferred from prison in 1984 suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

K’taka boils over Taslima article; 2 killed

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Shimoga, March 01: Two persons died and four others were injured in Shimoga district during violent protests against an article written by controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen in a Kannada newspaper.

One person died when police fired at a mob and another other succumbed to injuries sustained in stone pelting, police said. A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed in four places in old Shimoga, the hometown of Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa.

Turkish PM: Turkey to change constitution

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Ankara, March 01: Turkey’s democratically elected ruling party is to revise the constitution before the end of March, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday, amid an unprecedented crisis with the powerful military.

“This will not be about completely revising the constitution, but we are envisaging to amend certain articles,” notably on the banning of political parties and on the judiciary, Erdogan told journalists.

Iran to IAEA: remember Western nuclear breaches

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Tehran, March 01: As the UN nuclear watchdog meets on Monday to discuss a key report on Iran’s atomic programme, Tehran told the agency to remember what it said were past breaches of contracts by Western powers when it came to supplying nuclear fuel to Tehran.

In a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran cited three specific examples where the United States, France and Germany had turned out to be unreliable suppliers of nuclear fuel to Tehran in the past.

Another mosque collapse in Morocco kills one

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Rabat, March 01: One person died and three others were injured when the dome of a mosque collapsed in northern Morocco just over a week after another mosque accident killed 41 people, the interior ministry said Sunday.

In a statement, the ministry blamed the latest collapse, which took place Saturday, on unauthorized construction work on the Al-Amal mosque at Zayo, near Nador in the north, and said it was opening an inquiry into the incident.

Radical Israeli settlers party amid Hebron tensions

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Hebron, March 01: The illegal radical Jewish settlers sang, danced and drank themselves into a stupor, ignoring the growing outrage of the indigenous Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank.

As they do every year on the Jewish holiday of Purim, the illegal settlers donned costumes — one was a clown, another a Palestinian — and drank and danced to celebrate a biblical miracle.

Kurdish autonomy calls divide Syrian dissidents

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Damascus, MarA rift has emerged between Kurdish opposition groups and other Syrian dissidents over calls for Syrian Kurds to be granted autonomy.

Against the backdrop of Kurdish minorities in neighbouring Turkey and Iraq gaining more rights, the Syrian Yakiti party, one of the main Kurdish opposition groups, declared that the solution to the Kurdish issue would be to give Kurds the right to self-government.

The statement, which came during the party’s convention last December, sparked a wave of criticism from other elements of the Syrian opposition.