Students of the Dattatreya city Municipal corporation secondary school demonstrated their imagination power by creating the fictitious fort "Duttgarh".
With encouragement from Principal Sandhya Medpallivaar the teachers and students built the fort out of clay.
Rajesh Gavre, the President of the MNPA teachers association, honoured the school by presenting the award.
Ramesh Saatpute examined the fort.
Students like Nikhil Kavle, Darshan Gedekar, Sahil Meshram participated in building the fort.
Narender Barai, the President of the District Art Teachers' association, Shekhar Vanskar, a cashier, Ajay Gundamwar, a member of Gajanan Mehar provided guidance to the students.
Nagarsevak, Reeta Mule presented messages from well-wishers.
Rohtak. Akhil Bhartiya Janwadi Mahila Samiti and DYFI jointly launched a state-wide campaign against corruption in jobs, fraud and hold-ups.
Through this state-wide signature campaign, 10 Lakh (1 million)signatures across the state will be collected and handed over to the Governor.
The signature campaign started on Friday at the new bus stand.
On this occasion, the SFI state secretary Manoj Kumar, Anju, District Secretary of the Committee, State joint-secretary of the Youth council Vinod Deshwal, Sumit, Anju, Rakesh Kumari, Geeta, Sonu, Rajesh Kumar, Sangeeta, Meena, Veena Malik, Sangeeta, Hawa Singh and Ajit were present.
A very sad incident occurred in Maloya village, which is located on the outskirts of the city, where a newly married woman committed suicide by hanging herself from the fan.
Komal had married only two months ago.
A police investigation found that Komal was worried about her financial situation and so she took this step.
According to the description, the details of the death of Komal only came to light when one of Komal's cousin went to the third floor of their house to do some cleaning.
Seeing the body hanging from the fan the girl screamed and immediately informed the in-laws about it.
Komal was immediately taken to the Multi-speciality Government Hospital, Sector-16, where she was declared dead on arrival.
Komal's husband Kulvinder is unemployed.
Before committing suicide, Komal wrote with henna on her left hand that she was committing suicide of her own free will as the difficulties in her life were too much for her.
According to the details received, Komal's father had passed away a few years ago, her mother is mentally ill and her brother is studying in a government school.
In the meantime, the police has kept the body in the mortuary of the hospital in Sector-16.
Only after a post-mortem will the police be able to find out the actual cause of death.
Sri Lankan selectors have selected 16 members of the team for the up coming limited-over match series, which is going to take place from the 10th of November, against New Zealand.
The selectors have included only one new face, the 24 year old Ashan Priyanjana, while they also called Dimuth Karunarathne back to the team after two years.
The Sri Lankan team will play three ODI (One Day International) matches and two T-20 matches against the Kiwis from 10th to 21st November.
The first and second one day matches will be played in Hambantota, while the third one day match will be played in Dambulla.
Both T-20 matches will be played in Pallekele.
It is a known fact that theft is on the rise in the city these days.
This is the seventh incident in the past few days.
All those renewal renewed and valid driving licenses (DL) are ready where photos are donewere submitted by till up to the 30th of September, The rest will be provided by next week.
This notice has been placed on the DTO office delivery counter.
It is clear that the DTO office itself accepts that DLs are being delivered after one month, while the service act specifies that the deadline is seven days.
This means that within seven days of application the DTO office has to give the finished DL to the applicant.
If we talk about the reality on the ground then the situation is even worse.
There are very many applicants to whom the DL has not been delivered even after 1 month.
The number of applicants who are being moved around the office for two to three months are countless.
You can get an idea of how bad the situation is in the office from the fact that DTO Anil Garg does not have any information regarding the notice on the delivery counter.
He claims that DLs are being delivered within the given deadline.
When asked why the notice has been displayed he replied that he did not have any information regarding this.
The decision made by the Federal Reserve to continue supporting the American Economy with its relief package has created enthusiasm among foreign investors, which in turn has helped the domestic share market to make history on Thursday.
The Bombay Stock Exchange, Sensex, jumped 130.50 points to reach 21,164.52 points and the National Stock Exchange was up 47.45 points to 6299.15 points.
The shares of consumer goods, banking, metal, oil, natural gas and power has helped the market to pick up.
Out of the thirty companies involved in Sensex only nine recorded a loss while the rest of them enjoyed gains.
This fact was revealed after the investigation by the Environment Protection Board.
The investigation that was conducted last year at different places, during Diwali, showed that the noise pollution reached a level of 100 decibels.
On an ordinary day it is usually 55 decibels.
Every year the noise pollution level increases due to the noise of the firecrackers or loud DJ music.
Even after the restrictions imposed by the government people are continuing to sell and buy high decibel crackers openly.
The management and prevention of the above activities is the responsibility of the local S.D.M, but they avoid this responsibility even when needed.
The Environment Protection Board had measured the noise pollution near the traffic police station last year during Diwali.
The investigation was done before Diwali on the 10th of November at different times.
The minimum noise level was found to be 72.5 decibels and the maximum 83.6 decibels.
Similarly, during Diwali, on the 13th of November 2013, the maximum sound level was 87.7 decibels and the minimum was 80 decibels.
During Diwali a maximum of 100.3 decibels of noise pollution was recorded and the minimum was 72.1 decibels.
On an ordinary day the maximum level of noise pollution recorded was 65 decibels, while the minimum was found to be 55 decibels.
Unfortunately, people don't care about the level of increased noise pollution and continue to buy high decibel firecrackers.
Jagran correspondent, Agra: The Fatehabad road had a deadly day on Thursday when there were several fatal accidents.
Near Kalal Khedia, Tajganj a police jeep collided with a truck. Inspector RP Singh Yadav was killed.
On Thursday night, in the village of Nagla Devhans Dauki, a truck hit the villager Hariom while he was crossing the road.
Due to his death angry villagers blocked the Fatehabad road.
The police arrived on the scene and cleared the two hour-long traffic jam.
After keeping the dead body in the mortuary, constable Ravindra and Ram Naresh of Bamrauli Katara police station were returning on a bike.
Near Tora police station, the bike hit the central reservation and both of them were injured.
At around two o'clock at night, Bamrauli Katara Chauki in-charge and Register Pal Singh Yadav were taking the wounded constables by jeep to Dauki.
While going to Kalal Khedia a truck driver, who was ahead of them, suddenly applied the brakes.
The speeding jeep collided with the back of truck.
The front part of the jeep was badly damaged.
Chauki in-charge Rejister Pal Singh, who was sitting on the front, was killed immediately.
The driver Yakub and constable Arvind, Ravindra and Ram Naresh were injured.
Officials arrived at the spot and admitted the injured people to the SN Emergency Unit.
Inspector Tajganj Hari Mohan reported that a case has been filed against the truck driver.
Full honour was given to the body of the inspector on the police lines on Friday
The family took the body to Mainpuri for the funeral.
The inspector killed in the accident, Register Pal Singh's family, lives in the main police station in the Katara district, Mainpuri.
Basically, he came from Malawan in Etah.
There are two sons and three daughters in his family.
He was transferred from Nehru Nagar Hariparvat to Bamrauli Katara just 3 days ago.
However, on Thursday power-dependent business were completely stopped.
Even the work of banks and offices were affected.
There was shortage of water in the whole city due to the power cut.
Mobile services and other work was also affected.
Also, on Tuesday morning a tower was damaged when a tree in the forest near Suigawadi of Dodha fell on it.
The 132 KV line from Udhampur broke down completely.
NHPS officials and staff were working hard to reinstate the power supply.
The General Manager of NHPC, Arvind Batt, reported that staff kept on repairing the power line in spite of rain.
The power supply was reinstated by 7.30 pm.
Demand for gold bars and coins went down due to inflation and the weak economic situation and this has reduced its attraction.
In Delhi, gold was priced at 31,400 Rs. per 10 grams. It was 32,485 Rs. per 10 grams last year during Dhanteras.
Haresh Soni, the Chairman of All India Gems and the Jewellery Federation said,"Due to the weak economic situation and inflation the demand for gold has gone down drastically".
Mehul Chowksi, Chairman and MD of the Gitanjali Group, said that the sale of gold had gone down by 25 percent.
The attitude of buyers has changed.
We are expecting the sales of diamonds to go up by 25 percent this year.
Compared to last year gold prices have gone down this year, but the customers still preferred to buy silver this Dhanteras.
The chief of the PSS organises meetings arbitrarily.
Ramprasad Yadav, the PSS from Bengabad, has made the allegation and demanded Panchayat Raj officers relieve the Chief of his duties and that action is taken against the Secretary.
He said that on the 4th of July he had complained about the Secretary and the Chief and as a result the Chief suspended him.
He has provided proof of irregularities committed by the Chief to the Panchayat Raj officers.
He said that the general meeting of the PSS was called with 7 day notice, but information of the meeting held on May 12th was sent on May 8th, which reached the PSS a day before the meeting.
Information about the PSS meeting, which was held on July 3rd, was not given to the Panchayat level committee officer, so they could not attend the meeting.
He alleged that it was a requirement of the Act to send a summary of meeting minutes to each member but this is not done.
At the July 3rd meeting, the Chief made the decision, in their own private office, to spend the 13th finance commission fund.
While demanding an investigation into this matter, he has requested that the expenditure of 13th finance commission fund is halted.
Our Jagran correspondent, Jammu: When evil arises on earth and evil people torture innocent people then God has to incarnate to exterminate the evil ones.
To free the people of Mathura from the atrocities of Kansa, Lord Krishna was born.
Mahanta Nand Kishore (from Gau Manasa) narrated the story of the incarnation of Lord Krishna to people on the Indo-Pakistani border in Laleyal Satwari on Thursday during Shrimad Bhagwat week, with the desire for peace.
He said that Lord Krishna redressed the grievances of the people by killing the horrible monsters in his childhood.
Mahanta said that you should not allow inferiority to enter your mind and devote your mind to God.
The mere remembrance of God keeps the sufferings of human beings at bay.
He said that it is the feelings of inferiority Pakistan has, when compared to India, that forces them to move down the wrong path again and again.
They must understand that with every such act they are hurting innocent people living on both sides of the border.
Before this Katha hundreds of pilgrims offered oblations to the Havan that is being organised for the desire for peace on the border.
Hundreds of pilgrims are visiting to take the Raspan of Havan and Shrimadkatha.
Nayab Sarpanch of Laleyal Satwari, Chain Singh said that a Langar has also been organised for the pilgrims visiting this place.
The Katha will be completed and the final oblation to the Havan will be made on Saturday.
Office correspondent, Rupnagar: With the aim of spreading awareness among the public against corruption the Roop-nagar vigilance unit held a seminar at a local Khalsa school.
The general public also participated in it along with students and teachers.
The DSP of the Roop-nagar vigilance bureau, Balveer Singh said, if the general public were vigilant against corruption then a corruption free society could be built.
While motivating people Balveer Singh said that if any official or member of staff asked for a bribe for any work, a complaint could be sent to the vigilance department.
The department would give punishment that officials or staff members fearlessly and to the full extent of the law.
Succha Singh, Sarsa Nangal, Amarjeet Singh Bhullar and Vigilance inspector Pal Singh addressed the seminar.
They said that at the present time corruption had emerged as a major problem.
Every member of society had to come forward to have complete control over it, because corruption now has roots that are so deep that it is no longer possible for the government acting alone to uncover it and stop it.
For this reason the general public has to come forward.
Gifts and sweets were distributed among the students and teachers by the organisers of this program.
The Organizing Committee President, Baba Ranjit Singh Thakur, said that Diwali is a Festival of Joy and Happiness.
The people of Ayodhya had lit strings of lamps to welcome Lord Rama on his return from exile.
The tradition of celebrating this festival started at that time.
He appealed to the students to take inspiration from the life of Lord Sri Rama.
Bal Krushna Thakur, Rameshchandra Thakur, Umadutta Gautam and Ramesh Thakur were also present at this event.
Halloween was celebrated all over the world, on October 31st.
Many western countries believe that it is very important to keep their ancestors' souls happy because, if these souls get upset, they might cause harm.
So, they celebrate this day.
At Halloween parties they can be seen wearing very unusual costumes.
Not only this, but in many places people organize Halloween parties, where people arrive in many scary and weird costumes.
At a single Halloween party one can see many weird faces.
Some of these are really scary, while others are very funny.
A fire at a fireworks shop in Dehradun road has caused quite a stir.
Thankfully, the fire was brought under control on time.
On the Dehradun road, near the Durga Temple, Umesh Singh had set up a fireworks shop outside his hotel.
At about 8:30 PM a rocket suddenly landed on the fireworks counter.
Within no time the fireworks counter was engulfed in flames and the entire shop was burnt down amidst the explosions of fireworks.
Customers were in the shop at the time.
The owner of the shop tried to extinguish the fire using fire extinguishers and sand.
Meanwhile, the fire brigade also arrived.
No one was injured in the accident.
The fire in the fireworks shop caused quite a stir among the locals.
The fire brigade officer, Dani Ram, said the fire was brought under control in time.
Following the incident the shopkeepers in the market have been sternly requested to take all necessary safety precautions.
Apart from the cinemas of South India, her films also make a big impact in the cinemas halls in Singapore and Malaysia.
The name of the actress is "Avni Modi".
Avni is from the Gandhinagar district of Gujrat.
Avni was interested in acting from childhood, but until college she wasn't able to brush up her acting skills.
Because of this, her college script writer even once told her to,"forget about acting, as you don't even understand the A in Acting".
She was lost in the crowd of her school and college, but now she is making Gujarat very famous in the Tamil Film Industry.
However, on the arrival of the landlord, it was revealed that the girl is his relative.
The family members went to the market so they left the girl at home and locked the door.
The girl has been handed over to the family in the presence of a councillor and the police.
The relative of Sushil Vishwakarma, Soni Devi's 14 years old daughter, came from Giridiha to his home.
Soni's husband is deceased.
Sushil's wife Anjali went to the market on Friday, keeping the girl locked up at home.
Here, the girl started crying.
The people of the community rushed to the spot.
People around the house immediately reported the matter to the police.
Councillor Anup Sav arrived.
Anjali had also arrived by that time.
She said that this girl was her relative.
As her family's situation is not so good, we are taking care of her.
Her mother, Sunita Devi a.k.a. Soni, and her family live in Belatandh village in Giridih.
Her father Mantu Vishwakarma is deceased.
Soni, the girl's mother and her uncle Praveen Lal Sharma were asked by phone to come to Jharia.
Her mother and uncle arrived in the evening.
Her mother said that they sent their daughter to her relative, Sushil Vishwakarma and his wife Anjali.
In the presence of the councillor and the police, Soni Devi took her daughter from her relative's place.
Anjali said, "We cannot keep the girl with us".
If anything had gone wrong we would have been helpless.
The taxi driver was injured in the incidence.
He has been admitted to Sundernagar civil hospital.
Both his legs are fractured.
Police have charged the taxi driver with careless driving and have started an investigation.
After a post-mortem at the Sundernagar civil hospital, the body was handed over to the relatives.
In the early morning at about quarter to three, when the taxi reached Chatrokhadi in Sundernagar, the driver suddenly dozed off.
Because of this the speeding taxi collided with a eucalyptus tree which was on the edge of the highway.
The passenger Ganga Devi and the driver, Chandra Kiran the son of Subhash Chand a resident of Syal (Manali), were badly injured.
On hearing the sound of a car colliding with a tree, the near-by residents came to the scene and immediately informed the police.
The police were able to remove Ganga and Chandra Kiran from the damaged car with some difficulty and took them to the Sundernagar civil hospital.
Ganga Devi was declared dead by doctors.
Ganga was going to meet her sister in Mumbai, and so she was heading to Chandigarh to catch a flight later that afternoon.
This case is being handled by Sub-Inspector Surendra Kumar.
D.S.P. Kulbhushan Varma confirmed this tragedy.
In the raiding team, ADCP City II Amreek Singh Pawar, ACP west Dilbagh Singh, M.H.O Cant Iqbal Singh and more than one hundred other police officers were present.
The search lasted up to three hours in the jail, but the police did not find any narcotics or mobile phones.
After three hours the police returned empty-handed.
Announcement of the candidates for the three seats has been posted.
Candidates from Cant, North-Central, East, Paatan-Majhauli and Bargi Assembly seats have been declared in the list issued by the party.
The Bhartiya Janata Party has announced their candidates for the 147 Assembly seats on Thursday.
The list has only those names which were speculated about earlier.
As per the list issued by the BJP, Ishwardas Rohani from Cant, Sharad Jain from the North-Centre, Aanchal Sonkar from the East, Ajay Vishnoi from Paatan- Majhauli and Pratibha Singh from Bargi have been included.
The list prepared by the BJP included the candidates who were already chosen except for the North-Centre and Bargi assembly, where the talks to change the candidates went on for a long time.
Except for the East Assembly seat, candidates from the other seats are sitting MLAs of their respective seats.
Only Anchal Sonkar was already a former member of the Eastern Assembly for the east constituency.
After this declaration of candidates, workers celebrated in their areas.
The decision regarding the rest of the candidates for the Assembly would only be made after Diwali.
According to the sources, Assembly seats where there is some opposition or problems due to caste, new candidates can be finalised.
Around 276 party workers will go to Delhi on Friday with a demand to give a ticket to a local candidate for the Assembly.
All these party workers will meet the national president Rajnath Singh, the organization secretary Ramlal, former president Nitin Gadkari, Ananth Kumar, incharge of M.P and the president of the national youth wing, Anurag Thakur.
However, officers have not said anything about finding any rock in the excavation.
Shobhan Sarkar has said that the rock has been found and as soon as it is broken up the SSI officers will find out the truth about the treasure.
Shobhan Sarkar lost his temper many times while talking to the media and also altered his statements.
Once he said that if this operation was being undertaken by the army, the truth would have been known already.
At the same time he said, and shocked everyone by saying, that until he is called to the excavation site the gold will not be found.
When asked about the differences in his comments he became annoyed and started accusing the Government and the SSI, talking about what exactly is being done at the excavation site and that the media is being banned from entry there.
We had demanded a live telecast of the excavation.
However, he did agree that the SSI excavation team is digging on the right spot, as he had indicated.
Meanwhile, after a day's rest the SSI team has started digging again today but could not make even a centimetre of progress.
The Assistant District Collector, Vijay Shankar Dubey, said that today the SSI team kept cleaning the area excavated so far, 4.80 m., the whole day.
If the Tata Workers Union is not able to provide any permanent solution to the Tata Steel Employees quarter extension issue, then the secretary-general would have to fix a date for a quick requisition meeting.
If the decision on a grade revision is taking time, then efforts shall be made to provide these employees with some interim amount.
With these two demands, around ten union members met the General Secretary B.K Dinda on Friday evening and put forward a proposal.
While speaking, Dinda mentioned that on Friday the issue of the extension could not be discussed between the Management and the Union.
An Office Bearer meeting would be held on Saturday, at which this issue would be discussed.
Among the people who went to meet the General Secretary were Ghulam Moinuddin, Manjit Singh, Saroj Pandey, Mahendra Singh, Dharmendra Upadhyay, Lal Bahadur Upadhyay, Ravi Shankar Pandey, Munneshwar Pandey and Girish.
The Corporate Services Deputy V.P. was in the city but could not meet the Union officers.
This issue would probably now be discussed on Monday.
All the committee members, as well as the employees, met the office holders and informed them of their problems.
No circular was published with information on the date of application for the submission map, which in turn created some confusion among the workers.
The festival of lights, Diwali began today.
Dhanteras or Small Diwali is on Friday.
As well as Diwali house decorations, beautiful rangolis are also an attraction.
Beautiful rangolis in the front yards or courtyards of houses are making the houses more beautiful.
We have chosen some pictures from Gujarat on this occasion.
By making these beautiful rangolis you can also make your house beautiful.
These officers had already been promoted to the grade of Joint Secretary and their current designations were upgraded to Joint Secretary levels.
Deepak Varma and others from the Nangal district had filed a petition in the High Court against the increase in fees. Advocate Dhiraj Chawla stated that the notice from the High Court had been received from the B.B.M.B advocate Kuldeep Tiwari.
The reply date for the notice is fixed for the 12th of November.
It should be noted that it was only last month that B.B.M.B had increased the fees after two years, for non B.B.M.B students.
Because of this, the parents approached the High Court.
Two years ago, when the fees were increased, the parents protested on the streets against this and only after that were the fees reduced a bit.
Parents were angry when the fees were increased once again.
Parents are shocked by the sudden revision of fees, after just 5 months of the new term.
After the meetings, parents demonstrated against the steps taken by the school.
Despite this, the school did not respond and finally the parents had to go to the High Court.
The parents said that the frequent revision of fees is not fair.
This not only affects the children's education but also affects the parents' businesses.
The chief said that developmental work should be carried in keeping with transparency in the government work.
He said no irregularities will be tolerated in the implementation of schemes.
Earlier the Block Co-operative Officer was instructed to provide a list of bills provided to all panchayats, a list of the Srividhi farmers under the Green Revolution Scheme, as well as a detailed pack of information of the amount received under this scheme.
In the meeting the order was given that the para teachers would not be engaged in the work of building construction.
The BEEO was asked to provide a list of the schools under construction in the block.
Representatives who had come to attend the meeting in the absence of the Health department and the CDPO were not allowed to sit in the meeting hall.
It was the decision of the house that departmental representatives were attending the meeting just to complete the quorum and were not equipped with complete information.
Many departments including those for supply, drinking water, cleaning and health were reviewed in this meeting.
In this meeting the parliamentary representative, Prof. Pravin Chaudhari, said that the Cooperative Department should provide the funds for the Green Revolution beneficiaries so that the farmers can move ahead.
He gave emphasis to the high level investigation of the activities of the Co-operative department.
It is written in Hitler's Autobiography "Mein Kampf" that the size of the lie is the main reason for trust.
People accept the bigger lie more easily than the smaller lie due to the primitive simplicity of their brains.
During the emergency Congress leader Devant Baruah used the slogan "Indira is India".
But the historical facts are different.
There is a glorious history of nation building.
The people of India have made the country world renowned with their active efforts.
Philosophy and culture, the Vedic sages Kapil, Buddha, Mahavira and Shankara are such notable ancestors.
Dynasties such as Chandragupta Mauraya, Ashoka etc.,are examples of ancient national unity.
There is a long list of iconic men who fought against foreign armed attacks and rulers.
Vivekananda, Dayanand, Tilak, Gandhi, Subhash, Patel, Lohia, Bipin Chandra, Ambedkar etc., and Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad make a long list of immortal martyrs, but Congress has only been giving credit for nation building to the Nehru - Gandhi family.
The bigger lie is the more effective.
Out of the 58 central schemes 16 have Rajiv Gandhi's name on them.
The list of other schemes, awards, airports and institutions with the Nehru family name attached to them is long.
Now preparations are being made to name even the Public Distribution System i.e., the PDS scheme, after Indira Gandhi.
The names of such iconic men have been inspiring.
Naming streets, universities or airports after them is welcome, but to name the rural housing scheme of the national capital's international airport is not acceptable under any circumstances.
The public distribution system has already been brought into disrepute.
Who is stopping the Congress from asking for votes in the name of this scheme?
But what is the problem in looking beyond the Nehru family, when it comes to naming?
Many competing arguments were exchanged between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the main opposition party prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, about the greatness of Sardar Patel.
Patel is a great nation builder.
He joined 562 states into one nation.
Patel belongs to everyone, he is loved by the whole of India, but Congress has made him their own property.
The public distribution system may be named after Patel too.
This will not affect the importance of Patel in any way.
Congress has been in power for a long time.
The politicisation of the schemes was done by Congress itself.
Congress was once a democratic party, with democratic leaders like Tilak, Gokhale, Gandhi, Subhash, Rajendra Prasad, Nehru, Patel and Madan Mohan Malviya. Since 1950, it has come under a single family's control.
Party and Family have become synonymous.
To proclaim family and country synonymous the slogan 'Indira is India' was created.
The naming of the schemes has also become a household matter.
Government schemes are run from the accumulated exchequer, from the country's taxpayers.
The nation's exchequer is not the property of any single family in Congress.
Following the example of Congress each party created their own icons.
The regional parties ran schemes in the names of politicians as they wish.
Everyone has icons, but the list of party icons kept increasing.
Currently, every small or large party has its own icon.
Government schemes are not run in the names of political leaders in America.
Their justification in India is pathetic.
The centre plans to take the credit for all the schemes by running the schemes in the names of the Nehru family.
Schemes in the names of Mahatma Gandhi, Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose or Bhagat Singh's cannot be identified with the identity of Congress.
Congress has moved away from its heritage.
Only preaching or messages from Rahul-Sonia seem to work for Congress.
Of course the other parties also name their schemes the same way, but they do not stick to one family's name for every scheme.
The politicization of social welfare schemes is condemnable.
The laptops distributed in Uttar Pradesh have the picture of the SP chief on them.
Of course, the voters give the majority winning party the right to make policies.
The government is bound to the planning and implementation of their duties, but the taxpayers and voters definitely do not give the government the right to name the schemes as they wish.
Voters expect governance from the government not politics, and taxpayers expect the proper transparent use of the exchequer.
The misuse of the exchequer is a constitutional offence.
Some kind of naming protocol has to be developed.
Political leaders are not the solution to everything.
India is full of multi-talented geniuses.
The names of the institutes of higher education / research institutions must named after talented Indian scientists.
A philosopher's name or a distinguished author's name will be appreciated for literature, philosophy or the art institutes.
There is a lack of a sense of history in politics.
There was also a long debate on naming the country in the constituent assembly.
Seth Govinddas, Kamalapati Tripathy put forward 'Bharat'.
The name Bharat received 38 votes and India received 51.
The fundamental question is: why is no serious thought given to the naming of the schemes?
Why is politics always involved in this?
Why is such importance given to one single family?
Why not make a list of common public approved names?
Joint committees of Parliament and the legislature may also be used to create a list.
Why is there gross negligence at both the national and state levels in naming the schemes?
Due to this negligence, the young generation is forgetting the names of our freedom fighters.
There are different types of heroes.
Some are created by TV and mostly are biased with political prejudice.
Naming is a cognitive exercise.
In the "Jnyansukta " of the Rigveda, naming has been called the beginning of knowledge.
Naming the schemes well can be inspirational.
Memorising names of great people from general knowledge books is an act of labour, but naming the government schemes, streets or important places after inspiring personalities is the easiest tool for reviving a the sense of history.
Names like Gandhi Nagar, Patel Airport, Ambedkarpuram or Vivekanandapuram add an historicalinspiration.
In a recent survey conducted just two to three months ago, it was shown that half of the country's villages and cities are associated with the name of Rama.
Extra vigilance is required in naming the country, period, culture, civilisation and history.
Their names become representative of specific expressions and approaches.
Dayananda, Vivekananda and Gandhi's names are synonyms with social reform, Vedic philosophy truth and non-violence, respectively
The Friends of Congress are requested to overcome their addiction of looking for names from the same family.
There are many names in Indian history with a golden glow.
The Motor Vehicle Accident Claims Tribunal has ordered that Rs.50.67 lakhs compensation should be paid to the family of the former Minister of Maharashtra, Shrikant Jichkar, who was killed in a road accident in 2004.
The family had demanded Rs. 25.82 crores.
The family had said that the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation [MSRTC] bus driver's negligence caused the death of Jichkar on the 2nd of June 2004.
Along with ordering the MSRTC to pay the compensation the Tribunal said that the insurance company should not pay anything as the car belonged to Jichkar himself.
The family of Shriram Dhavadh, Jichkar's lecturer friend's family, will also receive compensation of Rs 21.60 lakh.
He also died in the same accident.
Out of this, approximately 70 percent of the amount (Rs.15.12 lakhs) will be paid by the MSRTC.
The driver of Jichkar's car was also found guilty of negligence and hence the remaining 30 percent (Rs. 6.48 lakhs) will be paid by the former minister's family.
During this time they discussed the combined activities of the party supporters and the members.
The Gojmumo organizational Committee Chairman, Tilak Gurung, said that the Gojmumo Head met the temporary employee organization, the permanent employee organization and Bhutia and Tibetan members of the organization on Thursday to discuss various issues.
The people of Twin City may celebrate Diwali in the dark in this season.
Those who have not paid their electricity bill within the due date.
Disconnection is being done 15 days after the due date.
Hundreds of connections from subdivisions number one and two from the Cant and Babyal substations have been disconnected.
Because of this, the crowd of disconnected consumers is increasing at electricity offices.
Consumers are disturbed.
One of the problems is that the Power corporation is not accepting part-payments.
The Corporation is accepting 80 to 90% payment of the bill, as part-payment.
At subdivision number one office the SDO has even put a notice stating "Do not embarrass us by asking to deposit a part-payment".
According to the SE of the Ambala operation circle, the Power Corporation has stopped thinking compassionately about consumers.
Now they will need to pay their upcoming bills within the due date, otherwise the corporation will cut off their electricity 15 days after the bill due date.
The Ambala circle has received the target of Rs.102 crore from the North Haryana Power Distribution Corporation.
Executive Engineer and the SDO of all sub-divisions have been ordered to meet the target.
October 31 was the deadline for this target and it could not be met.
On Friday the government lowered the import duty on gold to $440 per 10 grams and has increased the import duty on silver to $738 per kilogram.
