Actor Ali Fazal, who was last seen in Vidya Balan-starrer ‘Bobby Jasoos’, is excited about Pooja Bhatt-produced film ‘Rose’, which he says is his most important and challenging project so far.
The love story marks the directorial debut of ‘Aashiqui 2’ writer Shagufta Rafique. The 27-year-old ‘Fukrey’ star said his role in the film, which also stars Richa Chadda, is quite tough and demanding.
Continuing his Lok Sabha plank of ousting the Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today sought a clear mandate for the BJP in Haryana for putting the state on a growth trajectory.
Kicking off his party’s poll campaign in Haryana, he hit out at the Congress for the state’s backwardness.
Modi said that today the entire world was looking at India with greater respect and this had happened not because of him, but the power of 125 crore people of India, who had formed a strong and stable government at the Centre.
Ahead of the APEC summit here next month, China has mobilised an army of over 850,000 vigilantes to be on the look out for “terrorists”, adding teeth to the country’s war on terror, specially against militants from the restive Xinjiang province.
At first sight, they are just cobblers, grocers, deliverymen and garbage collectors, nothing special, but in China’s nascent people’s war on terror, these “men in the street” are on front line, part of what President Xi Jinping called a “wall of copper and iron”, a state-run Xinhua news agency report said.
BCCI’s decision to not send Indian teams for the Asian Games today drew sharp criticism from the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), which accused the influential cricket board of treating the sport just as a business venture.
“They have not sent the team for the second time to the Games. While I respect their decision, I am sorry to say and I believe they are not interested in promotion of the game but only in making it a business, in making money out of it,” said the OCA president at a media conference.
A US-led coalition has carried out new air strikes against jihadists from the Islamic State group outside a key Syrian Kurdish border town, activists and a monitor said today.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group, said the coalition hit at least four areas yesterday on the southern and southeastern fronts outside Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab.
The group said the strikes had destroyed some military materiel belonging to IS, which fired dozens of shells into the town after advancing to its outskirts.
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance today, attending prayers on the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday at a mosque in Damascus, state media said.
State media and Assad’s official Twitter feed posted photos of the embattled president praying alongside the country’s top cleric and members of his government.
“President Bashar al-Assad leads Eid al-Adha prayers at the Nuaman bin Bashir mosque in Damascus,” state news agency SANA said.
Two million Muslims, including Indians, ritually stoned the devil today in the last major ritual of this year’s Haj in Saudi Arabia, while fellow believers around the world celebrated Eid al-Adha.
The stoning took place in Mina, about five kilometres east of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca.
Over two million believers, including about 1.5 lakh Indians, today ritually stoned the devil in Mina Valley marking the end of the Haj pilgrimage, as Muslims around the world celebrated Eid al-Adha.
The pilgrims converged at Mina Valley, about five kilometres east of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, to hurl stones at three concrete pillars representing the devil.
The ritual began early this morning and sizeable number of pilgrims, wearing the ihram or two-piece seamless white garment, participated throughout the day.
A security drill today created a major scare and sent Air India and security officials into a tizzy after a grenade-like object was found on a Boeing 747 aircraft when it landed at Jeddah in the wee hours.
The object, earlier suspected to be a “defused grenade”, turned out to be only a “plastic wrapper”, an Air India official said, adding that the plane was checked by Jeddah airport security personnel and cleared for further operations.
The England and Walses Cricket Board (ECB) is likely to be placed in an awkward situation post the release of Kevin Pietersen’s long-awaited autobiography next week.
It may and will have to probably explain why it took the decision to dump England’s leading scorer across all formats of the game, and also explain the outlining up to 50 so-called misdemeanours he committed in Australia in 2013.
Since the confidentiality agreement affixed to Pietersen expired at midnight on Tuesday, one can expect the first shots to be fired from either camp early next week.
A new study has suggested that practicing yoga and meditation on a regular basis can help give a boost to the brain that ultimately can control a computer.
The research could have major implications for treatments of people who are paralyzed or have neurodegenerative diseases.
The study conducted at University of Minnesota involved a total of 36 participants. One group of 12 had at least one year of experience in yoga or meditation at least two times per week for one hour.
The second group included 24 healthy participants who had little or no yoga or meditation experience.
A suspected explosive device onboard a stand-by Air India VVIP aircraft has turned out to be a plastic wrapper, an airline official said in New Delhi Saturday.
After a thorough screening of the aircraft, the object “was found to be a plastic wrapper”, the official said.
The Jeddah Airport security cleared the Boeing B-747 aircraft – AI 965 – for further operations later Saturday morning.
Eight new polio cases have surfaced in Pakistan, taking the number of those affected by the crippling disease this year to 202, surpassing the previous high of 199 cases recorded in 2000, officials said.
The galloping poliovirus seems out of control and efforts to clamp down on the disease have miserably failed so far.
The record of the maxium cases a year was broken last night when a five-day national campaign to immunize 34.1 million children was completed, showing complete inadequacy of official efforts.
