Month: August 2014

The Delhi BJP Friday opposed Delhi High Court’s ban on e-rickshaws arguing that they contributed to the city’s transport needs and were environment-friendly.

A delegation of the party, led by president Satish Upadhyay, met Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung and urged him to put forth his best defence in the high court.

“We respect the court’s order but oppose the ban on e-rickshaws. It’s a disorganised sector and we have requested the LG to put in efforts to help resolve the issue. If needed, we will approach the Supreme Court,” Upadhyay told reporters after his meeting with Jung.

Issuing a clarification on his statement of stopping the migrant influx into Delhi, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Parliament Vijay Goel today said he had been misquoted, and added what he meant was that if each state was more developed, people would not have to come to the national capital to look for a livelihood or to stay.

“I meant that if all the other states are developed, then people won’t have to come to Delhi for better options and opportunities. I have been misquoted, what I meant to say was completely different,” said Goel.

A third summit of Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups, held in two phases over the past six days in Laiza in northernmost Kachin state, has decided to speed up coordination with the government to finalise the second draft nationwide ceasefire agreement.

According to a statement of the summit available here Friday, the first phase of the summit, held in the first four days, involved leaders of the National Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT) only, while the second phase in the remaining days comprised leaders of all 18 armed groups, Xinhua reported.

Pakistan has started deployment of army troops for the security of Islamabad over concerns that the Taliban militants could carry out attacks in reaction to the ongoing major operation against in North Waziristan, officials said Friday.

The army launched the long-awaited biggest offensive in the tribal region against local and foreign militants June 15 after the fragile peace dialogue deadlocked after deadly Taliban attacks.

Military officials say the security forces have killed more than 500 militants and destroyed their command and control system in the volatile tribal region.

A report has revealed that 12 days after the MH17 flight was downed, investigators have not yet been able to access the crash site in Ukraine. Attempts to begin forensic investigation at the crash site in Eastern Ukraine were foiled again as Ukraine”s National Security and Defense Council warned that separatists may have laid landmines and set up firing positions on the road to the Malaysian Airlines flight crash site, the CNN reported.

The toll in Maharashtra’s landslide disaster in Malin village of the district has gone up to 65 Friday evening, rescue officials said.

Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and other agencies have rescued 23 people from under the debris in the past two days.

The village with nearly 200 people was almost entirely buried under a landslide early Wednesday following torrential rain that had lashed the region.

At least 1,737 Iraqis were killed, and 1,978 others injured in terrorist attacks and violence in July, according to a statement issued Friday by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

The statement said that 1,186 civilians, including 106 civilian policemen, and 551 Iraqi security forces personnel were killed, while 1,511 civilians, including 177 civilian policemen, were wounded.

An additional 467 security members were wounded in terrorist and violent acts in July, Xinhua reported citing the UN data.

Want to know if your job can give you a heart attack? Workers in service and blue-collar occupations as well as unemployed people are at increased risk for heart disease and stroke, says a new research.

Those working in the wholesale trade are at greater risk – 2.9 percent of the people in that sector had suffered heart disease or a stroke in the US.

At 0.8 percent, people working in finance and insurance had the lowest rate of heart disease, the findings from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed.

Soha Ali Khan is one happy woman after her engagement to her long-time beau Kunal Kemmu. She’s in fact disappointed to realise that she’s “quite a traditionalist” as she always thought a “social sanction” to her relationship was not needed.

In an interview, Soha has opened up about love, engagement and marriage plans.

Excerpts:

Q. So you are formally and finally engaged to Kunal Kemmu?

Astronauts may soon rely on man-made leaves for their oxygen supply during space travel.

The world’s first synthetic biological leaf which absorbs water and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen just like a plant has now been developed.

“The discovery could enable long-distance space travel, indicating that the leaf could even help humans colonise space one day,” said Julian Melchiorri, the designer of the leaf from Royal College of Art in Britain.

Plants do not grow in zero gravity, Melchiorri explained.

Most people require seven to nine hours of sleep to have proper daytime functioning, but some people can function normally on less than six hours of sleep per night owing to a gene mutation, says a study.

The genetic variant also appears to provide greater resistance to the effects of sleep deprivation, the researchers, who studied 100 twin pairs, noted.

A group of single Indian women want to see the sweet-and-sour camaraderie of Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan to turn sweet permanently, according to a survey.

Ahead of International Friendship Day, which falls Sunday, matrimonial website Shaadi.com conducted an online survey to find out what the country’s single women felt about famous celebrity friendships.

In a damage control exercise after an article on its defence ministry’s website created an uproar in Tamil Nadu, the Sri Lankan government Friday tendered an “unqualified apology” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and state Chief Minister J.Jayalalithaa.

