New York, July 08: CNN has fired an editor responsible for Middle Eastern coverage after she posted a note on Twitter expressing admiration for a late Lebanese cleric considered an inspiration for the Hezbollah movement.
Octavia Nasr later apologized for her tweet, but CNN’s senior vice president for international newsgathering, Parisa Khosravi, said Wednesday that Nasr’s credibility had been compromised.
Mumbai, July 08: Kareena Kapoor arrived in Tangiers in Morocco on last week. And in less than 24 hours she had fallen in love with the place.
Sighs the restless diva, “Saif and I are at the border of Spain and Africa near Gibraltar. It’s heaven on earth. Morocco is stunning!
The people here are crazy about Hindi movies. The little Moroccon girls sing my song Yeh ishq haye from Jab We Met in Arabic. ”
Kareena can’t stop gushing about the local kids. “They’ve stolen my heart. They look exactly like me when I was a child.
Mumbai, July 08:Priyanka Chopra will be seen doing the tango in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Saat Khoon Maaf. A sequence in the film requires PC to perform the South American dance form. Ever since she got back from her schedule in Coorg, the actress has been watching videos.
And is trying to master the steps. This is the first time she is learning to learn a special dance form for a film. She’s has always always loved watching people do the intricate steps in English films and is quite excited about being trained by a professional tango dancer.
Bangalore, July 08: The Child Marriage Restraint Act, that is. While woman asks police to take action against former swamini, who married her underage son, the police say the law is silent on how to proceed
The police are clueless about how to respond to the complaint lodged by Ratnamma, whose son Chetan, has, at the age of 20, married 32-year-old Nivedita, a sanyasin, who gave up her robes for love.
Following the wedding on Monday, Ratnamma lodged a complaint against Nivedita with the Chitradurga police under the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929.
Tel Aviv, July 08: Tel Aviv has asked Washington to increase its weapons capability in the Middle East as part of efforts for Israel to have a strategic advantage over its Arab neighbors.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on an official visit to Washington, met with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on Wednesday to discuss Israel’s military capability.
According to officials familiar with the subject of the Wednesday meeting, Netanyahu discussed the possibility of Israel buying unspecified “defense products” from the United States, AFP reported.
London, July 08: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has joined international voices of opposition to the Israeli siege of Gaza, calling on Tel Aviv to change its strategy toward the impoverished strip.
Ban made the remarks at a closed-door meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday.
Following the meeting, Ban’s office issued a statement outlining the issues discussed between the two officials.
Washington, July 08: US Senator John McCain says Israel is not planning to launch a military strike on Iran to set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
The Arizona Republican, who was in Israel on Wednesday, spoke to reporters after meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli Army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
Toronto, July 08: A Canadian woman tried to jump out of a flying plane by trying to open the door.
According to police, the flight operated by WestJet – Canada’s largest private airline – with 131 people on board had taken off from Calgary Tuesday and was on its way to Halifax when the woman passenger grabbed the door.
She was overpowered by the crew and passengers. The plane made an emergency landing at Winnipeg where she was arrested.
Hyderabad, July 08: The Justice Srikrishna Committee members, who held meetings here during the last three days, would visit Andhra region on July 12, 13, and 14 to take the views of the people on bifurcation of the state issue.
Speaking to the media persons here on Wednesday, the Committee members said that they would visit Guntur, Krishna and West Godavari districts on above said dates.
They also said that they would visit the Telangana region after the ongoing by-elections on July 27 and would complete the field visits by the end of the August month.
——-NSS
Nizamabad, July 08: The PCC President Mr d Srinivas has exuded confidence that the Congress party will win half of the 12 Assembly seats in Telangana region, for which by-elections are being held presently.
Mr Srinivas filed his nomination papers here today for the Nizamabad urban constituency, as Congress candidate.
Speaking to the media later, he asserted that the Congress party would win half the seats in the present by-elections.
Hyderabad, July 08: Kadapa MP Mr YS Jagan’s Yatra has evoked mixed reaction from the Congress party. Senior leader and Rajya Sabha member Mr V Hanumantha Rao has said that Mr Jagan had no charisma as a leader except YSR’s son. He said it was not proper for him to start the Yatra 10 months after YSR’s demise. He said: “Mr Jagan would have done his Yatra within two months of YSR’s demise, and it is also not correct for him to accept ‘flowers’ from the fans”.
London, July 08: A solar-powered plane which can fly without fuel has taken off for its first 24-hour test flight before embarking on circumnavigation of the earth.
The plane, named Solar Impulse, left Payerne airfield in Switzerland Wednesday. Its pilot, Andre Borschberg, will take the prototype to an altitude of 27,900 feet by evening, when a decision will be made whether to fly the plane through the night using solar power stored in its batteries.
Islamabad, July 08: Former president and ex-chief of Pakistan Army Pervez Musharraf has secured himself a launchpad for his return to the country from his exile in London: a political party which is founded with the desire of bringing about ‘a great change’.