This change has been made after taking into consideration the international fluctuation of prices in both the precious metals.
Customs duty has been levied on the value of precious metals.
Two days ago the import duty on gold was increased to $442 per 10 grams, while the cost price of silver was kept constant at $699 per kg.
Generally the prices of precious metals are reviewed every fortnight, but because of the volatility in the international commodity market these prices have been changed.
According to the official statement in this regard, the Central Excise and Customs board has issued a notification.
Other than the precious metals the price of brass scrap, which was until yesterday $3,933 per ton, has been reduced to $3,840 per ton.
The price of imported crude vegetable oils, such as soy bean oil, RBD palm oil and others was also increased.
When the crackdown on passengers without tickets started, the passengers count increased to 39,000.
Jaipur. Due to a shortage of passengers, the Railways administration started intense checking in the trains and this has resulted in the increase of the passengers count up to 39,000 in a single month.
The Railways administration believes that passengers without tickets are now worried about getting caught and now they are travelling with a ticket.
The CPRO of the Railways, Tarun Jain, says that 9 lakh 75 thousand passengers in the reserved category and 88 lakh 13 thousand passengers in the unreserved category travelled last year in the month of October.
The campaign against passengers without tickets, that was started this year in October, has resulted in an increase of 11,000 passengers in the reserved and 28,000 passengers in the unreserved category.
9 lakh 86 thousand passengers in the reserve category and 88 lakh 41 thousand passengers in the unreserved category have travelled this year in the month of October.
He said that the Railway administration has started checking tickets at the entrance and exit of railway stations, inside trains and the staff from one division did the ticket checking for another division.
This has reduced the number of unauthorized passengers.
Stung by the Supreme Court decision the Rural Development Minister, Jairam Ramesh, said that the practice of exceeding their powers by the court is dangerous.
On Thursday, the court said in a ruling that civil servants should not act on verbal commands from their political masters.
On Friday Jairam said that it is not right for the Courts to exceed their powers and take the job of the officers and the Government into their own hands.
In a "Meet the Press" held at Kannur in Kerala, Jairam said that this is not a decision.
This is a verbal order from the Supreme Court.
For this purpose the Central Government's Civil Service Establishment Board is already in place.
The sudden revelation of a group of retired officers will result in many such decisions.
He said, "This is a dangerous trend promoted by the retired officers and social workers".
Strongly attacking the Supreme Court he said, "The Supreme court wants democracy and an open environment in the country, but when it comes to appointing the judges everything is kept separate."
Taking a strong stand against the officers who filed the petition for the interference of the Supreme court against the insult by the political lords of bureaucracy, he said that the retired officers are filing Public Interest Petitions in large numbers, even though they served the political lords very well when they were in office.
Now, after their retirement they have suddenly acquired decided that all politicians are crazy.
Konnur is the first district in the country, in which no family is now landless.
The Central Rural development Minister Jairam Ramesh has declared that every poor family should have at least 3 cent. (approx. 120 square metres) of land to build a house.
This is a historic step.
He appealed to all states to learn a lesson from the land distribution example in the State of Kerala.
He said that such decisions require political will and strong decision making.
Seven years ago, the Supreme Court issued an order on police reform.
That order was of a similar nature.
Ask yourself whether those orders were followed in the states?
The criminal was standing on the Mohanpur - Itwa road, which passes over the Bodhgaya-Bakraur bridge.
Police Station Officer, Kanhiya Singh, said that the truck thieves had tied the hands of the truck driver, Sanjay Yadav, and cleaner and had kept them in the forest.
On Thursday intensive checks of trucks were carried out.
When the police reached the Bakraur-Bodhgaya bridge the thieves started driving away in the stolen truck.
The police captured two of the thieves along with the trucks.
Dinesh Paswan from Kulhaura village, part of the Bodhgaya district, and Pramod from Dhadhanwa were held by the police for further inquiries.
The police chief said that these criminals have a large gang.
Pramod is the mastermind of this gang.
Pramod gave information about the other criminals.
Along with the Principal Sanjay Kumar, Puneeth Kashyap, Dina Nath, Kuldeep Kumar, Poonam Sharma, Sunita and Mridula Sharma and the other teachers present congratulated the students on their achievements.
This Diwali different types of firecrackers are available with the name of your favourite politicians on them, in the market.
If you don't want to buy the firecrackers with the name of Sonia, Modi and Rahul Gandhi, don't worry. Nitish brand crackers are also available in the market.
If you are still not satisfied and you have reservations about these names, there are other options that are available in the market.
This time when you go to the market to buy firecrackers for your children, you will not come back empty-handed.
If you don't want to buy firecrackers with the name of Bihar's Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on them then you will definitely buy the ground round [S1]with the name of the former Deputy Chief, Sushil Modi.
If you don't want to buy any of the crackers for your children with the name of any politician on them, then not to worry. The Ramvilas Paswan option is available for you. Yes, Ramvilas Paswan firecrackers are also available in the market.
Even if Laloo Yadav is now being punished for the fodder scam, you need not worry at all. If you want to celebrate with him then don't worry, you can enjoy Diwali with Laloo Yadav in your home!
Tributes were paid to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the ceremony.
This information was given by the school principal Nafe Singh.
He said that the teachers and professors placed flowers on a picture of Indira Gandhi.
An essay competition was organized on the topic - Pragati ke path par Haryana.
Manju Lakshmi won first prize and Shilpa won second prize.
The State president of the Association, Brij Mohan Gupta, shared his thoughts with the students on the sacrifices made by Sardar Patel and Indira.
Urmila Malik, Geeta Gupta, Rajbir Singh and Amit Gupta were honoured as jury members.
The principal gave information about the topic - Hariyana ki pragati.
His dead body was found near the drainage ditch.
The dead young man has been identified as Harish Gahlaut.
Two gunshot wounds were found in the body of the young man.
Police have sent the body for a post-mortem to the hospital and have started investigations.
On Thursday at around 1 am, the police received information that a young person was lying injured near the drainage ditch in the Roshan garden area.
When the police reached the spot they found him dead.
He was then recognised as Harish, a resident of the Dharmpura District.
The young man had been shot in the waist and shoulder with two bullets.
Harish left his tenth grade studies midway.
In the meanwhile, he was unemployed and fell into bad habits.
The last time people saw him he was with a man.
The police are trying to find this man, and also trying to find out where the youth was on Thursday and with whom, before his death.
Jagran communication center, Rajouri: On Thursday a surprise search was conducted of the indifferent government officials of various departments to nab them.
During the search at the P.H.E department in Kotranka the office was found locked and the employees were absent from work.
One of the employees working there was suspended, while the absentees were issued with a show-cause notice.
The District Commissioner has formed many teams to watch over the government employees.
On his orders a surprise search was conducted by Tehsildaars and other departmental officers on Thursday.
Kotranka Tehsildaar, Israr Ahmed Mir also paid a surprise visit to the government offices located in the headquarters.
At the offices, as well as the employees, many high officials were found to be absent from duty.
He made a note of the absent officials and sent the list to the District Commissioner Fakir Chand Bhagat.
When Kotranka Tehsildaar reached the P.H.E department, he found it locked.
None of the employees were present.
At Kotranka hospital, apart from the doctors, 14 other employees were found absent.
Even the B.M.O was absent.
Also, in the B.D.O Office, apart from two temporary employees, the B.D.O himself along with his employee were not present.
The C.D.P.O office was being handled by a low ranking official.
In the office register the employees had marked themselves present for the next two days.
In addition, at the C.A.D.P office, only the T.S.O was found present. The other employees were absent.
A low ranking official was handling the horticulture office, while the other officials were missing.
Tehsildaar prepared a list of all these absent employees and sent it to the District Commissioner.
Meanwhile, the Chief Education Officer Choudhary Lal Hussain, paid a surprise visit to many schools in the Baljaralan Zone.
Wali Mohammad is the person in charge of the midday meals in Katha School and has been suspended for not doing the work properly, while Mr.Abdul Majeed and teacher Suriya Begum of Cherrian Middle School, Javed Alam, the C.R.P at the Sankari High School and Ajay Kumar, the C.R.P at the Baljaralan Middle School, have all been issued with a show-cause notice.
DIET Principal Pradeep Sharma conducted a surprise inspection of schools in the Thanamandi zone to check the midday meals there.
On inspection, in the Thanamandi Zone, the principal found some loopholes in the midday meals and hence Mr. Pradeep Sharma asked the officer in charge of the meals and the Head Master to correct these deficiencies within two days.
Former UP Minister, Rajaram Pandey, who was known for his controversial speeches, passed away late Thursday evening following a heart attack.
After the death of Rajaram Pandey, the cabinet expansion of the Akhilesh Government has been postponed.
According to the sources, Rajaram Pandey was under continuous stress after being removed from the post of Minister.
As per the scheduled programme, Akhilesh Yadav was going to reshuffle his cabinet for the fourth time.
Rajaram Pandey found out that he had not being included in the cabinet reshuffle that was to be carried out on Friday.
After meeting the Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, he was heading to his Raj Bhavan colony residence and as soon as he got there, he started vomiting and fell unconscious.
His employees said that he was taken to the civil hospital around midnight, but he died on the way.
In Akhilesh Yadav's government, Rajaram Pandey was the Khadi and rural industry minister and was the MLA from the Pratapgarh's Vishwanathganj constituency three times.
He was removed from the cabinet on the 15th of April, due to offensive remarks he made about women officers.
In one program, while praising the beauty of the Sultanpur D.M., he said "I am very fortunate that I have become the minister in charge of this zone for a second time.
I always get the chance to work with a beautiful D.M. here.
When I saw the former D.M. Kamini Chauhan Ratan, I felt that there could be no woman more beautiful than her, but the new D.M. (Dhanlaxmi) is even more beautiful than her.
The tone of her voice is also better".
Rajaram Pandey also said this in Pratapgarh, "The roads are going to shine like the cheeks of Hema Malini and as of now only the facial is taking place".
This statement caused a big fuss.
Chandigarh: On one hand the Punjab government has passed the special bill in the Punjab for the safety of the properties of NRI Punjabies, while on the other hand emigrant Punjabies have fresh problems in Canada.
The Canadian government is questioning NRIs about the income from their properties and the amount they received as pension, etc. from the Punjab or India.
Through a special unit, the Federal government questioned pension holders in Canada about the income they are earning from their properties in other countries.
The Government is receiving these kinds of complaints and information about people who came from abroad who are receiving all the financial benefits in Canada.
According to Canadian law, after obtaining Canadian citizenship the income received from abroad must be added to their total income, but people are not doing it.
Even after obtaining Canadian citizenship, thousands of people from the Punjab have not declared their income from properties and pension benefits, etc. in the Punjab, in their Canadian income tax returns.
Many Revenue department officials are continuously asking the Canadian Chartered Accountants to force foreigners to declare their income which they are earning in other countries, so that they can calculate the appropriate tax on the income they are earning in Canada.
A delegation of the Association of Seniors' club met with an MP from Punjab, Param Gill and demanded security for their benefits in this regard.
Param Gill says that, as per the information provided to him, if any person makes a complaint against any other person regarding this issue to Revenue Canada then his/her income can be investigated but he does not have any concrete information about the investigation.
This Delegation also met with MPP Wick Dhilon earlier and soon they will also meet with other MPs and MPPs.
The Punjab Government passed the Punjab Tenancy Bill and Agricultural Land (Amendment Bill) and the Punjab Security of land tenures for the security of the NRIs property.
The NRI, along with Armed forces personnel, have been providing security for their land.
According to this bill an NRI Punjabi can rent his/her land and house-shop at a fixed point in time.
They can get them back when needed by giving the fixed notice.
The tenants will not have stay and no other option will be available.
The NRI will have to give proof of ownership to the SDM and they will have to tell them their requirements.
This legislation provides relief for the first five years of the lease.
Approximately 1.5 crore comes from people from the Punjab residing in different countries, while their property is still in the Punjab.
They keep demanding the security of their property from the Punjab Government.
Gold, silver and utensils are popular purchases on this day.
Because of this utensil sellers have already decorated their shops.
To attract customers, shopkeepers have displayed a variety of utensils inside and outside the shop.
However, the effect of high price rises can be seen clearly in the market.
According to the Hindu religious book, buying metallic things during the Dhanteras festival has a special significance.
People not only buy small pieces of gold and silver jewellery but also buy brass and silver utensils, as per their capacity.
Kitchen utensil sellers Kali Das and Madan Lal said that this time the price rise has been significant.
Due to the increase in price of steel, copper and brass, wholesale goods have also become expensive.
They said that the price of steel utensils was between Rs.120 and Rs.140 per kilogram last year, but this year this has increased to Rs.150 to Rs.200 per kilogram.
Similarly, in addition to the price of brass, copper utensil have also become more expensive.
Vikas, who sells things used for Puja and other brass items in Sabzi-mandi said that as brass has become more expensive, things made from brass have also become more expensive.
Customers are purchasing more smaller items in the market.
Utensil seller, Rajesh said that this market has the maximum number of utensil shops.
Customers who come from far afield buy things from this market, but people are buying fewer things as things are getting more expensive.
They believe that utensils are getting more expensive due to the festival and they will be cheaper later.
On Friday the whole day is auspicious for shopping on the occasion of Dhanteras.
According to the astrologer Vachspati, sunrise will be at 6.41 am on Friday, the first of November.
After this, at 9.50 am, there is a Vaidhriti yog, but most people ignore it.
People who consider this yog can avoid shopping at this time and people who ignore this yog can go shopping.
He said that people must buy Gold, Silver and other metal items on this day as their financial capacity allows.
Committee Members have appealed to people not to use firecrackers.
The rally started from Badwala up to the Haripur Kalsi Gate, where the children appealed to people to save the environment.
Committee Members asked everyone to light earthenware lamps, instead of lighting firecrackers, and also asked people to avoid the use of polythene bags.
The UT officials will receive 90 percent of the D.A. starting in July, which is equal to the D.A. of central government officials.
Earlier in September the D.A. was raised to 80%, from 72% with the approval a rise of 8% D.A.
After this administrative decision the employees of UT Chandigarh were very delighted.
Among others, the President of the UT Employees and Workers Union- Manmohan Singh, the General Secretary - Gopal Dutt Joshi, the President of the UT Powerworkers Union - Ram Saroop, Vice-President Vijay Singh, the Electrical Lift Union President - Jasbir Singh, and labour leader Manmohan Singh welcomed this decision taken by the administration.
After this decision the employees will get 10% of the D.A. starting in July.
On this occasion labour leaders have demanded that even the employees of the Child Welfare Council should also be given 90% of the D.A., instead of 9%.
BJP's candidate for PM and Gujrat's Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, has included 6 new State Ministers in his cabinet.
Half a dozen people received the green light, including the son of the heavyweight Vitthal Radadiya. Jayesh comes from Saurashtra and has recently joined the BJP, after leaving Congress.
The former Deputy Chief Minister, Narhari Amin, who left Congress before the assembly elections and joined the BJP, has been appointed as the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission.
This Ministry expansion is being seen as Modi's preparation for the Lok Sabha elections.
He has been travelling around a lot to promote his political interests.
After doing a tour of the five states, he will organise more aggressive rallies, journeys and meetings.
In this way he wants to turn Guajrat into an impenetrable fortress.
A black box in your car?
As America's road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.
The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America's major roads.
The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances.
Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them - then use the information to draw up a tax bill.
The tea party is aghast.
The American Civil Liberties Union is deeply concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues.
And while Congress can't agree on whether to proceed, several states are not waiting.
They are exploring how, over the next decade, they can move to a system in which drivers pay per mile of road they roll over.
Thousands of motorists have already taken the black boxes, some of which have GPS monitoring, for a test drive.
This really is a must for our nation.
"It is not a matter of something we might choose to do," said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which is planning for the state to start tracking miles driven by every California motorist by 2025.
There is going to be a change in how we pay these taxes.
The technology is there to do it.
The push comes as the country's Highway Trust Fund, financed with taxes Americans pay at the gas pump, is broke.
Americans don't buy as much gas as they used to.
Cars get many more miles to the gallon.
The federal tax itself, 18.4 cents per gallon, hasn't gone up in 20 years.
Politicians are loath to raise the tax even one penny when gas prices are high.
"The gas tax is just not sustainable," said Lee Munnich, a transportation policy expert at the University of Minnesota.
His state recently put tracking devices on 500 cars to test out a pay-by-mile system.
"This works out as the most logical alternative over the long term," he said.
Wonks call it a mileage-based user fee.
It is no surprise that the idea appeals to urban liberals, as the taxes could be rigged to change driving patterns in ways that could help reduce congestion and greenhouse gases, for example.
California planners are looking to the system as they devise strategies to meet the goals laid out in the state's ambitious global warming laws.
But Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has said he, too, sees it as the most viable long-term alternative.
The free marketeers at the Reason Foundation are also fond of having drivers pay per mile.
"This is not just a tax going into a black hole," said Adrian Moore, vice president of policy at Reason.
People are paying more directly into what they are getting.
The movement is also bolstered by two former U.S. Transportation secretaries, who in a 2011 report urged Congress to move in the pay-per-mile direction.
The U.S. Senate approved a $90-million pilot project last year that would have involved about 10,000 cars.
But the House leadership killed the proposal, acting on concerns of rural lawmakers representing constituents whose daily lives often involve logging lots of miles to get to work or into town.
Several states and cities are nonetheless moving ahead on their own.
The most eager is Oregon, which is enlisting 5,000 drivers in the country's biggest experiment.
Those drivers will soon pay the mileage fees instead of gas taxes to the state.
Nevada has already completed a pilot.
New York City is looking into one.
Illinois is trying it on a limited basis with trucks.
And the I-95 Coalition, which includes 17 state transportation departments along the Eastern Seaboard (including Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida), is studying how they could go about implementing the change.
The concept is not a universal hit.
In Nevada, where about 50 volunteers' cars were equipped with the devices not long ago, drivers were uneasy about the government being able to monitor their every move.
"Concerns about Big Brother and those sorts of things were a major problem," said Alauddin Khan, who directs strategic and performance management at the Nevada Department of Transportation.
It was not something people wanted.
As the trial got underway, the ACLU of Nevada warned on its website: "It would be fairly easy to turn these devices into full-fledged tracking devices."
There is no need to build an enormous, unwieldy technological infrastructure that will inevitably be expanded to keep records of individuals' everyday comings and goings.
Nevada is among several states now scrambling to find affordable technology that would allow the state to keep track of how many miles a car is being driven, but not exactly where and at what time.
If you can do that, Khan said, the public gets more comfortable.
The hunt for that technology has led some state agencies to a small California startup called True Mileage.
The firm was not originally in the business of helping states tax drivers.
It was seeking to break into an emerging market in auto insurance, in which drivers would pay based on their mileage.
But the devices it is testing appeal to highway planners because they don't use GPS and deliver a limited amount of information, uploaded periodically by modem.
"People will be more willing to do this if you do not track their speed and you do not track their location," said Ryan Morrison, chief executive of True Mileage.
There have been some big mistakes in some of these state pilot programs.
There are a lot less expensive and less intrusive ways to do this.
In Oregon, planners are experimenting with giving drivers different choices.
They can choose a device with or without GPS.
Or they can choose not to have a device at all, opting instead to pay a flat fee based on the average number of miles driven by all state residents.
Other places are hoping to sell the concept to a wary public by having the devices do more, not less.
In New York City, transportation officials are seeking to develop a taxing device that would also be equipped to pay parking meter fees, provide "pay-as-you-drive" insurance, and create a pool of real-time speed data from other drivers that motorists could use to avoid traffic.
"Motorists would be attracted to participate because of the value of the benefits it offers to them," says a city planning document.
Some transportation planners, though, wonder if all the talk about paying by the mile is just a giant distraction.
At the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area, officials say Congress could very simply deal with the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund by raising gas taxes.
An extra one-time or annual levy could be imposed on drivers of hybrids and others whose vehicles don't use much gas, so they pay their fair share.
"There is no need for radical surgery when all you need to do is take an aspirin," said Randy Rentschler, the commission's director of legislation and public affairs.
If we do this, hundreds of millions of drivers will be concerned about their privacy and a host of other things.
According to the police his death was due to drowning.
However, the police have taken the friend of the deceased into custody for hiding the deceased's luggage at his house.
The police have filed the final investigation report with the court.
It may be recalled that on August 26th the police recovered the body of Jahid Iqbal from the Jhelum river in Padshahi Park.
His family had accused his friends because his mobile and other luggage was missing.
The police said in their report that the deceased's phone and SIM card were checked and his phone was being used by a woman named Saura.
After questioning the woman, she said that the phone had been given to her by a relative named Ruhail Gauhar.
Ruhail also lives in Padshahi Park and was a friend of the deceased.
On August 25th, after Namaaz-e-Jumma, Ruhail had gone with Jahid to bathe in the Jhelum river.
Jahid took off his clothes and left all his things on the banks, while Ruhail went to the other bank to smoke a cigarette.
When he returned Jahid was not there, only his clothes were there.
Ruhail looked for Jahid, but he could not find him.
Then he picked up his mobile phone, watch and other things and kept them for his own use.
He did not tell anyone that Jahid has drowned.
The police told the court that Jahid has drowned and the post-mortem report confirmed this.
However, Ruhail was arrested under section 404 for hiding the facts and possessions of the deceased.
The Maharaja of the dynastic capital has arranged some magnificent cuisine from the majestic palaces.
These special dishes will be available in all the restaurants of the dynastic capital from November 1st to the 5th, in your city.
One must enjoy the heritage of these enriched recipes from the dynastic capital this Diwali with your family and friends.
Crispy Pea Rolls, Surti Plaza, Barsa Dola, Hariwali Patra, Jodhpuri Pakaros, Dakor na Gota nu Chat and Lilava Kachori will be awaiting you in the Special Diwali Thali.
Traditional recipes with vegetables such as Surti Udhiyu, Jaisalmer Panch Kuta, Pithaud ki sabji, Jodhpuri Gatta, Sagaru ke kofte, Rabodi Hara Pyaj, Til wale Aloo, Makai Mirch and Jajaria are included.
The best way to end a regal meal is with desserts like Apple Jalebi, Tomato Halwa, Walnut Halwa, Dudh Pak, Date Barfi, Dryfruit Halwa, Makai Jajaria and Sutar Saini Kheer.
Presenting CAT's trendy footwear and clothing collection.
Chandigarh: On the occasion of the festival of lights the internationally renowned brand CAT presented a collection of trendy footwear and clothing.
CAT is a brand that has been offering strong, durable, beautiful and high quality products for the past one hundred years.
Each of its products is made in the USA and represents the true CAT lifestyle.
It is the perfect gift for your relatives and loved ones.
This collection is ideal for the modern shopper who like this style of footwear, whether female or male.
Available in this style are mid-cuts and wheel boots along with slip-ons and sandals made of premium leather, suede and canvas.
To make this footwear collection even more impressive even a denim range is also available.
It includes woven trousers, graphic T-shirts, polo neck T-shirts, shorts, skirts and jackets.
CAT, in a way, is the blend of durability and lifestyle.
Luggage and travel gear is also available here.
MRF has been awarded the JD Power Award, for the tenth time in a row.
Chandigarh: India's largest tyre manufacturer and one of the top 15 global tyre companies, MRF has been awarded the JD Power award for the tenth time in a row.
This award is widely considered the equivalent of the Oscars by peers in the automotive sector and it is the most recognized in the industry.
Very few companies have received this award for so many consecutive years.
MRF has increased the size of the MRF ZLO Performance radials for high level vehicles.
Low profile tyres in the range of 40,45 and 55 are now available for many vehicles including Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Jaguar. More than 70 models of premium vehicles in the size 13 range, can now seen on Indian Roads.
The Due-guard company presented a water purifier to the Naya Nangal Temple of Lord Valmiki, for safe drinking water.
After receiving the water purifier from the company representatives J.K. Kaushik and Khushbu Kaushik, the Temple president Virendra Adiya said that this social act was very commendable, because now all the worshippers coming to the temple could enjoy clean drinking water.
The 77 year old former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, known for his Bunga Bunga parties, has married a 28 year old girl in an extremely secretive manner.
This was revealed by a family friend, Marythell Polanco.
According to her, the three times Prime Minister Berlusconi has married former TV anchor Francisca Pascale in his private chapel.
Francisca met Berlusconi when she was a teenage activist with the Forza Italia Party.
This is the same Francisca, about whom it has been said that her relationship with Berlusconi is a sham.
Berlusconi's close friend and the Bunga Bunga Girl Marythell Polanco revealed that she was also invited to this secret wedding.
This ceremony took place three weeks ago.
During the revelation on Italian Radio 2, when Polanco was asked what would happen if those two were to get married, Polanco replied that they are already married.
This was not a public ceremony.
This wedding was held in the chapel at the former Prime Minister's home.
Other than this, no one can say anything more.
However, she did not go to the wedding.
She had sent her best wishes to the newlyweds.
They got married about three weeks ago on October 8th or 9th.
He got engaged about 8 months ago to the 28 year old woman, Francesca Pascale, who is 50 years younger than him.
To avoid embarrassment, Berlusconi claimed loneliness as the reason for his decision to marry.
Between the hide and seek with the sun, rain continued in low-lying areas.
This created a cold front in the valley.
The cold could be gauged by the fact that the minimum temperature at Shrinagar was 4.8 degrees Celsius, in Gulmarg it was below 0 at -0.2 degrees and in Leh it reached -1.8 degrees Celsius.
Leh was the coolest place in the whole state.
However, due to rain and snow the strategically important Srinagar to Leh national highway has been closed to traffic.
There is heavy snowfall in the Jozilla Pass.
This is the fourth snowfall of the season in the Kashmir valley and the first heavy snowfall.
Due to the western disturbance activity, since the early hours of Thursday the higher hilly regions have experienced some snowfall and the low lying areas had rainfall, that continued until late into the evening.
Normal life has also been affected by the cold.
People remained in their homes to avoid the cold.
Meanwhile, the electricity supply has also failed in this area.
The day temperatures in Shrinagar were four degrees below normal and were recorded at 13.7 degrees Celsius.
Due to the rains along with strong winds in Jammu in the early morning of Thursday, the cold increased at night.
A minimum temperature of 16.6 and a maximum temperature of 27.0 degrees Celsius were recorded in Jammu.
According to the weather department, the influence of the western disturbances is declining and the weather will improve by Friday.
According to the Shrinagar weather department's Director, Sonam Lots, the weather in the valley from November the first to the seventh is expected to be dry.
Asaram, jailed on sexual assault charges, was once again disappointed by the Supreme Court on Friday.
It was pleaded on behalf of Asaram that the media coverage is presenting him as a kind of Dracula drinking the blood of children, but the Supreme Court denied his request to ban the media coverage.
Chief Judge P. Satshivam's panel refused to ban the media coverage about Asaram and said that they had read every word reported by the media and had not found anything objectionable in it.
When they are receiving information from the police and other people how can we stop them?
Before that Asaram's lawyers accused the media of showing highly biased news.
The country has so many newspapers and news channels.
They cannot file cases against every one of them, but the panel was not influenced by this plea and refused to file a complaint, saying that they had other options too.
The Court has already previously denied Asaram's request to ban the media coverage.
The officers of the department claim that this is the biggest case of TDS theft to date.
The director of the Mall group made payments to all the financial institutions after deducting the TDS, but did not deposit it in the government treasury.
In this way he kept the accumulated TDS amount.
The Mumbai Income Tax team, along with the team from the Jaipur Income tax department, raided this group on October 17th.
During the investigation of this group it was revealed that this businessman had deducted the TDS but had not paid it in.
This is why the TDS team initiated an income tax survey of this group.
About 15 days before, raids and a survey was carried out on the mall's group of directors, before there was any risk of the accounts being sealed.
Angry with these actions, the businessman clearly told the officers of the income tax department that he is not ready to pay the TDS amount due to the income tax department right now.
The Income tax department is continuing to target him and take action.
In this case the officers have explained that if payment is not made the accounts will be frozen and a recovery procedure will be initiated.
As Diwali is approaching the demand for desserts has increased.
Because of this, the sale of substandard and counterfeit milk solids has increased.
To make the desserts glossy, colourful and sweet, chemicals that are harmful for the health are being used,.
The Food and Drug Administration Department has launched a campaign against fake milk solids and chemical based desserts.
The department has seized Rs.70 thousand worth of milk solids brought in from Madhya Pradesh and Rs 5 thousand worth chum chum from the Quetta Colony.
With the increase in demand of desserts in the market the demand for fake milk solids from Madhya Pradesh has also increased.
The department received a tip off that substandard milk solids were being brought from Madhya Pradesh to Nagpur and stored in soil.
The milk solids were brought from the transport garage to Nagpur.
The milk solids seized by the department were reported to be worth Rs.70 thousand.
No one has claimed the milk solids due to the risk of legal action.
The department has destroyed the same as it was considered unclaimed (unknown).
The department raided Jitendra Caterers in the Quetta Colony and seized chum chum worth around Rs.5 thousand.
A chemical named sodium hydro-sulphate is used to make the chum chum shiny and more lasting.
A sample has been sent to the laboratory.
The joint-commissioner of the department, S.S. Deshmukh, said that the campaign to seize chemical based desserts and substandard or counterfeit milk solids will continue.
