Month: July 2014

At least two people were killed and two others injured in an explosion in Pakistan’s Karachi city Friday.

The blast took place near Makki Masjid in Karachi’s Saddar area and the explosives were planted on a motorcycle outside the mosque, Dawn online reported.

The injured were being shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC).

Police said one of those killed could be the attacker himself.

Security personnel cordoned off the area and a bomb disposal squad was called in.

Iraqi parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi won’t run for another term after outgoing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made this conditional on his not seeking a third term as head of government, a statement said Friday.

“I announce the withdrawal of my candidacy as a speaker of the Council of Representatives in its new term, and I wish to whoever would assume this post the success to serve the people,” the statement, emailed to Xinhua, quoted Nujaifi as saying.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today toured and inspected the blocks allotted to the state in the Secretariat here.

Chandrababu made an unscheduled visit to the Secretariat, after paying homage to freedom fighter Alluri Sitarama Raju on Tank Bund, to get a first hand feel of affairs in the administrative headquarters.

He first went to the J block and inspected the chambers of ministers and senior bureaucrats. He also went into the sections and spoke to the staff about the facilities.

Ever wondered how a giraffe’s thin legs support its massive 1,000 kg weight? Credit it to a special ligament, new research says.

“Giraffes are heavy animals (about 1,000 kg), but have unusually skinny limb bones for an animal of this size,” explained lead investigator Christopher Basu, a PhD student at the Royal Veterinary College in London.

“This means their leg bones are under high levels of mechanical stress,” Basu added.

The district magistrate of Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh was seriously injured Friday when a mob of BJP workers pelted stones at officials and policemen after getting news that party leaders on way to the village for an event, banned by the administration, had been detained en route.

Chandrakant was taken to a private medical facility with serious head injuries and has been admitted to the intensive care unit where his condition is stated to be serious but out of danger.

Scientists have stumbled upon a chemical “switch” in the brains of Alzheimer’s and stroke patients that prevents the generation and survival of neurons.

The chemical switch, MEF2, may be a potential therapeutic target to protect against neuronal loss in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and autism, researchers said.

A breakthrough discovery into how living cells process and respond to chemical information could help advance the development of treatment for cancers and other cellular disorders resistant to therapy, a research indicates.

To achieve this, scientists have unlocked the secret behind the activation of the Ras family of proteins – one of the most important components of cellular signaling networks in biology and major drivers of cancers that are among the most difficult to treat.

Do you wish that your rejuvenating spa session during the day be followed by good food and a fabulous party at night? This is now possible in Gurgaon with the launch of J One Spa which boasts of a spa, restaurant, club lounge and nightclub, all under one roof.

Built over 32,000 square feet, J One aims to offer people a world class wellness experience. The spa-cum-lounge is located at the Grand Mall on Mahatama Gandhi Road, Gurgaon.

Twenty-three Saudi women sued their parents last year for not letting them get married, a source at the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) said.

Riyadh had 11 cases, followed by Madinah with four, and two each in Dammam, Makkah, Jeddah and Jazan, the Arab News reported citing the source.

These cases are known in Arabic as “adhl”.

Suhaila Zain Al-Abideen Hammad, a rights activist and member of the NSHR, has called on the government to introduce a law to protect women from “adhl”.

Three BJP MPs and a legislator were Friday detained by police as they were trying to head to a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district where communal tension is at a peak, an official said.

Police detained Amroha MP Kanwar Singh Tanwar, Rampur MP Nepal Singh and Sambhal MP Satyal Saini, along with Sardhana legislator Sangeet Som, as a preventive measure, a state home department official here told IANS.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders were trying to go to Kanth village to hold a “maha panchayat” which has already been banned by the state government.

At least two internally displaced persons (IDPs) were killed Friday when unidentified gunmen opened fire at a refugee registration camp in a government school in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The incident occurred in Bannu district and the victims were from North Waziristan, Dawn online reported.

Security officials at the site arrested one of the gunmen and shifted him to a nearby police station.

The UN and other aid agencies are helping 470,000 people who have been displaced from Pakistan’s North Waziristan region due to the ongoing military operations.

Rebels of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) kidnapped three people in southeastern Turkey Friday, media reported.

A group of PKK militants kidnapped three villagers from the Meydan Plateau in Semdinli town of the southeastern province of Hakkari, Xinhua reported citing the Today’s Zaman newspaper.

The Turkish security forces have launched an operation in the region to rescue the kidnapped individuals, the report added.

Andy Coulson, ex-editor of the now defunct News of the World (NoW) newspaper, was jailed for 18 months Friday for conspiracy to hack phones, BBC reported.

The 46-year-old, who went on to become director of communications for British Prime Minister David Cameron, was found guilty last week at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales.

Coulson was one of four ex-journalists at the British tabloid to be sentenced, along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Police patrolled tense streets in Myanmar’s second-largest city today as anger and disbelief rippled through violence-hit communities following deadly Buddhist-Muslim clashes that raised fears of spreading unrest.

