Month: August 2014

The bacteria that aid in digestion help keep the intestinal lining intact, scientists say, adding that daily probiotics hold the key to ward off inflammatory disorders that occur when the intestinal lining has been compromised.

Intestinal bacteria secrete a wide variety of chemicals known as metabolites.

“These bacteria and their metabolites were known to influence the intestinal epithelium’s integrity, but precisely how they did so was not known,” said Sridhar Mani, at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

NASA has recently gathered information that could explain the mystery relating to why sun’s atmosphere is hotter than its surface.

The new observations came from just six minutes worth of data from one of NASA’s least expensive type of missions, a sounding rocket, EUNIS (Extreme Ultraviolet Normal Incidence Spectrograph) mission, launched on April 23, 2013, which gathers a new snapshot of data every 1.3 seconds to track the properties of material over a wide range of temperatures in the complex solar atmosphere.

If you are suffering from chronic pain, it may affect the brain in such a way that it decreases your motivation level even after popping painkillers, says a study.

People with chronic pain report feeling fatigue, depression and decreased motivation, Neil Schwartz from Stanford University in California was quoted as saying.

The brain’s rewiring during chronic pain may stem from the way pain prevents people from further injury, researchers said.

In-line with a weak stock market, nine of the top-10 most valued Indian companies together lost Rs 74,193 crore from their market valuation last week.

Barring ICICI Bank, rest nine companies, including TCS, ONGC, RIL, ITC and Coal India suffered losses.
The market-capitalisation of TCS plunged Rs 17,334.74 crore to Rs 4,92,904.10 crore, taking the steepest hit among the top-10 firms.

RIL’s value plummeted by Rs 13,978.9 crore to Rs 3,16,421.99 crore, while that of ONGC tanked Rs 12,533.79 crore to Rs 3,30,455.81 crore.

Korean car major Hyundai is looking to tap new customers in rural areas and corporate segment to increase its market share in the Indian automobile market.

The company’s wholly-owned arm Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL), which will make the global launch of its all new premium hatchback Elite i20 this month, also plans to introduce a new model each year in the segment where it is not present.

Driven by an investment friendly government at the centre, overseas investors have pumped in a staggering USD 6 billion into the Indian securities market in July — taking their overall net inflows since beginning of 2014 to more than USD 26 billion.

Foreign investors have poured in USD 2.18 billion (Rs 13,124 crore) into the equity markets, while they have made net investments worth USD 3.83 billion (Rs 22,977.65 crore) in debt securities, during July — the highest inflow for a month so far this year, latest market data showed.

A recounting of votes in the Afghan presidential elections, which was scheduled to begin on Saturday after several delays, has been put on hold again.

According to the BBC, the decision came despite late night talks between United States Secretary of State John Kerry and the two presidential candidates, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani.

The current disagreement is over the process to deal with the ballot boxes that are found to contain invalid votes.

Inspired by Gujarat government, the Centre has urged all the states to provide 33 per cent reservation for women in their police forces to effectively deal with cases of sexual violence and crime against women.

Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi has written to Chief Ministers of all states to take inspiration from Gujarat’s recent decision to enforce 33 per cent reservation for women in the police force.

At least 10 people were arrested for torturing an old woman last week for alleged witchcraft in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district, police said Sunday.

Those arrested are from Jodapokhari village where the crime took place July 27, Additional District Superintendent of Police G.C. Mallick told IANS.

Some of the arrested people are close relatives of the woman, the police officer said.

The body of a 20-year-old woman, who was allegedly abducted along with her sister, was found at Kairana town in Shamli district here, police said on Sunday.

The 20-year-old woman, identified as Shiba, is suspected to have been strangulated to death by some unidentified persons. Her body was found yesterday, they said.

Shiba and her sister Rizwana(15) were allegedly abducted by 12 people from Kairana town on July 25. While, Shiba was found dead, Rizwana is still missing, police said.

He has a fit frame and a body that many men envy – Hrithik Roshan, the Bollywood actor with the Greek god looks, says building a physique is not as much about doing weight training than to know how to have mental peace.

“Building a great physique is more about the mental muscle, discipline n spiritual vision. Not aggression n weights, but d art of love n calm,” the actor tweeted.

Fifty six people suspected to be involved in a sectarian riot which broke out in Myanmar’s second largest city Mandalay in early July have been arrested,
police said Sunday.

Police said action was being taken against them on charges of murder, arson, causing harm, incitement and illegal possession of weapons, Xinhua reported.

Police are also looking for 36 other suspects who are at large.

Riots broke out in Mandalay July 1 over a rape case.

Two people died and 17 others were injured in the riots.

-IANS

US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to New Delhi shows that the US and India are “determined … to forge deeper and strategic ties”, a Pakistani newspaper said Sunday.

