Beijing, March 25: This boy from China, suffering from a rare medical condition known as polydactyly (Greek for ‘ many fingers’), recently had a surgery to remove 11 extra fingers and toes — from the 31 he was born with.
The unnamed six- yearold from Shenyang, in China’s north- east, underwent the operation at Shenyan Hospital after he increasingly found himself the object of ridicule by his peers in school.
Bangkok, March 25: Two weeks of street protests have taken a toll on Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
He works and lives in a military base. He barely sees his family. His home and office have been splashed with sacrificial blood.
Whether his 15-month-old, military-backed government survives depends on whether he can continue to resist protesters’ demands for early elections, which the opposition aligned with ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra would almost certainly win.
New Delhi, March 25: A Home Ministry official has gone missing from the national capital this afternoon after he left home for withdrawing money from an ATM in west Delhi.
K V Singh, who works as Under Secretary with the relief and rehabilitation section of the Ministry, went missing after he left his Vikaspuri residence to withdraw money from an ATM at around 12 noon.
Singh, who is slated to retire on March 31, was supposed to leave for Kerala this evening along with his family for a holiday.
Srinagar, March 25: A top militant of Hizbul Mujahideen outfit was arrested by security forces in Bandipora district of north Kashmir this evening, police said.
Ghulam Rasool Malik alias Aftab, a top militant of Hizbul Mujahideen was apprehended jointly by the troops of 13 Rashtriya Rifles and local police at Shahgund-Sonawari, 35 kms from here around 5 PM.
The police said Malik is being questioned.
–PTI
Dhaka, March 25: Bangladesh observes its 40th Independence Day Thursday, when it also sets in motion the trial of the ‘war criminals’, the Islamist militia who killed unarmed civilians during the freedom movement.
The intervening night of Thursday-Friday would be mourned as the ‘black night’, marking the crackdown on civilians by then Pakistan Army. Bangladesh was East Pakistan before gaining independence in 1971.
Pakistan Army launched Operation Searchlight on the night of March 25, targeting civilians, leaving an estimated 7,000 dead.
New Delhi, March 25: Union human resource development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal has urged Indian industrialists figuring among the Forbes list of the world’s top 10 billionaires to invest in education.
Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani is placed fourth on the list. He has already met Sibal on two occasions regarding a university conforming to global standards that he wants to set up.
Sibal also wanted lending rates for loans to private players in education to be reduced.
New Delhi, March 25: The Supreme Court will examine on Friday the Centre’s plea to vacate its stay on mining activities carried out by French cement giant Lafarge in Meghalaya as government claimed it would otherwise affect diplomatic relations with Bangladesh.
Earlier, on February 5, a Special Forest Bench headed by Chief Justice had stayed the mining activities on the basis of the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) report which said the company was extracting minerals from the land falling in the forest area.
London, March 25: India Thursday said the civilian government in Pakistan has not moved towards reining in the ISI and likened terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba to al Qaeda.
Home Minister P Chidambaram said things would be better “if there is a truly civilian government in Pakistan which can rein in the ISI and direct the army and the ISI to move in and dismantle their terror infrastructure”.
“The camps must be closed. Training must come to an end”, he told BBC.
Asked if he has seen any movement in that direction in Pakistan, Chidambaram replied “nothing so far”.
London, March 25: Benevolence ensures free publicity. But for Lindsay Lohan, a compassionate trip to India seems to have backfired — the Indian government has reportedly initiated procedures to put her on the blacklist for violating visa norms. This is after social activists in the country also slammed her for suggesting that she had played a role in ‘rescuing’ 40 child workers.
Now, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which has produced a docufilm on child and women trafficking in India that Lindsay fronted, is backing her.
New Delhi, March 25: The top brass of the CPI(M) met here Thursday finalise its strategy on bringing together secular parties to target the government on the Nuclear Liability Bill and budget and decide on the meeting of extended Central Committee slated later this year.
The two-day Polit Bureau meeting, which is being held at the AKG Bhavan, is being attended by party General Secretary Prakash Karat, M K Pandhe, Brinda Karat, Manik Sarkar and Pinarayi Vijayan, among others.
London, March 25: A British couple, inseparable for 74 years, died within three days of each other after the woman wrote a love letter to her 90-year-old husband to come and see her from his hospital to hers. She died just three hours after he was moved to her hospital.
The elderly couple – Ted and Mary Williams – were transferred to the same hospital so that they could hold hands during their last moments together, Daily Express reported Thursday.
They fell in love as teenagers and were inseparable for the next 74 years.
Mumbai, March 25: Salman Khan’s real life is no less than a masala film if you come to think about it. It has everything, love, controversies and his generosity. Now, keeping all this in focus, a film based on Salman Khan will be of course nothing less than gripping.
Something similar is actually happening. Buzz is that a film is being made on Salman Khan, a fair length of which will deal with his ordeal when he was put behind bars almost a decade ago.
The script of the film will be partly penned by Salman’s ex-inmate, who spent three days with the actor in custody.
