Mumbai, August 05: Bollywood actress Soha Ali Khan has now signed Deepa Mehta’s much talked movie Midnight’s Children, which has seasoned actors like Shabana Azmi, Seema Biswas, Nandita Das, and Irrfan Khan.
The movie is an adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Booker Prize winning novel with the same title. The film will start shooting later this year.
Mumbai, August 05: For an actress like Katrina Kaif getting her tongue round chaste Hindi words in the long political speech in the latest release Raajneeti wasn’t a cakewalk. With her progressively thinning though yet-not-gone anglicised accent, the actress unwittingly ended up garbling some of the Hindi words during her dubbing.
Once such word was ‘Satta’, which means politics. After the film’s post production was over, Katrina discovered to her horror that she had mistakenly pronounced the word ‘satta’ as ‘satya’ (truth) in one of her speeches.
Islamabad, August 05: The coffin of a promising young Pakistani Hindu social worker, killed in the recent airliner crash here, has been marked as “kaafir” or infidel, causing anguish and revulsion among his friends and netizens.
Prem Chand, 25, a bright spark from the minority Hindu community, was a member of the National Youth Parliament and was heading to Islamabad from Karachi to attend the organisation’s last session when the Airblue flight crashed into the Margalla Hills on July 28, killing all 152 people on board.
Bhopal, August 05: Gangster Abu Salem today denied all charges against him in the alleged fake passport case and said they were “fabricated” to ensure his extradition.
Salem, whose statement was recorded in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Ramgopal Singh, claimed that he never visited Bhopal or the city municipal corporation office in connection with the case.
The court prepared a long questionnaire carrying 269 queries on the basis of statements of 36 witnesses, but Salem answered all of them in negative and said that these questions had nothing to do with him.
Hyderabad, August 05: The Cabinet, which met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister K Rosaiah on Wednesday gave green signal for many recommendations made by the Cabinet sub-committee on post-metric scholarships and tuition fee reimbursement.
Talking to reporters over the cabinet decisions, Minister for Information and Public Relations J Geeta Reddy said the cabinet approved uniform fee structure to similar courses in the universities.
Hyderabad, August 05: Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday demanded an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation into allegations of irregularities into the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
Mr Naidu said that the image of the country has been damaged due to the alleged financial irregularities and sub-standard works in the construction of stadiums.
Baghdad, August 05: The Iraqi government has released from prison a top Saddam Hussein loyalist after he was found innocent of helping the former regime punish opponents by draining the country’s fabled marshlands, a judge said yesterday.
Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammadi was recently released from a prison just outside Baghdad after being cleared of the charges in the marshlands draining case. The trial ended this week. Mr Muhammadi was the only one to be freed of the 32 defendants tried in the case, some of the others were sentenced to death by execution.
–Agencies
Hyderabad, August 05: All India Congress Committee secretary Ponguleti Sudhakar on Wednesday advised Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu to stop the ‘blame game’ and politicizing the Babli issue.
Talking to media persons at CLP Media Point on Assembly premises, the senior Congress leader said that all parties should come to a political understanding to solve the inter-state river water sharing dispute. He called upon Mr Naidu to stop the hue and cry over the Babli irrigation project.
Tehran, August 05: Iran has obtained four S-300 surface-to-air missiles despite Russia’s refusal to deliver them to Tehran under a valid contract, a semiofficial Iranian news agency claimed today.
The Fars news agency, which has ties to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s most powerful military force, said Iran received two missiles from Belarus and two others from another unspecified source. Fars didn’t elaborate, and there was no immediate official confirmation of the report.
Washington, August 05: Same sex couples in California have a right to be married, said a ruling issued Wednesday in a federal court in San Francisco that overturned a ban on gay marriage in the state.
US district chief judge Vaughn Walker said banning same sex marriage violates the US Constitution because it denies equal rights to gays and lesbians, New York Post reported.
The ban, known as Proposition 8, outlawed same sex marriage in California in November 2008, five months after the state Supreme Court made them legal.
Washington, August 05: In the four decades since the world watched his “one giant leap for mankind”, Neil Armstrong hasn’t had much use for the limelight.
So as, the first man on the moon celebrates his 80th birthday Thursday no large party is expected.
Last year, he took part in celebrations for the 30th anniversary of his famous moon landing July 20, 1969, but with seemingly less enthusiasm than his publicity-hungry colleague Buzz Aldrin.
Mumbai, August 05: After getting favourable reviews for her role in “Lamhaa”, Bipasha Basu is in no mood to swing back into fluffy, ultra-glam roles. The dusky actress says she has more serious stuff lined up – a film on honour killings and another on Goa’s drug mafia.
In fact when actor and beau John Abraham saw Bipasha in “Lamhaa”, based on the turmoil in the Kashmir Valley, he was so blown away that he advised her to only get into projects that brought out her acting skills.
New Delhi, August 05: Tata Sons on Wednesday said it has set up a panel to search for a successor to Group Chairman Ratan Tata, who is due to retire in December 2012.
The move comes within days of elevation of Noel Tata, Ratan Tata’s half-brother, as head of the $ 72 billion Group’s international operations, lending credence to speculation that he would be annointed the successor.