A woman was shot dead while another person sustained injury in two separating shooting incidents in the city here on Saturday.
40-year-old Nazreen Parvez was shot dead allegedly by unidentified chain snatchers in Kadma-Sonari link road here, Superintendent of Police (city) Karthik S said.
Parvez, a resident of Dhatkidih, along with her friend was on her way for morning walk when two motorcycle-borne miscreants made a futile attempt to snatch her gold chain, police said.
She, however, caught hold of a miscreant and screamed for help.
An undertrial rape accused, who was admitted to hospital after alleged suicide attempt, has died here in southeastern Jhalawar district, police said on Saturday.
25-year-old Mukesh Tanwar was admitted to the hospital in a “critical condition” on Tuesday afternoon after he attempted suicide with a long piece of cloth in the barrack’s toilet for prisoners in the district session court, where he was brought for an appearance, police said.
Tanwar died in the district hospital last night during treatment, Station House Officer (SHO), Kotwali police station Sunil Kumar said.
Five Dutch F-16 fighter jets have arrived in Jordan to take part in the US-led military airstrikes against the Islamic State (IS).
The Dutch aircraft will initially support Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces, Defence Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert told parliament Friday.
The Dutch F-16s will be used to strike IS targets in Iraq and Syria, she said, adding that the operation will be under the command of Qatar, Xinhua reported.
On Sep 24, the Dutch government decided to send up to eight F-16s and 250 support personnel to join the military mission.
Microsoft has released diversity stats showing that it has increased the number of its women staff, but says that there’s still much work to be done.
CNET reports women now comprise 29 percent of Microsoft’s worldwide workforce, up from 24 percent over the past year, according to new figures released by the company.
Microsoft Executive Vice President of Human Resources Lisa Brummel in an email to her staff said that though progress is being made in diversifying the workforce, a lot of work needed to be done.
One hopes that the decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to covey his “Man ki Baath (Thoughts) to the people of the country via All India Radio gives recognition to the medium of radio, which has played a very important role in the nation’s development.
My association with All India Radio has been both as an outsider and an insider. As a young boy, I grew up in Mangalore in South Kanara District on India’s west coast. The main source of news for us was the radio, as newspapers would reach us a good 48 hours later from Madras, now Chennai.
An undergraduate from Washington State University has developed a new method for detecting water on Mars.
The 21-year-old Kellie Wall looked for evidence that water influenced crystal formation in basalt, the dark volcanic rock that covers most of eastern Washington and Oregon and then compared this with volcanic rock observations made by the rover Curiosity on Mars’ Gale Crater.
Wall said that this is really cool because it could potentially be useful for not only the study of rocks on Earth but on Mars and other planets.
Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman has dismissed rumours about the inclusion of Younis Khan in national team for the ODI series against Australia in the UAE.
Shaharyar said that he had heard rumours that Younis was going to the UAE to join the team as the 16th member, and cleared that no such decision had been taken.
According to the Dawn, Shaharyar said that the Board had decided to seek help from both the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) for reviving its bilateral ‘A’ team tours.
In a recent study in Japan, researchers have found that climate change could affect the ratio of human males to females that are born in some countries.
The study by M and K Health Institute in Ako was done on recent years, and recorded nearly 90,000 newborns and about 1,000 fetal deaths per month in Japan. The scientists found the ratio of male to female babies born in the country had been decreasing, meaning there had been fewer and fewer male babies born relative to the number of female babies born, Live Science reported.
Addressing his first rally in Karnal ahead of the Haryana Assembly polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday appealed for a Congress-free state and a clear majority for the BJP.
“Today, I have kick-started the poll campaign from the land of ‘Daan veer Karan’. Whenever I come to Haryana it feels as if I have come home. I have learnt a lot here. The polls will determine Haryana’s future, to reach you better there must be no obstacle, you must give clear majority to BJP,” said Prime Minister Modi.
Microsoft has released diversity stats showing that it has increased the number of its women staff, but says that there’s still much work to be done.
CNET reports women now comprise 29 percent of Microsoft’s worldwide workforce, up from 24 percent over the past year, according to new figures released by the company.
Microsoft Executive Vice President of Human Resources Lisa Brummel in an email to her staff said that though progress is being made in diversifying the workforce, a lot of work needed to be done.
Certain parts of Noida and Ghaziabad would remain deprived of water from the Ganges for at least 20 days starting Saturday. The decision to close the shutters at Haridwar has been taken as the upper Ganges canal is being cleaned.
An irrigation department official said that the practice is a regular feature. The canal starts accumulating sand deposits from the water on its inner surface, thereby reducing its water carrying capacity. Thus, it is cleansed every year.
Yahoo is reportedly planning to invest in the popular messaging app Snapchat that allows users to send messages that disappear after a few seconds after being opened.
CNET reports that the investment round would value Snapchat at 10 billion dollars, though it remains unclear as to how much Yahoo would invest.
The news of Yahoo’s investment plans come while investors anticipate Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s next moves following increased scrutiny of the company over the Alibaba IPO.