Guwahati, June 29: Daisy Kalita is seething with anger and wants the harshest punishment for militants and leaders of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), almost begging that her husband’s killers should not go scot free.
“I don’t think they (ULFA) could be pardoned and should face severe punishment. Let the government not hurt our feelings by letting them go out without any punishment,” Daisy said as tears welled up in her eyes.
United Nations, June 29: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon Monday urged Israelis and Palestinians to continue proximity talks sponsored by the US.
Ban, who returned from attending the G20 summit in Toronto, Canada, told reporters at UN Headquarters that he had discussed with leaders, including those from the European Union, on the situation in the Middle East, Xinhua reported.
Colombo, June 29: Velvettithurai, Sri Lanka It’s been 14 months since the Colombo government defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ending Sri Lanka’s bloody 37-year civil war on the island, but the fight with the Tamil separatists is far from over.
“We are taking the fight for our rightful Tamil homeland to Toronto, London and Australia,” said one former LTTE fighter now back working and living in Jaffna.
Mumbai, June 29: Kareena Kapoor’s joy was short-lived. Even as the actress was gloating over the fact that Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who prefers and loves working with Aishwarya Rai, had handpicked her for his forthcoming flick, comes the news that the director has reverted to his regular choice: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan!
Mumbai, June 29: Priyanka Chopra just can’t stop smiling. After returning to Mumbai post a 65-day shoot for Saat Khoon Maaf in Coorg, Mysore and Pondicherry the actress is savoring every moment of her stay at home.
She has rather been out of Mumbai for entirely this year – first with shoots if Anjaana Anjaani and the Saat Khoon Maaf. However that does not mean that.
Kathmandu, June 29: An amazing gift of love by an American artist will revive the memory of an ancient Tibetan kingdom more than five decades after the annexation of Tibet by China and a drive by Beijing to clamp down on Tibet’s unique Buddhist art, culture and tradition.
A nearly five-year labour of love by Jane Lillian Vance, who teaches “the creative process” at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Virginia, climaxes in Nepal with a documentary recording the culture of Mustang, which was once part of an ancient and culturally rich Tibetan kingdom.
Manama, June 29: Muslims are planning to land a scientific lab called Mohammad I on the moon by 2013, a scientist said.
“The station will be called Mohammad after the Prophet [PBUH] and it is our scientific response for the negative stereotyping against the prophet [PBUH],” Radhouane Fakir, a Canadian scientist of Moroccan descent, was reported as saying on Saturday.
Washington, June 29: The Pentagon will try to convince the nation this week that the war in Afghanistan remains on track, despite a shake-up in military leadership.
Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, was expected to testify Tuesday before a Senate committee. It would be his first appearance on Capitol Hill since being picked to lead the war in Afghanistan following President Barack Obama’s firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal for criticizing the administration.
Srinagar, June 29: Two youth, including a 15-year-old, were killed in the Kashmir Valley Monday as thousands of protestors came out on the streets and clashed with security forces, who prevented them from reaching Sopore to attend the funeral of two men killed last week, police said.
Riyadh, June 29: A fatwa (religious ruling) issued by Shaikh Adel Al Kalbani, a former imam of the Grand Mosque in Makkah, in which he claimed that Islam does not forbid singing and music has split Saudi scholars, Islamic thinkers and secularists.
“There is no clear-cut religious ruling that says singing and music are not permissible in Islam,” Al Kalbani has said.
Istanbul, June 29: Turkey has been blocking Israeli military flights from entering its airspace, Turkish officials said Monday, in the latest diplomatic fallout over Israel’s deadly raid last month on a Turkish ship carrying activists trying to breach the naval blockade of Gaza.
Officials in Turkey, one of Israel’s closest allies in the Muslim world, threatened to sever diplomatic ties unless they received an apology for the attack, which left nine Turkish activists dead.
One thing is missing in the ‘Free Gaza’ movement. Activists and civil societies and journalists who support the Palestinian cause are rightfully angry at Israel’s murderous campaign against the aid-loaded ‘Freedom Flotilla’ that was going to the besieged and starved residents of Gaza, but they ignore the overall conditions in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the refugee camps.
Mumbai, June 29: An Indian Muslim televangelist recently banned from Canada for his inflammatory statements about Jews, gays, and the West, will still headline a massive Islamic conference in Toronto this weekend, addressing upwards of 10,000 attendees via video satellite.