The department also said that in the next few days this campaign would intensify.
The consumption of these desserts can cause poisoning.
The department has asked tradesmen to use good milk and milk solids when making desserts.
An appeal has been made on behalf of the department to the public to beware of fake desserts.
42 selected senior leaders of the state BJP unit gave him a grand reception at the airport.
It is noteworthy that Modi was here on a consolation tour in Bihar organised by the BJP.
The consolation tour was an exercise organised by the BJP to console the families of the victims of the Patna bomb blasts.
It is noteworthy that a total of 7 bomb blasts occurred one after the other during Narendra Modi's Hunkaar rally on October 27th.
Indian Mujahideen terrorists involved in the bombings had intended to cause a stampede during the rally, so that more people would die and to spread panic in the state.
The terrorists intentions were thwarted but six people died in the blasts.
They all have been declared to be martyrs by the BJP.
An urn tour was organized from their village by the party leaders on Thursday.
Their remains were buried in the Ganges in Patna on November 5th.
The consolation tour was a part of this tour.
The main player in this was Narendra Modi.
He will be going to the villages of the people killed in the bomb blasts to meet the families.
During this meeting and visit he will be donating cheques worth five lakh rupees to each family of the deceased.
This financial aid has been already announced by the BJP.
When the exciting Indian team plays at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium after their spectacular win in the last match for the seventh and last one-day against Australia, they will be aiming to win this match and win the series.
After rains washed out the last two one-day matches, they had to win the Nagpur one-day for India to remain in the series, and its batsmen played an amazing game and had a record win, levelling the series at 2-2.
In this series team India has achieved the target of 350 or more runs twice and once again the responsibility to save the team lies with the batsmen.
Indian batting is at its peak now and even the bigger targets seem small to them.
Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohile and Mahendra Singh Dhoni are in great form, but the team also has high expectations of Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja.
As far as opening is concerned, the opening pair of Rohit and Shikhar is making the job easier for the other batsmen, with their strong partnership.
They gave Virat the opportunity to bat without any pressure in Jaipur and Nagpur with their remarkable opening partnership.
Given the great performance by Virat up until now at No.3, he is being seen as the future Sachin Tendulkar.
Actually, a lot of cricket greats have said that he is better than Sachin.
Virat, who is completing 25 years next week, has scored 17 one-day centuries out of which 16 have lead to an Indian victory.
While chasing a target his average is above 80 and he has emerged as a excellent finisher.
The top three batmen of India are in great form, but too much reliance on these three can also be damaging for the team.
Raina and Yuvraj were very bog flops in the last match.
Yuvraj could not even open his account in the two matches of the series.
Because of this, a good innings at the Bengaluru one-day would be a 'lifeline' for him.
As far as Australia team is concerned, their batsmen especially Captain George Bailey, has impressed everyone with his performances.
There has been demand to include him in the Home Ashes test team against England.
Australia has good batsmen up to number nine.
Besides of Bailey, Shane Watson, Glenn Maxwell, Adam Voges and James Faulkner have batted well in the series.
Although Phil Hugh and Eron Finch haven't been able to make an impression at the opening.
However, the absence of bowler Michael Johnson could make things difficult.
Johnson, who had been performing well until now in the series, has been sent home to prepare for the Ashes series.
BJP national executive member and chief spokesperson, Dr Jitendra Singh, said Pakistan is now working on a new strategy to infiltration of terrorist groups under the guise of peace.
Citing reports from intelligence agencies, Singh said in a statement issued on Thursday that Pakistan is leaving no stone unturned in trying to infiltrate 2,000 terrorists trained in their training camps.
That is why they will never allow peace to prevail on the border.
After the separatists intentions of provoking the people in Kashmir and spreading widespread unrest failed, Pakistan has become more unruly.
Citing the Pakistan tour of the separatist the BJP leader said that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen Zaheer-ul-Islam, Lashkar, Hizb chief's Hafeez Sayeed and Saiyad Sallahuddin have predicted a rise in terrorism in 2014.
Pakistan is seriously trying to complete this promise.
The killing of soldiers on the border and suicide bombings in Samba, Hiranagar are part of the same strategy.
While stating that under these circumstances demand for the suspension of the special rights of the army would be dangerous, he said that saying such things before things cool down in the state is also not in the public interest.
This would abet the anti-national elements.
He stressed that the leaders should stop making statements that reduce the morale of the army and security forces.
Snowden ready to "cooperate" with Germany over US surveillance
Edward Snowden, the US intelligence whistleblower, has declared that he is willing to travel to Berlin to give evidence to the German parliament if the US National Security Agency and its director Keith Alexander fail to provide answers about its activities.
German MP Hans-Christian Ströbele on Thursday met Mr Snowden in Russia, where he has been granted asylum, to discuss him testifying in Germany.
A letter from Mr Snowden, presented to the media in Berlin on Friday by the MP, said: "Though the outcome of my efforts has been demonstrably positive, my government continues to treat dissent as defection, and seeks to criminalise political speech with felony charges that provide no defence."
However, speaking the truth is not a crime.
In the letter, Mr Snowden said he believed the support of the international community could persuade the US government to abandon criminal charges against him.
The charges filed by the US justice department include espionage and theft of government property.
Hans-Peter Friedrich, German interior minister, told Zeit Online: "If Mr Snowden is ready to speak to German officials, we will find ways to make this possible."
Relations between the US and Germany have come under strain following claims that the NSA bugged Chancellor Angela's Merkel's phone.
Thomas Oppermann, the MP who heads the parliamentary panel that oversees intelligence, said that if there were an opportunity to hear Mr Snowden as a witness "without bringing him into danger and completely ruining relations with the US," it should be taken.
Mr Ströbele, an MP for Germany's Green party, published a picture of himself with Mr Snowden on his Twitter feed.
He was accompanied on his visit to Russia by two German journalists.
Mr Ströbele said that, according to the former NSA contractor's lawyer, Mr Snowden would not be able to return to Russia if he left.
If Mr Snowden testified in Germany he would need assurances that he would be "safe" there, the MP said.
Mr Snowden said in his letter that he had faced a "severe and sustained" campaign of persecution that forced him from his home.
However he said that he was heartened by the worldwide response to "my act of political expression."
Citizens around the world as well as high officials - including in the United States - have judged the revelation of an unaccountable system of pervasive surveillance to be a public service.
The letter extends an offer to cooperate with German authorities "when the difficulties of this humanitarian situation have been resolved."
Frontier Airlines to charge for carry-on baggage
Frontier Airlines plans to charge up to $100 for passengers to store carry-on luggage on board their flight.
Frontier Airlines plans to start charging up to $100 for a carry-on bag and $2 for coffee or soda, although its announcement on Wednesday did say that passengers will get to keep the whole can.
The new carry-on fee is for bags in the overhead bin, so small bags under the seat will still be free.
Frontier said it will charge $25 if the fee is paid in advance, $100 if travelers wait to pay until they're at the gate.
Frontier spokeswoman Kate O'Malley said the $100 fee is to get travelers to take care of the charge in advance.
"We don't want to charge that," she said.
Airlines began charging for the first and second checked bags in 2008.
Passengers trying to avoid those fees have been stuffing as much as they can into carry-on baggage stashed in overhead bins, meaning those bins often run out of space.
Fees are one way to get passengers to bring less on board.
O'Malley said the new charge is not really about raising money.
It's about Frontier's most loyal customers making it very clear that finding overhead bin space has become increasingly difficult.
Passengers who buy their tickets on the airline's website won't have to pay.
That means one passenger in line at a Frontier gate might get to bring a bag on for free, while the next person in line might owe $100 for a similar bag.
O'Malley said Frontier's website and check-in procedures are being changed to make sure passengers know about the fee before they get to the gate.
Frontier's new carry-on fee won't start until summer, though a date hasn't been set.
Passengers often grumble about baggage charges and other fees, but airlines love them.
They argue that luggage costs money to handle, and passengers who want the service should pay for it.
Many on Wall Street view the addition of baggage fees as a sign that airlines are charging enough money to cover the cost of air travel after years of losses.
Most haven't touched carry-on bag fees, though.
Spirit Airlines Inc. started the first carry-on fee three years ago, and fellow discounter Allegiant Air later followed.
The only other airline with such a fee is Hungary's Wizz Air, said airline consultant Jay Sorensen, who closely tracks add-on fees.
He estimated in a December 2011 report that Spirit's carry-on fee brings in $50 million a year.
Sorensen, a former executive with Midwest Airlines, flew Spirit recently and wondered what he'd find at the gate as passengers encountered Spirit's unusual carry-on bag fee.
"The boarding process was the smoothest I had seen in my airline career," he said.
I was expecting to see gnashing of teeth and a fight breaking out at the gate.
The plane was full, he said, "and it boarded lickety-split."
Frontier is also following Spirit's $2 charge for coffee, tea, soda, or juice.
Frontier said passengers who get soda or juice can keep the whole can, and it will give coffee refills for free.
It will still give away water.
US Airways briefly tried charging for beverages in 2008 but backed down seven months later after passengers complained and no other major airline followed.
Frontier's move to charge the carry-on fee if passengers don't buy direct from the airline is its latest effort to steer customers toward its own website.
Airlines pay online travel sellers such as Orbitz $10 to $25 for each ticket sold.
That has given all airlines an incentive to steer passengers to buy directly from them instead of going through an online travel agency.
Frontier has gone the furthest in this area, though.
In September it began giving half as many frequent flier miles to customers who bought through an online travel agency.
On Wednesday it slashed the mileage award to 25 percent of the miles of the trip.
So, a 1,000 mile Frontier trip purchased from an online travel agency would earn 250 miles.
It also allows passengers to choose their seat in advance only if they buy directly from the Frontier website.
Frontier has a loyal base of customers in its home city of Denver, but its business is shrinking and losing money.
Revenue dropped 9 percent and its flying capacity shrank almost 13 percent in the first quarter, according to financial results released Wednesday by corporate parent Republic Airways Holdings Inc.
Republic has been trying to fix Frontier's finances as part of selling the airline.
NSA Blames "Internal Error," Not Hackers, For Website Crash
The shadowy National Security Agency said late Friday that it was a glitch that brought down its public website for a few hours, not hackers as some claimed online.
"NSA.gov was not accessible for several hours tonight because of an internal error that occurred during a scheduled update," the spy agency said in an emailed statement.
The issue will be resolved this evening.
Claims that the outage was caused by a distributed denial of service [DDoS] attack are not true.
Earlier this evening online server trackers noted the NSA's website had been down for at least six hours, and the site continues to be inaccessible for some users.
Earlier an NSA spokesperson told ABC News the agency's internal, sensitive network was "not at all" compromised.
No classified information is in danger, the spokesperson said.
At least one hacktivist group online claimed that they were responsible for bringing down the NSA site with a DDoS attack.
DDoS attacks are designed to flood a target website with traffic until the servers are overloaded and the site collapses.
The cyber tactic is a relatively unsophisticated one and the attacks are not meant to penetrate the internal network of the target system.
The formerly super secretive NSA, once nicknamed No Such Agency, has found itself in very public light, and amid vicious criticism, in past months following a stream of revelations about is vast foreign and domestic surveillance programs - collectively the product of secret NSA files stolen from the agency and leaked by disenchanted former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Such growing controversy surrounding the agency prompted early speculation that tonight's incident was the result of a targeted cyber operation.
A wonderful performance was given at the show "Ek aur Dronacharya" showing the resemblance between the Dwaapar yug and today.
It showed how, in today's world, a teacher can be forced to follow the wrong path in compromising circumstances.
The play was inaugurated in the St. Joseph Inter College auditorium jointly by Chief Guest MLA Prabhdayal Valmiki, Cantonment Board Vice-president Shipra Rastogi, Nresh Kansal and Shakti Singh.
The play showed the similarities between the conditions in Dronacharya in the Dwaapaar age and followed a professor called Arvind in the present day.
The play directed by Anil Sharma, Bharat Bhushan Sharma, Anil Sharma, Vinod Bechain, Hemant Goel, Seema Samar, Vanshidhar Chaturvedi, Abid Sammy, Shiva Ghazala, Amit, Ramesh, Arjun etc. did full justice to the characters and was a spectacular show.
The theatre lighting was handled by a young artist, Jitendra C. Raj, and the set was designed by Hemant Kumar.
After this function on behalf of APTA, many awards were presented to various literary and cultural personalities.
The head of the Urdu Department of Charan Singh University, Dr. Aslam Jamshedpuri, Senior Journalist Shambhunath Shukla and theatre designer Jitendra C. Raj were awarded on this occasion.
Among the officials of the executive committee, secretary Surendra Sharma, Rakesh Kaushik, Abid Rizvi etc., contributed to the success of the program.
Bombardier profit dips as plane deliveries, orders fall
Canadian plane and train maker Bombardier Inc reported a 15 percent fall in net profit on Thursday, pressured by fewer aircraft orders and deliveries in the third quarter and contract issues in its train unit.
Montreal-based Bombardier also did not release any flight test data for its brand-new CSeries aircraft or offer an update on whether the plane will meet its ambitious schedule of going into commercial service by next September.
After the test plane's inaugural flight about a month and a half ago, it has only flown three more times, raising questions over whether the testing phase is on track.
Results fell short of forecasts and sent shares sliding more than 8 percent on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Cameron Doerksen, an analyst with National Bank Financial, lowered his rating to "sector perform" from "outperform" on Thursday with the view that the stock has limited upside over the next one or two quarters.
"While the weaker aircraft deliveries were mostly anticipated, we are clearly disappointed by the margin performance in transportation," Doerksen said in a client note.
We believe that Bombardier will receive new orders for the CSeries as the flight test program progresses.
However, if no new orders are announced in the coming months, we suspect that the market will become more skeptical of the program.
Bombardier hopes the CSeries aircraft family can catapult it into the low end of a market now dominated by Boeing and Airbus.
The first test plane was unveiled in March and took flight for the first time in September after months of delays.
But firm orders for the CSeries are moderate so far at 177 as potential buyers wait for flight test results to validate the company's claims about the new jetliner's fuel efficiency and cost savings potential.
There are currently 403 total orders and commitments with 15 customers and operators.
Chief Executive Officer Pierre Beaudoin was confident Bombardier would meet its 300 firm order target by the time the first jet is put into commercial use.
Executives also reassured analysts and media on Thursday the program was progressing according to schedule.
"The test plane didn't stay on the ground longer than anticipated," Beaudoin said in a conference call, adding that ground tests and software updates were scheduled during the plane's downtime.
Every manufacturer schedules it in a different way.
We had decided to do a first flight and to do an update period and that's what we have done.
That will happen all through the flight program.
The second of five test planes is expected to take flight in the coming weeks, with the remainder following shortly after, the company said.
Still, analysts are skeptical the first customer can begin operating a CSeries plane 12 months after its maiden flight.
Bombardier said it was evaluating the entry-into-service (EIS) schedule and will provide an update in the next few months.
"This slow pace of flight testing - although in line with Bombardier's internal schedule apparently - reinforces our view that entry-into-service will be pushed to Q1/15," said Doerksen.
For the third quarter ended September 30, Bombardier's net profit fell to $147 million, or 8 cents per share, from $172 million, or 9 cents per share a year earlier.
Adjusted earnings per share were unchanged at 9 cents.
Revenue dipped marginally to $4.1 billion from $4.2 billion.
Analysts had expected earnings of 10 cents per share and revenue of $4.56 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The world's fourth-largest planemaker said it delivered 45 aircraft during the quarter, down from 57 a year earlier.
Net orders fell to 26 aircraft, from 83.
The backlog in the aerospace division was $32.9 billion as of September 30, unchanged from December 31.
"In aerospace, results were in line with our guidance, but the low order intake and overall market conditions were a disappointment," Beaudoin said.
Aerospace revenue fell 13 percent to $2 billion.
Bombardier, the world's largest trainmaker, said revenue in that division rose nearly 11 percent to $2.1 billion.
The order backlog in the transportation unit was $32.6 billion as of September 30, up marginally from December 31.
The transportation division's margins were affected by execution issues in a few large contracts.
Executives said new guidance would be provided in the fourth quarter.
Shares of Bombardier, which also announced that Google Inc Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette would join the board, were down 8.5 percent at C$4.83 in mid afternoon trading on Thursday.
Brazil's Embraer SA, the world's third-largest commercial planemaker and Bombardier's closest rival, reported a 10 percent fall in quarterly profit on Thursday.
New research has revealed that we work with complete honesty and dedication in the morning hours.
Thoughts of lying to anyone and theft or cheating someone do not enter our heads.
But as the evening comes, our minds change and we set aside our principles and we go against the accepted norms.
In research carried out by Harvard University and the David Axle School of Business, Utah, researchers have revealed some interesting facts.
According to researchers, while we don't have work pressure in the morning we attach importance to moral values, but as the evening sets in, due to fatigue or extra pressure our honesty declines.
To test this researchers did two experiments.
They asked some subjects to count the number of dots on a computer screen.
For example, subjects had to say if the dots were more on the right or left-hand side.
Participants were then told that if they give the wrong answer rather than the correct answer they would be given money.
This experiment shows that those who took part in the experiment in the morning between 8 and 12 did not make any mistakes and they gave the correct answers.
At the same time, those who took part in the experiment between 12 noon and 6pm set aside their morals and intentionally gave wrong answers.
Researchers have succeeded in proving that in the morning the greed for money does not affect our honesty, but in the evening we chose to ignore morality.
The research is published in the current issue of Psychological Science.
After the robbery, the robbers left waving pistols.
Relatives admitted the wounded to the hospital in a critical condition.
Sunder s/o Sohanveer, a resident of Madhi Village, had recently retired from the post of junior engineer from the Electrical Department.
On Wednesday he was returning home on his bicycle after withdrawing 44 thousand rupees from the Bhola branch of the Syndicate Bank.
On the Bhola to Marhi road, two men riding a bike came from behind and robbed Sundar and took the 44 thousand in cash.
When Sunder protested they shot him in the stomach, wounding him.
Upon hearing the news, family members and villagers rushed him to the hospital in Meerut in a serious condition.
No report was filed until the news was reported.
Note that three days ago Jasveer, a resident of Ammanulapur, was shot and injured while returning home from the same bank by two robbers.
The police could not reveal any information about many more similar recent cases besides these.
S/o Sumer Singh Yadav claimed that the details of the incident would be revealed soon.
When the hotel employees protested the fight began.
R.K. Singh, the hotel owner's younger brother came to mediate, the MP's drunken son started a scuffle with him.
In the meantime, a lot of people gathered there.
When an attempt was made to grab the assaulting youth he fired the revolver.
The shooting triggered panic in the area.
After this the hotel employees caught him and informed the police.
The hotel owner, Munna Singh, on reaching the police station filed a report against Anand Pandey, son of MP Gorakhnath Pandey, a resident of Barecha Pahadpur at the Koirana station in the Bhadohi district.
Upon which the police arrested Anand and seized his revolver.
According to Handiya Inspector Ashok Saraswat, Munna Singh, a resident of Pratapgarh in Khabhor, runs a hotel called Raag Durbar on the National Highway.
At around 8pm Anand Pandey arrived at the hotel and ordered food.
When the service was delayed, he started shouting abuse, assaulting the staff and shooting.
Anand was drunk and he also threatened to kill the hotel employees.
The inspector said that the Hotel is near Bhiti Village and adjacent to Bhadoi District.
Cocaine-addict lawyer who tipped off Mr Big about police investigation is jailed
Basharat Ditta, 42, would feed information to crime lord Neil Scarbrough
The solicitor feared his secret drug addiction would be exposed
Was given a three-year prison sentence at Liverpool Crown Court
A top defence lawyer who told a drugs Mr Big about a major police investigation, because he feared his secret drug addiction would be exposed, has been jailed for three years.
Basharat Ditta, 42, would feed sensitive intelligence to crime lord Neil Scarbrough about inquiries into his drug trafficking activities after he became compromised by his cocaine habit.
The solicitor, who was nicknamed "Bash" and hailed by criminals as a "top brief," was arrested at his home in 2011 following a police surveillance operation into Scarborough, who he had represented in a previous narcotics trial.
Officers spotted Sarborough, 32, dropping off three bags of cocaine at the lawyer's home in Blackburn, Lancashire, while he was out at a Law Society dinner with colleagues.
Inquiries revealed Ditta was a "regular user" of the Class A drug after tests found traces of cocaine in his hair, on his wallet and on his credit cards.
Over an eight month period between January and August 2011 he sought to illicitly obtain information on the arrests of two men on behalf of Scarborough as well as one of his associates.
All four suspects were being watched by police at the time as part of a major investigation into a heroin and cocaine racket operating across Lancashire, Cumbria, Merseyside, Berkshire and West Yorkshire.
They and 32 other men were later jailed after police seized heroin and cocaine worth £1.5million along with more than £200,000 in cash during a series of raids.
Ditta, 42, fed information to criminals because of fears his cocaine addiction would be exposed
Today at Liverpool Crown Court Ditta, who works at law firm Forbes Solicitors, based in Blackburn, was facing disgrace after being found guilty of two counts of perverting the course of justice following a three week trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
He admitted cocaine possession at an earlier hearing.
The lawyer's downfall came after police investigating Scarborough discovered he had been in regular phone contact with Ditta in February 2011.
Two detectives trailed the suspect and spotted him arriving at Ditta's house in and was seen to place the drugs which had a purity of 60 per cent under the lawyer's bins in a black golf glove.
Soon after the drop off, Scarborough was in regular phone contact with Ditta who had been out at the dinner at the Blackburn Rovers football stadium, Ewood Park.
The lawyer returned home to discover the drugs and there were nine communications between them.
The court heard Ditta was a "regular user" of cocaine after tests found traces of the Class A drug in his hair, wallet and on his credit cards
Ditta was arrested later but denied using cocaine and and said he had been speaking to the suspected dealer because he was his client and argued their discussions were subject to "legal privilege."
During his arrest Ditta picked up his wallet and tried to remove several credit cards but they were all seized and a hair sample was taken fom him.
In a police interview he said he ran an office at his home address as well as work place and clients would call at his house on legal business.
But the court heard he would call major players in the drugs supply chain, some of whom he had previously represented, after key arrests to tell them what detectives knew about them.
Prosecuting, Anne Whyte said: "If anyone should know not to the break the law, it is a criminal solicitor."
Mr Ditta is accused of abusing his position as a criminal solicitor, having become too involved with specific clients.
The relationship we are talking about is not simply a drug dealer, but a drug dealer providing his own lawyer with drugs.
Some of his communications will undoubtedly have been legitimate ones because he was their lawyer.
But this went way beyond the ordinary confines of a lawyer-client relationship.
He thwarted the police's investigation as much as possible to enable them to continue in their criminal activities.
Mr Ditta was not honouring his profession, but dishonouring it.
He got too close to certain clients, in particular Scarborough, and he allowed his independence to be compromised.
Ditta denied wrongdoing and claimed: "If I was a corrupt lawyer, which I am not, and I wanted to feed information to Mr Scarborough, I would not wait 15 hours, I would do it immediately."
But after the hearing Supt Lee Halstead from Lancashire Police said: "Mr Ditta turned from criminal solicitor to a criminal himself the moment he started obtaining drugs from organised criminals."
His addiction to cocaine left him hopelessly compromised and vulnerable to the motives of leading members of organised crime groups who tasked him to obtain valuable information regarding police investigations.
Solicitors should uphold the highest standards of integrity and should instil trust and confidence in the public.
Mr Ditta has betrayed this trust and attempted to hide behind the veneer of his profession.
Lancashire's Serious and Organised Crime Unit led the investigation into Mr Ditta which has also seen him convicted of three counts of possession of cocaine and now perverting the course of justice, demonstrating our commitment to bringing criminals to justice.
Let this case serve as a warning to criminals that no one is beyond the reach of the law.
We will find you and put you before the courts.
Scarborough himself was jailed for 14 years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin, cocaine and cannabis.
Thirty five other men involved in the racket were jailed for a total of 153 years for drugs offences.
On his website Ditta gave a question and answer session about himself in which he says his fantasy job would be a lawyer representing clients on Death Row in America, his ultimate dinner guest as being Mohammed Ali and inequality as his motivation for work.
Kenyan press outraged at controversial media law
"It is a frightening place, and it is valid to ask: what is there to prevent Parliament from simply sweeping away the independence of the judiciary tomorrow?" the paper said, challenging the bill as unconstitutional.
"This law is draconian and very punitive and we reject it," said Cyrus Kamau, managing director for Capital Group - home to CapitalFM, one of Kenya's most respected independent radio stations and news websites.
He said the new media tribunal "will always be biased because it's an extension of the government," and that restrictions on content and advertising would damage Kenya's place in the global economy.
"I hope the president will listen to us, and we appeal to him to reject this bill and return it to the MPs," he said.
According to The Star newspaper, the new bill will effectively hand the government "a stranglehold over the media," while The Standard said democracy and free speech in Kenya had been "dealt a major blow" and lambasted the bill as "draconian."
The passing of the bill comes amid a string of measures to reinforce national security in the wake of the September's attack by Islamist gunmen on the Westgate shopping mall.
Kenya media drew the ire of authorities by broadcasting security camera footage of troops who were dispatched to the scene of the attack purportedly robbing the upmarket mall.
Police chief David Kimaiyo reacted by summoning two journalists and a media executive for questioning, although the summons was retracted following a media outcry.
Under the new bill, media houses can be fined up to 20 million Kenyan shillings and individual journalists up to one million with the additional risk of being "de-listed," or barred from receiving official press accreditation.
The tribunal also has the power to seize the property of an offender if a fine is not paid.
According to the Daily Nation, "even one fine is enough to cripple most FM stations."
It also said the measures could have a devastating effect on what it described as Kenya's "lively blogosphere."
By silencing the media, politicians know they can do whatever they like with impunity.
"No one will ever know," wrote Nation journalist Mutuma Mathiu, describing the Kenyan media as a key source of checks and balances in public life.
"Left to themselves, politicians would bankrupt the country and take us back to hunting and gathering," he wrote.
Kenyan lawmakers have been the target of public anger in the past.
In May they voted to overturn cuts ordered by the national salaries commission and reinstate their hefty salaries of around 532,000 shillings a month tax-free - ranked among the highest in the world.
Although Nita Ambani, the wife of the world's richest Indian, Mukesh Ambani, celebrates her birthday on November 1st, as the clocks struck twelve on the night of October 30th, the whole of Jaipur began to celebrate Nita Ambani's birthday.
Prior to that, the mood of the occasion had already been set by A.R. Rahman and his group's performance.
A.R. Rahman sang his signature songs in the musical evening that started at 8 p.m.
Priyanka Chopra was on stage to add colour with her dances.
Guests arrived in around 32 chartered aircraft to attend Nita Ambani's birthday party.
As space at Jodhpur Airport was inadequate, the chartered planes landed at Jaipur, Delhi, Udaipur and Jodhpur.
same way 135 luxury cars were also used, including BMWs and Jaguars.
Sood said that the city's sanitation system and street lights had totally broken down.
No steps were being taken by the municipal corporation and HUDA to run Panchkula city centre.
He demanded the complete abolition of house tax in Panchkula.
On Friday, while addressing a press conference here, V.K. Sood said that, after the municipal corporation elections the city got a new councillor and mayor, but they do not have the powers necessary to get the work done.
So the city councillors have become dummies and officers are doing as they pleased.
Sood said that the municipal corporation has crores of rupees at its disposal, but all the money is in the form of Bank FDs and interest is being earned on it.
So no steps are being taken to use that money for the development of the city.
V.K. Sood said the refuse dump issue is the most serious problem.
By creating a dump in Sector 23, people living in sectors beyond Ghaggar are forced to live a hellish life.
The municipal corporation officers have been talking about shifting the dump to the village of Jhuriwala for the past several years now, but the inhabitants of the Barwala area are already facing a serious problem with flies.
He said that healthcare and educational facilities are extremely bad.
No work has yet been started to provide facilities for rural inhabitants.
UN hails new goals to tackle poverty
The United Nations is to start work immediately on a new set of goals to replace the millennium development goals, which were put place 12 years ago to tackle global poverty.
Australian diplomats played a key role in pushing for "sustainable development goals" to replace the MDGs, which expire in 2015, ahead of the UN sustainable development summit that began in Rio de Janeiro overnight.
They were included in the final draft of the document, which will be endorsed by world leaders including Ms Gillard during the summit.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the summit overnight that now is the time to "rise above national interests."
"I am pleased that member states have agreed to launch and take ownership of a process to establish universal sustainable development goals - SDGs," he said.
These SDGs will build on our advances under the millennium development goals, and they will be an integral part of the post-2015 development framework.
I will spare no effort to implement the mandate given to me by member states to realise our vision of sustainable development goals that build on the success of the MDGs.
Mozambique security concerns mount as powerful personalities clash
With a statue of Samora Machel, Mozambique's founding president, staring down on them, thousands of people gathered in central Maputo to chant peace slogans in a rare public demonstration.
"We want peace back; we want stability," said Vanessa de Sousa, chief executive of an investment company.
Fearful about the future of her country, she swapped her corporate attire for a T-shirt emblazoned with "we demand security" in Portuguese as she joined the crowds in the capital's Independence Square on Thursday.
For two weeks, there have been almost daily reports of clashes between government forces and Renamo, some of the worst skirmishes since a peace deal more than 20 years ago.
