Month: August 2014

BSP supremo Mayawati today claimed that the newly-launched ‘Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojna’ will “not serve” much purpose, as there was a need to give direct monetary benefit to the poor and downtrodden and not merely open bank accounts for them.

“By merely getting the bank accounts opened for the poor would not serve much purpose and not provide any monetary benefit to the poor….They would also not get the Rs one lakh of insurance money easily”, Mayawati told reporters here.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Kumar Vishwas said Saturday that a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA had offered him the Delhi chief minister’s post after the April-May general elections this year.

“A BJP MLA who is also an old friend had come to my house after elections. I thought he had come to either congratulate or sympathise as I had lost the (general) election. But he told me that his party wanted me to accept the post of chief minister. He also told me he was meeting me at the behest of the BJP leadership,” Vishwas told a news channel.

Some 230 members of an orthodox Jewish group were forced to leave a village in western Guatemala after a bitter row with the local indigenous community, BBC reported Saturday.

The Lev Tahor members were asked to leave San Juan La Laguna village, about 150km west of the capital Guatemala City, after a meeting with the elders of the Mayan community.

The elders accused the Jews of shunning the natives and imposing their religion and customs.

Priyanka Chopra, who has managed to pull off different looks in her over decade-long movie career, has sported a bald look for her forthcoming film “Mary Kom”. The actress, who didn’t actually shave off her head, says she may considering going bald if an entire film requires her to do so.

For “Mary Kom”, which releases Sep 5, the requirement was only for a scene.

Contrary to the traditional view that men are more invested in technology, a new study found that more young women are addicted to cell phones and even get agitated when it is not in sight.

Women may be more inclined to use cell phones for social reasons such as texting or emails to build relationships and have deeper conversations.

Nearly 60 percent of college students are hooked to cell phones, the study found.

A 15-year-old girl was allegedly abducted from Jaipur, tormented and pushed into flesh trade during her six-month confinement here, before she escaped the clutches of her kidnappers, police here said.

According to them, she managed to flee her tormentors on Friday morning and approached Anantpura police station to narrate her plight.

Station House Officer (SHO), Anantpura police station, Amar Singh Rathor said, the minor girl approached the police station yesterday, after having escaped from the confinement of one Gerunath Kalbeliya (40), resident of Talabbasti area of Kota city.

A local court on Friday granted permission to the police to take Ranjeet Singh Kohli alias Rakilbul Hussain in remand for three days in connection with an FIR filed by his wife Tara Shahdeo, who accused him of deceit, exploitation and torture among others allegations.

The police had on Thursday moved a petition seeking remand for 14 days after Chief Judicial Magistrate Niraj Kumar sent Kohli to judicial remand.

Claimed to be a national-level rifle shooter, Tara Shahdeo also accused Kohli of forcing her to keep secret the fact of her coming to know of her husband’s faith in Islam.

People are unhappy with the performance of Narendra Modi government at the Centre during its first 100 days as it has failed to keep its promises on rising prices and inflation, NCP said here today.

“People are not at all happy with the BJP government at the Centre for not fulfilling the promises made during the Lok Sabha polls, particularly on controlling rising prices of essential commodities,” Lok Sabha MP and NCP General Secretary Tariq Anwar told newsmen here.

A Muslim school teacher in Bihar was forced to leave her house by her husband who felt she had violated the Shariat law by participating in a Independence Day function, police said Saturday.

Nazia Khatoon, a teacher in a government-run middle school in Begusarai, about 125 km from here, was driven out of the house along with her two minor sons by her husband Umar Khan, a police official posted in Chatra district in neighbouring Jharkhand.

Khatoon Friday approached the Begusarai superintendent of police and sought justice.

A new animal study has helped scientists provide a deeper insight into an effective treatment drug that may help fight against Ebola outbreak.

A leading U.S. Ebola researcher from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has gone on record stating that a blend of three monoclonal antibodies can completely protect monkeys against a lethal dose of Ebola virus up to 5 days after infection, at a time when the disease was severe.

Jennifer Aniston didn’t want to discuss anything about her former husband Brad Pitt and his new wife Angelina Jolie during a recent interview.

The ‘F.R.I.E.N.D.S.’ star reportedly banned questions in a recent interview on the Today Show, which happened before the news of Pitt and Jolie’s marriage broke, the Mirror reported.

The 45-year-old actress talked to TV host Carson Daly on the Today Show at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverley Hills about her new flick, and even set strict guidelines about what could be asked.

Suri Cruise, daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, has found her lost Chihuahua pooch, named Honey.

The 1-year-old pup, which disappeared after running out of a friend’s front gate in Benedict Canyon, was found by the Lucky Puppy Rescue team, after they received two sighting reports, TMZ.com reported.

The vet, who scanned the pooch’s microchip, confirmed it was Honey. (ANI)

UN chief Antonio Guterres said Syria is now the biggest humanitarian emergency of this era, with more than three million Syrians forced to flee the war-torn country.