An editorial in the Dawn also said that the joint statement issued after Kerry’s three-day visit indicated that both countries had Pakistan in mind when they referred to the need to eliminate “terrorist safe havens”.

The daily said it was clear there were irritants too in bilateral relations including over America’s surveillance activity and trade issues.

Dressing your baby bump needn’t be stressful or time consuming – take inspiration from actress Zoe Saldana, who was spotted wearing a chic shirt dress that’s easy to wear and comfortable.

Whilst promoting her new film, “Guardians of the Galaxy”, Saldana has been displaying her growing baby bump in a stylish selection of looks and one of it was burgundy shirt dress.

This simple Calvin Klein collection shirt dress is definitely a look we can imitate.

Inspired by Gujarat government, the Centre has urged all the states to provide 33% reservation for women in their police forces to effectively deal with cases of sexual violence and crime against women.

Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi has written to Chief Ministers of all states to take inspiration from Gujarat’s recent decision to enforce 33% reservation for women in the police force.

Markets regulator Sebi’s efforts to recover dues from various defaulters and fraudsters through attachment and other proceedings seem to have begun yielding results, as payments have begun to trickle in.

However, nearly 2,000 demat accounts of individuals and companies still stand frozen for violations of various securities laws and default in penalty payments under orders by the capital markets regulator, shows data available with two depositories CDSL and NSDL.

As part of its vigour to track black money in country’s economic channels, the Income Tax (IT) department is creating a new “warehouse” of business related intelligence and funds data which will empower the taxman to check multiple trends of expenses made by individuals and entities.

The Income Tax department, which already has databases to undertake a 360-degree profiling of a person based on PAN card information or debit or credit card usage, has named the new project – Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence (DWBI), which it plans to operationalise by next year.

What you need:

500g boneless chicken,

2 tablespoons besan, 2 tablespoons plain flour,

chili powder, salt to taste, 6-7 garlic cloves,

1/4 tsp white pepper powder,

1/2 tsp garam masala 1 tsp coriander powder,

2 tsp lemon juice

How to make it:

For the marinade mix garlic, white pepper powder, garam masala, coriander powder, lemon juice, chili powder and salt.

Let the chicken marinate in it for 40 minutes to an hour. Then dip the chicken strips in the besan-flour batter and fry till golden brown.

Serve piping hot!

Air India, a new entrant of the 27-member Star Alliance, has said that it is overhauling its systems to take the country’s flag carrier to the next level of global aviation market and meet the challenges arising from the new alliance.

Pankaj Srivastava, Director – Commercial and a board member of Air India, said the carrier will pull all plugs to utilise the opportunities and face the challenges that arise from the deal with the Star Alliance.

Nearly 200 people were missing after a massive landslide in northeast Nepal that blocked Sunkoshi river, turning it into a huge lake and putting dozens of villages both in Nepal and India at risk of flash floods.

A huge hill had suddenly collapsed at last morning burying 100 homes before dumping mud and stones into the Sunkoshi river at Mankha village in Sindhupalchowk district, 75 km northeast of the capital Kathmandu.

Vishal Sikka, new chief executive of India’s second largest global software major Infosys, has urged Infoscions to get better at everything they were doing without disrupting the iconic company’s foundation.

“The task before us is to lay out the way forward. We must get better at everything that we do without disrupting the foundation that has got us where we are,” 47-year-old Sikka told the 1.6-lakh techies in his first mail on assuming the top job.

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has launched a probe after it detected a unique modus operandi to launder money by some importers who submitted fake bills to get bank remittances in their foreign accounts mainly located in Hong Kong.

After months of probe, the DRI claimed that certain traders submitted bills of imports for consignments that never reached Indian shores resulting in loss worth crores of rupees to the exchequer, official sources said.

Fresh spurt of violence in Eastern Ukraine forced an international investigation team to stop operations at the MH17 crash site.

Alexander Hug, the deputy chief monitor with the Ukraine mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said that sounds of artillery being fired were heard at a distance of about two kilometers while the operations were going on and the team had to leave the site immediately as it was too close to continue, reported the BBC.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 went down on July 17 killing all the 298 people onboard.

A bank union has demanded that the government frame conduct regulations in the wake of top bank executives getting caught in corruption cases and some escaping punishment.

“It is high time the government frames a set of rules and conduct regulations applicable to EDs (executive directors) and CMDs (chairman and managing directors) of banks. It is all the more necessary because banks deal with huge public money and important financial decisions are taken by them,” C.H. Venkatachalam, general secretary, All India Bank Employees’ Association said.

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari today expressed confidence that in the next couple of years, India’s GDP growth will be 8.5 per cent thanks to the “pro-development policies” adopted by the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre.

“Our government is pursuing pro-development policies. I am sure these policies being pursued by the government will take up India’s GDP growth to 8.5 per cent in the next couple of years,” the Union Minister for Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, told reporters here.