Month: August 2014

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan is suffering from viral fever and has also cancelled the shoot of his upcoming film ‘Piku’.

The 71-year-old actor began shooting for Shoojit Sircar’s next, co-starring Deepika Padukone and Irrfan Khan, from last week.

“DAMN !! Just discovered.. Down with fever,” Bachchan tweeted last evening.

The actor is yet to recover from it and today tweeted, “Still down! Shoot cancelled Not happy about that! But shall persevere and be up for it by the morrow.. Resting..!!” Bachchan tweeted.

Quite vocal about his religious views, the BJP MP Yogi Adityanath stroked a controversy when he said that communal riots happen in the places where a particular minority community constitute 20-40 percent of the total population.

“There is no place for other communities at places where population of the minority community is more than 40 percent. These are the areas where communal riots are on rife,” said Yogi Adityanath.

He further added that other communities are forced to migrate from such areas and if they resist they are wiped out.

Amid reports that he was planning to write to the President over government formation, AAP on Sunday stepped up its attack on Lt Governor Najeeb Jung, alleging that he was acting at the behest of BJP.

“It’s not the LG, but it’s (BJP president) Amit Shah who is taking decisions. It is the Centre which is ruling Delhi,” senior party leader and AAP MLA Manish Sisodia told PTI.

He also slammed Jung for his view that if elections were conducted, work and other developmental activities would come to a halt for two months.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh will visit Nepal on September 18 and 19 to attend the SAARC Home Ministers’ conference, during which he is likely to have a separate meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.

During the visit, apart from attending the SAARC Home/ Interior Ministers’ meet, Singh will have bilateral meetings with his counterparts of other SAARC member countries.

President Pranab Mukherjee will be arriving here on a two-day visit tomorrow during which he will attend a convocation at Jammu University, being held after a gap of seven years, and inaugurate facilities for pilgrims at Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine.

On his maiden visit to the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir, the President will be chief guest tomorrow at the 14th convocation of Jammu University, where he will be addressing the students besides presenting Gold medals and Ph.D degrees to them.

An old woman was today killed allegedly by a man who crushed her head with a stone as she tried to resist his attempt to loot her, police said.

The accused had entered the woman’s house at Jagdish Colony in the day when she was alone with an intention of loot and tried to snatch her gold chain, City Kotwali police station in-charge Vivek Asthana said.

When she tried to resist, the accused crushed her head with a stone. She succumbed to the injuries en-route to hospital, he said.

A brother and a sister were arrested by the police for having sex near a church in Effingham County in the state of Georgia.

As per reports, they got physically intimate after watching the movie, ‘The Notebook’ and had sex three times in a trailer.

Christopher Buckner, 20, and her brother Timothy Savoy, 25, are blood relations.

They have been charged with incest and aggravated sodomy. They have also been slapped with prowling after they were found walking along a Georgia highway last Tuesday.

It was reported that the brother-sister duo broke down and confessed to the authorities.

It was a rainy Sunday as Delhi enjoyed the showers that stretched throughout the day bringing down the temperatures, even as waterlogging was reported from several parts of the city.

According to the MeT department, Safdarjung observatory recorded 35.8 mm of rainfall between 8.30 am and 5.30 pm today.

During the day, the maximum temperature was recorded at 34 degrees Celsius which was normal for this time of the season, while the minimum settled at 25 degrees, one notch below normal.

The eight-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by a priest within the premises of a temple in Satbari area of south Delhi on Janmashtami has been suffering from nightmares, reports said.

A report in a daily said that the survivor was finding it hard to sleep as she could imagine her rapist each time she closed her eyes.

The police have recorded her statement and she was also made to identify the accused.

According to the police, the incident took place on the night of Janmashtami when the girl was playing in the temple yard with a few children.

Expressing concern over frequent ceasefire violations, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar on Sunday cautioned Pakistan that it should avoid increasing tension along the border as it would not be beneficial to it.

“We fully believe Pakistan should mend its ways, because it would not be beneficial to Pakistan to increase tension with India,” Javadekar said at a press conference here.

The DMK Sunday said its treasurer M.K. Stalin did not greet the people on the Vinayaka (Ganesh) Chaturthi day via his social media accounts but it was done by some enthusiastic people who maintain the site.

In a statement issued here, the party said the greeting was issued without Stalin’s prior permission and not as per his wish.

The DMK said the greeting was issued by enthusiastic people who are maintaining Stalin’s social media sites.

On Aug 29, Stalin’s Facebook profile carried a message greeting all those who celebrate Vinayaka Chaturthi.

A day after anti-government protestors tried to storm the prime minister’s house, the Pakistan government said its doors were still open for talks even as Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) leader Imran Khan vowed to file FIR against the Sharif brothers.

Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s Saturday night adventurism to enter the prime minister’s house along with Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) leader Tahir-ul-Qadri’s supporters left at least eight supporters reportedly killed and about 450 injured.