Renamo was once a notorious rebel movement, initially backed by white-ruled Rhodesia and then South Africa's apartheid government as part of efforts to destabilise the country's independent government.
After a 1992 peace deal, it became an opposition party.
Analysts believe the country is unlikely to slide back into full-blown conflict, but recent events have unnerved foreign investors and locals.
The stakes are high for the fast-growing economy as the discovery of huge offshore gas reserves and coal deposits in the northwest could bring in more than $50bn of investment over the next few next years from companies including Rio Tinto, Vale of Brazil, Eni of Italy and Anadarko of the US.
The ruling Frelimo party, the dominant political force since 1975, and Renamo blame each other for the tension.
Renamo says the government initiated the latest clashes by launching an attack on its members in Sofala province, traditionally a Renamo stronghold, on October 17.
Assaults on the former rebels then escalated as government forces attacked Renamo bases and attempted to kill Afonso Dhlakama, the group's leader, Fernando Mazanga, Renamo's spokesman, told the Financial Times.
The government blames Renamo for triggering the clashes, accusing it of attacking soldiers.
President Armando Guebuza has sought to play down concerns about instability.
Mr Guebuza told AFP, the French news agency, on Wednesday that Mr Dhlakama saw himself as a "loser" who wanted to use "whatever remains of his forces to try to prove that he can impose on the government his own decisions."
Both Frelimo and Renamo insist they want to avoid war.
But concerns have grown after Mr Mazanga was quoted as saying Renamo was abandoning the 1992 peace accord.
He told the FT that he meant the agreement was no longer being respected by Frelimo.
"Our vision is to come back to negotiations, but with seriousness," Mr Mazanga said.
Previous talks between the parties have done little to ease tensions fuelled by a series of clashes this year.
"It's two big men (Guebuza and Dhlakama) butting heads together," said Joseph Hanlon, a lecturer at the Open University and Mozambique expert.
Neither of them are good negotiators and neither of them are prepared to make the kind of concessions that are necessary.
Renamo, which has been pushing for electoral reforms, had already said that it would boycott municipal elections due in November.
Presidential and parliamentary polls are scheduled for next year.
Some commentators have interpreted its use of force as the attempt of an ailing movement to win concessions and financial spoils from the government.
Renamo's share of the vote has been declining since 1992, while a newer party, the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) which was formed by a former Renamo member, is expected to improve its showing at the elections.
Mr Mazanga says Mr Guebuza - who is due to step down when his second term ends next year - wants to destroy the country's democracy.
"He does not want multi-party democracy, he does not want transparent elections he does not want peace because he does not want to leave the presidency," Mr Mazanga said.
It is unclear how much capacity Renamo has, but it has carried out disruptive hit-and-run attacks on police stations and vehicles on a key north-south highway.
Most of the skirmishes have taken place in Sofala province, which is several hundred kilometres north of Maputo, but hosts Beira, the port that miners, including Rio Tinto and Vale, rely on to export coal.
In June, Rio suspended its use of the railway for about a week after Renamo threatened to attack the line.
Mr Mazanga was coy when asked about whether Renamo would repeat this threat.
Renamo wanted to "warn the international community that things were not going well in Mozambique," Mr Mazanga said.
The instability has added to frustrations with the government, says Fernando Lima, head of Mediacoop, an independent media company, with many people also concerned about corruption, the slow pace of development and a recent spate of kidnappings.
"People think the ones responsible for the future of the country are the government and the president, and he should be the one to find solutions for the problems," he says.
Omar Sultuane, a demonstrator, said people just wanted stability.
"No one cares about Renamo and Frelimo, they just want peace again, they want free access to the roads," he said.
Children should be taught myths and legends as "models for a way of life", author says.
Tales of Thor could show "brute strength is no match for subtle trickery," while the Arthurian legends reveal the importance of having a dream.
Saying many of the myths would be "far too wild, far too scandalous and in some cases far too filthy to be taught in schools," Crossley-Holland advocated a "careful selection" of age-appropriate works.
"I find it wonderful that in America, myth and folklore already has a part in education," he said.
I have been advocating it as a plan for twenty years.
He added authors and teachers being "overtly didactic" is a "total switch-off" for children, with messages being "subliminated" in enjoyable stories.
Crossley-Holland, who has translated Beowulf from Anglo-Saxon as well as writing the Penguin Book of Norse Myths and British Folk Tales, said: "You may well have intentions but you do better to keep them well out of sight."
Perhaps the big difference between an adult author writing for an adult and an adult author writing for a child is the necessity for some sense of hope.
Not that everything has to be simplified or come to a happy ending, but that there is an innate sense of good and evil.
And that must be subliminated; revealed through a story rather than stated.
The old basis of showing not telling.
Samvaad Associate, Ghumaarvi: the head constable, Om Prakash, retired after serving the Police Department for 32 years in Ghumaarvi.
To celebrate the occasion the employees and officers of the Police Department organised a farewell party.
Om Prakash is a resident of Bhapral village in Bhapral gram panchayat.
He served very well throughout his entire tenure.
Ben Greenman: The Tenth Anniversary of the New York Comedy Festival: The New Yorker
One could argue that New York City is the birthplace of standup comedy in America: nearly a hundred years ago, the vaudevillian Frank Fay, who served as the master of ceremonies at the Palace Theatre, on Broadway, started telling jokes directly to the crowd, in a conversational manner.
Fay's innovation has been extended through the years, most recently by the New York Comedy Festival.
Created and overseen by Caroline Hirsch, the founder of the standup institution Carolines, the festival celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, with more than sixty shows at small clubs and large theatres.
"Most of these headliners appeared at Carolines, and went on to greater success, to the point where they're too big to play a club," Hirsch said.
We built this festival as a way of continuing to work with them.
This year's event includes appearances by Wanda Sykes, Kathy Griffin, and Bill Maher, as well as "Stand Up for Heroes," an annual music-and-comedy benefit for military veterans, at Madison Square Garden, featuring, among others, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Stewart, Roger Waters, and Bill Cosby.
As the festival has expanded, so has the world of comedy.
Several of the comedians participating in this year's festival came up through nontraditional channels, such as shows on smaller networks, like Comedy Central, FX, and Spike.
Nick Kroll rose to prominence on a deep-cable sitcom (FXX's gleefully raunchy fantasy-football-themed "The League") and now has his own Comedy Central sketch show.
Jenny Slate has been a cast member on both "Saturday Night Live" and "Parks and Recreation," though she is best known for her viral video series "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On."
Both Kroll and Slate, as well as other young comedians with distinctive voices (the surreally pessimistic Anthony Jeselnik, the wry, racially focussed W. Kamau Bell), are products of the decentralized world of American comedy.
One of the festival's biggest draws will be an interview: David Steinberg talking to Larry David.
Steinberg started as a standup comedian but has become an accomplished television and film director, as well as an unofficial comedy historian.
From 2005 to 2007, he hosted a show on TV Land called "Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg."
The meeting takes place at Town Hall, in the center of Manhattan.
"The city is definitely in the comedy DNA of all of Larry's work," Steinberg said.
He was telling me that, when he's here, sometimes he'll walk down an alley between two buildings and think to himself, Hey, if I lose all my money, maybe I'll live here.
Oil extends drop toward $96 a barrel
The price of oil continued to fall on Friday as concerns over high supplies offset a report showing China's power-hungry manufacturing sector is strengthening.
Benchmark U.S. crude for December delivery was down 14 cents at $96.24 a barrel by late morning in Europe in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The contract fell 39 cents on Thursday, leaving it down 5.8 percent for the month of October.
Ample supplies of crude have weighed on the price in recent weeks.
The Energy Department said Wednesday that U.S. supplies increased 4.1 million barrels last week.
Over five weeks, supplies have risen by more than 25 million barrels.
But a suggestion of stronger demand came Friday from two reports on Chinese manufacturing that showed an uptick in activity.
That suggests China's economic recovery could continue to strengthen after growth rebounded to 7.8 percent in the third quarter from a two-decade low in the previous quarter.
Brent crude, a benchmark for international crude also used by U.S. refineries, fell 26 cents to $108.58 a barrel on the ICE exchange in London.
Court blocks ruling on NYPD stop-and-frisk policy
A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked a judge's order requiring changes to the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk program and removed the judge from the case.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the decisions of Judge Shira Scheindlin will be stayed pending the outcome of an appeal by the city.
The judge had ruled in August the city violated the Constitution in the way it carried out its program of stopping and questioning people.
The city appealed her findings and her remedial orders, including a decision to assign a monitor to help the police department changes its policy and training program associated with it.
The appeals court heard arguments Tuesday on the requested stay.
The appeals court said the judge needed to be removed from the case because she ran afoul of the code of conduct for U.S. judges by compromising the necessity for a judge to avoid the appearance of partiality in part because of a series of media interviews and public statements responding publicly to criticism of the court.
The judge had ruled that police officers violated the civil rights of tens of thousands of people by wrongly targeting black and Hispanic men with its stop-and-frisk program.
She appointed an outside monitor to oversee major changes, including reforms in policies, training and supervision, and she ordered a pilot program to test body-worn cameras in some precincts where most stops occur.
In August, New York City agreed to end the practice of storing the names and addresses of people whose cases are dismissed after a police stop.
An oral argument on the city's appeal is scheduled for sometime after March 14, 2014.
The stop-and-frisk tactic has been criticized by a number of civil rights advocates.
Stop-and-frisk has been around for decades in some form, but recorded stops increased dramatically under the administration of independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg to an all-time high in 2011 of 684,330, mostly of black and Hispanic men.
A lawsuit was filed in 2004 by four men, all minorities, and became a class action case.
Supporters of changes to the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program say the changes will end unfair practices, will mold a more trusted and effective police force and can affect how other police departments use the policy.
Opponents say the changes would lower police morale but not crime, waste money and not solve a broader problem of a police force under pressure after shrinking by thousands of officers during the last decade.
The judge noted she wasn't putting an end to the stop-and-frisk practice, which is constitutional, but was reforming the way the NYPD implemented its stops.
Huge numbers of participants from Godda, Pakuf, Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Hazaribagh and Chatara districts took part in the training.
All the participants were trained in many disciplines over a period of seven days, including pitching tents and erecting flag poles.
Training is being provided with the co-operation of Dr. Ashutosh Kumar Roy and Isha Ghosh.
All the participant helped to spread a sense of unity by taking part in nondenominational prayer sessions.
The Camp Chief and Commissioner of State Training, Vipin Kumar, is offering special assistance.
Coulson used phone hacking to verify tip
Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson allegedly used "phone hacking, surveillance and confrontation" in an attempt to confirm a bogus tip about an affair involving then-home secretary Charles Clarke.
Prosecutor Andrew Edis QC told the Old Bailey that the News of the World heard a false rumour in May 2005 that Clarke was seeing his "attractive special adviser," Hannah Pawlby.
The newspaper tasked private investigator Glenn Mulcaire with hacking Pawlby's voicemails and "door-stepped" her, but Coulson also called and left her voicemails, the court heard.
"The prosecution suggests that Mr Coulson, who is now the editor of the NotW, he is not the man who stands outside people's houses hoping to catch them out, he is the man who likes to put the story to people to see what they will say," Mr Edis said.
He said the NotW used three ways to investigate stories: phone hacking, surveillance, and confrontation.
The editor is personally involved in the third.
Obviously he knows about the second, surveillance, he must do.
What about the first?
Does he know about phone hacking?
He says he doesn't, we say "Oh yes, he did".
Rumours about an affair involving Clarke were first picked up by the NotW's features desk when a source who was sexually interested in Ms Pawlby was told: "Don't bother wasting your time, she's with Charles."
A tape of voicemails taken from her phone on at least three occasions was seized from Mulcaire's home in August 2006.
Investigators also found entries on the private investigator's computer which had Ms Pawlby and her sister as "Projects."
During the period she was being investigated, Ms Pawlby's grandparents received anonymous calls asking for information about her, Mr Edis said.
Meanwhile, former chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and former reporter James Weatherup oversaw surveillance of Ms Pawlby's movements.
Leaving her a voicemail on June 18 2005, Coulson told her: "I've got a story that we're planning to run tomorrow that I really would like to speak to Charles about."
Mr Edis said Coulson's involvement in the story followed the same pattern as with other important men, such as former home secretary David Blunkett.
The jury heard on Thursday that Coulson confronted Mr Blunkett over an affair with a married woman while he was himself seeing co-defendant Rebekah Brooks, who was married at the time.
Coulson and Brooks deny conspiring with others to hack phones between October 3 2000 and August 9 2006.
Mulcaire, Thurlbeck and Weatherup have admitted phone hacking.
NSA revelations boost corporate paranoia about state surveillance
On a mild day in late August a German police helicopter buzzed low over the US consulate in Frankfurt, the financial capital of Germany.
On the instruction of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence agency, its mission was to photograph the rooftop of the US outpost, which is located less than 5km from the European Central Bank and Bundesbank.
German media say the BfV hoped to identify the presence of listening antennas and the action prompted an exchange between the US and the German foreign ministry in Berlin.
James Clapper, US Director of National Intelligence, insisted again in September that the US does not use foreign intelligence capabilities "to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of US companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line."
But ever since Edward Snowden, the contractor turned whistleblower, began releasing his treasure trove of US surveillance secrets, European governments and business leaders are no longer sure whether to take the director at his word.
Reports that the US National Security Agency spied on Brazilian oil company Petrobras and gained access to data held by US cloud providers including Google and Yahoo have ratcheted corporate paranoia about state surveillance to new highs.
The final straw came when it was revealed that Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone had been bugged, possibly for about a decade.
If Europe's most powerful person can be targeted, then surely business leaders are also potential targets.
Snowden has made transparent the intensive collaboration between US intelligence services and companies.
I think it's conceivable that these data are used for mutual benefit.
"Germany must wake up," says Oliver Grün, president of BITMi, which represents small and medium sized German IT companies.
German companies believe the US now poses almost as big a risk as China when it comes to industrial espionage and data theft, according to a survey published in July by EY, the consultancy.
In all the documentation leaked by Mr Snowden, there has, however, been no evidence to date that the US has passed on foreign companies' trade secrets to its own companies.
Politicians have expressed concern that the EU lacks certain IT and internet capabilities and should strive to reduce its dependence on the US.
Business leaders are sceptical about this.
Someone in the German parliament says we should build a German Google.
I can only shut my eyes and slowly open them again...
"That's not the way," Hasso Plattner, chairman of German business software company SAP, says.
If one wanted a strong European IT industry, then one shouldn't have let it die out 20 years ago.
Everything is subsidised in Germany, from coal, to cars and farmers.
Everything but the IT industry.
Still, the reach and technical sophistication of US spy agencies exposed by the Snowden revelations have come as a shock to some companies who previously thought the biggest surveillance risk was posed by China.
A big shift is occurring in cloud computing where European executives have become more aware that data stored in the US is subject to that jurisdiction and therefore potentially vulnerable.
According to a survey carried out by the Cloud Security Alliance, a trade body, some 10 per cent of non-US members cancelled plans to use a US-based cloud provider after revelations about the US Prism data mining programme.
Jim Snabe, co-chief executive at SAP, says: "We see a new question from customers that didn't come up a year ago - which is where is my data stored and can you guarantee that it stays physically in that jurisdiction."
Many German executives argue that the latest reports are simply confirmation of what they already knew: that powerful states want to steal their most prized secrets and these data must therefore be guarded at all costs.
That economic spying takes place is not a surprise.
It has always taken place.
"This has been a topic for many years and hasn't fundamentally changed through the current discussion," says Kurt Bock, chief executive of chemical maker BASF.
The Americans spy on us on the commercial and industrial level as we spy on them too, because it is in the national interest to defend our businesses.
Corporate leaders are not generally keen to boast about the countermeasures they have taken, in case this hands an advantage to an attacker.
For large companies, the message has long since been drummed home that picking up a free USB stick at a trade fair, or leaving a laptop unguarded in a hotel room are unwise, to say the least.
Ulrich Hackenberg, board member at carmaker Audi, says it has been standard practice for years for mobile phones to be collected before board meetings so they cannot be used as remote listening devices.
Germany's BfV advises executives to consider using simple prepaid mobiles when on foreign trips because of the risk that smart phones are compromised.
The prepaid mobiles are then thrown away afterwards.
However, there is concern that small and medium-sized companies remain vulnerable to hacking and surveillance.
In Germany, many of these companies are global market leaders in their particular niche.
"Small and medium sized companies often lack the experience, personnel and financial resources to protect corporate secrets effectively against unauthorised access," the BfV warns in a report.
The US warns its own companies about economic espionage by other countries.
The US National Intelligence Estimate in February named France alongside Russia and Israel in a second tier of offenders who engage in hacking for economic intelligence, behind China, according to The Washington Post.
A board member at a German blue-chip company concurred that when it comes to economic espionage, "the French are the worst."
Bernard Squarcini, former head of the French internal intelligence agency DCRI, was quoted in an interview this month as saying: "The services know perfectly well that all countries, even as they co-operate in the antiterrorist fight, spy on their allies."
The Americans spy on us on the commercial and industrial level as we spy on them too, because it is in the national interest to defend our businesses.
Nobody is fooled.
Parents of Georgia teen who died in 'freak accident' believe son was murdered
The parents of a Georgia teenager, whose body was found inside a rolled-up wrestling mat in his high school gym, believe their son was murdered, the family's attorney said Thursday.
Kendrick Johnson, of Valdosta, Ga., was found Jan. 11 stuck in an upright mat propped behind the bleachers inside his high school gym.
Lowndes County sheriff's investigators concluded Johnson died in a freak accident, but the 17-year-old's family disputes that.
"They absolutely think their son was murdered," Benjamin Crump, an attorney representing Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson, told FoxNews.com.
They never believed he died the way the sheriff concluded.
"They believe that it defies logic, the laws of physics as well as common sense," Crump said.
They think this is a cover-up to protect the person or people responsible for their son's death.
"They sent their son to school with a book-bag and he was returned to them in a body bag," he said.
U.S. Attorney Michael Moore said Thursday he is conducting a formal investigation into Johnson's death, noting that several key questions remain unanswered.
What was the cause of death?
Was his death the result of a crime?
Moore said at a press conference Thursday afternoon.
I will follow the facts wherever they lead.
My objective is to discovery the truth.
"I am of the opinion that a sufficient basis exists" for a formal investigation, he said.
Moore told reporters that the initial autopsy indicated Johnson died as a result of "positional asphyxia."
A second autopsy, however, listed a different cause of death, according to Moore.
"There are several questions that must be answered or confirmed," he said.
Moore added that if he uncovers sufficient evidence to warrant a criminal or civil rights investigation into the death of Johnson he will ask the FBI to conduct it.
A representative from the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office was not immediately available for comment when contacted Thursday.
A southern Georgia judge on Wednesday ordered authorities to release all surveillance video that investigators reviewed.
The teenager's parents said they hope the video footage will contain clues to how he died.
CDC issues children's allergy guidelines for schools
On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a set of guidelines to manage children's food allergies at school.
This is the first set of such guidelines the U.S. government has put out, as the number of school-age children suffering from food allergies climbs.
One in 20 children in the United States now have food allergies.
The CDC found the prevalence of food allergies among children increased 18 percent between 1997 and 2007.
The guide contains information for schools on how to make faculty and staff aware of children's food allergies, and how to handle them should an allergic reaction occur.
It also recommends schools have epinephrine stocked -- the EpiPen brand auto-injector being most commonly used -- to respond to potentially fatal anaphylaxis.
State legislatures have recently been updating rules to allow schools to stock epinephrine more easily.
The report also includes a list of typical symptoms communicated by children who are having an allergic reaction.
Kids may say, "It feels like something is poking my tongue," "My tongue feels like there is hair on it," or "My tongue is tingling."
Parents of Intersex Kids Can Pick 'Gender Undetermined'
Germany became the first European nation to recognize a third gender for babies born with ambiguous genitalia.
No longer will newborns be rigidly assigned to male or female.
The new law doesn't require parents to declare any gender for such children, allowing parents to declare gender "undetermined" or "unspecified" on their birth certificates.
The aim of the law was to take the pressure off parents who might make hasty decisions on sex-assignment surgery for newborns, and to fight discrimination against those who are intersex.
One intersex person, according to the BBC, said years later, "I am neither a man nor a woman."
I will remain the patchwork created by doctors, bruised and scarred.
An estimated one in 2,000 children born each year is neither boy nor girl.
They are intersex, part of a group of about 60 conditions that fall under the diagnosis of disorders of sexual development, an umbrella term for those with atypical chromosomes, gonads (ovaries or testes), or unusually developed genitalia.
Wallis Simpson may have been intersex.
Gender identification is still not well understood, but most experts in the United States say that when sex cannot be determined, it's better to use the best available information to assign it then to wait and monitor the child's psychological and physical development before undertaking surgery, if at all.
New York City psychiatrist Dr. Jack Drescher, who specializes in issues of gender identification, said the new German law "sounds like a good thing."
Intersex children pose ethical dilemma.
"Some people have life-endangering conditions that require surgery, but most kids do not," he said.
You can make a gender assignment without surgery, and then see how identity develops.
The science of knowing how a child will develop any gender identity is not very accurate.
Nobody can answer the questions about why this happens.
It's like the mystery of why people are gay.
A report filed to the European Commission in 2011 described intersex people as different from transsexual or transgender people, as their status is not gender related but instead relates to their biological makeup, which is neither exclusively male nor exclusively female, but is typical of both at once or not clearly defined as either.
These features can manifest themselves in secondary sexual characteristics, such as muscle mass, hair distribution, breasts and stature; primary sexual characteristics such as reproductive organs and genitalia; or in chromosomal structures and hormones.
The report also gives an overview of the discrimination faced by intersex and transgender people in the realm of employment, as well as levels of harassment, violence and bias crimes.
Gender nonconforming boys now have special camp.
Already, Australia and Nepal allow adults to mark male, female or a "third gender" on their official documents.
In June, a 52-year-old Australian, Norrie May-Welby, became the world's first recognized "genderless" person after winning a legal appeal to keep an "unspecified" gender status for life.
German passports will have a third designation other than M or F -- X, for intersex, according to the Interior Ministry.
In neighboring France, gender issues are still controversial, according to a news report on France 24.
In 2011, dozens of French lawmakers from that strongly Catholic country signed a petition for "gender theory" to be withdrawn from school textbooks.
The U.S. website Catholic Online has also opposed the German law, writing that "as the world is being dragged into a new state, where gender is a choice, but sexual activity is not, we reverse two more pillars of civilization."
One Maryland mother of a newborn also told the Baby Zone that she would rather see babies assigned gender at birth.
"Parenting is stressful enough without extra limitations, especially if you don't know the gender of your child," she told the parenting website.
Children need stability and certainty.
Historically, children born with both male and female genitalia were called hermaphrodites, named for the handsome Greek god who had dual sexuality.
And as little as a decade ago, the medical community thought of gender as a slate that could be erased and then redrawn.
But now, many are challenging the ethical basis of surgery, knowing that gender identity is complex, and doctors can sometimes get it wrong, not knowing how a child will feel about their gender assignment when they grow up.
"Back in the middle of the 20th century, it was called a 'psychiatric emergency,'" said Drescher.
When these kids were born, you didn't call the psychiatrist, you called a surgeon.
The prevailing theory on how to treat children with ambiguous genitalia was put forward by Dr. John Money at Johns Hopkins University, who held that gender was malleable.
He coined the term "gender identity" and argued that social and environmental cues -- how parents raised a child -- interacted with a child's genes and hormones to shape whether the person identified as male or female.
But in one 1966 case, known as "John/Joan," his theories became controversial.
He advised the parents of a boy whose penis had been severed in a botched circumcision to have the child fully castrated, removing his testicles, as well, and to raise him as a girl.
"Money presented the case as a successful case of transition, but it was not," said Drescher.
When the boy was around 15, he transitioned back to a boy and married a woman.
But at 38, he committed suicide.
Drescher said that now some doctors are still "practicing that model."
But in the 1990s, with the advent of the Internet, survivors of these gender surgeries have come forward "not happy with the outcome."
Such was the case with Jim Bruce, a 36-year-old writer from Montana, who was born with XY male chromosomes but ambiguous genitals.
Doctors couldn't be sure if he had a large clitoris or a small penis and were convinced he could never live a "satisfactory life" as a man.
So shortly after his birth in 1976, Bruce's external organ and testes were surgically removed and he was raised as a girl.
He was given female hormones at age 12.
"I knew that I wasn't a girl," he told ABCNews.com.
I was unhappy, but it was really difficult to ask questions.
At 18, he was set for a vaginoplasty.
But depressed and knowing something was wrong, he demanded medical records.
What he found out was horrifying.
I was sterilized at birth -- and no one ever told me.
Bruce was born with a DSD that prevented his body from producing enough testosterone to properly develop his genitals.
After learning the truth, he changed back to a man, taking testosterone shots and having his breasts removed.
Surgery rendered him infertile.
Today, he advocates for others in an organization called the Interface Project, trying to normalize perceptions of those who are intersex.
But Anne Tamar-Mattis, executive director for California-based legal group Advocates for Informed Choice, worries that the German law "invites labeling and stigma."
"A lot of activists are concerned that what the German rule will do is encourage parents to make quick decisions and give the child an 'undetermined,'" she said.
We are afraid it will encourage intervention.
We think a better process is assigning male or female sex, then waiting.
But we haven't seen how the law will play out, so all we can do is speculate.
Tamar-Mattis said that her organization supports the Australian law because "it allows adults to choose to be recognized in a third gender."
"Adults should be able to make their own decisions about legal gender," she said.
German law is about assigning it at birth.
That is not a battle young children should have to take up at this point.
When they are grown, they can make decisions about their own bodies.
But Dr. Arlene Baratz, a Pittsburgh breast radiologist who has a daughter with a disorder of sexual development and helps hundreds of others in a support group, said the German law will "empower" both parents and children.
Baratz's daughter Katie was born with male chromosomes, but has a DSD called complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.
Because her androgen receptors are faulty, Katie developed female characteristics.
She has a vagina, but no uterus or ovaries.
Now at 29, Katie is married and at the University of Pennsylvania, a resident in child psychiatry.
Though she is infertile, she hopes to become a parent through adoption or gestational surrogacy.
"The law gives parents some space not to have to rush into making decisions themselves," said Baratz.
It gives them the time to do some tests and figure it out and a period of time before they write 'male' or 'female.'
This way, you are OK -- raise the child, love the child.
You have a wonderful baby and enjoy the fun.
We don't have to rush into surgery that is irreversible.
"It brings the children into the decision and takes away the anxiety that motivates parents because they don't feel they are doing the right thing," she said.
Ultimately, the child will decide which sex he or she feels more comfortable with -- and that's a wonderful thing.
It empowers children to make the decision for themselves.
On behalf of the Ramnagar Tehsil Legal Services Committee and under the chairmanship of the committee chairman, Ramnagar Sub-Judge Sandip Kaur, a Legal Awareness Camp was organised at the Middle school, Dalher in Ramnagar.
In this camp awareness was raised about the right to education and information for financially underprivileged people.
Advocate M.L. Gupta, Rohin Bharadwaj and Sarpanch presented their views on the subject and gave lectures to the people in the camp.
A large number of villagers attended the camp.
Report: Obama campaign considered dumping Biden for Hillary Clinton
President Barack Obama's closest advisers secretly considered replacing Vice President Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton on the 2012 ticket, according to the New York Times.
The revelation is the most notable bombshell from Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's heavily anticipated 2012 campaign tome, "Double Down: Game Change 2012."
The Times obtained a copy of the forthcoming book and reported Thursday evening that the President's top aides conducted "extensive group-sessions and polling in late 2011" to gauge whether the dumping Biden could help bolster Obama's waning re-election hopes.
According to the Times' national political correspondent Jonathan Martin, the book provides a thorough account of the effort by senior officials inside the campaign and the White House, namely former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, to measure what effect swapping former Secretary of State Clinton for the Vice President would have in the polls.
The potential switch was a closely guarded secret within the Chicago campaign infrastructure and inside the Oval Office.
Only half a dozen of the President's closest advisers -- including Daley, former Obama campaign chief Jim Messina, and former White House senior advisers David Axelrod and David Plouffe -- knew the change was under consideration.
"Double Down" claims Daley spearheaded the effort to replace Biden, despite their "close personal rapport," before ultimately deciding against the move when their data showed adding Clinton to the ticket wouldn't "materially improve Obama's odds."
In an interview with Martin, Daley confirmed that the administration did in fact consider replacing Biden with Clinton.
"I was vocal about looking into a whole bunch of things, and this was one of them," Daley told the paper.
You have to remember, at that point the President was in awful shape, so we were like, "Holy Christ, what do we do?"
While Daley characterized the research as "due diligence," Martin told CNN's Anderson Cooper that the re-election campaign made a significant investment in finding out whether the move would pay dividends at the polls.
"Campaigns don't spend the kind of money on polling and focus groups unless they're seriously considering something," Martin said on AC360.
It's unclear, however, whether Obama knew his team was exploring the swap.
Martin told CNN that he asked Daley whether his then-boss knew about the potential shuffle.
While Daley said he doesn't think the President "was aware" of the potential change, the former chief of staff admitted that it's "possible" Obama knew.