“An article titled ‘How meaningful are Jayalalitha’s love letters to Narendra Modi?’ had appeared on our website along with a graphical portrayal of Hon. Prime Minister of India and Hon Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu,” read a statement hosted on the defence ministry’s website.

Rescue teams have retrieved bodies of 33 people who drowned over the last three days at different recreational points while bathing in the rough seas off Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi, media reported Friday.

Citing Express TV, Xinhua reported that several people are still missing and a search operation is being conducted by teams of Pakistan Navy, Sindh Police and non-governmental organisations.

Behaving in a “capricious” and “irrational” fashion, Sonia Gandhi once forced Zambia’s senior leader Kenneth Kaunda to shift out of a New Delhi hotel whose owner had fallen from her grace, K. Natwar Singh, a former Congress leader and foreign minister, now says.

Kaunda, one of Africa’s most respected leaders who had been his country’s president, had checked into Lalit Suri’s hotel on Barakhamba Road in the capital for a 1997 conference on 50 years of India’s independence.

At least 27 Palestinians were killed and 200 others were wounded Friday in Israeli air raids and artillery attacks on the city of Rafah, in the south of Gaza, breaking a 72-hour humanitarian truce agreed by Israel and the Islamic Palestinian movement Hamas.

Local sources in Rafah reported intense fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militias in the area, which borders Egypt, Efe news agency reported.

The fighting broke out only hours after the humanitarian truce took effect at 8 a.m.

The Delhi government spent over Rs.3,000 crore but has failed to provide basic facilities like roads, sewer and water lines in the city’s unauthorised colonies, the CAG said.

“The urban development department, Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, has failed to provide basic services like sewer lines, water lines, roads and drainage to all the 895 unauthorised colonies despite incurring an expenditure of Rs.3,029.21 crore up to March 2013,” said a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, tabled in parliament Friday.

At least 20 people, including six civilians, have been killed during heavy fighting overnight Thursday in eastern Ukraine, authorities said Friday.

According to Ukrainian military operation spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky, 14 people died in clashes between government troops and insurgents near the Shakhtarsk town, one of the spots that witnessed violent confrontation over the past days, Xinhua reported.

Ten of those killed were Ukrainian servicemen, while the identities of the other four victims remained unknown, Dmytrashkivsky told reporters.

The government will expedite the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project to connect 50,000 gram panchayats this year, IT and Teleommunications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said here Friday.

“A big revolution waiting to occur in the field of digital connectivity and once the government is able to create an enabling atmosphere, I am sure retailers, service providers, content creators will come on their own,” addressing the “i-bharat 2014” conference organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Pinki Jangra brought home India’s first boxing medal from the 2014 Commonwealth Games though she lost her women’s 48-51 kg semi-final bout and had to settle for the bronze at the SECC Hall here Friday.

The Haryana pugilist gave a tough fight to Michaela Walsh but the Northern Ireland woman’s height and better reach helped her win all the four rounds of two minutes each.

While Judge A gave both the boxers a total of 38 points from the available 40, Judge B gave Michaela a perfect 40, four more than Pinki. Judge C too ruled in favour of Michaela, awarding her 39 points to Pinki’s 37.

A Gaza ceasefire crumbled only hours after it began on Friday, with at least 40 Palestinians killed by Israeli shelling and Israel accusing militants of violating the U.S.- and U.N.-brokered truce by firing rockets and mortars.

The 72-hour break announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was the most ambitious attempt so far to end more than three weeks of fighting, and followed mounting international alarm over a rising Palestinian civilian death toll.

Former union minister K Natwar Singh told ANI here today that he was looking forward to Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s book and claimed that she should come out with her own book as she was a “historic figure”.

Dismissing questions about the timing of his book’s release, Singh said, “I started writing the book in 2011. It takes two to three years to write a book. I never thought about the timing, whether it was before the elections or later. The book was published after it finished.”

International forensic scientists have finally reached the Malaysian airlines MH17 crash site in eastern Ukraine after the government stopped military operations.

According to the BBC, Australian and Dutch investigators reached the crash site in a group of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitors.

After being prevented from entering the crash site for nearly one weak due to the conflict between government and rebel forces, experts have successfully reached the site.

Congress MLC MS Prabhakar demanded that the Telangana Government take immediate measures to resolve the drinking water problem being faced by people living on Hyderabad’s outskirts.

INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) is organizing a “Filmmaking Workshop” for schools of Hyderabad on August 2 at Jubilee Hills Public School, Road No 71, Block III, Jubilee Hills, from 9.30 am to 12.30 pm.