Month: October 2011

Beijing, October 07: The Beijing Capital International Airport here has seen a record number of passengers during the week-long National Day holiday, Xinhua reported.

The airport handled 1.35 million passengers between Sep 30 and Oct 5, an airport official said Thursday.

The travel peak fell Oct 1 or the start of the holiday, when the airport handled 258,000 travellers.

During the period, the airport handled 8,739 flights, an average of 1,456.5 flights daily and an increase of 3.92 percent compared with the same period last year.

——IANS

Washington, October 07: The number of people in the US applying for unemployment aid rose slightly last week after falling below the threshold of 400,000 a week earlier, Xinhua reported Thursday.

The Labor Department said that the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims for jobless benefits was 401,000 in the week ending Oct 1, marking an increase of 6,000 from the previous week’s revised figure.

New Delhi, October 07: Bollywood actor Preity Zinta, who is also a UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador, will participate in a three-day International Forum on Millennium Development Goal 6 beginning Oct 10 in Moscow, a statement said here Thursday.

The objective of the forum will be to halt and reverse the spread of HIV, malaria and other diseases by 2015, the statement from the UN said.

The forum is being organised by the government of the Russian Federation, a Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and partners.

Mumbai, October 07: Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, who is returning to the big screen after four years with the Sino-Indian venture “The Desire”, admits that she missed being on celluloid but has learnt to prioritise her life with time.

“I have taken a backseat from showbiz purely out of choice because I am really enjoying what I am doing. I’ve been there and done that,” Shilpa told reporters here at the launch of website www.grouphomebuyers.com.

Shilpa, who married Britain-based Indian businessman Raj Kundra in 2009, wants to focus on her personal life and business.

Milan, October 07: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will never quit, declared his daughter Marina Berlusconi.

“My father absolutely doesn’t have to quit and will never quit,” she said in an interview with daily Corriere della Sera.

Critics have called for Berlusconi’s resignation saying as his legal woes are an embarrassment to the country and hamper efforts to pull it out of economic stagnation.

Moody’s rating service Tuesday cut Italy’s debt rating because of worries about its weak economy.

Islamabad, October 07: A Pakistani commission investigating the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden has allowed his widows and daughters to leave the country, a media report said.

The commission, headed by Justice (retired) Javed Iqbal, said that it had finished recording their statements and they were no longer required.

The compound in Abbottabad where Osama and his family members were living will be handed over to the local authorities, the Geo News Thursday said quoting a notification from the commission.

Baghdad, October 07: At least five people were killed Thursday night when two bombs exploded in quick succession in the Iraqi capital, Xinhua reported.

The first explosion hit a passing car, while the second one went off when people rushed to help the victims of the first blast. The explosions took place in Autafiya district of Baghdad. Four policemen were among the 20 injured.

——-IANS

London, October 07: A British woman has been jailed for 18 months for sinking her estranged husband’s 75,000-pound yacht on Valentine’s Day, a media report said.

Mandy Fleming “lost it” when she realised her spouse had splashed cash on his boat after pleading poverty to her, the Guardian newspaper reported Thursday.

She drilled three holes in the hull of the boat, which was berthed at Brighton Marina, and turned on cooker gas taps turning it into a “bomb”, the Old Bailey heard.

Islamabad, October 07 (IANS) Pakistan’s Chashma Nuclear Power Plant, which was shut for past one week, Thursday resumed operations, a media report said.

The plant, located in eastern Punjab province, has a capacity to generate 300 MW of electricity. The water and power ministry spokesman said that Chashma has started generating electricity.

According to the official, the total demand for electricity in the country currently stands at 14,000 MW, against the supply of 13,200 MW, Geo TV reported.

Islamabad, October 07: Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has said that the militant Haqqani network did not exist during his rule.

It is the duty of the government to convince the US and other countries that Islamabad was not involved in terror activities, he said at a press conference in Washington Wednesday.

Musharraf termed the US allegations that the Haqqani network is linked to the Pakistan Army and the spy agency the ISI as “baseless and fake”, The News reported Thursday.

Washington, October 07: The United States says American troops must be granted immunity from local prosecution, should any number of them stay in Iraq beyond an agreed year-end deadline.

“I can say very clearly that any kind of US presence [in Iraq] demands that we protect and provide the appropriate immunity for our soldiers,” US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, said at a news conference in Brussels on Thursday, the Associated Press reported.

Mumbai, October 07: A frail but robust Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray Thursday attacked the Congress and Sonia Gandhi, mimicked leaders like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan and took potshots at many other leaders, including Anna Hazare, and the judiciary and media.

Addressing the party’s annual Dussehra Rally at Shivaji Park late in the evening, the 85-year old Thackeray, imitating the prime minister, said that “what Manmohan Singh speaks nobody understands and ditto with Chief Minister Chavan”, who he mimicked.

Mumbai, October 07: In a veiled attack on Anna Hazare, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray today said his fast looked like a “five-star” event, a comment which left the social activist unfazed.

“It was a five-star fast…Do not make a mockery of (issue of) corruption,” he said.