Martin added that "Double Down" does not definitively answer whether the political probing reached Obama's desk.
Cooper asked Martin whether he seriously thought Obama did not know about the research into dumping Biden from the ticket.
"Possibly," Martin replied.
Fancy a glow-in-the-dark ice cream?
A British entrepreneur has created the world's first glow-in-the-dark ice cream - using jellyfish.
Charlie Francis has harnessed the fluorescent properties of the marine animal to develop the luminescent snack.
He came up with the idea after reading a research paper on jellyfish and convinced scientists in China to chemically recreate the glowing protein.
The ice cream reacts with the eater's tongue - raising the pH level in the protein and making it glow.
Chris says because the ice cream lights up when it reacts with the heat of the mouth it means the more you lick, the brighter it becomes.
Charlie, founder of the "Lick Me I'm Delicious" ice cream company, said: "It is incredible stuff but still at very early days in terms of production, so £200 gets you about 2g of the stuff."
The protein we are using in the ice cream reacts with your tongue at neutral pH.
So as your mouth warms up the protein it will raise the pH level and the ice cream will glow.
We have been testing it out over the past few months and it seemed perfect to share it over Halloween because it gives that wonderful glow effect.
It is probably the most expensive ice cream I have made because the jellyfish luminescence is four times more expensive than gold.
So each scoop costs me around £140.
It tastes pretty good though.
Charlie's experimental company, based in Bristol, is famed for its unusual flavours including beer, cheese, beef and gold leaf.
But his next creation is set to be even more ambitious.
He said: "I really want to develop an invisible ice cream."
It is inherently impossible because of the refraction caused by the ice crystals which make up the ice cream, but I reckon we will find a way of doing it.
The ice cream harnesses the fluorescent properties of a jellyfish, synthesized by Chinese scientists
Rani Bagh Market was packed with customers.
The situation was such that people had to wait from 15 to 20 minutes to buy utensils.
The same was the case in Vajirpur, Avantika market, Rohini, Naharpur, Ashok Vihar, the Central Market, and the central market in Prashant Vihar.
There was a similar scene in the jewellery shops in Pitampura, Ashok Vihar, and Model Town.
Many people were shopping for gold and silver ornaments and coins.
Because of this, the outer ring road, along with other markets, were jammed with traffic.
Because of this people leaving the office had to spend hours in traffic jams on their way home.
Halloween 2013: By the Numbers
When I was little, Halloween was magical.
My sister and I were allowed to eat candy, stay up late and play dress-up for the neighborhood.
Nowadays, I've become more of a scrooge.
I haven't signed up for the past two years to give out candy in my apartment and probably won't this year.
But stats show that I'm a black sheep when it comes to Halloween.
The majority of Americans - 158 million of them in fact - will be celebrating Halloween this year, spending a total of $6.9 billion on candy, costumes and decorations, according to the National Retail Federation.
One thing I do look forward to every Halloween are the trends.
Costumes are expected to account for $1.2 billion dollars out of the $6.9 billion spent, according to the NRF.
This year, sexy inanimate objects are all the rage.
Women don't have to be sexy professionals anymore; they can also be sexy foods like pizza, hamburgers and carrots.
As for men, I expect we will be seeing a lot of zombies, thanks to The Walking Dead and I'll bet the Daft Punk space men will make it into our Instagram feeds this year.
According to Google, the highest searched costumes are zombies, Batman, pirates and witches.
I guess there's nothing wrong with going traditional.
We dressed our dogs up last year and to my amazement we were not alone.
In fact, Americans will spend $330 million on pet costumes this year, according to the NRF.
That's a lot of ironic hotdog dogs.
When it comes to candy, we don't screw around.
Americans will spend $1.9 billion on it this year, according to The Nielsen Company.
That's around 600 million pounds worth of Hershey bars, lollipops, Milk Duds, Twizzlers and Clark Bars.
That's great news for the 41 million trick-or-treaters set to take over our neighborhoods, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.
In fact, we will buy and, who are we kidding, consume 90 million pounds of chocolate during Halloween.
The one thing we don't want to consume, candy corn; and yet nearly 35 million pounds of it are sold around Halloween, according to the National Confectioners Association.
That's about 9 billion individual kernels of corn.
It's a mystery I have yet to solve.
Nothing is more quintessentially Halloween than haunted houses.
They have the best names, like "Terror Behind the Walls" (which, by the way is in an actual prison), "Howl-O-Scream" and "The House of Shock."
In fact, there are 1,200 officially sanctioned haunted houses in the United States generating about $500 million in revenue, according to America Haunts, and that includes those awesome photos of you mid-peeing your pants that your friend puts on Facebook and you can't take down and then that guy you like sees the photo and leaves a comment like "nice face."
Finally, let's talk pumpkins.
Charlie Brown introduced us to The Great Pumpkin when we were kids, and carving a jack-o-lantern is like decorating a Christmas tree - it's something we've done since we were little.
Lucky for us, the "baby in a pumpkin trend" started only last year thanks to Pinterest, so most of us grew up carving these gourds not sitting in them.
This year, Americans will spend around $106 million on pumpkins, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The jack-o-lantern slowly withering on your front porch probably came from Illinois, which grew 542 million pounds of pumpkin this year.
If you're looking for extra credit, call Tim and Susan Mathisdon in Napa, Calif., and try to carve up their 2,032 pound pumpkin.
The MCA said in a statement, "It was decided that the postage stamp with Sachin's photograph on it would be issued prior to the start of the match.
Afterwards, there would be a joint presentation by the BCCI and the MCA.
Besides that, a special coin would be used for the coin toss that would be kept by the MCA.
The MCA will also publish a 64-page brochure, which will have articles about Tendulkar and testimonies about him from the business, sporting and journalist around the world.
The association said the limited edition brochures and coins will be distributed to members of the MCA and the BCCI.
They said that every day 10,000 masks, 10,000 score cards and 10,000 caps bearing Sachin's photograph will be distributed.
Land Rover rally series announced
The interior has racing seats and six-point harness belts, as well as an intercom system.
Options include upgraded brakes, a service package providing access to Bowler Works mechanics, logistic support, and vehicle storage between events.
Drew Bowler, the managing director of Bowler Motorsport, said: "Rally customers coming to Bowler have changed."
They're not all experienced racers, but people looking for excitement and adventure, and an achievable path towards world-class events.
We're delighted to be offering this path in partnership with Land Rover and the MSA, and believe the format offers a new way to experience different rally disciplines in the UK and overseas, and prepare entrants for the rigours and realities of Rally Raid.
We've really enjoyed developing the Defender Challenge car - it'll be a really fun championship.
Additionally, the Defender Challenge will provide a training and test day in February, as well as the option to compete in desert events in North Africa and the Middle East.
The dream of firecracker traders of doing good business in the firecracker market in the transport area was not realised.
The firecracker traders are trapped in a dilemma after the High court's order.
Neither can they do business in the temporary firecracker market in Ranjit Avenue, nor have they been issued licenses to do business in the Transport area.
After its visit to the temporary firecracker market in Ranjit Avenue the commission, appointed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, had declared it unsafe.
Since no appropriate arrangements were made there, the Deputy commissioner was fined ten lakh Rupees.
The High Court strongly criticised the Amritsar administration in its order and questioned the use of such an administration that could not even resolve such a small issue as that of the firecracker traders over a period of the 9 years.
No proper place has been allotted to them in the city.
Thereafter, they were asked to provide appropriate and safe facilities and to issue the licenses for selling firecrackers in Jahajgarh market itself.
After this order the firecracker traders were happy but the police poured cold water on their joy on Friday.
The firearm license branch team arrived in the firecracker market and set up a counter selling forms.
The necessary terms and conditions involved, could not possibly be met in one day.
ASP East Gaurav Garg, Firearms License Branch chief, Anup Kumar, SHO Sultanvind Arun Sharma also went to the firecracker market.
They expressed dissatisfaction over the arrangements made by the firecracker traders.
So the licenses were not issued to the firecracker traders.
Diwali is just one day away.
For this reason the firecracker vendors were worried.
The loss of crores of rupees seemed inevitable.
Firecracker traders Avinash Singh, Rakesh Seth, Harish Dhawan, Harish Dua, Desraj, Satnam Singh, Manjinder Singh and Ginni said that if they lost a large amount of money they would sue the district administration.
On Friday night the angry firecracker traders went on a protest march from Jahajgarh to Ranjeet Avenue.
The shouted slogans against the police and the administration.
Thereafter the business in the temporary firecracker market at Ranjeet Avenue was also stopped.
Fire crews called to rescue lost puppy after she got stuck 50ft above the ground on precarious ledge in a quarry
Cocker spaniel Ruby had run off after she was in a minor road crash
She was spotted three days later by a dog walker trapped in the quarry
Firefighters abseil down cliff face to pluck the dog from certain death
A puppy had a lucky escape after fire crews were called to lift her to safety when she somehow got herself stuck 50ft up on a precarious cliff ledge.
Nine month-old cocker spaniel Ruby had run off after being involved in a road crash on Sunday afternoon and survived three days alone before being rescued from a quarry on Wednesday.
Her owners Scott Alderson, 25, and his girlfriend Becky Hall, 20, were at Flappit Quarry in Denholme, West Yorkshire, to be reunited with Ruby and have thanked West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.
They had searched frantically for their missing dog and posted appeals on social networking sites after she had ran into the quarry following the minor accident.
At around 2.15pm on Wednesday, an eagle-eyed dog walker spotted Ruby on the ledge in the quarry, stranded 50ft up.
A Technical Rescue Team from Cleckheaton Fire Station rushed to the scene and abseiled down to rescue Ruby and used a pet tube to transport her up the cliff.
Specialist Technical Rescue Officer Andy Clayton said: 'She was in a precarious situation.
She was right in the middle of the cliff face - 50ft from the top and bottom.
She did not move a muscle during the rescue - she was frozen solid.
But she is fine now.
She was eating biscuits afterwards.
This was a very unusual call-out.
The fact that the dog was spotted is unbelievable.
Specialist Technical Rescue Officer Peter Lau said: "Ruby had a very lucky escape."
The potential was there that she could have been very seriously injured or worse.
Ruby was taken to the vets for a check-up and was found to be fine other than exhaustion and dehydration.
Miss Hall, from Halifax, West Yorkshire, said: "Watching the rescue was terrifying."
I could not believe that she was up there in the first place.
It was amazing to get her back in our arms.
The vet said that if she became too exhausted and collapsed she would probably have fallen.
The firefighters were amazing.
It was really daring what they did.
We are just so grateful and every single one of them was absolutely tremendous.
Mr Alderson, from Keighley, added: "We were scared that she might fall but she stayed there."
The firefighters were brilliant.
I just can't believe where she was.
Mick Jagger says he never hit on Katy Perry when she was 18.
During an interview with an Australian radio show this week, the pop star said she sang backing vocals for Jagger's 2004 song "Old Habits Die Hard."
Perry said she had dinner with the veteran rocker and that "he hit on me when I was 18."
She added, "That was a long time ago, and he's been very kind."
In a statement Thursday, a representative for Jagger, 70, says he "categorically denies that he has ever made a pass at Katy Perry."
The rep adds: "Perhaps she is confusing him with someone else."
Perry was one of the singers to make a guest appearance on the Rolling Stones' tour this year.
Her new album, "Prism," debuted at No. 1 this week.
George Kerevan: Europe break-up gives Scots choice
Another day, another independence scare story.
This time we are warned that an independent Scotland would be required to join the Europe-wide free-travel zone as a condition of EU membership.
Cue stories about passport controls at Berwick and a barbed wire border along Hadrian's Wall.
True, the Strathclyde paper pointed out the possible economic benefits of freer movement with the rest of Europe, though - predictably - that did not figure in the headlines.
Nor did anyone point out that the EU member states spend much of their time bending their formal rules if it suits them.
Since Scotland isn't in the Schengen area now, continued non-compliance would be a cheap concession for Brussels to offer up in return for whatever it really wanted out of the Scots.
So, a non-story, then.
And one that is so long in the tooth it has become fossilised: I first heard the "independence means passport controls" canard at least 40 years ago.
Yet there is an interesting point lost in this retelling of a whiskery old tale.
Why should an independent Scotland be expected to do Europe's bidding, anyway?
Why trade London's yoke for that of Brussels, especially now?
Here is the real European news: the great, post-war plan to unite Europe has finally stalled.
With the euro crisis, Project Europe is officially dead.
Across the EU, parties which are dedicated to opposing the EU, or to scrapping the euro as a common currency, are gaining ground.
Even in Germany, the Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany Party - founded only this year - came from nowhere to grab nearly five million votes in September's federal elections, thus effectively knocking the Free Democrats (equivalent to our own Lib Dems) out of the Bundestag.
There has always been domestic opposition to the plan to create a federal Europe.
However, the current economic crisis has proved a watershed.
The austerity imposed by Berlin and the European Central Bank, coupled with the straitjacket imposed on national economies through adherence to the common currency, has led many people to think Project Europe has gone too far.
The crisis of the euro has little to do with national governments running excessive budget deficits - that was true only of Greece.
Rather, the euro system locked in its members at exchange rates favourable to German exporters - something German politicians want to keep.
Without the possibility of domestic currency devaluation, southern Europe finds itself with a built-in productivity disadvantage vis-à-vis Germany.
The only recourse is to slash wages and public spending - spurred on by Berlin.
Beyond the current budget and currency problems lies a deeper European productivity malaise.
As a result of "green" energy policies imposed by Brussels - code for subsidising French and German energy firms at the consumer's expense - European industry pays twice as much for electricity, and four times as much for gas, as in the United States.
That is a crippling cost disadvantage, as we've already seen at Grangemouth.
All the wage freezes in the world won't stop the European petrochemicals industry being hammered by cheap US shale gas.
As a result, revolt is brewing, especially in France, once the EU's main cheerleader.
After the war, the French political elite saw the EU as a vehicle to keep Germany in check, and to give Paris equal billing in the world with Washington.
But Berlin no longer needs Paris as a passport to political legitimacy and has imposed its own economic policy on Europe, leaving the battered French economy struggling.
Result: Marine Le Pen's right-wing, anti-EU National Front has just won a crucial by-election, knocking the ruling Socialists into third place.
The Front is now the most popular party in France with 24 per cent of the vote - a timely warning to British Labour that they can't assume a split on the right will automatically favour the left.
What is Le Pen doing with her newfound popularity among the French white, working class?
She wants to use next year's EU elections to create an anti-EU, anti-common currency bloc across the European Parliament.
If, as is very possible, anti-EU parties do well in these elections, such a bloc could dominate the European Parliament for the first time.
Here's my point: sometime soon growing anti-EU and anti-common currency feeling in Europe will coalesce to kill the euro.
The EU won't disappear, but it will revert to something more like the loose "Europe of the (Sovereign) Nations" favoured by General de Gaulle.
Germany and a few of its satellite economies might keep the euro but France and southern Europe will revive their own currencies.
I expect the UK will distance itself from this project, hoping to cosy up to the US.
However, Washington's growing interest in the Pacific suggests Britain will be left out in the Atlantic cold.
Where does this leave Scotland?
We can choose to be a region of (essentially) Little England.
Or we can defend our own economic interests - which includes telling Berlin and Brussels where to get off.
I suspect that Scotland could do well inside a looser European arrangement provided we kept our own currency.
Co-operation with other like-minded countries will be easier in a non-federal Europe of the Nations.
Otherwise we should consider emulating Norway and retaining our economic independence.
The SNP government in Scotland is - remarkably-- the most successful anti-austerity political movement in Europe, having won a spectacular majority in 2011 on the basis of opposing the cuts proposed (and implemented) by Labour's chancellor Alistair Darling and the subsequent Tory-Lib Dem coalition.
It would be ridiculous now for Scotland to vote for independence only to accept austerity imposed by Berlin and Brussels.
Early puberty: Growing older sooner
African-American and Hispanic girls tend to reach puberty earlier than their white counterparts, research shows.
Physical changes don't mean puberty is imminent
There's no evidence that hormones or other chemicals are to blame
Experts think the obesity epidemic might be one trigger of early puberty
The trend toward early puberty is not as pronounced with boys
Former CNN correspondent Pat Etheridge is a journalist specializing in children's health and family issues.
Should a mother be alarmed if her daughter begins to sprout breast buds and pubic hair at 7 or 8?
At the annual conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics this week in Orlando, Florida, pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Paul Kaplowitz explained that these early physical changes are quite common among American girls and represent a new norm.
"I spend a lot of time reassuring parents -- usually, this does not signal a rapid progression into full puberty," said Kaplowitz.
Obvious signs of development, such as budding breasts, pubic and underarm hair and body odor are appearing sooner in girls.
But there has been only a slight shift in the age of menarche (the first period) over the past four decades.
In the United States, the average age is 12.5 years, down from 12.75 in 1970.
"Once breasts begin to develop, it takes at least two to three years before menarche," said Kaplowitz, also author of "Early Puberty in Girls: The Essential Guide to Coping with This Common Problem."
Time is the most accurate test of how puberty is going to progress.
There is debate about what constitutes the actual onset of puberty, but it is considered "precocious" when breast enlargement is accompanied by a growth spurt before age 8.
In most cases, the process will slow down or stall -- something a pediatrician can monitor closely.
A more rapid progression may warrant tests by an endocrinologist to rule out serious problems such as tumors or cysts.
There are treatments to delay early menses and ward off another consequence: premature aging of the bones that ultimately can lead to stunted growth and being short as an adult.
Recommendations for drug or hormone therapy are based on the child's age, rate of development, growth rate and emotional maturity.
Psychosocial aspects are important, too.
Kaplowitz is cautious with medication but acknowledges, "suppressing puberty may alleviate behavioral issues and girls' feelings of being different from peers."
The other big issue is understandable: Parents simply don't want their very young daughters having periods.
"They worry about the risk of pregnancy or even how they will handle hygiene," said Kaplowitz.
"It was a shock," recalls one woman whose daughter started her period at 10.
Even though there were signs and we had talked about menstruation, she was not emotionally prepared.
She came home from school scared and upset to be the first among her friends.
There are lots of well-publicized theories about the causes of precocious puberty.
Yet, there's no consistent body of evidence that hormones in milk or other foods, chemicals in the environment or sexual messages in the media are to blame.
Boys - like girls - are hitting puberty earlier.
Kaplowitz contends the premise that holds the most weight is the epidemic of obesity.
He helped conduct a 2001 study of 6- to 9-year-old girls that links body fat to the timing of puberty.
Other findings support this conclusion, but there are many other contributing factors.
In this country, African-American and Hispanic girls tend to reach puberty earlier than their white counterparts.
There are varying explanations.
Globally, patterns of early puberty appear to be influenced by everything from economic conditions to climate to genes.
Another conundrum: Although boys are getting facial and pubic hair at younger ages, the trend toward full-blown early puberty is not as pronounced as it is with girls.
Other doctors attending the AAP conference reinforced the complexities of the topic.
The appearance of acne and pubic hair is common even in infants and toddlers.
"We need to be careful about how we identify the true onset of puberty," said Dr. Lawrence Silverman, a pediatric endocrinologist at Goryeb Children's Hospital in Morristown, New Jersey.
Parents should not hesitate to get guidance from their pediatrician about how to talk with their child.
"It may mean having a sooner-than-expected conversation," Kaplowitz advised.
If you remain calm, your child usually will respond well.
Girls who blossom early need reassurance that, even when it happens ahead of schedule, the process is a normal part of life.
A drop in temperature of 3.1 degrees was recorded on Thursday.
The rain and cold wind on Wednesday night made people feel cold.
On Thursday people left for the markets and their other destinations wearing sweaters.
After the first rain of the winter people took out their quilts.
People were seen enjoying the sunshine in the morning.
Once the climate changes there will be relief from colds and other illnesses but after that the clouds kept playing hide and seek with the sun.
The children also went to school wearing sweaters.
According to the air force weather department the maximum temperatures on Thursday was 25.1 degree Celsius and the minimum temperatures was 13.7 degree Celsius.
7.8 millimetres of rainfall was recorded.
According to the weather department the skies will be cloudy.
Jet makers feud over seat width with big orders at stake
A row has flared up between leading plane makers over the width of tourist-class seats on long-distance flights, setting the tone for a bitter confrontation at this month's Dubai Airshow.
The dispute focuses on the width of seats provided on long-haul flights for economy passengers - not always the ones most courted by airlines, but whose allocated space holds the key to efficiency claims for the latest jets offered by Airbus SAS and Boeing Co.
Airbus this week called for an industry standard that would provide for a seat at least 18 inches (46 cm) wide in economy cabins, but its U.S. arch-rival Boeing says it should be for airlines to decide.
The dispute comes as plane makers vie to sell ever-larger versions of their twin-engined long-distance aircraft, with potentially record orders expected at the November 17-21 event.
How the back of the plane is laid out - particularly whether seating is 9 or 10 abreast - is central to the economic performance claims being made for new "mini-jumbo" jet designs.
Boeing says its revamped "777X" will hold 406 people based on economy seats more than 17 inches wide and set out 10 in each row.
Airbus says the competing version of its A350 will carry 350 people in 18-inch-wide economy seat laid out 9 abreast.
Plane giants often trade blows on technical matters through advertising in the trade press.
Now, Airbus is appealing directly to the public ahead of the Dubai Airshow, where the 777X is expected to dominate with more than 100 orders.
It recently previewed what may be the start of a new ad war by showing financiers a slide illustrating three people squashed together at a restaurant, titled "Would You Accept This?"
"Boeing is proposing long-distance flying in seats narrower than regional turbo-props," said Airbus sales chief John Leahy.
As diets change, people get bigger but plane seating has not radically changed.
Between the early 1970s, when the Boeing 747 jumbo defined modern long-haul travel, and the turn of the century, the weight of the average American 40- to 49-year-old male increased by 10 per cent, according to U.S. Health Department Data.
The waist of the average 21st-century American male is 39.7 inches, according to U.S. health statistics.
Airbus says its rival is sticking to a seat concept from the 1950s, when the average girth of the newly christened "jet set" was narrower.
Airbus says it has commissioned research suggesting an extra inch in seat width improves sleep quality by 53 per cent.
Boeing disputes Airbus's figures on seat measurements and says it is not up to manufacturers to step into decisions on how airlines balance fares and facilities.
It also says research shows cabin experience depends on more than the width of a seat.
"It really comes down to providing flexibility to airlines and allowing them to do the things that they believe they need to do to be successful," said Boeing cabins expert Kent Craver.
They don't want us to dictate to them what makes them profitable.
They know their business better than anyone else.
For flyers it is about more elbow room, but for suppliers it is increasingly an issue that could affect earnings.
Behind the dispute is a race for plane orders with at least $700-billion of estimated business at list prices in coming decades, enough to tip the scales of U.S. and European exports.
As Reuters first reported in July, seat layout is exactly what drives the battle between the latest jets.
Both Airbus and Boeing claim 20 per cent better efficiency per seat in their latest twin-engined long-haul designs than the market leader in that segment, the 365-seat Boeing 777-300ER.
Boeing's performance claims depend in part on comparing the 10-abreast 777X with an original 9-abreast 777 design.
The gain in unit costs is blunted compared with 10-abreast now in use.
"The reason Boeing are doing this is to cram more seats in to make their plane more competitive with our products," said Kevin Keniston, head of passenger comfort at Europe's Airbus.
On the other hand, analysts say full 10-seat-per-row cabins for existing 777s suggest many passengers are voting for the denser layout, which may go hand in hand with cheaper fares.
"Eighteen inches in seat width would be great for passengers, but the reality is that from a business point of the Airbus proposal is driven by the threat of the 777," said cabin interiors expert Mary Kirby, founder and editor of the Runway Girl Network.
Airbus and Boeing do not supply seats but offer a catalogue of suppliers for airlines to choose from.
Globe-trotting jet sellers even carry tape measures to check on competing layouts.
While boasting comfort, all builders also offer jets with high-density layouts for low-cost airlines and regional travel.
Airbus offers a 10-abreast A350 but says it has not yet sold it.
Until recently, Airbus was stressing the need for more cabin customization by offering wider aisle seats on some of its jets.
Without the support of the only other maker of large modern jets, experts say its call for a new industry standard is unlikely to fly, but could distract from a wave of 777X sales.
New anti-nicotine vaccine could take the pleasure out of smoking
Scientists have developed an anti-nicotine vaccine that could take the pleasure out of smoking a cigarette.
A single dose of the vaccine was able to protect mice against nicotine addiction for life.
Further tests are needed before starting human trials, which would take several years, but Professor Ronald Crystal of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York said the early signs are good.
"We are very hopeful that this kind of vaccine strategy can finally help the millions of smokers who have tried to stop, exhausting all the methods on the market today, but find their nicotine addiction to be strong enough to overcome these current approaches," Prof Cornell said.
The new vaccine contains a harmless virus that has been engineered to carry the genetic information to make anti-nicotine antibodies.
The virus selectively infects liver cells, which then start to make a steady stream of the antibodies.
The antibodies hunt down any nicotine molecules in the bloodstream, neutralising them before they reached the brain, preventing a smoker from getting a nicotine hit.
In tests, vaccinated mice who were subsequently given nicotine continued with their normal activity.
But mice who had not been given the vaccine "chilled out," say the researchers, a sign that the nicotine had reached their brains.
The experiments are described in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Previous tobacco vaccines failed because they contained antibodies.
The jabs had to be given so frequently to keep antibody levels topped up that they proved expensive and impractical.
But the cost of the new vaccine is likely to be far lower, because it turns liver cells into antibody factories.
Prof Crystal said that if a future human vaccine was completely safe it could be given to children before they were tempted to try a cigarette, preventing nicotine addiction.
But more likely it would be used by smokers to quit.
"They will know if they start smoking again, they will receive no pleasure from it due to the nicotine vaccine, and that can help them kick the habit," he said.
British scientists said the results were interesting but warned far more research was needed.
The cause of the death of the tigress was not clear, even after the post-mortem.
The forest department, giving an evasive answer, said that prima-facie, the tigress seemed to have died a natural death.
On Thursday night the forest employees of the Pawalgarh Conservation reserve of the Ramnagar Forest department found a tigress's body near the Khichadi drain.
The tigress's body was intact and no signs of wounds or injury were found on the body.
On Friday an autopsy was conducted on the body of the tigress by CTR veterinarian Bharat and Kotabagh veterinarian Hema Rathore in the presence of the Conservator of Forests, Vivek Pandey, the CTR deputy director, Saket Badola, DFO Kahakasha Naseem, and SDO J.S. Karkee.
According to sources, during the autopsy, the internal organs of the tigress were reported to be damaged.
Because of this the actual cause of death of the tigress was not known.
Department officials are giving evasive answers about the death of the tigress.
However, to test for the presence of poison, the internal organs have been sent to IVRI Barelli for a toxicology test.
Vivek Pandey, the Conservator of Forest Western Circle, said that the tigress's death could be considered as natural.
There were no traces of poison in the body.
However, a search of the surrounding areas was carried out and the viscera were sent to be tested for the presence of poison.
Tripodi denies being influenced by Obeid
Former NSW Labor minister Joe Tripodi will be investigated by the state's corruption watchdog.
Former NSW minister Joe Tripodi has denied changing maritime leases policy at the request of his political mentor Eddie Obeid, who had hidden interests in three properties on government-controlled land.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on Friday widened its inquiry into whether Mr Obeid lobbied several state ministers to have leases at Circular Quay, where the Obeids owned two restaurants and a cafe, renewed without going to tender after their expiration in August 2005.
It's now investigating allegations Mr Tripodi knew of Mr Obeid's secret interest in the properties, after evidence given by Mr Tripodi's former deputy chief of staff, Lynne Ashpole, on Thursday.
During years of discussions starting in 2005 the government had been pushing for the leases to go to public tender.
The lessees were against this and also wanted longer terms.
In 2009 leases for the Circular Quay enterprises, which earned the Obeids about $2.5 million annually, were renewed without going to public tender.
Mr Tripodi, who was ports minister from February 2006 until November 2009, was initially in favour of public tenders.
But he denied the changes were made at the request of Mr Obeid, who Mr Tripodi acknowledged was urging a shift in government lease policy.
A phone transcript tabled in ICAC showed calls in August and September 2007 between Mr Obeid, Mr Tripodi and Steve Dunn, a senior bureaucrat who had come into the ports ministry after working under Mr Obeid in the fisheries department.
"Was the matter being discussed in the course of these telephone conversations the development of the commercial lease policy," Assistant Commissioner Anthony Whealy asked Mr Tripodi.
"No," Mr Tripodi replied.
I can't remember what was discussed but it definitely wasn't that.
Definitely not between myself and Mr Obeid.
Israeli warplanes attack target inside Syria, official says
Israeli warplanes struck a target inside the Syrian port city of Latakia Thursday night, a senior administration official confirms to Fox News.
The official did not specify what the target was, but said there was at least one.
The Associated Press reports the target was Russian-made SA-125 missiles.
At least twice earlier this year Israel launched airstrikes on shipments of missiles inside Syria.
Foreign workers on 457 visas could undergo "genuineness" test
A "genuineness" test for foreign workers on 457 visas is being considered by the government as it contemplates expanding a crackdown.
