New Delhi, June 27: Come September and you will just have to dial 111 to lodge a complaint against a tout or an auto driver who is overcharging you or for that matter to know about city hotels and tourist places.
“Keeping the Commonwealth Games in mind, Delhi government is coming out with a helpline to address complaints as well as disseminate basic information about the city,” said a senior Tourism Ministry official.
Addressing large groups of people from Bushehr province, southern Iran marking the birth anniversary of Imam Ali (AS) on Saturday, World Shia Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei called on the nation and officials to be cautious against enemy plots and deception.
Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei called on the audience to clear their line with enemies and be alert against their deception and lies.
Johannesburg, June 27: Soccer World Cup governing body FIFA has hailed South Africa for being the “perfect” host of the tournament and said the country will now be considered as an alternate venue for future events.
“We have gone beyond our targets on everything, the number of visitors to South Africa has passed our expectations and the number of tickets is higher than what we sold in Germany so may be South Africa will become plan B for the future,” FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke told reporters Saturday.
Toronto, June 27: When French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited the Taj Mahal in 2008, he was overawed by the monument of love, but could not show it to his then friend and now First Lady Carla Bruni.
This cherished moment is likely to be realised later this year, as Sarkozy has accepted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s invitation to visit India along with his model-singer wife.
Bangalore, June 27: Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa faces the most difficult assembly session in his two-year rule as it starts Monday in the backdrop of the Lok Ayukta (ombudsman) resigning over “the government’s indifference to fighting corruption”.
The resignation by N. Santosh Hegde, a retired Supreme Court judge, a year ahead of completion of his five-year term as Lok Ayukta, and the inadequate rehabilitation of north Karnataka people hit by last year’s floods will dominate the month-long session.
New Delhi, June 27: With assembly polls due in Bihar later this year, political parties have gone on an offensive to woo different caste and community groups in the state.
While the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-BJP government has made a bid for some new social engineering by attempting to carve out Mahadalits from among SCs and Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs) from the OBCs, Lalu Prasad’s RJD and Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP are trying to bring Muslims, Dalits, OBCs and upper castes under one umbrella.
Toronto, June 27: Thousands of protesters rampaged through Canada’s largest city and its financial capital, unleashing an unprecedented fury of violence as world leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, gathered here for the G-20 summit Saturday.
Four police cruisers were set on fire, storefronts smashed, windowpanes sprayed with anti-police and anti-G-20 slogans as more than 10,000 protesters came out on the streets to oppose the summit attended by leaders of the world’s most important nations.
Mumbai, June 27: RGV is obsessed with Boney Kapoor’s wife and desperately wants to work with her. She hasn’t returned any of his SMSes. He hopes a handwritten letter will have better luck.
Ram Gopal Varma has written a letter to Sridevi expressing his desire to work with her in one of his productions. The director wanted Boney’s biwi to act in his film Shaque, directed by his assistant Rumina.
In the past too, RGV has offered her some films, but she’d begged off. This time he decided to get her attention, and convince her by writing to her.
Mumbai, June 27: Hrithik Roshan has a new name. The Kites actor is known as Swami Hrithikanand. Because lately every word that comes out of his mouth is about humanity from a high spiritual plane.
Even his tweets are preachy and make pseudo-sermons about ‘healing humanity, ‘ ’embracing comp-assion’ and ‘nurturing mankind’.
Sniggering benefi-ciaries of this lavish charitable trust have secretly labelled our Kites hero, ‘Swami Hrithikanand’.
Mumbai, June 27: India’s ace spinner Harbhajan Singh has broken up with his long time girlfriend Geeta Basra. The duo were going steady for a while and Bhajji even introduced Geeta to her family in Jalandhar just a few days back.
But things seems to have taken an ugly turn after that. We hear that it was Singh who called off the relationship. Differences cropped up between the couple after a trivial and turned into big issue. Geeta is said to be having hard time, coping with the break-up. However, she is determined to concentrate on her acting career now that she is single again.
Mumbai, June 27: He is known for giving glam dolls of B-town a milestone film in their career. After giving Priyanka Chopra Fashion and Bipasha Basu Corporate, National Award winning filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar claims that his upcoming film Heroine will be its lead actress Kareena Kapoor’s best film of her career.
“Kareena has been wanting to work with me for quite a long time. But due to some reasons we have not been able to team up. She blindly trusts me and my talent and the feeling is mutual,” said Bhandarkar.
Mumbai, June 27: Gone are the days when the yesteryear stars, including those who held sway till the 90’s, were blessed with only a landline, which was always manned personally by them, when at home.
So much so that even their secretaries or houseboys hardly dared to meddle with their telephonic chores unless their Sahabs or Madams were busy shooting outdoors. And those days the outdoor locales extended only as far as Kashmir, Shimla or Darjeeling.
Thanks to the technological revolution today, stars can now be tracked down even if they are shooting in a remote corner of the world.
Mumbai, June 27: Salman Khan, Asin, Paresh Rawal and other unit members were shooting for Anees Bazmee’s ‘Ready’ in Sri Lanka. This was when Paresh Rawal got the news that his mother had expired in India. Paresh broke down on the sets. When the crew members asked the vetern actor to return home to perfom his mother’s last rites, Paresh was adamant that he would complete the shooting per schedule and then return for the last rites.