London, August 05: Details of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s steamy sex session with three sex workers has been revealed by an escort.
Escort Maria Teresa De Nicolo alleged she shared the bed with Berlusconi, 73, and two other women.
A statement to prosecutors by 38-year-old Nicolo was published by Italian newspaper La Repubblica, which spoke about the group sex.
She said in her statement, “In the bed there was me, two girls from Rome and Berlusconi.”
The sex session had taken place at Berlusconi’s Palazzo Grazioli residence in Rome.
New Delhi, August 05: The CBI has so far arrested Shah, IPS officer Abhay Chudasama and owners of Arham farm Rajendra Jirawala in the case.
Government on Thursday chose not to comment on reports of Gujarat Chief Minister BJP’s Narendra Modi’s name cropping up during interrogation of former minister Amit Shah by CBI in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.
Tehran, August 05: Iran’s presidential office has rejected as false reports of a grenade attack on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the western city of Hamedan.
Earlier Wednesday, some foreign news sources said Ahmadinejad’s convoy was targeted by a homemade explosive device as he was travelling from Hamadan’s airport to give a speech in a local sports arena.
The reports said the president was unhurt but others had been injured in the incident.
Beirut, August 04: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday openly accused Israel of the 2005 assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri and said he would unveil proof to that effect at a news conference next week.
“I accuse the Israeli enemy of the assassination of (former) Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and… I will prove this by unveiling sensitive information at a press conference on Monday,” Nasrallah said in a speech transmitted via video link.
New Delhi, August 04: Indian soccer captain Bhaichung Bhutia on Wednesday asserted that the country should not have bid for the Commonwealth Games saying that the existing infrastructure was inadequate for hosting an event of such magnitude.
“I don’t think it was a good idea to host the Games at this stage. If you look at the infrastructure we have at present, it will only show we are not ready for it,” Bhutia told reporters here.
Bhutia attacked the central government for bidding for the Games without making substantial effort to improve the nation’s sports infrastructure.
Japan, August 04: Japanese bike maker Yamaha Wednesday launched three bikes for the mass Indian market priced between Rs.47,000 and Rs.52,000.
“India is the most important market for us and we realised we need to address the volume segment who commute everyday for their work and are looking for a vehicle that has comfortable seating and excellent mileage,” Yukimine Tsuji, chief executive, Yamaha Motor India, told reporter.
The three motorcycles named SZ, SZ-X and YBR 125 have 123cc and 153cc engines.
Washington, August 04: The makers of BlackBerry have unveiled a new smartphone with a touchscreen and slideout keyboard that it hopes will fend off competition from Apple’s iPhone.
The BlackBerry Torch will go on sale in the US Aug 12 for $199.99 (Rs.9,200) with a two-year contract with AT&T. The new smartphone was unveiled in New York on Tuesday.
The device uses a new operating system and has a faster and easier-to-use web browser, its manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) said at a press conference, reports from the US.
Karachi, August 04: At least 62 people have died and 128 have been injured as angry mobs stalked the streets of Pakistan’s largest and most volatile city in unchecked violence after Monday’s killing of a MQM legislator.
Muttahid Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader and member of the Sindh provincial assembly, Raza Haider, was shot dead in Nazimabad area where he had gone to attend a funeral.
As the news spread, mobs torched more than 50 vehicles including buses and trucks and set several shops and fuel stations on fire.
New Delhi, August 04: Five days after yesteryear’s wanted criminal Charles Sobhraj had his appeal against a life term for murder rejected by Nepal’s Supreme Court, it was the turn of his fiancee, Nihita Biswas, and her mother Shakuntala Thapa to appear in the same court, offering apologies for their outbursts on the day of the judgment.
Thapa, who is also Sobhraj’s lawyer, and Nihita, who claims to have married Sobhraj inside Kathmandu’s Central Prison, were slapped with a contempt of court case by two lawyers for calling the judges, who had found Sobhraj guilty, corrupt.
New Delhi, August 04: The Supreme Court has awarded life sentence to three persons in a honour killing case, in which six members of a family were gunned down, but said the accused deserved capital punishment.
The apex court however, refrained from awarding death penalty to Master Krishna, Ram Sewak and Kishori as the incident was two decades old and slammed the High Court for acquitting them by rejecting the testimonies of a child and another witness.
New Delhi, August 04: Ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal is hopeful of continuing her red hot form and exuded confidence that she will do well in the upcoming tournaments like World Badminton Championship and Commonwealth Games.
“I am preparing well. My training has been going on smoothly. I am confident of doing well,” she told reporters here at a press conference organised by Guinness World Record holder Dinaz Vervatwala.
Saina, however, added that ups and downs are natural in life and that she is prepared to face the worst. “I am very confident of doing well. But ups and downs are
New Delhi, August 04: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Wednesday called for the dismissal of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit for diverting funds meant for Dalit welfare to the Commonwealth Games (CWG).
Delhi BJP chief Vijendra Gupta said despite the government documents revealing the diversion of funds to the tune of Rs.744.35 crore, Dikshit flatly denied the charges.
‘We have not diverted any funds from the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes welfare schemes for the Commonwealth Games,’ Dikshit had said Tuesday.