Month: August 2014

Katie Price recently flaunted her trim post baby body and revealed that she followed no diet to get in shape as she couldn’t stay away from curries and the biscuits.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Friday announced that over three million Syrians have been registered as refugees and the crisis is only getting worse, BBC reported.

The UNHCR said Syria is now “the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era” with almost half of the Syrians forced to flee their homes.

It said one in every eight Syrians has fled across the border and a further 6.5 million are displaced within Syria and half of them are children.

A new research has revealed that three major pigment cell types i.e. black cells, reflective silvery cells, and yellow cells helped in forming the stripes on zebrafish.

Oil prices rose in Asia today supported by renewed Russia-Ukraine tensions and upbeat US economic data, analysts said.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for October delivery was up 11 cents at $94.66 while Brent crude for October advanced 24 cents to $102.70 in mid-morning trade.

Ukraine and the West yesterday said that Russian troops are actively involved supporting pro-Kremlin separatists who have been fighting against Kiev’s rule since April.

NATO said at least 1,000 Russian troops were on the ground in east Ukraine but Moscow insisted none of its soldiers were in the country.

A report has revealed that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is ready to strike a deal with the Pakistani military that will give it the authority to control key policy areas such as relations with India and other countries. The deal comes in the backdrop of political turmoil in the capital city of Islamabad.

A private room in a leading hospital here has turned into Congress’ war-room in poll-bound Maharashtra.

Mohan Prakash, the AICC General Secretary in-charge of the crucial state, has been admitted to a hospital due to a fractured leg. Not giving up, he has turned the hospital room into a place for strategy sessions with party leaders and workers.

“He had slipped and broken his leg. A rod was inserted and he is still in hospital but he is looking after the party affairs from there only,” a senior Congress leader said.

Calling for practical reforms in labour laws, Maruti Suzuki India Chairman R C Bhargava says policy must allow employment of temporary workers in such a manner that the last to be hired becomes the first to be laid off during downturn but they must be paid subsistence wage.

The company, which is looking at 25-30 percent of its total workforce to be temporary workers to provide flexibility during downturn, is already applying the last-come-first-go principle at its factories.

China has reportedly warned the United States to stop surveillance by patrol aircrafts near its territory if it wants to repair the damaged bilateral ties.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Yang Yujun, spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, denied US State Department’s claim that the U.S. had notified China in advance about the surveillance flights and that the operation was “open and transparent,” reported China Daily.

Yujun said that China never received any notification from the U.S. every time they sent a reconnaissance flight.

Congress Party leader Manish Tewari today said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have the highest number of seats in Delhi Assembly but they are still short of the right majority to form a government.

When asked to express his opinion on the speculation that the single largest party i.e. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be asked to form a government in Delhi, Tewari said, “If that is the case then the BJP should have formed the government immediately after the polls. BJP has the highest number of seats in Delhi Assembly but they don’t have majority to form the government.”

Shraddha Kapoor has made it to the cover of Filmfare for their September issue. The cover reads “Hello Hottie! Shraddha Kapoor Steams It Up” and the actress looked sizzling hot on the cover.

Speaking to media persons, the excited Aashiqui 2 star expressed her happiness and said, “Thank you for this most prestigious opportunity which I have been waiting for the longest time. I have been very patient. I think I have had my share of tuitions in being patient right from the beginning, and I patiently waited for this moment to get my own solo filmfare cover.”

Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Friday said Uttar Pradesh will soon have fast track courts in every district to ensure the speedy trial of cases, especially those involving atrocities on women.

“One of the most important decisions that the Cabinet took today is the installation of fast track courts across Uttar Pradesh to address the issues relating to atrocities on women. I can assure you that the courts will start functioning very soon,” Akhilesh said.

Uttar Pradesh has witnessed a spate of rape incidents and violence against women in the past few months.

Telangana government has decided to keep the Minority Budget as 1000 crore and it is also planning to make all the 43 decisions taken by state cabinet practicable in the budget session of Telangana assembly to begin in October first week.

Besides 12 pc reservations to Muslims, financial aid of 51000 to poor Muslim girls for their marriage, and allocation of budget for fee reimbursement scheme of poor Muslim students are likely to be implemented. Besides these other schemes like ‘fast’, ‘our village our plan’ would also be implemented.

Siasat news

Google announced Thursday that it will not display names of authors associated with articles anymore.

According to CNET, authorship markup is no longer supported in Web search, Google announced on the company’s official authorship support page.

The feature was launched in 2011, with intentions to allow writers to claim their content and gain followers by presenting the author’s work in search results. An Author Rank feature also promised to help users filter out useless information by scoring the reputation of the author for providing reliable information, report said.

