Month: September 2014

Newcomer Akhil Kapur, who is the nephew of actor-politician Vinod Khanna, performed a risky action sequence for his debut film “Desi Kattey”.

In one of the scenes, Akhil had to jump from a height and he decided to do it himself despite action director Jai Singh Nijjar, known for his work in “Singham Returns”, “Chennai Express”, and director-producer Anand Kumar insisting on roping in a stuntman to perform the stunt.

But the martial art expert Akhil was confident that he could pull it off.

A lottery system would decide the participants who would get to attend the public reception of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 28 at the prestigious Madison Square Garden in New York City, organisers of the event have said.

Indian-American Community Foundation, set up recently for the purpose, till Monday midnight had received some 20,000 applications from people across the country – from as far as remote parts of Alaska and Hawaii.

‘Metro Man’ E Sreedharan on Monday participated in a test run of Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) between two stations and termed, the construction and facilities created, as ‘high quality’ at a depot in Hydeabad.

Mr Sreedharan, Principal Advisor to Delhi Metro Rail Corp, along with HMR Managing Director N V S Reddy took part in the train test run from Nagole to Survey of India metro stations.

He inspected various facilities of Uppal Metro Rail depot and Nagole station.

“The ride quality and behaviour of various components of the Hyderabad Metro system are very good,” he said.

National Geographic Channel will be airing a documentary titled ‘Connecting the city of Nizams: Hyderabad Metro’ in association with L&T Metro Rail Limited next month.

It will be a part of its popular ‘Megastructures’ series, L&T officials said here yesterday. It will be broadcast on October 19 at 6 pm.

The program will highlight various aspects of the mega project.

L&T Hyderabad Metro Rail Pvt Ltd is an L&T subsidiary, which is developing a 72-km elevated metro rail here.

Two orthotists here claim to have developed artificial limbs for cows, though it’s early days to say how successful they will be.

The prosthetics, which have been fitted below the knee on one hind leg each of three cows at Krishna Gopal Gaushala in Nagaur, over 160 km from here, have been developed using waste material of products used to manufacture artificial limbs for human beings, Rakesh Sharma, an orthotist at the Mahatma Gandhi Hospital here, told IANS.

With over 25 per cent of the total premature birth related deaths occurring in India, the Centre has launched a national programme to identify the causes and predictive “biomarkers” of such births.

“After a series of national and international consultations, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, has launched a major national programme to identify the correlates, causes and predictive biomarkers of preterm birth under its Grand Challenge Programme.

Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) has written an open letter urging that ‘Mardaani’ shouldn’t be shown to police officers because the style of policing in the film promotes “violent” and “encounter-style” policing in the name of “efficiency”.

Impressed by Rani Mukerji’s new movie ‘Mardaani’, which sees the actress playing a police officer on a mission against trafficking of girls, a top police officer in Bihar had requested district chiefs to arrange shows for all policemen to take inspiration from it for the fight against child trafficking.

A new study has observed that dogs act dumb and are more dependent on their human owner whereas wolves cooperate with each other to solve their problems.

The study presented at the Animal Behavior Society’s meeting at Princeton University, advised that they reconsidered the notion of “dog-human cooperation”.

Co-author Friederike Range explained that it was not about having a common goal and it was not about being with them, but without conflict and they told dogs something, and they obeyed.

United Nation recent initiative called ‘weather reports from the future’ predicted the disastrous climate change by 2050 with imagined weather forecasts.

The United Nations has warned of floods, storms and searing heat from Arizona to Zambia within four decades, as part of a series of imagined weather forecast s released on Monday for a campaign publicising a UN climate summit, the Guardian reported.

Immersion of Ganesh idols in the Yamuna river will not be permitted in Agra.

After several rounds of talks involving voluntary groups and police, district authorities Tuesday announced plans to develop “immersion tanks” at the ghats.

A similar exercise is being undertaken in nearby Mathura and Vrindavan.

The Allahabad High Court last year directed the Uttar Pradesh government to make alternative arrangements for immersion of idols to prevent pollution of rivers and other water bodies.

Automobile major Tata Motors has received orders for over 2,700 ‘urban’ buses under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) – II scheme.

The company had received an order from KSRTC (Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation) to supply 487 buses and another for 780 buses from HRTC (Himachal Road Transport Corporation) for Tata Marcopolo built buses as per Urban Bus Specifications under JNNURM – II scheme, Tata Motors said in a statement.

These orders are part of the over 2,700 orders for Tata Motors buses received under the scheme, it added.

Model-actress Kelly Brook has branded music mogul Simon Cowell “neurotic” in her new memoir.

The ‘X Factor’ mogul recruited Brook as a judge on the panel of reality Tv series ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ in 2009 but dropped her after three days of auditions, reported Contactmusic.

Are you frustrated by the limited battery life of your smartphone? No need to fret any longer as a US professor has created a free app called Estar that reveals how certain apps drain a smartphone battery faster.

Estar offers two energy efficient alternatives — and the first is to search for energy-efficient apps in Google Play.

It displays a colour-coded, five-star energy rating for each app that shows how fast an app will drain the phone battery relative to other apps in the same category.

Helped by a smart rise in the Sensex that surpassed the 27,000-mark for the first time, more than 300 stocks hit their one-year high level on the BSE on Tuesday.