Senior journalist and political analyst Ved Pratap Vaidik on Sunday the ongoing protests in Pakistan against the Nawaz Sharif-led government should give way to negotiations. “Khan and Qadri had claimed that during their protests, millions will come but as we have seen, not more than a few thousand people came. Thus I feel that these protests should end. Moreover, the Pakistan government has started to use force, and the demonstrators would also be scared for their lives,” Vaidik told ANI here.

An Indian Air Force (IAF) jawan has been arrested here today for allegedly spying for Pakistan. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Rakesh Kausal said, “We have arrested an Indian Air Force jawan for leaking confidential information to a Pakistani agent.” “The jawan befriended a woman on the social networking site Orkut, who offered him money in exchange for state secrets. When officers in the Air Force caught him , they court-martialed him and handed him over to us,” Kausal added. The accused had enlisted in the Air Force in 2008 and had been transferred to Pathankot in 2010.

Protestors led by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan and Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief Tahirul Qadri clashed with the police as they marched to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s residence, demanding his resignation. According to reports, hundreds were left injured as the police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.

Terming the situation prevalent in Pakistan as internal, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi today reminded that the neighbouring nation was reaping the ills of the wrong policy’s which it had adopted earlier against others. “This is Pakistan’s internal matter and my commenting on it would not be fine. Definitely, the Pakistani establishment will have to reap what it has sowed. The way they gave support and shelter to anarchy, lawlessness, terrorism in Pakistan has been a cause of concern not just for them but for the whole world.

U.S Secretary of State John Kerry has stated that airstrikes alone will not be effective in defeating the genocidal ISIS militants. In an op-ed which appeared in the New York Times, Kerry suggested a global coalition using political, humanitarian, economic, law enforcement and intelligence tools to support military force in order to tackle ISIS, reported the Guardian.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has expressed his concern about the increasing threat posed by Islamic State in mainland Europe. Cameron urged the European Union (EU) in Brussels to take a joint action to tackle the Islamic extremists. In order to contain radicalisation and extremism within Europe, Cameron will make a Commons statement on Monday, proposing new powers to prevent people from travelling to Iraq and Syria to fight with Islamic State, the BBC reports. In the wake of growing conflicts in Iraq and Syria, UK recently raised its terror threat level from “substantial” to “severe”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Tokyo Sunday evening, where a tight schedule awaited him, after a busy day in the former Japanese capital Kyoto where he visited two ancient Buddhist temples and sought Japan’s help to combat sickle cell disease prevalent in tribal regions of India.

Post-general elections with a stable federal government at work, global private equity (PE) players find real estate in India worth investing for good returns, an international realty services firm said Sunday.

“Global PE investment in India is likely to exceed Rs.12,000 crore ($2 billion) by end of this year, thanks to increasing interest globally in committing funds for the realty sector in the Indian sub-continent,” Cushman & Wakefield estimated in a report.

An Indian Air Force (IAF) jawan has been arrested here today for allegedly spying for Pakistan.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Rakesh Kausal said, “We have arrested an Indian Air Force jawan for leaking confidential information to a Pakistani agent.”

“The jawan befriended a woman on the social networking site Orkut, who offered him money in exchange for state secrets. When officers in the Air Force caught him , they court-martialed him and handed him over to us,” Kausal added.

Joel Joseph (Bangalore) and Rizwan Khan (Hunsur, Karnataka) scored a double each in the second round of the JK Tyre-FMSCI Indian NationalADrag Racing Championship at the Kari Motor Speedway here Sunday.

Joel, who had dominated the proceedings in the four-wheeler category on the rain-curtailed Saturday, winning both the races, continued his dominance Sunday, topping in both the Indian Open and the unrestricted classes for cars.

Maintaining that India wanted good neighbourly relationship, Union Urban Development and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said Pakistan should stop funding terrorists and cannot expect peace talks when there is continuous firing across the border.

“Peace talks and terrorism cannot go hand in hand,” Naidu told reporters tonight, replying to a specific question on the cross-border firing, which was intensifying in the border.

“India has never initiated an attack or been the aggressor but they (Pakistan) should give up the attitude of intimidating,” he said.

East Bengal rode on Nigerian Ranti Martins’ brace to triumph 3-1 over Mohun Bagan Sunday before over 90,000 spectators in the season’s first Kolkata derby – the 150th between the two sides whose soccer rivalry dates back to the 1920s.

Joaquim Abranches was the other scorer for the winners, while C.S. Sabeeth netted the only goal for Mohun Bagan in the highly charged Kolkata Football League premier division match at the Salt Lake stadium.

A group of Islamist militants stormed the US embassy in Tripoli as intense fighting was ongoing in the capital’s suburb Sunday, a security source said.

The Libya Dawn militants broke into the embassy compound and occupied the main building, Xinhua quoted the source as saying. Some witnesses said they saw militants swimming in the pool in the compound. A commander from the armed group confirmed that their fighters had “secured” the embassy.