The New Delhi-based National Science Centre believes that the science of crystallography can be used to drive future development.

In a study, the NSC described crystallography as a science that examines the arrangement of atoms or molecules, and opined that it can be applied to a wide variety of areas – from agriculture to development of cures for plant and animal diseases, water purification, reduce carbon emissions and development of ecological construction materials.

The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice to a judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in connection with a sexual harassment complaint lodged against him by a Gwalior woman judge.

In its ruling, the apex court stayed a committee appointed to probe the allegations of a judge in Gwalior who has claimed that she was sexually harassed by a senior judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court last month.

The woman judge had moved the Supreme Court asking the Chief Justice of India to appoint a committee with three members to explore her allegations.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Shahnawaz Hussain on Friday said his party will react to the ongoing speculation about government formation in Delhi only after Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung takes a final call on the issue.

Hussain said the people of Delhi want this political deadlock to end.

A new study has revealed that movement and hearing are connected and can influence each other.

The findings suggested that disruptions in the communication between the brain’s motor cortex, which controls movement, and the auditory cortex, which gives rise to our conscious perception of sound, might give rise to auditory hallucinations in people with schizophrenia.

The team found that movement stimulates inhibitory neurons that in turn suppress the response of the auditory cortex to tones.

A new study has revealed that younger college-educated consumers are likelier to take advice from unreliable online health forums.

Researcher Kapil Chalil Madathil from Clemson University said that age, educational levels, and health status were significant predictors of a consumer’s use of anecdotal information available on the Internet.

UN deputy secretary general, Jan Eliasson, said that lack of progress on sanitation and failure to end open defecation is taking its toll on the lives of nearly 2.5 billion people.

Eliasson said that lack of toilets was having a staggering effect on the health, safety, education, prosperity and dignity of scores of people around the world, the Guardian reports.

A Chinese herbal medicine meant for back pain triggered life-threatening heart condition for an Australian woman, physicians reported.

The woman began experiencing facial tingling and numbness within minutes of ingesting a Chinese herbal preparation containing aconite – a class of plant that is also known as wolfsbane or devil’s helmet.

These symptoms were followed by nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain 30 minutes later.

By the time she was admitted to the hospital, she had developed severe cardiovascular toxicity that required admission to the intensive care unit.

Over-confident people can fool others into believing they are more talented than they actually are, claim two Indian-origin researchers, adding that these individuals are likely to reach influential positions in their organisations.

“Our findings suggest that people do not always reward the most accomplished individual but rather the most self-deceived,” said Dr. Vivek Nityananda, a research associate at Newcastle University.

Over-confident people may also be more likely to take risks.

Actor George Clooney has been named Hollywood’s most-gracefully ageing male, for refusing to dye his greying hair.

The 53-year-old topped a list of “Tinseltown’s leading ‘Mags’ Men Ageing Gracefully” – in a survey by a Britain-based hair transplant centre, reports hollywood.com.

His close friend Brad Pitt, 50, came second in the list of male stars who have stayed sexy with age. Johnny Depp, 51, was placed third.

The top five was rounded out by “James Bond” star Daniel Craig, 46, and Australian star Hugh Jackman, 45.

A married Right to Information activist, who was presumed to have died in a car fire here, has been arrested in Bangalore where he had been staying with another woman, a senior police official said.

Senior Superintendent of Police Preeinder Singh told newspersons that the activist Chander Mohan Sharma was apprehended after police tracked the mobile phone of the woman he was staying with in Bangalore.

According to Singh, Sharma told the police that he was having strained relations with his wife Savita, a social worker.

The Islamic State (IS) has released a video showing the beheading of a Kurdish man as a warning to the forces fighting the group in northern Iraq.

The video, titled a ‘Message in Blood’, shows several men in orange jumpsuits said to be captured Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, the BBC reported.

The victim is seen kneeling near a mosque in the IS-held city of Mosul before he is beheaded.

The jihadis warned that others will be killed if Kurdish leaders continue to back the US.

Union Minority Affairs Minister Najma Hepatullah Friday clarified that she used the word ‘Hindi’ for all citizens and not ‘Hindu’ that a media report quoted her as saying.

Her comments came on the day a media report quoted her saying that “there is nothing wrong with the term Hindu being applied equally for all citizens as a label of national identity”.

“We are Indians, thats our nationality. I used the word Hindi. It’s an Arabic word. They call all Indians Hindi. I didn’t say Hindu. I used the word Hindi,” Hepatullah told reporters at her residence.