Mumbai, June 27: Sanjay Dutt gets the biggest solitaire earrings he can find for wife, Maanayata
When Sanjay Dutt learned that wife Maanayata was pregnant after three years of marriage, he was thrilled. He decided to buy her a gift to mark the day.
Says a source close to Dutt, “When the doctor confirmed Maana’s pregnancy and she informed Sanju, he was so happy, he wanted to lay the whole world at her feet.”
Daddy dobaara!
Mumbai, June 27: After playing a strong supporting role in her debut film ‘Fashion’, Mugdha Godse was riding high. In fact she was also signed by Madhur Bhandarkar for his very next film ‘Jail’ where she was the solo heroine.
In the midst of this, she also landed a role in ‘All The Best’ which worked well at the box office too. Now she is all set to be seen alongside Bobby Deol in horror flick ‘Help’.
Kabul, June 27: A senior Taliban commander disguised in woman’s clothes was killed by Afghan and international forces when he fired on troops trying to catch him south of Kabul, the military said.
NATO and Afghan security forces cornered Ghulam Sakhi at a compound last night in Logar province’s Puli Alam district, and called for women and children to leave the building, a coalition statement said.
Mumbai, June 27: Boman Irani, who started life as a photographer, just loves exploring different avenues. After some crackling performances, including in comic roles, the hugely talented actor is trying his voice as a singer.
He is touring five Indian cities with music director Shankar Mahadevan but says he does not want to make a career out of it.
Kolkata, June 27: A Karachi-bound ship intercepted on the Hoogli river on Friday, was carrying arms and ammunition used by different nations that had participated in the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia, a police officer said on Saturday.
The union home ministry has asked the security agencies to bring the Liberia-registered ‘Aegean Glory’ to the Kolkata dock for a thorough investigation. The ship is likely to reach on Sunday noon, West Bengal DGP Bhupinder Singh said.
Islamabad, June 27: An abortion hotline which has been set up in Pakistan is facing violent opposition. Islamic groups and political parties have condemned the hotline, which was launched yesterday, as “anti-Islamic” and “colonial”, even though it will save the lives of thousands of women who die each year in backstreet abortion clinics. They have warned the organisers that they are at risk of reprisals.
Chennai, June 27: Congress lawmaker D. Sudarsanam died following a cardiac arrest Saturday night in Coimbatore, where he was attending the first World Classical Tamil Conference, hospital authorities said. He was 67.
The Tamil Nadu Congress Legislative Party leader was admitted to the Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital in Coimbatore, some 500 km from here, after he fell seriously ill.
He is survived by three sons. His wife had passed away two years ago.
Elected from the Poonamallee assembly constituency, Sudarsanam was serving his fourth term as Tamil Nadu assembly member.
New Delhi, June 27: A Delhi court yesterday extended by 14 days the judicial custody of diplomat Madhuri Gupta, who has been arrested for allegedly passing classified information to Pakistani intelligence officials.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kaveri Baweja remanded Gupta, 53, to judicial custody till July nine after she was produced in the court. Her judicial remand was on May 31 extended in proceedings conducted through video-conferencing.
Khartoum, June 27: Sudanese police briefly detained more than 20 models, make-up artists and designers after a rare mixed-sex fashion show in Khartoum, participants said.
Amateur models taking part in the “Sudanese Next Top Model Fashion Show” told Reuters they were rounded up by Sudan’s public order police, a body known for its crackdowns on indecent dress and drinking in the Muslim north.
Police were not available to comment on Thursday’s arrests outside a club in the capital’s Khartoum 2 district.
Mumbai, June 27: Terror suspects held at South Africa could be on a reconnaissance mission for LeT, say sources at a central intelligence agency
The arrest of two suspected members of militant organisation Lashar-e-Toiba has sent intelligence agencies across the country, including the Anti Terrorist Squad, into a tizzy.
The two suspects identified as Imran Mohammed and Chaudhary Parvez Ahmed were apprehended by security forces while they were trying to cross over into South Africa from Zimbabwe. During preliminary inquiry, the duo claimed they were Pakistani nationals.
Mumbai, June 27: Dr Zakir Naik, 45, does not give you much of a choice. “If you have sinned, all a court can pronounce is death or life sentence. The next life is eternal and there you will be roasted alive on a slow burner, then given fresh skin, and the action will be repeated a million times,” he says, with the air of surety with which he answers all doubts in his sermons.
Coming from a man who wants to be seen as a promoter of peace, the graphic description of the afterlife can give you the shivers in this life, even when the person he mentions to illustrate his point is Hitler.
London, June 27: A woman in Saudi Arabia, Heila al-Qusayyer, has been named the al-Qaeda”s ”First Lady”, who was running a cell of 60 militants and is believed to have been the Arabian peninsula”s principal fund-raiser for the terror outfit.
Qusayyer holds a degree in geography and was married to a former executive, Abdulkareem al-Humaid, from Aramco, the state oil company, who gave up all his worldly possessions to become a radical preacher.