The test, if adopted, would be applied through a criteria aimed at preventing 457s being used to fill unskilled positions or as a back door way to move family and friends to Australia.
A government discussion paper was released today as former Labor MP Maxine McKew slammed the government's rhetoric about foreign workers, saying it could offend Australia's neighbours.
"Loud declarations about 'foreigners getting to the back of the queue' and 'Aussie jobs first' are a very unpleasant throwback to a time when unions demanded a protected labor market," she told the Australia India Institute today.
Historically, that meant it was white labour that had to be protected - and if some in the region saw echoes of that historic artifact, I wouldn't be surprised.
The discussion paper outlines 12 measures that were previously considered by former Immigration Minister Chris Bowen.
Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor, who was yesterday in Sri Lanka where he is meeting officials about people smuggling, has implemented five of the recommended changes with the remainder under consideration.
If the "genuineness" criteria was adopted a visa applicant could be scrutinised about "whether the nomination is genuine in circumstances where the nominee is a relation or personal associate of an owner or relevant person of the sponsoring business."
Businesses could also be required to account for the number of 457 visa holders after previously businesses who had intended to sponsor a small number of workers then employed hundreds.
Meanwhile, a 35-year-old Sri Lankan asylum seeker died of a suspected heart attack after arriving on an asylum boat at Christmas Island this week.
The man's distraught nine-year-old son travelled to Australia with him and has been comforted since the death of his father on Wednesday by an adult cousin who was also on the vessel.
Australian authorities rushed the man to Christmas Island Hospital, where he died.
A study aiming to increase the benefits to Scotland of the HS2 rail project has been announced by the UK government.
The work by HS2 Ltd suggests high-speed services to Scotland and the north of England will start as soon as Phase One opens in 2026.
Transport minister Baroness Kramer said the project would "bring the UK together."
Scottish transport minister Keith Brown said he was "excited" to work with the UK government on the plan.
Phase One will consist of a new high speed rail line between London and the West Midlands.
When Phase Two is completed, lines will run to Manchester and Leeds.
In June the government revised the estimated cost of building the high-speed link between London and the North of England from £32.7bn to £42.6bn.
The UK government, which has been holding talks with Transport Scotland, has instructed HS2 Ltd to look at further rail capacity and journey time improvements for northern England and Scotland.
This is to include the possibility of eventual journey times from Glasgow and Edinburgh to London of three hours or less.
Baroness Kramer said: "Our goal for HS2 is for a truly national network that will bring the UK and its cities closer together."
We are driving forward HS2 because the benefits it will bring are huge.
Without it we face a crisis in capacity on our rail network.
But it is also about connectivity, across the UK 18 cities including Glasgow and Edinburgh will be better connected because of HS2.
Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael added: "Today's announcement is good news for Scotland."
For the Scottish government, Keith Brown called on Mr Carmichael to "unequivocally" back Scotland's inclusion in the HS2 network.
Mr Brown said: "High speed rail has the potential to bring huge economic benefits to Scotland, but also adds Scotland's economic weight to the overall case for high speed rail across Britain."
So we are excited to work in partnership with the UK Government to examine options for bringing high speed rail to Scotland, creating benefit for all and complementing the Glasgow-Edinburgh line which the Scottish Government is already planning.
I look forward to reviewing the report of the investigation with UK ministers next year and together decide on the next steps.
Aircraft electronic device rules to stay in force in Australia for now
Australian airline passengers will need to continue turning off their tablets and smart phones during take-off and landing despite moves in the US to loosen regulations covering the devices.
The US Federal Aviation Administration has left the way open for American carriers to change their procedures so that passengers will be able to read e-books, watch videos or play games on their devices during critical phases of flight provided they remain in "airplane" mode.
Passengers can already do this during the bulk of a flight but many people find it annoying to be unable to access their e-books during take-offs and landings.
Australian carriers are looking at the decision, which requires US carriers to undertake a massive amount of work to meet the requirements, but have indicated they have no immediate plans to change their procedures.
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority also said it was looking at the announcement but emphasised that restrictions on the use of electronic devices in critical phases of flight were still in place in Australia.
"CASA currently has no specific regulations governing the use of electronic devices in aircraft," it said " The issue is covered by regulations which require aircraft operators to ensure safety is maintained at all times and passengers to comply with the safety instructions given by crew members."
Virgin, which has already been talking to CASA about extending the use its in-flight wi-fi entertainment system, was amenable to a change but said it would take its lead from the regulator.
"We would welcome a review by CASA into allowing the use of electronic devices because we really do think it will improve the customer experience now that we have (wireless in-flight entertainment) on our planes," a spokesman said.
Qantas said it would stick with the current rules for now.
"Our current policy is that electronic devices cannot be used during take-off and landing and we have no immediate plans to change that," it said.
The FAA ruling applies to American airlines.
However, we are always interested in regulatory developments that could benefit passengers and we will certainly be taking a close look at the FAA's decision and the reasons behind it.
For US carriers, the impact of the ruling will vary from airline to airline and will depend on the age of their fleet.
Carriers will need to prove their planes can tolerate radio interference from mobile devices as well as revise manuals, training materials, carry-on baggage programs and passenger briefings.
"Once an airline verifies the tolerance of its fleet, it can allow passengers to use handheld, lightweight electronic devices such as tablets, e-readers, and smartphones-at all altitudes," the FAA said.
In rare instances of low visibility, the crew will instruct passengers to turn off their devices during landing.
The group also recommended that heavier devices should be safely stowed under seats or in overhead bins during take-off and landing.
Pawnbrokers shine in Singapore as middle class feel the pinch
At a pawnshop in Bendemeer shopping centre in Singapore, Janani Amirthalinga is swapping a gold bangle, ring and pair of earrings to pay her daughters" school fees.
"My husband and I have just bought a house so all my money's stuck there," Mrs Amirthalinga says.
Even though she earns S$3,000 ($2,400) a month as an administrator and her husband works as well, the monthly family income is insufficient, she says.
Indeed, such is demand across parts of southeast Asia - where household debt is rising - that ValueMax, where she is carrying out her transaction, this week became the third pawnshop to list on the Singapore stock exchange.
Pawning jewellery is not merely a fast way to land cash - S$1,300 in Ms Amirthalinga's case - but almost as cheap as unsecured bank loans.
Typically pawnbrokers in Singapore charge an effective annual percentage rate of 17 per cent, just above the 15.4 per cent offered at United Overseas Bank, a local lender with a branch in the same shopping centre.
However, pawnbrokers have the advantage of not requiring credit checks or proof of salary, and can arrange loans faster than banks.
Hence millions of people across the region are turning to pawnshops as families feel the squeeze from rising living costs and ballooning household and consumer debt.
After five years of robust growth since the global financial crisis, and cheap credit fuelled by loose monetary policy in advanced economies, lower- and middle-income families are turning to pawn shops to make up the difference as their economies slow.
This week Standard & Poor's, the rating agency, cited increasing household leverage, mainly from rising mortgages, as a risk factor for Asian banks" creditworthiness.
It said that Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore had the highest household debt to gross domestic product ratios in Asia.
Malaysia topped the list at 80 per cent of GDP, up from 60 per cent in 2008.
Economists are also worried about high levels of consumer debt in Thailand, which this week narrowly emerged from technical recession.
On Thursday, data showed continued export weakness, and a softening in consumer demand.
"Bottom line is that with costs rising, people in the middle to lower end [of the income scale] will be looking to supplement their income wherever they can," says Song Seng Wun, economist at CIMB, a Malaysian bank.
Historically high prices for gold in the past two years have added to the rush to pawn personal belongings, as people take the opportunity to cash in the value of their family jewellery.
In Singapore, about 70 per cent of items pawned at the city-state's 200 pawn outlets are gold.
"People are saying "the gold price looks good, let's pawn grandma's gold chain and get it back next month,"" says Mr Song.
In Thailand the largest pawnshop operator, EasyMoney, has seen an up to 20 per cent rise in the number of customers using its outlets in recent months.
Such is the growth in the pawn business that ValueMax, operator of the outlet at Bendemeer and of 15 others like it in Singapore, plans to expand not only in neighbouring Malaysia - where it has four shops - but outside Asia too, says Yeah Lee Ching, ValueMax's executive director.
The company will fund that by using 60 per cent of S$66m it raised this week in a listing on the Singapore stock exchange.
While some discount lenders have come under fire for high interest rates, Ms Yeah says that not only does pawning offer cheaper rates than other lenders, it also does not add directly to debt.
"Customers are mortgaging items that they already own, and monetising personal assets does not increase household debt," she says.
There's an increased social acceptance of pawnbroking as a means to secure short term, secured financing.
Nor are the types of people who use pawnbrokers only the financially stretched.
Wealthy people in Singapore also use ValueMax outlets, pawning gold bars or Rolex watches, which can command up to 60 per cent of their purchase price in cash.
We see customers from all walks of life.
"They include wealthy individuals who need to borrow short term for business ventures or investments, or small businesses with a need to tide over their cash flow needs," says Ms Yeah.
Sometimes they just need the money very quickly.
Nita Ambani, the wife of India's most important businessman Mukesh Ambani, is celebrating her 50th birthday on November 1, 2013.
Nita is celebrating her birthday in Jodhpur and not in Mumbai.
She has organized a big party to mark the occasion.
Many big Bollywood stars have arrived in Jodhpur to the attend the party. In the late evening of October 31st many big stars were seen catching a flight to Jodhpur from Mumbai Airport.
Among these stars were Karisma Kapoor, Geeta Basra, Vinod Khanna and his wife Kavita Khanna, Abhishek Kapoor, Anu Malik, Shekhar Kapoor, Raj Kumar Hirani, Rakesh Om Prakash Mehra, Rahul Bose, etc.
You can imagine, when such big names were invited, how big the party was.
$325m rescue package for Tassie health
The Federal Government insists a $325 million rescue package for Tasmania's ailing health system has tough conditions attached that will ensure the State Government can't waste the funds.
Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek has announced the Commonwealth is taking "urgent action" to head off a crisis caused by the island state's aging population, higher rates of chronic disease and system constraints.
The funding, over four years, was decided after government consultations with Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie.
"The Government has come up with an emergency rescue package we believe will address the unique challenges faced by the state," Ms Plibersek said today.
The $325 million package includes a $31 million elective surgery blitz.
An additional 2600 operations including orthopedic and cataract surgery will help clear a backlog.
There's also money for walk-in clinics in Hobart and Launceston, better after-hospital care, medical specialist training, mental health services and the rollout of personal electronic health record systems in local hospitals.
"These investments respond to the ideas that front-line clinicians have told me will be the best ways to tend to Tasmania's health system," Ms Plibersek said.
The minister insisted the Tasmanian Government would face a strict reporting and accountability regime.
The state would have to maintain current funding levels in order to receive Commonwealth cash and report monthly on where it was spending the extra funds.
A three-person commission will be set up to ensure the state is delivering services as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Mr Wilkie today said the $325 million would count for little "unless it's followed by genuine reform to put Tasmania's public health system on a more sustainable footing."
He nevertheless praised the Government for responding to his request for urgent assistance which he first raised with the Prime Minister at the beginning of May.
"I'm hopeful the federal assistance package will go a long way towards taking the state's public health system off the critical list," Mr Wilkie said.
According to the State Government these additional elective procedures will largely reverse the recent cuts.
But federal Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton believes today's announcement is a "band-aid solution."
"The reason we are here is that the Labor State Government ripped $430 million out of its health system," he told ABC TV.
You can't have a state government ripping out almost half-a-billion dollars and the Commonwealth put in $300 million and pretend it's a good news day.
Mr Dutton called on Ms Plibersek to guarantee that not one dollar out of the rescue package would be spent on additional bureaucracy.
Guillaume Nicloux's adaptation of Denis Diderot's novel boasts exceptional production design and period detail but is also heavier going than it should be.
Unfolding in 1760s France, it tells the grim story of Suzanne, a young aristocrat sent to a convent by her family.
When she rebels, she experiences extreme cruelty at the hands of a wantonly sadistic Mother Superior and becomes an object of erotic fascination for another.
The film never slips into prurience or sensationalism - and that's the problem.
The earnest solemnity of the storytelling risks making it a hair shirt-like ordeal for audiences, too.
The CSA's Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Munna Singh, has decided to charge an entrance fee to the park because of the litter being left in the park.
The departments have been given a 15 day ultimatum to clean the park.
On Friday morning at ten o'clock the Vice-Chancellor randomly inspected the Deputy Director of Parks Department and Director of Research along with the parks department.
During this time more than a dozen employees of these departments, including the director, were found absent from their posts.
After reprimanding them he warned that their wages would be cut if they were found absent again.
The director of the university, Dr. Naushad Khan, said that a monthly pass of Rs.30 would be charged for this purpose.
People would be able to visit the park for a daily fee of 1 Rs.
Work will be done systematically: The files from various departments will be put in front of the Vice-Chancellor under a system.
No employee will have the right to enter the office of the Vice-Chancellor with their files.
The officer concerned will present the files to the Vice-Chancellor.
Syria has destroyed its chemical weapons making ability, watchdog group says
Syria has destroyed critical equipment for producing chemical weapons and poison gas munitions, the global chemical weapons watchdog said Thursday as fierce clashes raged in the country's north, close to one of the sites where toxic agents are believed to be stored.
Also Thursday, a Syrian activist group said more than 120,000 people have been killed since the start of the country's civil war nearly three years ago.
The announcement by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons came one day ahead of the Nov.
1 deadline set by The Hague-based organization for Damascus to destroy or "render inoperable" all chemical weapon production facilities and machinery for mixing chemicals into poison gas and filling munitions.
The completion of what is essentially the initial stage of destruction is a significant milestone in an ambitious timeline that aims to destroy all of Damascus' chemical weapons by mid-2014.
Destruction of the equipment means that Syria can no longer produce new chemical weapons.
However, Damascus still has to start destroying existing weapons and stockpiles.
The country is believed to have around 1,000 metric tons of chemicals and weapons including mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin.
The announcement came as fighting raged Thursday in the town of Safira, which experts say is home to a chemical weapons production facility as well as storage sites, reported the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The activist group, which has been tracking the death toll through a network of activists in Syria, said Thursday that 120,296 people have died.
Of those, it said 61,067 are civilians, including 6,365 children.
On the government side, it said 29,954 are members of President Bashar Assad's armed forces, 18,678 are pro-government fighters and 187 are Lebanese Hezbollah militants.
Also among the dead it said were 2,202 army defectors and some 5,375 opposition fighters, many of them foreigners.
On July 25, the U.N. estimated 100,000 have died in the conflict since March 2011.
It has not updated that figure since.
The conflict has forced some 2 million people to flee the country.
Assad's troops have been battling rebels, many of them linked to al-Qaida groups, in Safira for weeks.
The Observatory said there were casualties on both sides Thursday but had no specifics.
The fighting underscored the dangers the chemical weapons' inspectors face as they race against tight deadlines in their mission to rid Syria of the toxic arsenal in the midst of an ongoing civil war.
A statement from the OPCW, which works closely with the United Nations, said its team was "now satisfied that it has verified - and seen destroyed - all of Syria's declared critical production and mixing/filling equipment."
It added that, "no further inspection activities are currently planned."
Earlier this week, the inspectors said they had completed their first round of verification work, visiting 21 of 23 sites declared by Damascus.
They were unable to visit two sites because of security concerns, the inspectors said.
On Thursday, OPCW said the two locations were, according to Syria, "abandoned and ... the chemical weapons program items they contained were moved to other declared sites, which were inspected."
It was not immediately clear if the facility in Safira was one of the two sites that OPCW inspectors were not able to visit.
Syria has submitted a plan for the total destruction of its chemical weapons that has to be approved next month by the OPCW's executive committee.
"I salute the fortitude and courage you've all demonstrated in fulfilling the most challenging mission ever undertaken by this organization," the watchdog's director-general, Ahmet Uzumcu, said in comments released by the OPCW.
Now in its third year, the civil war pits the primarily Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad's government and its security forces, which are stacked with members of his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
In other developments, the Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said there had been a strong explosion Wednesday inside an air defense facility in Syria's coastal province of Latakia.
The cause of the blast was not known, he said.
Police seized a forged registry, forged seals, a laptop and photocopies of registration documents from the accused.
Moti Nagar police have registered a case against the accused.
Police commissioner Paramjit Singh said that those arrested and accused are Haiboval Rajiv Agarwal a.k.a. Bintu from Chandan Nagar, from Ghumar Mandi, Kamal Krushna Jaiswal, Gurwinder Singh Jaggi from Kohada and Sonu from Ghumar Mandi.
Balbir Singh from the Registrar Office (East) has fled from the scene.
According to the police the accused used to take out the documents of the records of vacant and old plots with the help of Balbir Singh, a clerk and record keeper in the Registrar Office and then, by purchasing new stamp papers, used to make counterfeit registration documents for them.
Not only that, but they used to destroy the original registry documents and then the false registry documents were updated in the records.
Then the accused use to sell the land with counterfeit papers for crores of rupees.
At the same time, they would take out loans against these counterfeit documents.
Thereafter, the original owner would be left running to the police and administration.
Those accused of the counterfeit registrations were especially intersted in the NRIG plots.
As no-one was looking after the NRIG plots.
So it was easy to forge registration documents and sell the land.
The Police Commissioner said that, upon interrogation, the accused said that they had made about 150 counterfeit registrations so far.
According to police Rajiv, the leader of the gang, already has a criminal record for fraud and theft.
Anger over Bali bomb plotter's sentence
Survivors and relatives of the 202 people killed in the 2002 Bali bombing have reacted with anger over the sentence given to the last of the plotters to face justice, saying Umar Patek should face a firing squad.
Patek, who spent almost 10 years on the run as one of South-East Asia's most wanted, was yesterday sentenced to 20 years in jail for his role in building the explosive devices used in the bombing.
He could be released within 15 years if granted parole.
The 45-year-old was found guilty of mass murder for the attack on two nightclubs in the popular tourist area of Kuta which left 202 people dead, including 88 Australians, and injured scores more.
He was also found guilty of a number of other terrorism-related charges, including a wave of bombings of churches across Indonesia on Christmas Eve in 2000.
Prosecutors had demanded a life sentence, although they could have pushed that the man dubbed the "Demolition Man" for his reputation as a master bomb-maker be sentenced to death.
The decision has reignited painful memories for Perth mother June Corteen, who lost her 39-year-old twin daughters Jane and Jenny in the destruction unleashed by Patek and his co-conspirators almost a decade ago.
Fighting back tears, she said Patek should have been sentenced to death.
I really feel that he should follow in the footsteps of the other guys.
"He should be put in front of the firing squad," Ms Corteen told AAP.
I have to live every day without seeing more grandchildren, and my daughters.
The Sari Club was levelled when a massive bomb loaded into a van parked outside was detonated just after 11pm on October 12, 2002.
Peter Hughes was in Paddy's Bar where a suicide bomber detonated a backpack loaded with explosives just 20 seconds earlier.
He lapsed into a month-long coma in the wake of the bombing, and "died" three times while on life support.
Mr Hughes said Patek should have shared the same fate as three other members of the Jemaah Islamiah terror cell responsible for the carnage - Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra - who were executed four years ago.
Really, this guy should get the death penalty before anybody.
To keep him alive, well, there's no reason to keep him alive.
To get 20 years, after killing 202 people and injuring many hundreds, it's not much.
Patek is the last of the Bali bombers to face justice.
He had avoided capture for almost a decade but was eventually apprehended in January 2011 in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where US forces killed former al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden less than four months later.
During the trial, an FBI agent testified that intelligence reports had revealed Patek was in Pakistan to meet with bin Laden in an effort to re-establish links between South-East Asian terrorist groups and al-Qaeda.
"He didn't give himself up," Ms Corteen said.
Until just recently, he really didn't feel sorry for how much grief he caused other people.
The verdict comes ahead of the 10th anniversary of the attack later this year, which will be marked by ceremonies in Bali and Australia.
"There will be a lot of tears this year," Ms Corteen said.
Patek may yet appeal his sentence.
FAA: Air passengers can now use gadgets on planes (but not make cell phone calls)
Airline passengers will be able to use their electronic devices gate-to-gate to read, work, play games, watch movies and listen to music - but not talk on their cellphones - under much-anticipated new guidelines issued Thursday by the Federal Aviation Administration.
But passengers shouldn't expect changes to happen immediately.
How fast the change is implemented will vary by the airline, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said at a news conference.
Airlines will have to show the FAA how their airplanes meet the new guidelines and that they've updating their flight crew training manuals and rules for stowing devices to reflect the new guidelines.
The FAA said it has already received plans from some airlines to expand the use of portable electronic devices on planes.
Delta and JetBlue were among the airliners who have already submitted plans.
"Depending on the condition of the plan, we could approve expanded use of electronic devices very soon," the FAA said in a statement.
Currently, passengers are required to turn off their smartphones, tablets and other devices once a plane's door closes.
They're not supposed to restart them until the planes reach 10,000 feet and the captain gives the go-ahead.
Passengers are supposed to turn their devices off again as the plane descends to land and not restart them until the plane is on the ground.
Under the new guidelines, airlines whose planes are properly protected from electronic interference may allow passengers to use the devices during takeoffs, landings and taxiing, the FAA said.
Most new airliners and other planes that have been modified so that passengers can use Wifi at higher altitudes are expected to meet the criteria.
Laura Glading, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, welcomed the changes.
"Once the new policy is safely implemented - and we're going to work closely with the carrier to do that - it will be a win-win," Glading said in a statement.
We're frankly tired of feeling like 'hall monitors' when it comes to this issue.
But connecting to the Internet to surf, exchange emails, text or download data will still be prohibited below 10,000 feet, the agency said.
Passengers will be told to switch their smartphones, tablets and other devices to airplane mode.
So, still no Words With Friends, the online Scrabble-type game that actor Alec Baldwin was playing on his smartphone in 2011 when he was famously booted off an American Airlines jet for refusing to turn off the device while the plane was parked at the gate.
And heavier devices such as laptops will continue to have to be stowed because of concern they might injure someone if they go flying around the cabin.
In-flight cellphone calls also will continue to be prohibited.
Regulatory authority over phone calls belongs to the Federal Communications Commission, not the FAA.
FAA may lift ban on some electronic devices during takeoff and landing
Last month, National Transportation Safety Board Mark Rosenker, a CBS News national transportation safety expert, said that cell phones are still considered a risk.
"Cell phones, that really is an issue, not just because potentially it could create interference with navigational devices, but we do know, according to the FCC, that it could interfere with cell phone towers when they're in the air," Rosenker said.
An industry advisory committee created by the FAA to examine the issue recommended last month that the government permit greater use of personal electronic devices.
Pressure has been building on the FAA in recent years to ease restrictions on their use.
Critics such as Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., contend there is no valid safety reason for the prohibitions.
The restrictions have also become increasingly difficult to enforce as use of the devices has become ubiquitous.
Some studies indicate as many as a third of passengers forget or ignore directions to turn off their devices.
The FAA began restricting passengers' use of electronic devices in 1966 in response to reports of interference with navigation and communications equipment when passengers began carrying FM radios, the high-tech gadgets of their day.
New airliners are far more reliant on electrical systems than previous generations of aircraft, but they are also designed and approved by the FAA to be resistant to electronic interference.
Airlines have been offering Wi-Fi use at cruising altitudes to passengers for several years.
Planes modified for Wi-Fi systems are also more resistant to interference.
The vast majority of airliners should qualify for greater electronic device use under the new guidelines, Huerta said.
Today's electronic devices generally emit much lower power radio transmissions than previous generations of devices.
E-readers, for example, emit only minimal transmissions when turning a page.
But transmissions are stronger when devices are downloading or sending data.
Among those pressing for a relaxation of restrictions on passengers' use of the devices has been Amazon.com.
In 2011, company officials loaded an airliner full of their Kindle e-readers and flew it around to test for problems but found none.
FAA advisory committee members expressed mixed feelings about whether use of the devices presents any risk.
Douglas Kidd of the National Association of Airline Passengers said he believes interference from the devices is genuine even if the risk is minimal.
Other committee members said there are only anecdotal reports from pilots to support that the devices can interfere with aircraft systems, and most of those reports are very old.
However, the committee recommended the FAA allow pilots to order passengers to shut off devices during instrument landings in low visibility.
A travel industry group welcomed the changes, calling them common-sense accommodations for a traveling public now bristling with technology.
"We're pleased the FAA recognizes that an enjoyable passenger experience is not incompatible with safety and security," said Roger Dow, CEO of the U.S. Travel Association.
After learning the lesson of the Patna Serial Blasts the UT police in the view of security have become ready to react quickly to any emergency situation during the Diwali celebrations.
1,800 Soldiers will patrol the major areas of the city in vehicles or on foot, to ensure that the traffic runs smoothly to prevent any bag snatching and to teach the lesson to eve teasers along with any other miscreants.
Female police officers will also be involved along with the PCR, Traffic Unit in that Unit.
Police officials and officers, doing their duty promptly, will inspect the records of all the other venues including hotels, guest houses, and PG accommodation.
The station SHOs have been ordered to set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the case.
The responsibility of investigating the VIP sectors of the city along with the markets, malls, etc. has been assigned to the DSPs along with the inspectors.
Due to the emergency situation and the Diwali festival, senior officials have deployed additional police employees in the control room to facilitate the flow of people.
Other than the Director of the PGI and fire department, Principal Director and DHS Sector 16 GMSH and Sector 32 GMCH staff of other dispensaries were also asked to be on high alert for emergencies.
To teach a lesson to the goons the divisional officers have appointed female police officers and others under the leadership of the NGO's, naming them the "Anti Goon Staff".
The Anti Goon team will be on alert in the crowded market areas and other crowded areas in civilian clothes.
All the SHOs have been ordered to set up 44 posts in the internal parts of the city during Diwali.
Also police officials will be stationed at 38 checkpoints on the city borders.
Bird airlifted to safety from North Sea rig released back into wild
A bird airlifted ashore after being found exhausted on a North Sea oil rig has been released back into the wild.
The water rail was put on a helicopter to Aberdeen last month before being nursed back to health by the Scottish SPCA at its rescue centre in Alloa.
Centre manager Colin Seddon said: "This water rail was likely a winter migrant from Northern Europe who got caught up in strong winds over the North Sea."
It seems the bird became exhausted and managed to find refuge on the oil rig.
He added: "It was unable to fly off again so we were contacted for help."
The water rail was fit and well by the time it was released.
Is Europe's elite ready to do business with Britain?
Business for Britain launched in April with a pledge to bring business together and define what the UK's wealth and job creators want to see changed in our relationship with the EU.
To that end, we commissioned the largest and most comprehensive poll of British business leaders asking them for their thoughts on Britain, business and the EU.
YouGov polled over 1,000 business leaders, broadly representative of Britain's business sizes, sectors and regions.
The conclusions of the poll will come as a surprise to many.
We found that the vast majority of businesses are now looking to export outside of Europe, focusing on countries that are modernising and growing while the EU states stagnate.
They want to see the Government prioritise new trading links with the likes of China, India and Brazil, rather than getting bogged down in the long and arduous process of reforming the EU's arcane institutions.
When asked their views on specific policy areas - ranging from monopoly regulation to product laws - the majority of business leaders thought that control of these key competences should be returned to Westminster.
There was general discontent with the Single Market, with businesses saying that the costs of Brussels regulation now outweighed the benefits of being part of Europe's trading area - even 40 per cent of large businesses, traditionally the most pro-European of companies, agreed.
Finally, and most tellingly of all, our poll of business leaders found a clear majority wanted to see Britain pursue a course of treaty change and a relationship with the EU that is based on trade, not politics.
This finding, which was reflected across the sizes and major business groups, shows that business is pushing for a "meaningful change" that brings powers back to the UK.
The stakes are high - achieving treaty change and a better deal for Britain sees a 16 per cent swing towards voting to stay in the EU in a referendum.
The Prime Minister should be in no doubt: this poll shows that British business backs his plan for renegotiating the terms of Britain's membership of the EU.
It also shows that business expects that renegotiation to make a significant shift in the current balance of power back towards the UK.
A better deal for British business is possible, and increasingly necessary as the eurozone embarks on the road to closer economic and fiscal union.
The priority must be jobs and growth in Britain and, as the findings of our poll show, for business this means a renewed focus on trade and a fundamental change in Brussels" regulatory approach.
Gazprom's Alexei Miller says pipeline in Bulgaria starts new gas era
The start of construction of the South Stream gas pipeline in Bulgaria marks the launch of one of Europe's largest energy projects, Gazprom's chief said.
"A landmark event has taken place today: Construction started on the Bulgarian section of the South Stream gas pipeline, the most large-scale and important project in Europe," Gazprom Chairman Alexei Miller said in a statement Thursday.
This project is a key element of energy security of the whole European continent.
South Stream is meant to add diversity to Russia's export routes through Europe.
A contractual dispute between Gazprom and its counterparts in Ukraine, which hosts most of Russia's gas for Europe, adds a layer of risk to conventional routes, officials say.
Miller said the direct connection to Bulgaria, a member of the European Union, means geopolitical risks associated with transit countries are eliminated "forever."
Bulgarian consumers will receive gas from South Stream at a discounted rate once the entire project starts operating in 2015.
Gazprom said construction should begin in other downstream countries by year's end.