As many as 323 stocks touched 52-week high in an overall robust stock market where the Sensex hit fresh life-time high of 27,082.85 and settled at all-time closing high of 27,019.39, up 151.84 points, or 0.57 percent, over the previous close.

The list included blue-chips like ACC, Bharti Airtel, Cipla, Dr Reddys Laboratories, ICICI Bank, Hero MotoCorp, IOC, Lupin, Mahindra & Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki India and Tech Mahindra.

R&B star Rihanna reportedly paid 6,000 pounds to have her favourite nail expert flown out to her while she holidays in the Mediterranean.

The ‘Rude Boy’ singer, who is currently enjoying some time off from her busy schedule on her luxury yacht in the Mediterranean, flew out A-list nail technician Jenny Longworth to tend to her talons for the hefty sum, reported Contactmusic.

“Rihanna is quite fussy and wants to be able to trust her glamour team. She’s known Jenny for a while and loves her technique, so would prefer to pay for her to fly out to Italy than risk going to a stranger.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Japan will induce Japanese companies to invest more in India, and bilateral trade is likely to swell to USD 50 billion by 2019-2020, PHD Chamber of Commerce today said.

The industry body has projected that the bilateral trade between India and Japan is poised to accelerate to USD 50 billion by 2019-2020, with Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe working to further cement ties.

Real estate firm Unitech will sell non-core land parcels to reduce debt by 15-20 percent and improve cash-flows for faster execution of ongoing projects, company’s chairman Ramesh Chandra has said.

Unitech currently has over 100 ongoing projects, totalling an area of 38.41 million sq ft. Its net debt stood at Rs 5,900 crore at the end of the first quarter of this fiscal.

“We do have land that is non-core to the business that will be sold to improve liquidity and reduce debt exposure related risks,” Chandra told shareholders in the company’s annual report for last fiscal.

A 150-metre long tunnel which was recently discovered ear a forward post along the Indo-Pak border in Jammu region’s sensitive Pallanwala sector, was apparently aimed at infiltrating terrorists, Defence spokesperson said here Tuesday.

“Having failed to infiltrate terrorists across the Line of Control in the Jammu Division, there was an attempt to construct a tunnel across the Line of Control (to facilitate infiltration)”, he said.

The recent conflict in the Gaza Strip has caused “unprecedented” destruction, leaving hundreds of thousands people homeless, the UN said Tuesday, quoting the latest assessment after the ceasefire.

“Organisations on the ground report that the scale of destruction is `unprecedented`. An estimated 18,000 housing units have been either destroyed or severely damaged, leaving more than 108,000 people homeless,” Xinhua quoted UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric as saying.

Confronted by a Kremlin-backed military offensive in Ukraine, President Barack Obama and Western allies will approve plans this week to position at least 4,000 troops and military equipment in Eastern Europe, bolstering NATO’s security commitments to nervous member states near the Russian border.

Ahead of a high-stakes NATO summit that begins tomorrow, Obama will also make a symbolic show of solidarity with Eastern Europe when he visits Estonia for meetings with Baltic leaders. He was due to arrive in the Estonian capital of Tallinn today morning.

Pop stars Britney Spears has dropped a large amount on two dogs.

According to new documents filed on her conservatorship, the newly-single pop star paid USD 31,234.15 for two dogs she bought in 2013 as well as their accessories and food, reported TMZ.

She dropped USD 5,568 for her white Maltese in January and then in July she spent another USD 8,212 for its playmate, a new Yorkie.

The singer even spent USD 1,585 on clothes for the dogs.

Pop star Britney Spears, who recently split from her boyfriend David Lucado, has revealed that she is open to dating again.

The 32-year-old singer directly addressed the alleged infidelity for the first time during her gig on August 31 night, reported People magazine.

“So I know you know my boyfriend cheated on me,” she told the crowd during her Piece of Me show in Las Vegas.

“But the best thing about being cheated on is I get to go on more first dates. I need a hot guy. Where are the hot guys here tonight?,” she added.

Department of Islamic Studies, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, is organizing an extension lecture on the topic of “Muslim Immigrants in American Religious Life’’ on Wednesday, 3rd September 2014 at 3:30 pm at Auditorium MANUU Central Library. The lecture will be delivered by an Eminent Scholar of Islamic Studies Professor Bruce B. Lawrence, Adjunct Professor in Civilization Studies, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakif University, Istanbul and Ex-Professor Department of Religion, Duke University, North Carolina, USA.

A Pakistani court today dismissed a plea seeking disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for “lying to the nation” over inviting army chief Gen Raheel Sharif to help resolve the ongoing crisis in Islamabad.

Lahore High Cour Justice Mansoor ALI Shah termed the petition “non-maintainable”, observing the petitioner could agitate this matter before an appropriate political forum.

He might be under tremendous pressure after three consecutive losses, but England skipper Alastair Cook has made it clear that he is not stepping down as ODI captain in the wake of his side’s one-day series defeat against India.

England are trailing the five-match series 0-3 after losing the fourth ODI by nine wickets against India at Edgbaston here today.

“At this precise moment in time, no,” said Cook when asked whether he will relinquish his ODI captaincy.