Month: June 2015

Kim Kardashian seemed to have a footwear doppler when she recently accompanied her rapper husband Kanye West to the rainy and muddy Glastonbury music festival in her strappy stilettos.

The American reality star made heads turn around as she wore a sleek black dress ditching her bra, and a flowing sheer coat while West was spotted in camouflage pants, his trademark large gold chains, and an open beige coat when they stepped off a helicopter, People Magazine reported.

Expressing deep concern over the heinous terrorist attack at a mosque in Kuwait, President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday said India strongly condemns all acts of terror and mindless violence.

President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday expressed deep concern over the terrorist attack in Tunisia on June 26.

“It was with shock and sadness that I learned of the horrific terrorist attack in Tunisia in which so many innocent people lost their lives,” President Mukherjee said in message to his Tunisian Beji Caid Essebsi.

Here are some food trends you need to know for 2015.

The April 2015 issue of Food Technology magazine published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) features Contributing Editor A. Elizabeth Sloan’s insights on the top food trends for 2015.

Sloan gathers data from a multitude of industry resources to come up with the following trends:

1. Fresh and Refrigerated Foods: Shoppers are buying more fresh ingredients, up 10 percent versus just three years ago.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel on Sunday said that that he was not impressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest edition of ‘Mann ki Baat’.

“We have heard his Mann ki Baat. How will he speak his heart out if he has closed his mind?” Patel said.

In the ninth edition of his ‘Mann ki Baat’, the Prime Minister spoke on the importance of water conservation and called for the people to partake in his ‘Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao’ initiative, as well as hailing the worldwide celebrations of the International Yoga Day.

The Congress Party on Sunday dubbed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Mann Ki Baat’ programme to be a political propaganda and said the ruling dispensation at the Centre has failed to live up to the expectations of the people.

Congress leader P.C. Chacko disapproved Prime Minister Modi’s statement that the government led by him is functional.

“Today Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on ‘Mann Ki Baat’ programme that it is a working government, now that is a wrong statement. Even he knows that,” Chacko told ANI here.

(ANI): Seems like, Kim Kardashian is now planning to extend her IQ along with her family.

Pregnant with her second child, the 34-year-old reality TV star wishes to go back to school to broaden her horizons intellectually and wants to work alongside a private tutor to further her education, reported The Inquisitr.

Tabloid media reveals that Kanye West is also encouraging his wife to take classes, especially after receiving honorary doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

(ANI): Mohit Suri’s latest direction ‘Hamari Adhuri Kahani’ has been adapted by the movie’s producer, Mahesh Bhatt, and will be staged in Delhi on August 1, and then in Karachi.

The Bollywood director recently broke the news on Twitter by mentioning that he will soon be directing a project adapted from his recent production starring Emran Hashmi and Vidhya Balan, with the award winning National School of Drama (NSD) graduate, Happy Ranajit, and the Pakistani sufi rock band Raeth, the Dawn reported.

(ANI): Bollywood actress Juhi Chawla has definitely become a fan of Shabana Azmi after she got an opportunity to work with the renowned actress in her upcoming film ‘ Chalk N Duster’.

Speaking at an event in Mumbai where she facilitated by a leading Hindi daily for her contribution to Indian cinema, the 47-year-old actress said, “I was quite overwhelmed with Shabana and was awestruck by her personality”.

The ‘My Brother Nikhil’ star added that the she learned lot of things the way Shabana works on her role.

(ANI): Former world champion Tyson Gay edged past 19-year-old Trayvon Bromell on Saturday to win the 100m at the US trials.

Gay clocked 9.87 seconds to overcome Bromell, who finished second with 9.96, and will make a return to the World Championships in Beijing in August for the first time since 2009.

Reflecting on his performance, Gay said that he felt the race as the toughest of his career and insisted that his 10 years of experience came in handy while outpacing ‘tough kid’ Bromell, the BBC reported.

(ANI): Commonwealth Games silver medallist pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa stormed into the Canada Open badminton tournament final after claiming straight sets win over Shiho Tanaka and Koharu Yonemoto in their women’s doubles event in Calgary.

Jwala and Ashwini, who won the 2011 World Championship bronze, overcame the Japanese duo 21-17, 21-16 in a thrilling semi- final contest that lasted 30 minutes.

The third seeds Indian pair will take on top pair of Eefje Muskens and Selena Piek from Netherlands in the summit clash. (ANI)

Rich tributes were paid to late former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao on his 94th birth anniversary here on Sunday.

Ministers from Telangana, leaders of the Congress party and Rao’s family members paid floral tributes at his Samadhi ‘PV Gyan Bhoomi’ on the banks of the Hussain Sagar Lake.

For the second year, the Congress stalwart’s birth anniversary was celebrated officially by the Telangana government.

Those paying tributes included deputy chief ministers Kadiam Srihari, Mahmood Ali, home minister N. Narasimha Reddy, ministers Harish Rao, T. Nageswara Rao and Mahender Reddy.

Veteran West Indies batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul says he has no intention of announcing his retirement from Test cricket until perhaps the end of the year.