Calm returned to Mandalay after the city was placed under curfew yesterday to quell violence that saw mobs wielding airguns, swords, rocks and other weapons go on a rampage, leaving one Buddhist and one Muslim dead.

Former News of the World (NoW) editor Andy Coulson has been jailed for 18 months after being found guilty of a conspiracy to hack phones.

He was one of the four former journalists of NoW that were to be sentenced today.

Former reporter Glenn Mulcaire was given a six-month suspension while ex-news editor Greg Miskiw and former chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck were jailed for six months. James Weatherup, another former reporter was given a four month suspended sentence.

Five defendants in the trial were cleared of charges last week, reports the BBC.

National passenger carrier Air India Friday said it will operate a special aircraft service to Iraq for bring back the 46 stranded Indian nurses.

“Our flight will take off 6.00 p.m. IST here and will land at Erbil (airport) by 8.20 p.m. Iraq time. The flight will load passengers and take off from there by 9.30 p.m. (Iraq time) and head towards Kochi,” a senior Air India officer with the operations arm based in New Delhi told IANS.

According to the official, a Boeing 777 LR (long range) aircraft will be operated on the service. The aircraft can accommodate more than 300 passengers.

Iraqi refugees have said that the ISIS rebels were hunting down non-Sunnis and people against the militants.

ISIS rebels have been methodically hunting down non- Sunnis and those opposed to the militants, refugees from the rebel-held towns have told the BBC.

ISIS reportedly demanded that soldiers and officials pledge allegiance to the Caliphate that was recently declared or give in to execution.

There are more than one million Iraqis who have fled from the country due to the militant activities of ISIS in the cities of Tikrit, Mosul and other parts of the northwest region.

The first look of “Singham Returns” will be out soon for fans to sample what the “Singham” sequel would be like. The poster and trailer of the Ajay Devgn-starrer will be out July 7 and July 11 respectively.

The worldwide launch of the film’s theatrical trailer will be held July 11, and if a source is to be believed, it is being planned on a “very massive scale”.

Directed by Rohit Shetty, “Singham Returns” promises to offer a power-packed performance by Ajay.

Actress Kareena Kapoor will be seen playing the love interest of Ajay’s onscreen character.

A scientific journal that published the Facebook study about how emotions spread across social networks has defended its decision to publish the research.

According to Inder Verma, editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the decision to publish the research was deemed appropriate based on the information provided by the study authors.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today declared that the Centre wants to win the hearts of people of Jammu and Kashmir through development as he flagged off the train linking Katra–the base camp for Mata Vaishno Devi shrine in Trikuta hills–with the rest of the country.

Suggesting that the train be named ‘Shree Shakti Express’, Modi, who is on his maiden visit to J and K after assuming power, said the state has gone through many “problems and difficulties” and the country wants it to be “prosperous and peaceful”.

Winter babies, especially men, born between November and January are more likely to be left handed, a new study has claimed.

Various manual tasks in everyday life require the use of the right hand or are optimised for right-handers. Around 90 per cent of the general population is right-handed, only about 10 per cent is left-handed.

The study by Ulrich Tran, Stefan Stieger, and Martin Voracek from the University of Vienna comprised two large and independent samples of nearly 13000 adults from Austria and Germany.

With 3,146 distressed farmers ending their lives last year, Maharashtra has topped the list of farmland suicides in the country, an activist said here Friday.

Citing the latest National Crime Records Bureau report, Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) chief Kishore Tiwari said there have been 60,768 farmers’ suicides in the state since 1995.

“These are not mere suicides or homicides. It is a genocide perpetrated by the wrong policies of the state government over the years, especially the last 15 years’ rule of Congress-Nationalist Congress Party,” Tiwari told IANS.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for restraint amid growing calls from the right-wing groups to revenge the abduction and murder of three Israeli teens last month.

“I appeal to all the citizens of Israel and ask you: Please exercise restraint in your actions and words. Our hearts ache, our blood boils, but we must remember that we are, first and foremost, human beings and we are citizens of a law-abiding country,” Netanyahu said.

“We are making decisions in a responsible, cool-headed and considered manner,” he said.

In a significant discovery, scientists have found a link between high blood cholesterol and breast cancer in a study of more than one million patients over a 14 year time period in Britain.

“Our preliminary study suggests that women with high cholesterol in their blood may be at a greater risk of getting breast cancer,” said Rahul Potluri, founder of the Algorithm for Comorbidities, Associations, Length of stay and Mortality (ACALM) study.

It raises the possibility of preventing breast cancer with statins, which lowers cholesterol, he added.

The inaugural ICC Women’s Championship starts in August and will see the top-8 sides lock horns in a bilateral qualifying competition over three years for the World Cup.

Developed in order to create a more extensive and meaningful bilateral playing programme for women’s cricket, the championship will see the eight sides play one another in three One-Day Internationals (ODI), either at home or away, between 2014-16, said an ICC statement.

Points will be awarded for each game with the top-four gaining automatic qualification to the 2017 World Cup in England.