Kolkata, March 25: Firemen searched for missing persons in the debris, three days after the landmark Stephen Court on famed Park Street was ravaged by a devastating fire, even as municipal workers began demolishing damaged portions of the top floors of the building.
Forensic experts are scheduled to conduct DNA tests Thursday on four of the 24 retrieved bodies whose identity remained disputed in claims and counter-claims.
Myanmar, March 25: Aung San Suu Kyi is against registering her opposition party for Myanmar’s upcoming elections because the ruling junta’s restrictions on the vote are “unjust,” her lawyer said on Tuesday.
Suu Kyi was quoted as saying she would “not even think” of registering her National League for Democracy for the polls which the government says will be held this year but stressed she will let the party decide for itself.
The NLD won the last elections held in Myanmar in 1990 by a landslide but was barred by the military from taking power.
Mumbai, March 25: After breaking up with his childhood sweetheart recently, it seems Neil Nitin Mukesh has found love again. This time, the girl seems to be none other than a very well known bollywood actress.
Recently, Neil Mukesh was spotted with actress Asin. The two were out on a dinner date and according to some sources the chemistry between the two suggested that Asin and Neil are not merely friends but more than that.
Though, Neil maintains that Asin is only his good friend, but our sources do not buy this theory.
United Nations, March 25: UN chief Ban Ki-moon has slammed Israel for approving construction of 20 new apartments in occupied East Jerusalem, pressing that the building of “illegal” settlements “must stop”.
Israeli authorities have approved a project to build luxury apartments at the site of the former Hotel Shepherd in occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah quarter.
The announcement came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s is set to commence talks with President Barack Obama in Washington.
Beijing, March 25: The suspect in a Chinese elementary school stabbing that left eight children dead and five wounded said he felt life was meaningless after romantic failures and a fruitless job search, reports said on Wednesday.
Former medical worker Zheng Minsheng is accused in yesterday morning’s knife attack in the Fujian province city of Nanping _ one of China’s most shocking crimes in years.
Zheng, 41, carried out the minute-long rampage as dozens of students and their parents stood outside the gates of the Nanping Experimental Elementary School waiting for it to open,
Mumbai, March 25: Arshad Warsi seems to have got bored of his comic acts. Though his last film ISHQIYA portrayed him in a different light, the actor is seeking options to get rid of his comic actor image.
Though a lot of films are being offered to the actor, but Arshad is taking his own sweet time to decide on a subject that is more serious in nature. The actor has been bombarded with scripts that have a comic tone, without denying their importance; Arshad Warsi thinks that a serious subject is what he has his mind set out for.
Mumbai, March 25: Very few actors in the film industry are honest and open in expressing their views. And Boman Irani is among them. Boman Irani, who plays a doting & caring Abba (father) to Minissha Lamba in Shyam Benegal’s upcoming film WELL DONE ABBA, reveals that he was quite apprehensive about Minissha playing the part in the film.
Mumbai, March 25: A few weeks back, Sajid Khan had taken a dig on critics at an awards function. He had dropped quite a few hints about the misjudgment of some of them and also openly challenged their stand vis-a-vis a few movies that they either appreciated to the skies or brought down to earth. One wonders though that in retrospective, does he ever feel that he could have toned down his act a little.
Washington, March 25: After Google, two more American internet companies announced their decision to pull out of China because of internet freedom restrictions and censorships imposed by the Chinese authorities on them.
Appearing before a Congressional committee, Christine Jones, executive vice president of Go Daddy, which runs the world’s largest domain name service, said the company will no longer register new Web Sites in China.
Colombo, March 25: Sri Lankan election authorities will set up special polling centres in Jaffna for the 8th April parliamentary election following a formal request from over 1,500 former LTTE rebels, who are being held in rehabilitation camps there.
The authorities have taken the decision to set up special polling centres for the detained LTTE cadres in Jaffna following a written request from them, local media reports quoted a Department of Elections official as saying.
Mumbai, March 25: It was near chaos at the airport recently when Neha Dhupia misplaced her laptop and went berserk trying to recover it as it had a lot of important documents.
The actress was there to catch a flight for Udaipur where she was going for a day. When we reached her, Neha agreed saying, “What a crazy morning! The airport came to a standstill!”
Now she has promised to herself that she won’t be lazy anymore and get a back-up of all her files right away. The actress has been busy shooting her next film which, incidentally, is a French project.
Mumbai, March 25: Injuries to key players, including skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, would be at the back of the senior national selectors when they sit here on Friday to pick the Indian squad for Twenty20 Cricket World Cup which begins next month in the West Indies.
Dhoni and opener Gautam Gambhir were injured during the early part of the ongoing Indian Premier League while Ashish Nehra, another important member, has not played any match in the IPL for Delhi Daredevils due to a rib cage problem.
Mumbai, March 25: Actress and IPL team owner Preity Zinta is enraged. Not because her cricket team is not doing well in the IPL this time around.
Winning and losing are part of the game and she understands it well. One did understand that she almost hugged Ness Wadia when they beat Chennai Super Kings the other day as a sudden reaction. But then the actress is quite upset about rumours floating that her dimple is not for real and has been created using plastic surgery.