Chanderpaul, 40, was dropped for the two-Test series against Australia in June after managing only 92 runs at an average of 15.33 in the three matches against England in April and May, reports CMC.

He had six single-digit scores and only one fifty in his last 10 innings.

“Definitely, but I am on the outside just waiting to see what is happening,” Chanderpaul said on Saturday.

(IANS) Two militants were killed in a joint operation by the army and police and four militants were nabbed with a cache of explosives in two incidents in Meghalaya on Sunday, police said.

In the first incident, acting on a tip-off, a joint team of the 19 Dogra Regiment and Meghalaya Police intercepted the movement of unidentified Garo militants in and around Pach Kilo area in North Garo Hills district.

Pach Kilo area is about 300 km west of state capital Shillong.

(IANS) After months of ‘will it? will it not?’, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has declared that – by political implication – Narendra Modi still remains its best bet in the Indian electoral arena.

Like the knight in shining armour, he is expected – yet again – to rescue the BJP from the demons which now and then crop up in the form of assembly elections in different states with varying degrees of significance in the larger Indian political system.

The historic US Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage could improve the health of gay, lesbian and bisexual people, says experts.

Evidence shows heterosexual people who are married have better physical and mental health than people who are not married.

Research done so on same sex marriage also suggests that marriage may provide the same benefits for same-sex couples.

“We know that marriage does enhance people’s health,” Richard Wight, a community health researcher at the University of California was quoted as saying in a Live Science report.

The Congress party on Sunday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of only selling dreams but taking no action, urging him to speak out on the Lalit Modi scandal.

“The Prime Minister says that his government is running: yes it is running to the US, South Korea, China, Nepal and Bangladesh, but the common man is still crawling. Prime Minister Modi believes in only selling dreams but not in taking action. We are disappointed that he did not speak about Lalit Modi the Mann Ki Baat programme,” Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said.

The trailer of filmmaker Sanjay Gupta’s action film “Jazbaa”, which marks the comeback of actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, will be launched on August 15, which is also the country’s Independence Day.

Gupta, who is gung-ho over the film after getting a casting coup with established actors like Irrfan Khan, Atul Kulkarni, Jackie Shroff, Chandan Roy Sanyal and Shabana Azmi along with Aishwarya, shared the news on micro-blogging site Twitter.

“JAZBAA First Theatrical Trailer will out on 15th August 2015,” Gupta posted.

Rail tracks in a stretch of 175 km will not be strewn with human excreta from October 2 with installation of bio-toilets on trains plying on two routes, marking completion of the first year of the launch of Swachh Bharat Campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Indian Railway has undertaken an initiative to make 367 km of tracks free from discharge of human waste from toilets on trains in the current fiscal. Of these, 175 km will become discharge-free on October 2.

In a record of sorts, the office of Vice President Hamid Ansari has responded within two days to an RTI application seeking to know the reason for his absence from Yoga Day celebrations held here last Sunday, saying he was not invited for the event.

Public authorities are expected to respond to RTI appplications within 30 days but such alacrity in sending replies is rarely witnessed.

SCHEME OF ‘MERIT CUM MEANS BASED SCHOLARSHIP’ FOR STUDENTS BELONGING TO THE MINORITY COMMUNITIES

1. OBJECT The objective of the Scheme is to provide financial assistance to the poor and meritorious students belonging to minority communities to enable them to pursue professional and technical courses.

2. SCOPE: These scholarships are available for studies in India only and will be awarded through State Government/UT Administration or an Agency designated by the State Government/UT Administration for this purpose.

Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel, the Indian Twitterati have come up on the social media website to express solidarity with the Jewish state with the hashtag IndiaWithIsrael.

The hashtag, which is trending on Twitter, came to light after ICL Fertilizers, a part of the Israel-based firm ICL, announced that it has signed several contracts for the supply of an aggregate of 835,000 metric tonnes of potash to its customers in India.

A hijab can also be a fashion statement as recently a British high school girl, Abrar Shahin, who wears hijab, has been voted by the students as the best-dressed girl of Clifton High School.

According to North Jersey, Shahin has set the new trend and has bashed all the stigmas about Islamic fashion by keeping her religious tradition alive, whereas, Clifton High School sets an example of how acceptance of Islamic traditions has grown in British schools and how people have started looking beyond the labels.

An earthquake of moderate intensity of 5.6 on the Richter Scale rocked Assam, Meghalaya, West Bengal besides Bhutan today leaving three injured and a lion sculpture of an ancient temple damaged.

India Meteorological Department officials said the quake shook Assam, including its capital Guwahati, Meghalaya, West Bengal and neighbouring Bhutan at 6:35 am.

The epicentre of the tremor was in Kokrajhar at a depth of 10 km on latitude 26.5 degree north and longitude 90.1 degree east, they said.

At least two armed suspected militants were today killed in a gun battle with security forces in Meghalaya’s North Garo Hills district.

Acting on intelligence inputs given by the armed men in the area, a special police team and troops from Assam’s 19 Dogra regiment raided the hideouts at Rari last night, district SP Ramesh Singh said.

At around 4:40 am today, the militants opened indiscriminate fire after spotting the security forces, with two killed militants killed in the retaliatory attack, he said.