New Delhi, June 29: Intensifying the agitation against price rise, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Monday hit out at Congress president Sonia Gandhi asking her to stop “expressing false sympathies for the common man” and announced July 1 as all India ‘Inflation-Protest Day’.
The party also announced a march to Rashtrapati Bhavan during the start of the monsoon parliament session to submit a request letter to President Pratibha Patil with 100 million (10 crore) signatures against price-rise.
New York, June 27: The story seemed too bizarre to be true: Gary Faulkner, a 50-year-old Greeley, Colo. construction worker, found alone and arrested in a forest in northern Pakistan on June 13, armed with a pistol, sword and night-vision goggles, saying he was trying to hunt down the world’s most-wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden.
Now back on U.S. soil after being released, he’s vowing to return to Pakistan try again.
And on “The Early Show” Monday, Faulkner told co-anchor Erica Hill his goal is to capture bin Laden, not kill him, as earlier reports about him indicated.
Washington, June 29: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will press US President Barack Obama in Washington this week to take a stronger stance with Israel over stalled peace talks with the Palestinians, analysts and diplomats said.
The king will meet Obama on Tuesday after attending a G20 summit in Canada in the latest summit in the seven decades-old relationship between Washington and the world’s top oil exporter and a key regional ally.
New Delhi, June 29: Days after the talks between home ministers of the two countries, Pakistan Monday said it has “no problems at all” in giving the voice samples of handlers of 26/11 attack even as India hoped for some credible action before Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s visit to Islamabad July 15.
Mumbai, June 29: Honestly, one more Ms Goody-two-shoes story about Katrina Kaif should give the junta a diabetic stroke.
Since she is the current reigning Bollywood princess, everyone has only nice things to say about her. But this little story is still worth telling.
Apparently, Kat who travelled to some small time village a couple of months ago for her charity work surprised the locals when she was most non-fussy about the toilet she used. It seems the locals were embarrassed with their modest facilities and thought that a superstar like Kat would hesitate to use their loo.
Paris, June 29: Prime Minister Francois Fillon urged France’s Muslims on Monday to reject full face veils as a sectarian caricature of Islam, a week before parliament debates a law banning burqas and niqabs in public.
Inaugurating a mosque in a northwestern Paris suburb, he said French Muslims should combat a tiny radical minority using face veils as a way to combat the integration of a tolerant Islam that respects the separation of church and state.
Ahmedabad, June 29: The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), the top business school in the country, will set up a campus in Hyderabad soon, a senior official of the Andhra Pradesh government said today.
He said that the idea was originally mooted when Dr Rajasekhara Reddy was the chief minister. The former CM had invited a team to take a look around the state for finding a suitable place to set up the campus.
New York, June 29: Facebook recently announced it would be opening an office in Hyderabad, India, to be able to provide better round-the-clock and multilingual support to its ever-increasing number of users, advertisers and third-party developers.
According to Business Standard and India Times, the company is set to launch its India operations from the ‘City of Pearls’ – its first office in Asia – within the next two months.
New Delhi, June 29: India expects that Pakistan will initiate some “credible action” against LeT operatives and handlers involved in the Mumbai terror attack before July 15 when external affairs minister SM Krishna visits Islamabad.
Officials said this was the indication given by Pakistani side during their interaction with Indian delegation on the sideline of the just-concluded SAARC home ministers’ conference in Islamabad.
Hyderabad, June 29: In a setback to the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case probe, the CBI has discovered that the unexploded bomb recovered by the Hyderabad police from the scene of offence was subsequently destroyed.
How the perpetrators procured the RDX material used in the bomb is a big question that need to be thoroughly probed. The unexploded bomb recovered from the blast site would have helped us in this regard as we could have gathered some scientific evidence,” a senior CBI official involved with the investigation said.
New Delhi, June 28: A minor fire broke out at the Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan located inside Safdarjung airport premises today, fire brigade officials said.
The fire was reported from the maintenance station of the building at around 3 am and was spotted by two security officials posted inside the airport.
There were four helicopters stationed inside the airport but no damages were reported due to the fire, which was doused in 30 minutes.
Srinagar, June 28: In an attempt to support the district administration, the Jammu and Kashmir government today created the posts of Special Commissioner and Special Inspector General of Police for northern districts on ex-cadre basis.
According to a government order today, Social Welfare Department Secretary Mohammad Syed Khan has been transferred and posted as Special Commissioner while Inspector General of Police (Vigilance) Pankaj Saxena has been transferred and posted as Special Inspector General of Police for Baramulla, Bandipora and Kupwara districts of North Kashmir.