The pipeline is designed for an annual capacity of 2.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
The FAA is easing restrictions on the use of electronic gadgets on airplanes - though chatting on cellphones will still be prohibited.
Warplanes attack a store of Russian missiles in the port city of Latakia, an official says.
It's an apparent continuation of Israel's campaign to keep arms from proliferating in the Mideast.
A federal appeals court blocks a judge's ruling that the NYPD's controversial tactic discriminates against minorities.
Nearly 100 African migrants hoping to travel to Algeria die of thirst after their two trucks break down in the middle of the Sahara.
Experts say violence that left 14 adults and seven children dead is nothing more than random chance, not a sign of growing violence in America.
Rather than being rattled by the U.S. government shutdown, investors kept their focus on what probably matters more: the Federal Reserve.
The California woman plans to challenge what may be a first-of-its-kind citation, saying the Internet-connected eyewear makes navigation easier.
Police say they have a video that appears to show Mayor Rob Ford smoking a crack pipe.
Even close allies keep things from one another - and work every angle to find out what's being held back.
The Vatican wants to know how Catholic parishes around the globe handle sensitive issues like contraception, divorce and gay couples.
Foreign athletes will perform gymnastics.
The MLA from the City Constituency, Balbir Pal Shah, inaugurated the Asiad Circus by cutting the ribbon on Thursday evening.
The Municipal Corporation Mayor, Bhupinder Singh Sardar, and the former Chairman of the City Improvement Board, Mukesh Tuteja, also attended the event.
The first performance of the city circus was watched by dignitaries.
Asiad circus manager, Raghbir Singh, said that Kenyan athletes will perform gymnastics.
Dwarf clowns are sure to make everyone laugh.
The flying trapeze will be a particular centre of attraction for the visitors.
He said that focus will be on entertaining the residents.
Two YMCA employees charged with sex offences before allegations against Jonathan Lord, Royal Commission hears
Two YMCA NSW employees had been charged with child sex offences before allegations were raised against Caringbah child care worker Jonathan Lord in 2011, the child sexual abuse Royal Commission has heard.
But in its opening statement to the Commission it said it had "never dealt with an incident of child sexual assault within its organisation," the Commission was told.
Chief executive officer Phillip Hare was asked about one case where a YMCA employee was charged child pornography offences, and another when a gym instructor at the YMCA Caringbah Hall was convicted of child sexual offences against children in his care in 1991.
Mr Hare told Gail Furness, counsel assisting the Commission, he knew about the first case but did not know about the second one.
He conceded the YMCA's opening statement to the commission was also inaccurate in claiming "there have been external audits of the YMCA that have recognised the YMCA as being at the forefront of child safety."
Evidence before the commission is that YMCA was notified that it received the second lowest of four possible ratings in a Department of Education and Communities quality audit in August this year.
Mr Hare, who started with the YMCA when he was 21, conceded management "from myself down" failed by recruiting Lord and failed to make sure staff were clear about their obligations to report child safe policy breaches.
Earlier this year Lord was convicted for sexual offences against 12 boys during the two years he worked at the YMCA.
He was jailed for a minimum of six years.
But Mr Hare rejected the suggestion the YMCA had a cultural problem which prevented staff from reporting Lord's breaches of child safety.
Staff gave evidence they observed breaches including Lord being alone with children, babysitting them privately, having them sit on his lap, saying he loved one and letting them play with his mobile phone.
Danielle Ockwell, who was supervised by Lord and asked for child protection training because she was concerned about his behaviour, testified she found the YMCA Caringbah children's services manager Jacqui Barnat who supervised Lord "very intimidating and hard to approach a lot of the time."
The CEO said he did not accept staff's evidence that they were uncomfortable with reporting upwards to their managers.
Rather, he said, their friendships with Lord clouded their judgements about reporting him.
Mr Hare said he had provided his view to the YMCA NSW board that the lesson for the organisation from the "Jonathan Lord incident" was "not about reporting" by staff, and the board agreed with him.
Mr Hare said the decision to get staff to sign confidentiality agreements soon after the allegations emerged was made by YMCA general manager of children's services Liam Whitley.
He said it was intended to avoid contamination of evidence but was "overzealous" and poorly executed.
YMCA NSW was not a child safe organisation at the time Jonathan Lord was employed between 2009 and 2011, child sex abuse expert Professor Stephen Smallbone of Griffith University told the commission.
He said there were "serious problems" in recruitment, screening, induction, training and supervision of staff.
The hearing adjourned until December 20.
Blair says he'd like UK comeback
Tony Blair said he'd seize the chance to return as Britain's prime minister - but acknowledges a comeback is unlikely.
In an interview overnight to mark the fifth anniversary of his departure from office, the 59-year-old aired his views on various domestic policies.
Since he stood down in June 2007 after a decade as leader, Mr Blair has largely avoided discussing British politics, confining most of his comments to foreign affairs and his role as envoy to the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers.
Asked if he would return to the post of prime minister, Mr Blair was quoted by London's Evening Standard as saying: "Yes, sure, but it's not likely to happen is it, so..."
He also urged leaders not to turn their backs on the business community following the financial crisis.
As crowds of horse-showing experts gathered in Cardiff to battle it out for Horse of the Year, they knew the competition would be tough.
But nobody was quite ready for three-year-old Fenton Kirkland.
Not yet in school and just months on from taking his first steps, the toddler and his pet Shetland pony Toffee trotted through the three rounds with ease to take the top prize - leaving their 30 adult opponents trailing behind.
The inseparable pair - who are the same height - were commended for appearance, behaviour and style at the annual contest run by Sunnybank Equestrian Centre, in Rudry near Cardiff.
Taking to the stage against men and women in smart bowler hats, he tipped his flat cap at a jaunty angle and paraded two-year-old Toffee around the ring.
Fenton was lauded by judges for natural handling skills well beyond his years.
And Toffee received top marks for his appearance and personality.
Fenton was given Toffee as a third birthday present last March and has practised with the Shetland pony every day since.
His mother Donna, 30, said: "Fenton and Toffee are a great double act."
They were up against all comers but the two of them walked off with the gold cup and rosette.
It was only the second time he had competed with Toffee and we were all ecstatic when he won.
Complete strangers in the arena all thought he was so phenomenal they wanted photos taken with him.
The youngster, from the village of Nantyglo, near Ebbw Vale, South Wales, is following in the footsteps of his aunt Sharon Howells, who has been showing horses for more than 10 years.
Mrs Howells said: "The whole place was electric and everybody was cheering and clapping."
He was running on sand down the full length of the arena and even though he looked so tiny he did a marvellous job.
Fenton is animal mad - he loves horses, tractors and farms and has got two chickens which he looks after.
The way he has started he'll be at the Horse of the Year show before long - and I'm sure he'll do well.
A spokesman for the annual horse show said: "Fenton is only three but he knows how to handle his pony."
They are a great team together.
The judges marked Fenton and Toffee on how well they were turned out and the way they presented in the show ring.
They look for good teamwork between the pony and the handler - Fenton and Toffee were the best in the ring.
I'm sure Fenton was helped by his cute clothes, he really looked the part.
China plea paper 'to be overhauled'
A Chinese newspaper that made a front-page appeal for the release of a reporter accused of defamation is to be overhauled, a press regulator says.
The Guangzhou-based New Express made a rare public plea for the release of journalist Chen Yongzhou.
But Mr Chen subsequently admitted on television that he had taken bribes to fabricate stories about a part state-owned company.
Now the New Express is to undergo "full rectification," the regulator said.
The "rectification" order came from the Guangdong Administration of Press and Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
A preliminary investigation showed that Yangcheng Evening News Group's New Express had published several untrue reports about listed company Zoomlion in the period of September 2012 to August 2013.
"New Express's editorial management was disordered," the regulator said in a statement.
It said it had decided to "impose an administrative penalty on Chen Yongzhou by revoking his reporter's license."
It had also "instructed Yangcheng Evening News Group to undertake a complete rectification of New Express, and recommended they investigate the relevant responsible persons at New Express and immediately revise New Express's leadership team."
Mr Chen wrote several articles for the New Express alleging financial irregularities at a construction-equipment company called Zoomlion.
After he was detained, his newspaper published two front-page appeals for his release, saying it backed his journalism.
But Mr Chen then appeared on state television admitting he had published false stories for money.
"In this case I've caused damages to Zoomlion and also the whole news media industry and its ability to earn the public's trust," he told state broadcaster CCTV.
I did this mainly because I hankered after money and fame.
I've realised my wrongdoing.
Following Mr Chen's apology, New Express issued a front-page apology, saying it had failed to properly check his reports.
Several high-profile suspects have made televised confessions recently.
Experts say confessions are still routinely coerced, despite a change in the law earlier this year banning the authorities from forcing anyone to incriminate themselves.
The National President of the Anti-Terrorism Front, Maninder Singh Bitta, will read Shree Hanuman Chalisa along with 10,000 other readers on November 23rd, at an event organised by the Shri Hindu Nyaypeeth at Dana Mandi near the Jalandhar bypass.
This information was provided by Bitta after the chief spokesman of Shri Hindu Nyaypeeth Pravin Dang and Ashwini Katyal, Bhupinder Banga, Surji Jain, Bunty Bajaj, Raman Khosla,Bantu and Aman Sharma, had come to invite him to the Hanuman Chalisa Paath.
He appreciated the efforts of the Shri Hindu Nyaypeeth to make children aware of Sanatan Culture.
He said it is also important to give children religious instruction along with worldly education for the unity and integrity of the country.
US-Mexico drug tunnel with its own railway found
One of the most sophisticated drug smuggling tunnels between the USA and Mexico has been found, complete with its own lighting, ventilation and electric rail systems.
US authorities described the four foot by three foot tunnel as one of the most sophisticated secret passages they have ever discovered.
The tunnel, which zigzags the length of nearly six football pitches, links warehouses near Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, USA.
The area is filled with nondescript warehouses, making it easier to conceal trucks being loaded with drugs.
The tunnel was shut down before any drugs made it through undetected, authorities said.
Authorities seized eight-and-a-half tons of marijuana and 327 pounds of cocaine in connection with the tunnel's discovery, according to court records.
Three men who authorities say worked as drivers were charged with possession of marijuana and cocaine with intent to distribute.
They face prison sentences between 10 years and life imprisonment if convicted.
In Nogales, Arizona, smugglers tap into vast underground drainage canals.
The tunnel is the eighth major passage discovered in San Diego since 2006.
Some of the largest tunnels have been discovered after central Mexico's marijuana harvest in October, which presents drug cartels with a challenge of how to quickly get their product to consumers.
In 2010, authorities found a roughly 700-yard passage equipped with rail tracks that extended from the kitchen of a Tijuana home to two San Diego warehouses.
Congress candidate Sarhul Ram Bhagat filed his nomination for the Assembly constituency.
Besides the BJP and the Congress, the National People's Party and two independent candidates, a total of 7 candidates filed nominations on Thursday.
BJP candidate Rajsharan Bhagat, along with his sponsor, deposited his nomination papers with the Returning Officer for the assembly constituency 12-Jashpur on Thursday, which was day 7 after the start of filing of nomination papers for the second phase of the elections to be held on November 19th.
The Indian National Congress candidate Ram Bhagat Sarhul, with his sponsor Ajay Kumar, filed his nomination with the Returning Officer.
The BJP candidate, Kunkuri Rohit Kumar, filed his nominations along with his sponsor Mohanram and the Kunkuri Constituency independent candidate, Dr. Phoolchand Kujur, filed his nominations for the Assembly Constituency Sector 13 along with his 10 sponsors Mrs. Alpino Khalko, Suben Kerketta, Sukhdeo Sai Naag, Hemant Kujur, Shaniram Bhagat, Walter Kujur, Vikas Kumar Jindal, Mr. Gupta, Murari Lal and Mrs. Sushila Kujur.
The BJP candidate, Shibshankar Pankaira, filed his first nomination for the Assembly constituency sector 14 - Pathalgaon with his sponsor Tulsiram Kaushik and his second nomination with his sponsor Rajendra Agarwal.
Councillors accused Dukpa of turning up at the function without an invitation.
Dupka said that he had been invited by the Food Controller.
Upset by this dispute the GTA members left the function.
Eight families were given food grain.
The Town President, Amar Singh Rai, Vice President Suk Bahadur BK and other town councillors were present at the event.
British police serve Assange with extradition notice
Btitish police served an extradition notice today on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has taken refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London and requested asylum.
Scotland Yard said they had served a "surrender notice" on the 40-year-old Australian requiring him to appear at a police station, adding that failure to do so would make him further liable to arrest.
Assange faces extradition to Sweden over sex crime allegations, having exhausted his options under British law when the Supreme Court overturned his appeal against extradition earlier this month.
Fearing Stockholm would pass him on to the US, he sought refuge at Ecuador's embassy in London on June 19, asking the South American country for political asylum.
Scotland Yard has "served a surrender notice upon a 40-year-old man that requires him to attend a police station at date and time of our choosing," a spokesman said.
He remains in breach of his bail conditions.
The embassy declined to comment on the serving of the police notice.
Assange fears he will be extradited from Sweden to the United States to face possible espionage charges, after releasing more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website.
Driver speeding at 130mph with hot drink between legs fined £1,000
A motorist has been fined £1,000 for driving at up to 130mph (210km/h) with a hot drink balanced between his legs.
Andrew Howie, 35, of Tiptree, Essex, was spotted driving his Mercedes Benz on the A120 at Braintree on 27 May.
When police stopped him they discovered the takeaway drink between his legs.
At Colchester Magistrates' Court Howie admitted a charge of driving without due care and attention.
Seven points added to his licence resulted in him receiving a six-month driving ban.
Howie was also ordered to pay costs of £90 and a victim surcharge of £100.
Tax on foreign property owners to burst London's bubble
The Treasury have provisionally costed out the CGT measure but are awaiting a final decision from Mr Osborne, who, in the 2012 Budget, introduced a 7% rate of stamp duty for homes costing more than £2m and annual charges for buyers who choose to hold homes in a company rather than as individuals.
Already the stamp duty take for residential property in the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea, which stood at £708 million in the 2012/13 tax year, exceeds the combined total for Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the North East, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber put together.
Mr Cook said: "Following increases in stamp duty of high value homes and the introduction of associated anti-avoidance legislation, it is very difficult to argue that high value property is under-taxed irrespective of the effect of the out-dated council tax system."
"But this move could make some foreign investors reticent to buy property in London or current owners reluctant to sell," he added.
Prime property - the top 5% to 10% of the housing market by price - in the affluent south-west London belt, which stretches from Fulham to Wimbledon, has increased by a record 11.8% over the past year.
Prices in central London continued to show steady year-on-year growth of 5.6% but were overshadowed by a burgeoning "domestic market" with the city's south west, north (7.4%) and east (6.5%) all experiencing an uptick, according to research from Savills.
Scientists have shed more light on how the movements of a dog's tail are linked to its mood.
Earlier research had revealed that happy dogs wag their tails more to the right (from the dog's point of view), while nervous dogs have a left-dominated swish.
But now scientists say that fellow canines can spot and respond to these subtle tail differences.
The study is published in the journal Current Biology.
Prof Georgio Vallortigara, a neuroscientist from the University of Trento, said: "It is very well known in humans that the left and right side of the brain are differently involved in stimuli that invokes positive or negative emotions."
Here we attempted to look at it in other species.
He added that just as in humans, for dogs the right side of the brain was responsible for left-handed movement and vice versa, and the two hemispheres played different roles in emotions.
To find out more about how dogs react to the lop-sided tail wags of other dogs, the researchers monitored the animals as they watched films of other dogs.
They measured the pets' heart rates and analysed their behaviour.
It will probably not be long before we understand why their tails sometimes go one way, sometimes the other
Prof Vallortigara said: "We presented dogs with movies of dogs - either a naturalistic version or a silhouette to get rid of any other confounding issues, and we could doctor the movement of the tail and present the tail more to the left or right."
When the animals saw an otherwise expressionless dog move its tail to the right (from the tail-wagging dog's point of view), they stayed perfectly relaxed.
But when they spotted a tail veer predominantly to the left (again from the tail-swishing dog's point of view), their heart rates picked up and they looked anxious.
Prof Vallortigara said he didn't think that the dogs were intentionally communicating with each other through these movements.
Instead, he believes that they dogs have learned from experience what moves they should and shouldn't feel worried about.
He said: "If you have several meetings with other dogs, and frequently their tail wagging one way is associated with a more friendly behaviour, and the right side is producing a less friendly behaviour, you respond on the basis of that experience."
The researchers say the findings could give owners, vets and trainers a better insight into their animal's emotions.
Dog behaviour expert John Bradshaw, a visiting fellow at the University of Bristol's school of veterinary science, said this was not the first study to examine whether left and right were important to canines.
Last year a team from the University of Lincoln found that dogs turn their heads to the left when looking at an aggressive dog and to the right when looking at a happy dog.
And in another research paper from the University of Victoria in Canada, he said: "Dogs were more likely to approach a robot dog when its 'tail' was made to wag left rather than right, rather than becoming anxious - the opposite way around to the Italian study."
He said the differences could be because the dogs in the different studies were not fully interpreting the animals in the films or robo-dogs as canines.
A study of how dogs responded to real dogs could help, he explained.
"While there is considerable evidence from many different mammals that the two sides of the brain are used for different purposes, much of the detail still has to be hammered out - and dogs are no exception," he said.
However, given the ease with which their behaviour can be recorded, it will probably not be long before we understand why their tails sometimes go one way, sometimes the other.
Arctic Monkeys postpone Glasgow gig due to Alex Turner's illness
Rock band the Arctic Monkeys have postponed a gig in Glasgow after their lead singer was diagnosed with laryngitis.
The Sheffield group were scheduled to perform at the Hydro venue in the city on Friday.
However, lead singer Alex Turner's illness has forced them to reschedule the show.
The band's announcement came after they were forced to similarly postpone a gig at the LG Arena in Birmingham on Thursday.
In a statement on their official website, the Arctic Monkeys said: "Following the decision to postpone the show at the Birmingham LG Arena tonight and after seeking medical advice, Arctic Monkeys must also postpone the show at the Glasgow Hydro on Friday, November 1."
"Alex Turner has been diagnosed with laryngitis and is regrettably not able to perform."
The show at the LG Arena in Birmingham will now take place on November 20 and the show at the Glasgow Hydro will now take place on November 21.
All tickets remain valid for these shows.
We wish to apologise to all ticket holders for any inconvenience this has caused.
Please contact the customer services at the box office you purchased your tickets from for any further assistance.
Pope Francis to name first cardinals in February
Pope Francis will create new cardinals of the Catholic Church for his first time on February 22, the Vatican announced Thursday.
Cardinals are the highest-ranking clergy in the Catholic Church below the pope, and they're the ones who elect popes, so Francis will be appointing his first group of men who will ultimately help choose his successor.
There are now 201 cardinals.
However, once a cardinal reaches 80 he is no longer permitted to participate in the election of a pope -- this falls to a group of 120 "cardinal electors."
In a statement announcing the news, Father Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said a meeting of all the existing cardinals would be held before the ceremony to elevate the new cardinals, known as a consistory.
"Pope Francis has decided to communicate his decision to convoke February's consistory in advance in order to facilitate the planning of other meetings involving the participation of cardinals from different parts of the world," Lombardi said.
Jack Valero of Catholic Voices said that by February, the number of cardinal electors was likely to have dropped.
He said usually a pope would name as many cardinals as was needed to raise the number of cardinal electors back to 120 and as many cardinals aged over 80 as he wanted.
Next year's consistory would be significant because it would be the first since Francis was elected in March this year, Valero said.
At the moment there is a sort of bias towards Europe and especially towards Italy.
"It will be interesting to see whether the new Pope will nominate cardinals from the rest of the world to restore the balance," he said.
Forty percent of Roman Catholics are in South America, but they have a tiny number of cardinals.
The cardinals will also be the first to be chosen since Francis formed the Council of Cardinals, a group of eight cardinals from around the world tasked with looking into ways to reform the church.
In the past the Pope decided everything on his own.
"Now Francis has selected these eight cardinals to help him," Valero said.
He said it was "quite possible" that Francis would ask the cardinals for advice.
But we've not been in that situation before -- it's all completely new.
Valero said popes typically elevated bishops from large places to the position of cardinal but that Francis was "full of surprises -- so we don't know who he'll name."
GM recalls some new pickup trucks in U.S. to fix seatbacks
General Motors Co is recalling nearly 19,000 of its all-new 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks to repair a problem with the manual reclining seatback, according to a notice from U.S. auto safety regulators on Friday.
On some of the trucks, the front seats may have a defect in the reclining mechanism.
As a result, the seatbacks fail to comply with federal auto safety standards on head restraints.
"If the vehicle is struck from behind, the head restraint may not properly protect occupants, increasing the risk of injury," according to the notice posted on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website.
The recalled models were built between August 1 and September 10.
GM's truck roll-out began in June and represents the most important vehicle launch for the No. 1 U.S. automaker since its 2009 bankruptcy restructuring.
GM told truck owners about the defect in the first half of October.
NHTSA could not review the owner notification letter due to the 16-day government shutdown, which tempered auto sales growth in October.
Sales of the Silverado and Sierra trucks, which were redesigned for the 2014 model year, were up about 20 percent during the first 10 months of the year, GM said on Friday.
In October, GM sold 42,660 Silverado and 16,503 Sierra pickup trucks.
GM shares were up 1.4 percent at $37.47 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday afternoon.
An Obama voter's cry of despair
I voted for President Obama twice, sharing hope in possibility of change
He says Obama has had worthy efforts thwarted by GOP obstructionism
Obstructionism can't excuse Obamacare website woes, drone attacks
Obama's 2008 campaign memoir is a sad reminder of what might have been
Nathaniel P. Morris is a second-year student at Harvard Medical School.
I'm reading a terribly sad book these days.
It's a book that I thought would uplift me during the doldrums of second-year medical school, and renew in me a sense of hope.
It's called "The Audacity to Win," and it's a memoir of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
When I'm finished with my patient write-ups at night and get into bed, the book returns me to a time when politics inspired millions and speeches could take your breath away.
The election turned out to be a landslide, and news anchors paused to reflect on the historic nature of the hour.
My classmates cried with joy, and my parents saved every newspaper they could find.
A young team of visionaries was headed for the White House, and the nation was ready for change.
During Obama's transition to office in 2008, he had an 82% approval rating.
And then I close the book.
Cutting to the present is a rude awakening, like snapping out of a dream.
It's hard to remember those days of optimism -- they seem a distant memory, a sad reminder of opportunities gone by.
Change indeed happened, in the years since I cast my first ballot.
It was simply nothing I could have imagined.
I credit Obama with great and varied accomplishments, from the passage of the Affordable Care Act to our military exit from Iraq, the end of "don't ask don't tell," to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Moreover, I believe that partisan obstructionism has upended too many efforts to push our nation forward: immigration reform, a public option for health care, and closing the base at Guantanamo Bay, among others.
But, after the countless times in which I have found myself defending the Obama administration to colleagues and peers, I've reached a limit to the explanations that I can provide.
I've reached a point of political despair.
Republican obstructionism cannot explain allowing the bugging of foreign leaders, nor having drones strike innocent children overseas.
It cannot explain having the National Security Agency collect data on the private lives of Americans, nor prosecuting whistle-blowers who reveal government wrongdoing.
It cannot account for assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, without a trial, nor shirking public funding and spending limits during presidential campaigns.
It cannot justify the findings of a report that says the White House's efforts to silence the media are the "most aggressive ... since the Nixon Administration."
And, most recently, it cannot excuse the failure to design a simple website more than three years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law.
I don't know if this is what I should have expected.
If, at 18 years old, I was supposed to figure out that governance may contradict the political campaigns that precede it.
Obviously, elective office isn't a predictable course, as the opposing political party and random events, such as the Newtown massacre, will shape our public conversation.
Yet, of all of the examples that I have listed above, they largely seem to be of the administration's own choosing.
That is what troubles me most of all.
I voted for Obama again in 2012, but not because I was excited by his candidacy.
Mitt Romney presented a confusing and unrefined alternative who could not seem to lock down his policies or his positions.
I felt that a second term for Obama, free from the pressures of future elections, would fulfill the hope that we had heard of for so long.
Still, as Obama's approval rating sank below 45% this week, returning to 2008 through that book has become that much harder.
It makes me yearn for the many promises that disappeared.
This week I was reading the portion of the book describing how Obama suffered a huge loss to Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary.
At a post-mortem campaign meeting, he told his staff that they needed to get back on track and stay true to the purpose of their cause.
"I want us to get our mojo back," he said.
We've got to remember who we are.'
It's five years later, Mr. President, and I couldn't agree with you more.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Nathaniel Morris.
Clive Palmer claims PM Tony Abbott has conflict of interest over parental leave scheme
Billionaire MP Clive Palmer says Prime Minister Tony Abbott has a conflict of interest over his parental leave scheme because his daughters might get pregnant and benefit from it.
The mining magnate, who is in a dispute about paying a $6 million carbon tax bill, made the claim as he tried to brush off questions about whether he had a conflict.
The Palmer United Party could control up to four votes in the Senate that may be crucial in deciding if the carbon and mining taxes are axed.
But Mr Palmer claimed it was only ministers who could have a conflict of interest and said Mr Abbott's daughters stood to personally benefit from policies.
"He's got a major conflict of interest when it comes to paid parental leave because if any of those daughters get pregnant, he'll have a direct interest whether they get leave or not," Mr Palmer said.
Two months after the election, the electoral commission officially declared Mr Palmer the winner of the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax by 53 votes, after a recount.
Mr Palmer called for overhaul of election counting to speed up the process.
Tony Abbott's daughters Frances and Bridget.
Should this election be decided two months after we stopped voting?
"We need to have a better system," he said.
Why is it that we shouldn't have a system where you can walk in, punch your details into a computer, vote immediately and have a result at 6.30 that night?
Mr Palmer also criticised the use of pencils to mark ballots.
Is it because they can rub out the result if someone doesn't like it?
In this day and age having a pencil seems extraordinary.
The Electoral Commission has been studying options for electronic voting and recently released a joint discussion paper with New Zealand.
Mr Palmer, 59, said his policies included an international airport for the Sunshine Coast and he would take "very seriously" his new job.
Public office is about public service.
"We seek no reward, except the reward of history that we can at a critical time serve this community," he said.
Because of this the plaintiffs had to suffer.
Addressing those gathered for the occasion, the Bar Association President, Ramesh Singh Negi, expressed strong indignation at the deteriorating law and order situation in the state.
He said that the growing number of attacks on the advocates and their families shows that the criminals have become fearless.
They are not afraid of the police and administration system any more.
Citing various such attacks taking place at different places he said that, if the lawyers themselves are not safe, then we can surely understand how much less safe is the general pubic.
RBS suspends two forex traders
Royal Bank of Scotland has suspended two traders in its foreign exchange division according to two people familiar with the situation, in another sign that the global probe by regulators into the suspected manipulation of the currency market is rapidly gaining traction.
Some of the world's largest banks, including UBS, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and RBS, have confirmed they are co-operating with regulators in investigations into the world's largest financial market, where $5.3tn changes hands each day.
The two traders would be the first RBS employees to be suspended in the widening probe that echoes the Libor interbank lending manipulation scandal.
The bank, which declined to comment on the suspensions, confirmed this month that it has received requests for information from regulators.
"Our ongoing inquiry into this matter continues and we are co-operating fully with the FCA and our other regulators," the bank said two weeks ago.
Last month, people close to the situation said that RBS had turned over records of emails and instant messages to the UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, sent to and from a former trader.
This trader, Richard Usher, left RBS in 2010 and is understand to have be given leave from his current position as European head of forex spot trading at JPMorgan.
Rohan Ramchandani, head of European spot trading at Citi, went on leave this week, while Matt Gardiner, a former senior currencies trader at Barclays and UBS, was suspended by Standard Chartered this week.
None of these traders have been accused of any wrongdoing.
Mr Usher's instant message group included bankers at Barclays and Citigroup, people close to the situation said.
UBS said this week it had taken action against some of its employees after the Swiss regulator, Finma, said it was investigating suspected manipulation of the foreign exchange market at a number of Swiss banks.
At least six authorities globally - the European Commission, Finma, Switzerland's competition authority Weko, the FCA, the Department of Justice in the US and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority - are looking at allegations that bankers colluded to move the currencies market.
HSBC, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Credit Suisse have also launched internal probes or received requests for information from regulators, said people familiar with the situation.
Banks are scouring through years" worth of instant messages and emails to search for instances of wrongdoing.
News about the probes has rattled traders in an area that has been one of the bigger profit drivers of investment banks' trading units in past years but which has been challenged this year as low volatility in currencies cuts opportunities for speculators.
Some bankers have tried to play down the affair by saying the vast and highly liquid foreign exchange market is almost impossible to manipulate, but senior traders are saying this is not necessarily true.
A senior trader said that despite the huge volume of daily foreign exchange trading, the fragmentation of liquidity between different trading platforms and banks" increasing use of their own internal platforms meant that "you can start to get an impact on the market at quite small ticket prices."
The news came on the same day as Credit Suisse announced it had dismissed a trader at its London exchange traded funds desk this week after he had caused a nearly $6m loss late last year.
The bank promptly notified the relevant authorities and has been co-operating with its regulators.