According to the UNHCR, one in every eight Syrians has taken refuge in bordering countries, while at least 6.5 million people- half of which are children-are displaced within Syria, the BBC reports.

The number of registered Syrian refugees has gone up from two million over the span of one year.

More than 190,000 have lost their lives in the three-year civil war in Syria.

A woman died of electrocution at Mahankali, Secunderabad. However woman’s relatives allege that Rukmini has been killed by her husband. Mahankali police has registered a case of suspicious death and investigations are underway.

Sub inspector Durga Rao told that 36-year-old Rukmini was the wife of Anand who died of electrocution. The couple had frequent quarrels.

Siasat news

In the wake of growing conflicts in Iraq and Syria, UK has raised its terror threat level from “substantial” to “severe”.

According to the BBC, the new alert level rates the risk of an attack on the UK “highly likely”, although Home Secretary Theresa May said there was no evidence to suggest one was “imminent”.

Britain Prime Minister David Cameron said in a press conference on Friday, the Islamic State (IS) extremists represented a greater and deeper threat to UK’s security than it was known before.

Retired England spinner Graeme Swann has said on Friday that the team’s current approach to ODIs was akin to a two-litre diesel in Formula One race, reiterating his call to Alastair Cook to stand down as the nation’s ODI captain and quit limited overs internationals completely.

The former off-spinner, who retired from international duty during England’s 5-0 Ashes thrashing in Australia, had first urged Cook to stand down on Monday, saying that the side did not have a cat in hell’s chance of winning next year’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand .

Austria authorities have decided to turn Adolf Hitler’s home, located in the upper-Austrian town of Braunau am Inn, into a museum called as “House of Responsibility”, which would be dedicated to his crimes against humanity committed during the Third Reich.

The two-storey “Hitler house” is in the centre of Braunau am Inn on Austria’s border with Germany. It has been empty for the past two years, but politicians have argued bitterly about its fate for decades. Critics insisted that demolition was the only way of dispelling the stigma attached to the building, the Independent reported.

Russian tennis ace Maria Sharapova would soon be an outlaw if she does not fly to Moscow and comply with President Vladimir Putin’s new law that requires all 10 million Russians with dual citizenship to register with the Kremlin.

Sharapova, who played her third round match in the US Open on Friday, won’t have to meet the law’s October 4 deadline because she is out of the country, but she will have to register on the next visit to her homeland.

The law was enacted after Russia invaded Crimea and the US imposed sanctions on Putin and some of his associates, New York Post reported.

Border Security Force (BSF) personnel have reportedly seized contraband, arms and ammunition from unknown miscreants here.

The seized arms included a pistol, a magazine, six rounds of ammunition and four packets of heroin at Mahawa Border Outpost.

BSF Deputy Inspector General M. F. Farooqui said that BSF personnel heard sounds and noticed suspicious movement at the border around 3 a.m. in the morning, but failed to nab the miscreants.

The drugs menace is a serious problem in Punjab and a lot of it was seized during the recent general elections by security agencies.

Manchester United has reportedly been revealed to have the most expensive squad in the Premier League, although their performances over the last year or so makes it hard to believe.

While Chelsea and Manchester City have an almost limitless spending power, United has been revealed as the club that top the table for the most lucrative pick of players in the division.

The Jammu and Kashmir Assembly was in a state of pandemonium on Saturday following a hue and cry over the state government’s discrimination in sanctioning funds for the Jammu region.

Panthers Party MLAs were physically removed from the House by marshals for creating an uproar in the Assembly.

Welcoming all the facilities provided by the state government for state Hajj aspirants, Maulana Jaffer Pasha asserted that Hajjis are actually the guests of Allah; hence their reverence is necessary for all. He urged the Hajj aspirants not to keep in view the facilities provided by the government but to go for Hajj with an intention to get reward from Allah. ‘We don’t know which of a Haji’s acts would please Allah (swt) and his Hajj is accepted’ said the Maulana.

The Congress Party said on Saturday that the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) remains greedy for power.

Responding to allegations that AAP leader Kumar Vishwas had been approached by the Bharatiya Janata Party to join it, Congress leader Mukesh Sharma said, that if this was true, then the AAP must reveal the name of the BJP MP.

Nationalist Congress Party ( NCP) leader Tariq Anwar on Saturday said he hopes Prime Minister Narendra Modi is successful in taking Japanese assistance to boost the country’s economic policy during his visit.

“He is visiting Japan on a foreign tour. We expect that he would be successful in taking help from Japan to boost India’s economic policy,” Anwar told ANI when asked to comment on the Prime Minister’s visit to Japan.

Nationalist Congress Party ( NCP) leader Tariq Anwar on Saturday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) does not want elections to take place in Delhi as they have now realized that the coming days are not good for them.

Reaction to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Kumar Vishwas’s claims that a BJP leader offered him the Delhi Chief Minister’s post immediately after the Lok Sabha elections, Anwar said the saffron party is indulging in horse-trading to form the government in Delhi.