Myanmar parliament will commence its 5th session Oct 22.
Members of the House of Representatives (Lower House) and House of Nationalities (Upper House) will meet. A foreign investment bill and other key issues will be finalized.
In the 4th session ended Sep 7, the parliament approved the nomination of U Nyan Tun as vice president, the appointment of 11 ministers and an auditor-general, Xinhua reported.
IANS
The United States has told India it was going to have a broader relook at its visa regime, but this will have to await the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
This was conveyed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton toIndian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna when he raised the issue at their bilateral meeting here Monday, according to official sources.
The United States has told India it was going to have a broader relook at its visa regime, but this will have to await the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
This was conveyed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton toIndian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna when he raised the issue at their bilateral meeting here Monday, according to official sources.
Ikea is being criticized for deleting images of women from the Saudi version of its furniture catalog, a move the company says it regrets.
Comparing the Swedish and Saudi versions of the catalog, free newspaper Metro today showed that women had been airbrushed out of otherwise identical pictures showcasing the company’s home furnishings.
The Jharkhand government has reduced value added tax (VAT) on kerosene from five per cent to two per cent, while the VAT on tobacco products has been increased from 14 per cent to 20 per cent, official sources said today.
The decisions were taken at the cabinet meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Arjun Munda, yesterday.
The new rate for kerosene would be Rs 13.76 per litre from the current Rs 14.19, the sources said.
–PTI
A 28-year-old Indian taxi driver was on Tuesday found guilty by an Australian court of raping his inebriated female passenger last year in Brisbane.
Sunveer Jassar, hailing from Punjab, was found guilty of raping the intoxicated female student in the back of his cab after driving her to an isolated area in Brisbane’s city centre last year on April 12, according to The Courier Mail.
Driven by debt, a couple allegedly killed their two minor daughters before hanging themselves, leading to the death of the mother even as the father is battling for life.
Sangeeta Patel (38) and her two daughters– Snehal (3) and Kalpana (6) died while the father — Ajit Patel, survived the suicide attempt and has been admitted to hospital, Katodara police official said.
According to police, debt arising out of the family’s textile business could be the reason behind the extreme step.
Enjoying the natural advantage of abundant rainfall and fertile soil, Meghalaya is not only slowly catching up with Assam and Darjeeling in tea output, but has also started production of high quality organic tea.
Though tea planters had identified the favourable condition in the region almost two centuries ago, tea cultivation was never taken up seriously by successive administrations.
A prospecting party sent by the British East India Company to the region in the first half of the 19th century had called for vigorous tea cultivation, but sadly the advice was not acted upon.
The finances of Indian-origin Labour MP Keith Vaz were subject to a secret police investigation that uncovered “hundreds of thousands of pounds in mystery bank accounts”, a media report said.
Vaz, a minister in the Labour government, had almost 500,000 pounds deposited in accounts between 1997 and 2001, the Daily Mail reported.
A Scotland Yard probe found “significant amounts of cash” said to have been of a “suspicious nature”.
Vaz denies any wrongdoing.
The Indian-origin leader chairs the home affairs select committee which holds the police to account.
Nothing spreads faster than a rumour! It was not long after a rumour of a mysterious phone call had created panic among thousands of people in several districts of Andhra Pradesh, keeping them awake throughout the night, that a hoax SMS forced the residents of Hyderabad to switch off their phone last night.
In August this year, people in several districts of Andhra Pradesh including Hyderabad had claimed to have received phone calls which claimed that a baby had prophesied within hours of her birth that anybody who slept at night would not see the light of day.
Indian Sikh Jasbir Singh, whose wife and three children were found murdered last Friday in Brussels, has accused one of his colleagues for the crime, the EuAsiaNews reported.
The gruesome crime took place in the Brussels borough of Etterbeek and Jasbir Singh, who worked in a cafe, has told reporters that one of his colleagues, reportedly from Bangladesh, acted suspiciously when he returned from holidays last year.
“He was jealous and I never understood what had happened,” the 37-year old Sikh hailing from Punjab’s Ludhiana district told the media.
Actress Rani Mukherjee says actors will lose out on working with a great director like Yash Chopra, who recently announced his retirement plans.
“He gets everybody to participate, gives everyone lot of love and every actor on his sets is pampered. So obviously actors will lose out on working with a great director like him. I am lucky to have got the opportunity to work with him,” Rani told reporters.
The Pakistani Taliban has offered protection to Imran Khan who is scheduled to hold a peace march in the violence-prone tribal areas Sunday, it was reported here.
Imran Khan, a former cricketer, now heads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. His rallies have witnessed a massive participation.