“Anna, you are trying honestly to fight corruption, but the corruption would not go away this way…” Thackeray said at a Dussehra rally of Shiv Sena at Shivaji Park here.

He referred to the huge arrangements at the fast venue, Ramlila Ground in Delhi, including the arrangement for “meals for 35,000 people”.

Ahmedabad, October 07: The arrest of suspended Gujarat IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt has been just one of the controversial decisions in Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s long 10-year rule in the state. A decade later, will Modi’s dream of entering national politics always remain a dream? The road ahead for the Chief Minister may not be that easy.

When asked whether he will take moral responsibility for what happened in 2002, Modi replied with a question, “What is moral responsibility?”

Washington, October 07: A number of top officials in the United States have confirmed the existence of a “secret panel” of senior government officials in the country that can order the assassination of American citizens with no judicial oversight.

According to the officials, the panel’s recommendations first go through a group of National Security Council officials which consist of cabinet secretaries and intelligence chiefs for approval before reaching the US president who will then make a final decision on the extra-judicial killing, Reuters reported.

Islamabad, October 06: A Pakistani panel, investigating the US raid to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad May 2, Thursday suggested registration of treason charges against a doctor who helped a fake CIA vaccination programme in an attempt to obtain DNA from the Al Qaeda leader’s family.

Shakil Afridi was arrested by the Pakistani security agency days after the US military helicopters killed the most wanted man in a compound where he was believed to have lived for years, reported Xinhua.

Washington, October 06: A Muslim-American woman is suing Southwest Airlines for discrimination because she was removed from a plane by federal security agents.

Irum Abbasi of San Diego plans to announce the lawsuit Thursday.

Abbasi is a Pakistani immigrant who’s lived in the US for a decade. She was on a flight from San Diego to San Jose in March when she says a flight attendant became concerned.

Abbasi, who was wearing a head scarf, told someone on her cell phone, “I have to go” because the plane was about to depart. But Abbasi says the attendant thought she said, “It’s a go.”

Riyadh, October 06: A Saudi woman who went into the X-ray section at a public hospital in the conservative Gulf Kingdom was shocked when the technician asked her to strip off. She was shocked again to learn that he is supposed to be a grill worker.

After refusing his request, the woman went straight to her husband and told him about the “rude” Arab technician, prompting him to go straight to police.

Mumbai, October, 6: Under fire for linking influx of north Indians to terror attacks in Mumbai, MNS chief Raj Thackeray said he had not said anything wrong.

“The issue is of criminal elements coming along with hordes of migrants,” he said. “These elements come here from Nepal via Uttar Pradesh,” he told reporters.

“It is true that in 60 to 70 per cent of the criminal cases here, police have to go to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in search of culprits,” Raj said.

Mhow,October 06: Seven people were killed and five critically injured after a major fire broke out in a cracker factory near Indore today, police said.

The factory and four adjacent houses at Multani Nagar in Rau were completely gutted in the fire before the situation could be brought under control, they said.

According to eyewitnesses, a loud blast was heard from the factory, which was followed by crackers shooting in all directions.

Within minutes, four more houses adjoining the factory caught fire and huge flames rose from them too, police said.

Mumbai: Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, who is returning to the big screen after four years with the Sino-Indian venture The Desire, admits that she missed being on celluloid but has learnt to prioritise her life with time.

“I have taken a backseat from showbiz purely out of choice because I am really enjoying what I am doing. I’ve been there and done that,” Shilpa said in an interview.

Shilpa, who married Britain-based Indian businessman Raj Kundra in 2009, wants to focus on her personal life and business.
Shilpa Shetty in a still from ‘The Desire’

London, October 06: For the first time, scientists have created human embryos from slivers of skin, a feat they say has brought closer the day when babies are cloned in the lab.

In experiments that mirror the cloning technique used to make “Dolly the sheep”, the researchers took cells from men’s arms and legs and placed them into women’s eggs.

The embryos created lived for only five or six days, but they represented a key step in the quest for treatments for incurable diseases from Alzheimer’s to cancer, they said.

London, October 06: A top National Football League star’s girlfriend has claimed before a court that a bank worker, Andrae Edward, had raped her in a London hotel room after she had passed out due to excessive drinking.

She alleged that she was unaware that she had been raped until she became pregnant

The Blackfriars Crown Court heard that police found that Andrae, 22, had taken pictures and video images showing her naked, while she slept.

The girl claimed she woke up naked in her hotel room after going for a night out with Edwards and her three friends.

Hyderabad, October 06: With the general strike in Telangana continuing in support of a demand for a separate state, the central government has summoned Andhra Pradesh Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan to New Delhi to get first-hand information about the situation in the region.

The governor will be leaving for the national capital Friday and will call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday, official sources said.

New Delhi, October 06: The country may have achieved significant economic growth and gone through rapid transformation over the years but the issues of child rights and abuse largely remain neglected, Law Minister Salman Khurshid said Thursday.

“We have a deep concern over how the issue of children is being dealt with despite our country achieving significant economic growth,” Khurshid said at the inauguration of the 9th ISPCAN Asia Pacific Conference of Child Abuse and Neglect here.

“We still have a lot of work to do on this issue,” he added.