‘We are happy. There is still a lot of work to do, but we have the concept, the objectives and the will,’ asserted retired General Rashid Qureshi, who was the military and presidential spokesperson for Musharraf and is now one of the ‘masterminds’ behind the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML).
Beijing, July 08: After bringing a rail line close to the Indian border with Tibet, China is now gearing to push a rail link across the Karakorams into Pakistan through the Gilgit-Baltistan region that is part of the original state of Jammu and Kashmir.
As the first rail link across the Great Himalayas, the line running nearly 700 km from the historic Kashgar city in Xinjiang province to Havelian near Rawalpindi in northern Pakistan through the Khunjerab Pass will transform the geopolitics of western China. China also has plans to expand its rail links into Nepal and Myanmar.
Gaza, July 08: The Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers say they have blocked what would have been the first shipment of outside newspapers to the territory in three years.
The Israeli military said it was set to begin allowing 10,000 copies of three Palestinian dailies from the West Bank and Jerusalem into Gaza yesterday. Hamas said it had blocked the delivery because it was not properly co-ordinated.
An observer said Hamas will not allow the newspapers in until President Mahmoud Abbas lets Hamas-linked newspapers into his West Bank stronghold.
–Agencies
Hyderabad, July 08: An American Muslim of Indian origin has been elected as the mayor of a Jewish dominated township in New Jersey, across the Hudson river from New York.
Mohammed Hameeduddin, whose roots have been traced to Hyderabad, has become one of the few Muslim mayors in the United States. He was elected the mayor of Teaneck Township in New Jersey last week, following a fierce debate among its council members.
Tehran, July 08: An Iranian official has rejected a new women’s football strip which was created after the world football federation banned the team from international competition due to their Islamic headgear, it was reported yesterday.
Football’s world-governing body FIFA banned the team in April after the Iranian Olympic Committee insisted they play in headscarves. In Iran all women are required to cover their hair in public to conform to the Islamic dress code.
Washington, July 08: The Obama Administration has maintained that it is receiving significant counter-terrorism contribution from Pakistan, even as a fresh chargesheet filed by the US Department of Justice revealed that al-Qaeda is still running terrorist training camps in that country.
The plot to bomb New York’s subway system, uncovered in September 2009, was directed by the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, the Justice Department said.
Baghdad, July 08: A suicide bomber wearing an explosives-filled belt murdered 28 Shiite pilgrims today while five more were killed in bomb attacks against worshippers in Baghdad, a security official told AFP.
The suicide attack occurred in Adhamiyah, a Sunni district across the Tigris river from Kadhimiyah, an area named after Musa Kadhim, the seventh of 12 revered imams in Shiite Islam, whom the pilgrims are honouring.
An interior ministry official said 28 were killed and 63 wounded. Many of the victims were passing through Adhamiyah en route to the imam’s mausoleum.
Los Angeles, July 08: A fifty-seven year old man, nicknamed “Grim Sleeper”, who allegedly killed 11 people over a period of 22 years here has been arrested, police said.
Lonnie David Franklin Jr. was taken into custody in his South Los Angeles home Wednesday morning, Xinhua reported.
Police said a new DNA technology has helped to nail the suspect.
He is believed to have killed 10 women and one man between 1985 and 2007. The suspect was given the moniker because he took a 14-year hiatus in his crimes after 1988.
Kabul, July 08: In a van honking and maneuvering through gridlocked Kabul traffic, an Afghan man gets philosophical about the problems of modern life.
“All over the world, there is fighting, fighting,” he says. The solution to all these problems, he says, is cricket.
Meet Taj Malik, the Afghan cricket team coach and, possibly, the sport’s biggest advocate in the the war-torn country.
Kabul, July 08: Afghanistan Defense Ministry Condemns Latest “Friendly Fire” Incident; 3 U.S. Soldiers Dead in Roadside Bomb Attack
NATO mistakenly killed five of its Afghan army allies in an airstrike Wednesday while they were attacking insurgents in the country’s east, officials said.
Three American soldiers were also reported killed Wednesday in a roadside bombing in the south.
Havana, July 08: Cuban opposition activist and longtime hunger striker Guillermo Farinas is “in danger of dying,” state media reported Saturday.
In a rare move, state-run Cuban website Cubadebate published an interview with Armando Caballero, head of intensive care at Arnaldo Milian Castro University Hospital, where Farinas is being treated.
Caballero said Farinas is “conscious [and] oriented,” but his frail condition has doctors “on edge,” according to the website.
Bhopal, July 08: Kutkipura village in Berasia tehsil in this district has ushered a revolution of sorts by generating electricity from human waste.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan yesterday dedicated to the people a five KW bio-electricity generation plant set up at a cost of about Rs 22 lakh in this village which would generate electricity from human waste, an official release said here today.
Amritsar, July 08: High drama was witnessed at Rajasansi International Airport after a new-born baby was found abandoned in an aircraft’ toilet.
The male infant was discovered in the toilet of the Ashkhabad-Amritsar flight of Turkmenistan Airlines after it landed in the afternoon.