The Pakistani Taliban’s senior commanders said a meeting headed by the group’s leader Hakimullah Mehsud set aside earlier instructions to send suicide bombers to assassinate Khan, reported Daily Telegraph.
Mahatma Gandhi was today fondly remembered with President Pranab Mukherjee leading the nation in playing glowing tributes to the Father of the Nation on the occasion of his 143rd birth anniversary.
Mukherjee, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and senior BJP leader L K Advani were among the prominent people who visited Gandhi’s memorial at Rajghat to offer floral tributes.
Other dignitaries who visited Rajghat included Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Defence Minister A K Antony and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.
Even a bit of exercise can deliver a mental health boost to obese teenagers, says a new study.
“The first thing I tell teenagers and parents struggling with their weight in my practice is to throw away the scale,” said Gary Goldfield, researcher at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Research Institute.
“These kids face enough challenges with bullying and peer pressure today! This new study is proof positive that even a modest dose of exercise is prescriptive for a mental health boost,” Goldfield was quoted in the Journal of Paediatric Psychology.
An earthquake of slight intensity was experienced in parts of Himachal Pradesh this morning, Met officials said.
The quake which struck the Chamba-Lahul-Spiti border region at 09:15 hours, measured 4.5 on the Richter scale, they said.
–PTI
It’s that time of the year when pious Hindus pray to their ancestors. The fortnight-long ‘pitra-paksh’ began this week but an acute shortage of priests – with the younger generation no longer interested in carrying on this vocation -has forced families to bring them from other places in the country.
Traditionally, Vedic hymns are chanted and religious rites performed through the fortnight in honour of one’s ancestors. There is an elaborate feast that marks pitra-paksh. Family and friends are invited, and pandits too are fed on the occasion.
Samsung Electronics said Tuesday that Apple’s newest smartphone iPhone5 infringed eight of its patents, including two standards patents and six features patents.
Samsung added infringement claims about the iPhone 5 to the existing patent lawsuit against Apple at the US District Court of California. The original complaint was filed April 18, alleging earlier iPhone models infringed the same eight patents, Samsung said in an e-mailed statement.
With the success of Telangana march Congress high command is compelled to review the issue seriously. Congress president Sonia Gandhi called general secretary AICC and incharge Andhra Pradesh Ghulam Nabi Azad and got the details of Telangana march. According to highly placed sources Ghulam Nabi Azad gave an account of massive gathering at the march and law and order situation.
A passenger plane in Nepal had to make emergency landing Monday after being hit by a bird, authorities said.
The Kathmandu-bound Yeti Airlines 9NJ flight returned to Pokhara airport minutes after it took off around 3.30 p.m., Xinhua reported. There were 29 people on board.
“A bird might have hit the plane as blood stains were discovered,” officials said.
It happens just three days after 19 people aboard a Sita Air-owned aircraft were killed when their plane caught fire and crashed near Kathmandu after being hit by a bird.
IANS
India has called upon all states to destroy their chemical weapon stockpiles under the Convention against Chemical Weapons (CWC) within the shortest possible time to advance the cause of disarmament.
“Disarmament is a primary goal of the Convention and should remain the priority till the complete destruction of all chemical weapons,” Indian External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna said here Monday at a high level meeting to celebrate 15 years of the convention.
For nearly two years after India became independent, pictures of the king and queen of Britain continued to adorn government offices and departments.
It was only from June 2, 1949 that the government of then Bombay state ordered all offices to replace the photographs of British colonial rulers with those of Mahatma Gandhi, who by then had been assassinated.
(Ram Puniyani) India is facing lot of communal-ethnic strife where the place of origin and religion of people is the marker due to which they are attacked. Many a retrograde political ideologies are based on the ‘first comer’ assertions. The deeper problems related to social resources, economic deprivations and socio-political inequalities are being presented as problems related region or religion of people. In Mumbai, one can see this in its extreme form, in the politics of Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Both these outfits have a regional-religious chauvinist agenda.
Govt.of France has imposed a ban on Muslim women for wearing hijab. Those who violate this ruling are being punished by the Frech Govt.Despite all these, the famous French singer Diam has announced in a newly-published autobiography that she has embraced Islam and decided to wear hijab.
The book tells about Diam’s life, hardships, conversion to Islam and choosing to wear hijab.
“In the height of success I suffered from a major depression and visited different psychologists, but none of them could help me,” she says in her book.
(Siasat News) Congress M.P. representing Telangana, Mr. G. Sukhender Reddy retaliating strongly on the remarks made by Congress M.P. of Vijayawad, Mr. L. Rajagopal said that Hyderabad is our father’s jagir (property). He threatened that there would be serious repercussions and dire consequences of the remarks made by Rajagopal. He had advised the Govt. to close down Osmania University which, according to him, has become the center of terrorist activity.