"We are confident the trader acted alone and that the matter has been contained," Credit Suisse said.
The students studying various courses, including technical and administrative courses, will be able to exercise their right to vote.
The University Vice-Chancellor wrote to the governor seeking permission to hold elections.
The University Students' Union had demanded to begin the election process.
They also organised a petition to support the campaign and make their voices heard by the university administration and college management.
The students enrolling in over two dozen courses including B.Tech, MBA, Pharmacy, Biotechnology, Bioscience, Tourism Management and Paramedical Science held on the campus, will be able to elect their representative.
More than six thousand students will be getting their first opportunity to exercise their franchise.
The Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Ashok Kumar, said that the university has sought permission from the Governor for the election.
Once approval is obtained the election date will be announced.
He said it is the responsibility of the college administration to hold elections in other colleges.
Many colleges do not want to hold Student Union elections in their campus.
However, due to the lack of unity among the students, elections were not being held.
The Union organised a petition for elections.
Akash Jaiswal, Division Organiser ABVP
After Diwali permission will be sought from the district administration to hold elections in colleges.
The unclear views of various colleges is also making it difficult to hold elections.
People purchased a lot of utensils as well as gold and silver on the occasion of Dhanteras in the capital.
Sales have increased by 20 to 30% since last year.
People crowded the jewellery shops in Simla.
The utensil shops set up in lower Bajar to Maal road were crowded.
Although inflation had plagued these items, people did not seem to be penny-pinching while purchasing on this auspicious occasion.
The auspicious times for purchases on Friday were from 7:52 am to 10:12 am, 1:56 pm to 3:37 pm and 6:17 pm to 8:12 pm.
Large crowds gathered in shops on all the three auspicious times in Simla and the suburbs.
There wasn't even a place to stand for people in the lower bazaar in Simla.
Every shop, large and small, was crowded.
When the thirteenth day of the Kartik month is celebrated as Dhanteras it is considered to be a sign of a Happy Diwali.
Supreme Court upholds Obama health care law
In a major victory for the Obama administration, the US Supreme Court today ruled Barack Obama's signature health care law is constitutional.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices ruled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's individual mandate - which requires citizens to buy health insurance by 2014 or else pay a penalty - was constitutional under the taxing power of the government.
Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four more liberal members of the court while Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy dissented.
The court also upheld the remaining sections of the 2700 page law, and further held that the health care law's requirement that states increase Medicaid eligibility or else lose all federal Medicaid funding is not unconstitutionally coercive.
The suit to block the law was brought by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business.
The law was vigorously opposed by each of the major Republican presidential candidates during the 2012 primary season, including presumptive nominee Mitt Romney.
It's true that we cannot even move without money.
Money is one of the most important requirements for survival, but considering it as the most important thing is not in our best interest.
We celebrate Dhanteras on Krishna Trayodashi in the month of Kartika.
Kuber, the lord of wealth, and Yama, the lord of death Yama are worshipped during Dhanteras.
Money plays an important part in our religion and life.
Money is neither good nor bad.
It is our attitude towards money that is good or bad.
There is nothing more valuable than wealth that is used for the well-being of mankind, but if wealth becomes the cause of ego, then it is of no value.
Wealth should be earned with a sacred objective and should also be spent on sacred objectives.
It is the duty of everyone to earn money for the well-being of the family.
There should also be some sense of social expenditure, but the tendency to the unlimited accumulation or creation of wealth by any means can be bad for our conscience and personality.
There should always be a spirit of charity on our minds.
Even a fraction of your wealth, given by you, can become the basis of someone's livelihood.
Many people in society are living in extreme poverty. We all must think about them.
In fact wealth, religion, desire and salvation have been given equal importance in all walks of life.
Everyone wishes for wealth and success and depending on how hard they work they achieve wealth and success.
Only wealth gained with self-respect is long lasting.
No criminal, no matter how wealthy he becomes, can never enjoy his wealth in the correct manner and nor can he be useful to others.
Do not envy someone who has money.
True wealthy is the one which makes it possible for wealth to flow through numerous hands.
There is no more appropriate use for wealth than that of creating jobs for others.
Also bear in mind, wealth does not come only in the form of money.
Health, character and love for others is also a kind of wealth.
Try to gain possession of this kind of wealth.
This morning in Agra a sub-inspector lost his life and four people were severely injured after a direct collision between a truck and a police Jeep.
Near the Tora Police Chowky in the Tajganj Station area a police Jeep going at full speed collided head-on with a truck.
Sub-Inspector Register Singh died on the spot and four constable were severely injured.
All of them were admitted to the medical college.
According to the information received, a resident named Habibullah Malla was walking towards Willow Nursery in Haritara Sopor on Thursday.
Suddenly he was attacked by a bear.
He cried for help to fight the bear off.
By the time the people around him came to his help the bear had badly bitten his face.
People shouted and threw rocks at the bear.
Then, the bear left Habibullah and hid in the nursery.
The villagers took the injured man to hospital.
To achieve their set targets the Income-Tax Department has plans to start a campaign for collecting advance tax from tax payers.
More than 100 NGOs, along with the Executive Management committee of the Mahabodhi Temple, declared a World Heritage centre, were sent notices by the Department.
School students are also future tax payers.
The official have started reaching out to them too.
The Gaya Zone Deputy Director Saurabh Kumar Rai announced details of the departmental action plan on Tuesday to 'Jagaran'.
The Deputy Director said that the target for the current financial year was around Rs. 9 crores.
Out of which 40 percent will be obtained through TDS and TCS.
There are many sources from which to collect the remaining amount.
He said an appeal is being made to tax payers to pay their advance taxes.
Departmental actions are being brought against the tax defaulters.
Similarly there is a plan to self-motivate the tax payers to pay.
For this reason officials have gone to the IMA, the Chamber of Commerce and other institutions in Gaya.
He said that the Chief Commissioner of income tax has come to pay a visit after an invitation from the Chamber.
He said that there is a strategy to spread awareness about taxes among the students from 9th to 12 grade.
For this purpose he himself has met with many school students.
Children can also encourage their parents to be good tax payers.
He said there are a total of 42,000 members in the income tax department.
This includes officers down to clerical staff.
He said that in the last financial year the department collected 5 lakh crores in taxes.
Deputy director Rai said that he was going to ask the commercial tax department for the records of any action taken against tax defaulters.
The program started with the National Anthem and the lighting of the lamp by all the guests.
Director, Dr.S.K.Garg, said that the institution's annual function is celebrated as the foundation day.
During this the alumni and students who have achieved the top position in the University are awarded the "Cash Achievement Award".
For various competitions such as Mehendi, debating skills, Antakshari, dancing, singing and comedy shows prizes were presented to the winners.
The principal guest District Collector, Navdeep Rinwa, and special guest, the Principal of the LLRM medical college, Dr. Pradeep Bharati, appreciated the management initiatives.
The program was presided over by Chaudhari Vikram Chandra Goyal, Vice-Chancellor of Charan Singh University, who said that the institution had honoured the University.
At the end of the function all the guests were given shawls and mementoes.
Before that Chairman Dr. S.P Deshwal said that the aim was to provide the nation with the best and most worthy citizens by providing high quality education for students from all walks of life, who would help in moving the country forward.
Arnav Chakravarti and Jagvijay assisted during the function.
Megha Singh and Priti Kaushik conducted the function.
In a hearing held behind closed doors, after accepting the plea of the NIA, special Judge I.S. Mehta has placed Ahmed on remand for 14 days.
According to sources, when presenting Ujair Ahmed to the court, the NIA said that Ujair Ahmed was also among those accused of the Patna Serial Bombings, along with Imtiyaaz Ansari and Haider who are members of the Indian Mujahideen.
Ahmed had brought many other terrorists to Ansari.
The NIA wants to find the other suspects in this case by interrogating Ahmed.
The search for bomb-making material and the terrorists who made those bombs is still going on, in this case.
They have to take Ahmed to Bihar, Jharkhand and many other states to do this and to facilitate this Ahmed's remand is essential.
It should be noted that the NIA had arrested the man accused of the Patna Serial Bomb blast, Ujair Ahmed from Ranchi, on October 30th.
The special Task Force (STF) exposed the fraud in the 2012 PMT just a day ago.
The STF found discrepancies in the enrolment numbers of 700 students.
Amongst them almost 125 students had been admitted into medical college.
Now these students admissions will be declared void.
After the STF's revelation the medical examination department has started considering cancelling these students' admissions.
According to the information provided the department is waiting for a complete list of all suspect students from the STF.
The list will be sent to the PEB to revoke the eligibility of the students involved.
Although, in this case, the department is also thinking of taking legal advice.
The departmental officials said that the students enrolled in 2012 have completed one year, so taking legal advice is necessary.
As the case is now under an STF enquiry, Department of Medical Education officials are not in a position to make a statement.
The PEB director, Tarun Pithore, said, "If the STF provides us the list of suspected students with proof, then their admission would be cancelled immediately".
The Director of Medical Education, Dr.Nirbhay Srivastava, also said, "If the students' admissions were found to be forged, we would cancel their admissions".
According to STF officials the forged student admissions included in the PMT for the year 2012 are under investigation.
After the investigation a list of the suspected students will be given to the PEB.
It is noteworthy that in the PMT exams for the year 2013 the eligibility of 345 suspect students was rescinded.
Out of these 345, the Department of Medical Education has already rescinded 84 student admissions.
Ejaz Jaan, the legislator of the Poonch Assembly Constituency, set up a water cooler in the Gurudwara grounds.
The legislator said that quite a lot of people visit the Gurudwara, but due to the lack of proper water facilities a water cooler has been installed here.
Using this, people can get cold water in the summer.
Pure ordinary water will also be available during the winter season.
This will solve the drinking water problem of the devotees.
Other people were also present at the event, including the Gurudwara Committee members.
If, after the general election, the new government continued the policy of not selling kerosene through ration shops then in half a dozen states kerosene would not be sold in these shops.
The Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand are among the states where the sale of kerosene sale will be stopped.
In addition to these, Karnataka, Tamilnadu and some states in the north-east are also preparing to stop the sale of kerosene.
According to sources in the Petroleum Ministry the decision to stop the sale of kerosene through PDS shops is based on two criteria.
The first criterion is that an electricity supply are being installed in the rural areas at a rapid pace.
The second criterion is the LPG supply network.
This means that in those states where most households in the rural areas have gas connections the sale of PDS kerosene will be stopped.
The Petroleum Ministry is fully prepared for this.
Since October 2013 the sale of PDS kerosene in Delhi has already been stopped.
According to sources, under this policy the kerosene quota of Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand has been reduced significantly.
The Punjab quota of 2.72 lakh kilolitres was reduced to one lakh kilolitres.
The kerosene quota allocation for Haryana was reduced by 70% and for Uttarakhand it was reduced by almost 40%.
Despite this reduction no shortage of kerosene has been reported by these states.
The Ministry is assuming that it is clear that kerosene is used for adulteration.
The difference in the price of diesel and PDS kerosene is currently Rs.37.
This encourages those who carrying out adulteration.
In the states where the sale of kerosene through PDS shops has been stopped, the oil companies can sell kerosene at full price on the open market.
At present the oil companies are selling kerosene at a loss of Rs.39 per litre.
The burden of the kerosene subsidy in the year 2013-14 is estimated to be 31,000 crore rupees.
Claiming to be a trading firm the accused opened accounts for investors and in the name of selling and purchasing shares, committed fraud.
It is possibly the first time in the state that this type of fraud, worth crores of rupees, has been discovered and exposed.
The police have not yet been able to catch the leader of the gang, but the police have detained seven people including the accused, after examining his work in the state.
This gang ran a fictitious commodity market named Metatrader-5.
Company executives used to take cash from investors and with the help of bogus software used to create fake IDs.
With these, the accused could see the shares the investors were buying.
They also used to known which shares were being purchased and at what price.
In reality no shares were purchased, nor any transactions carried out, because no DEMAT account was opened for the investors and share prices were falsely displayed in the fictitious software.
Police estimate that hundreds of people had been defrauded by the gang.
Every investor was asked to invest from two to five lakhs to get good returns.
The main suspect, Amit Soni, was detained by the cyber cell from Jodhpur, while his six associates were arrested in Indore.
According to the cyber cell ADG, Ashok Dohare, every stock trading company has to join the Stock Exchange as a trading firm.
Only after that can the company can get investors to do stock trading through them.
Then the investor's DEMAT account is opened, so that the stock can be traded, but this company MetaTrader-5 was neither associated with any exchange, nor was carrying out any stock trading.
This company purchased a server on 24th September 2012 under the name of Wintrade.
Since then this company has been defrauding people with fake investments.
So far, eight traders from Indore have come forward with complaints to the cyber cell.
After selling their shares at a profit the amount was not transferred into their accounts.
Then they started asking for the promised profit from the executives of the company.
Investors are even saying that their fake IDs always showed a reduction in the price of their purchased shares.
This price was set by the accused themselves.
The company had appointed a CEO and agents in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
The agents lured people to join the company with promises of very good returns.
Thereafter, some people invested between two to five lakh rupees.
The players in this team are setting new test match records everyday and now their reputation in one day tournaments is also increasing.
An excellent example of this was when a strong New Zealand team was crushed by Bangladesh, who had an insurmountable lead and won the one-day series title.
With Sohag Gazi and Musherfe Murtaza's strong bowling Bangladesh defeated New Zealand in the second one-day match by 40 runs and gained a insurmountable 2-0 lead in the three-match series.
This is Bangladesh's sixth consecutive win in one-day matches against New Zealand.
Before this, New Zealand had lost the 2010 series to Bangladesh by 0-4.
Chasing a target of 248 runs set by Bangladesh, the New Zealand team lost wickets at regular intervals. The team had piled on 207 runs in 46.4 overs from the spin bowling of Ghazi (34/3) and the strong bowling of Murtaza (43/3).
New Zealand's Ross Taylor made the highest score of 45, while Corey Anderson scored 37 runs.
Kyle Mills made 27 not-out, while Nathan McCullum contributed 25 runs, but many of the team's batsmen could not convert the good start into a big innings score, so the team were defeated.
Earlier, the Bangladesh team was all out for 247 runs after 49 overs in spite of Tamim Iqbal's (58) half century.
Anderson and James Nisham took eight wickets between them.
Anderson took 4 wickets for 40 runs, while Nisham claimed 4 wickets for 53 runs.
Tamim became Bangladesh's highest run scorer in one day cricket.
Leaving Shakib -ul-Hasan behind, Tamim scored 3,702 runs in 124 matches.
The third and final match of the series will be played on Sunday at Fatullah.
The bike was found abandoned near the forests of Pipcho.
The police have taken the bike into custody.
The bike belonged to JRPO postman Chhoti Mehta.
The Gate City Hall Circle Office, that earns crores of rupees every day for the Punjab State Power Corporation, is housed in an old ruin of a building.
All the employees are forced to work in fear of accidents.
Plaster falling from the ceiling everyday has caused panic among the staff.
Built in 1913, this British-era building was the Municipal Corporation's first office.
In 1995 the building was handed over to the Power Board.
The department just did some painting by way of repairs.
The building has deteriorated to the extent that employees are afraid of working in it.
The building's condition is so poor that often plaster falls from the ceiling.
In the past month, plaster has fallen from the ceiling in four rooms.
Because of this a female employee was injured.
The JE and Revenue accountant narrowly escaped injury in this accident.
Currently nearly four hundred employees work in the building.
These include the SE along with 5 Ex.Ens., 12 SDOs, 20 Junior Engineers, 130 Clerical staff, 200 Technical Workers and 20 other staff members.
Even though the situation is so bad, the PowerCom top officials have taken no steps to secure their safety so far.
Three rooms allotted to the JEs, for scooter and cycle parking, and two rooms on the upper floor of the building have complete collapsed.
The state of the building can easily be assessed by these facts.
At the state women's sport championships Rohtak took first place in Kabbadi.
Jajjhar and Hissar came second and third respectively in Kabaddi.
Similarly, in basketball Sonipat was first, Rohtak second, and Kurukshetra took third place.
In the volley ball competition Jajjhar came first, Mahendragarh was second and Karnal were in third place.
In the team event gymnastic competition Ambala Team came first, the Rohtak team second and the Bhiwani team came in third place.
In weightlifting the Sonipat team came first, the Bhiwani team came second and the Rohtak team came in third place.
Similarly, the Bhiwani team was first, the Rohtak team second and the Hissar team third in athletics.
On the other hand, at the closing ceremony while addressing the players and others present, the ADC R.C. Bidhan said that the players should continue to practice hard with discipline so that they could become great players and bring glory to the country and state.
Empowering women at the state level of women's sports has proven to be especially effective.
The state level women's sporting competition began on October 29th in Rohtak, at the Rajiv Gandhi Sports Complex and ended on October 31st.
The ADC said that the players will have to demonstrate their skills and exercise discipline to strengthen their abilities with hard work. Only then could they prove their mettle in the future and bring glory to the country and their states.
Arriving in Pune to inaugurate a section of the Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital, the BJP prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, while addressing an election rally on Friday, strongly attacked Congress.
On this occasion Modi said, "In several states and in the Centre, coalition governments were formed at one time, Congress, Communists and BJP also formed a coalition government.
You have seen the rule of many parties.
I call upon the Political pundits and economists.
Set a few parameters in the country.
Which party did what.
If the comparative results would come out, the question of whether the BJP government should rule or not would not arise in the country.
Whenever and wherever the BJP government was formed they tried to meet the people's aspirations.
This country is witness to the fact that during the governments led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Morarji Desai inflation was low.
The poor man ate twice a day.
But when the government was formed by Congress or its supporters then the poor man could not get enough food.
Not one Congress leader, not one leader of the UPA, can tell us what they have done in nine and a half years.
Our country's media also cannot talk to them.
Congress has become egoistical.
They do not answer to the media.
In the Loksabha elections you answer to the public.
Attacking the Congress leader, Kapil Sibal, Modi said, "Every day Modi is being asked questions. In 2014, if the public elect the BJP, then it will publish a record of its work for the public every year.
In a democracy a servant, not a ruler, should be sitting in Delhi.
There can be no lord in Delhi, but there should be a servant there.
The friends of Congress released balloons every day.
The friends of Congress, we gave you a test just 10 months ago.
It is the public that will make you sit your examination in Democracy.
Google, Samsung, Huawei sued over Nortel patents
The group that owns thousands of former Nortel patents filed a barrage of patent lawsuits on Thursday against cell phone manufacturers including Google, the company it outbid in the Nortel bankruptcy auction.
Rockstar, the consortium that bought the Nortel patents for $4.5 billion, sued Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, HTC Corp, Huawei and four other companies for patent infringement in U.S. District Court in Texas.
Rockstar is jointly owned by Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson and Sony.
Google is accused of infringing seven patents.
The patents cover technology that helps match Internet search terms with relevant advertising, the lawsuit said, which is the core of Google's search business.
Representatives for Samsung, Huawei, HTC and Rockstar could not immediately be reached.
Samsung, Huawei and HTC all manufacture phones that operate on Google's Android operating system, which competes fiercely with Apple and Microsoft mobile products.
In 2011 Google placed an initial $900 million bid for Nortel's patents.
Google increased its bid several times, ultimately offering as much as $4.4 billion.
After losing out to Rockstar on the Nortel patents, Google went on to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, a deal driven partly by Motorola's library of patents.
"Despite losing in its attempt to acquire the patents-in-suit at auction, Google has infringed and continues to infringe," the lawsuit said.
Rockstar is seeking increased damages against Google, as it claims Google's patent infringement is willful, according to the complaint.
Egypt swears in first freely elected president
Mohamed Morsi takes the oath of office but his day of triumph is unlikely to mark end of political strife in Egypt.
ISLAMIST Mohamed Morsi promised a "new Egypt" as he took the oath of office to become the country's first freely elected president, succeeding Hosni Mubarak who was ousted 16 months ago.
At his inauguration before the Supreme Constitutional Court, Morsi also became the Arab world's first freely elected Islamist president and Egypt's fifth head of state since the overthrow of the monarchy some 60 years ago.
He took the oath before the court's 18 black-robed judges in its Nile-side seat built to resemble an ancient Egyptian temple.
"We aspire to a better tomorrow, a new Egypt and a second republic," Morsi said during a solemn ceremony shown live on state television.
"Today, the Egyptian people laid the foundation of a new life - absolute freedom, a genuine democracy and stability," said Morsi, a 60-year-old US-trained engineer from the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist group that has spent most of the 84 years since its inception as an outlawed organisation harshly targeted by successive governments.
Hundreds of soldiers and policemen guarded the building as Morsi arrived shortly after 11am local time in a small motorcade.
Only several hundred supporters gathered outside the court to cheer the new president and, in a departure from the presidential pomp of the Mubarak years, traffic was only briefly halted to allow his motorcade through on the usually busy road linking the city centre with its southern suburbs.
Derided as the Brotherhood's uncharismatic "spare tyre," his personal prestige has surged since his victory and his delivery of a Friday speech that tried to present him as a candidate not just of Islamists but of all those who want to complete the work of the 2011 uprising against the authoritarian Mubarak.
"Egypt today is a civil, national, constitutional and modern state," Morsi, wearing a blue business suit and a red tie, told the judges in the wood-panelled chamber where he took the oath of office.
Morsi later travelled to Cairo University where he was to make his inauguration address.
He was given an official welcome by an army band that played the national anthem as he stood to attention.
Military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi was in attendance.
His arrival was greeted with chants of, "The army and the people are one hand," from the hundreds gathered in the university's main lecture room.
Established in 1908 as a bastion of secular education, Cairo University later became a stronghold of Islamist student groups in the 1970s.
Morsi took a symbolic oath on Friday in Tahrir Square, birthplace of the uprising that ended Mubarak's authoritarian rule last year, and vowed to reclaim presidential powers stripped from his office by the military council that took over from the ousted leader.
But by agreeing to take the official oath before the court, rather than before parliament as is customary, he is bowing to the military's will in an indication that the contest for power will continue.
Morsi's speech in Tahrir Square was filled with dramatic populist gestures.
We receive hundreds of photos and news from our readers for our readers' column every day.
Some of which we are sharing with you here.
Looking at these photos you will also say that they are very good and that the photographer has made good use of the opportunity.
Every photo in the Readers' report has been taken from a different angle.
The slight change in the angle by the photographer has changed the mood of the photograph.
If you don't believe it, take a look for yourself.
If scrap is stored properly and with proper lighting it can also become a piece of art.
Secretary of State John Kerry unexpectedly acknowledged that in the US spying has gone too far, in some cases.
He also claimed that innocent people have been tortured under secret surveillance programs.
Kerry's confession came while addressing the Open Government Partnership's annual summit in London via a video link.
Kerry said, "I assure you that innocent people were not being harassed in this process".
But, in an effort to gain information, in some cases inappropriate methods had been used.
Meanwhile, a key committee of the U.S. Congress has approved a bill to limit the monitoring activities of the National Security Agency [NSA].
The aim of this is to make monitoring more transparent and to get back the trust of the people which has been lost following the disclosure of large scale phone tapping.
This move by the Senate was welcomed by six U.S. companies including Google and Yahoo.
The data centres in these companies have also been hacked by the NSA.
On Friday the select committee of the Senate passed a bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act(FISA)by 11 votes to 4.
Many restrictions, including an outright ban on phone tapping, have been proposed in this bill, under the American Patriot Act.
Deliberate, unauthorized collection and use of data under FISA will be treated as a criminal offence and will be punishable by up to ten years in prison.
Once both Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate pass the bill, it will become law.
The Committee Chairman and Senator, Diane Festin, said that the NSA's program of recording phone calls is within the law, and believed it had contributed significantly to the country's security.
However, there should be more transparency.
Not only that, the protection of personal privacy should also be kept in mind.
Meanwhile, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, AOL and Facebook, disturbed by the revelation of the NSA's Internet surveillance program, have supported this bill.
In letters written to the senators all these companies have said that the senators' proposal to restrict the NSA's large scale phone tapping is welcomed by them.
It is noteworthy that the documents released by the former CIA employee Edward Snowden made the actions of the NSA public.
The NSA's monitoring of the phone conversations of the presidents of 35 countries, including Germany and France, had caused a huge uproar in the international community.
The State Media member Ajay Rai said he will begin his extensive campaign on the 4th of November.
Bhagat will be focusing his efforts in the Assembly constituencies in Chhatisgarh, adjacent to Jharkhand.
He knows these areas very well.
He will travel in Chhattisgarh continuously until November 16th.
Jharkhandi leaders are in great demand in the electoral battle in Chhattisgarh.
More than two dozen leaders of the BJP are already there.
Congress had urged the JMM chief, Shibu Soren, and Chief Minister, Hemant Soren, to campaign on behalf of the party in Chhattisgarh, which JMM's top leadership has accepted.
The JMM withdrew its 10 candidates announced earlier from the elections.
The JMM has told the Chhatisgarh State committee that all its leaders must actively join in the campaign for Congress.
As per the issued notification Dr. Girish Sharma has been promoted from Assistant Professor to the post of Associate Professor in the Anaesthesia Department, Dr. Divya Vashishth from lecturer in the College of Dentistry, Simla to the post of Assistant Professor in the Prosthetics Department, Dr. Geetaram Tekta from Assistant Professor to the post of Associate Professor in the Department of Skin Diseases and Dr. Renu Gupta has been appointed to the post of professor in the College of Dentistry, Simla.
The government cancelled the transfer order of Neeraj Sharma, the Senior Superintendent of the CMO office, Simla on Friday.
He has been posted in DDU, Simla.
He was transferred to the Simla Dental College. He has been under transfer since 24th October.
Irrigation and Public Health Department Assistant Engineer, Ashok Kumar Choudhary, has been transferred from the Kangra sub-division to the Dharamsala zone.
Assistant Engineer, Jagat Ram Chaudhary, has been sent from Guglada (Kangra) to the Kangra sub-division.
The bail plea hearing of the former Chief of the Army, General Pervez Musharraf, in the case of the Lal Masjid cleric murder has been postponed until November 4th.
The next hearing of the case against Musharraf will be held on November 11.
In 2007, during the military campaign launched against the fanatics hiding in Lal Masjid, cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed.
The police have already declared Musharraf innocent, which was a great relief for him.
The police said then that President Musharraf did not play a direct role in the assassination of the cleric.
Islamabad Additional District and Sessions Judge (ADSJ), Wajid Ali, is presiding over Musharraf's bail hearing.
During the hearing Tarik Asad, the counsel of the Lal Masjid Shuhada Foundation representative and complainant, accused the police of destroying all the evidences of Musharraf's innocence.
Counsel asked the court for more time to present more evidence in this case.
Subsequently, the court adjourned the bail of Mushraf hearing until November 4th.
On Thursday, the Organisation for the Welfare of the Disabled held a meeting to discuss the welfare of the disabled in the town.
It was presided over by Vinod Sharma, senior vice-chairman of the organization.
After the meeting the disabled demonstrated against the administration and submitted a memorandum to the SDM Naushera.
Vinod Sharma, while addressing a meeting of the disabled, said that persons with disabilities should receive special concessions for government jobs.
The disabled should receive promotion in the various government departments based on SCST quotas.
The monthly pension should be raised from Rs. 400 to Rs. 2,000.
A prosthesis camp should be organized in Tehsil Naushera and a rehabilitation centre should be opened in Rajouri.
The disabled also protested with their demands.
After the meeting, the disabled presented the Naushera SDM, Dipti Uppal, with a memorandum of their demands.
The Naushera SDM assured the disabled that their problems could be resolved.
In the U.S.A. an Indian doctor has been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for fraud.
The doctor had made a false medical insurance claim for services that he had never provided.
Western District of Oklahoma U.S. Attorney, Sanford Coats, said in a statement that the native of Oklahoma, Amarnath Bhandari (53), was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment.
He was also fined $20,000.
Bhandari was also ordered to compensate Medicare.
An order to seize some of his property was also given.
Dr. Bhandari had a license to practice in Oklahoma.
In March last year a federal jury had also charged him with the illegal distribution of controlled drugs.
This year in April a trial was held in the federal court in Oklahoma.
However, the jury did not reach a decision in the case.
Para-military forces have been deployed, from the forest to the town, for security purposes.
The forces are protecting polling stations in Bastar, Rajnandgaon and Dhamtari.
According to police officers, the Naxal operation is continuing at the border.
80 platoons have been deployed in the district as this a Naxal affected area.
All forces have come from their respective regions.
During the elections, intelligence reported the possibility of a Naxal attack.
An alert has been issued.
The forces have increased their searches and Naxal operations.
The CSP, Mohan Dubey, said security arrangements have been tightened for the festival, before the elections are held.
Armed paramilitary soldiers have been deployed at the Manav Mandir Chowk, Bharat Mata Chowk, Basantapur, Jaystamb Square, Imam Square and Ganj Chowk in the city.
Police are also carrying out patrols.
Simultaneously detention of goons is also being carried out.
Efforts are being made to avoid any untoward incident during the elections and Diwali.
Thereafter, he continued the maltreatment.
Furthermore, on the suspicion that she was pregnant, she was taken to hospital for an abortion.
Then he took her home and tried to make her drink poison.
When the minor's family proposed marriage with the youth, the youth's family physically abused them.
Police have registered a case against the youth, his brother and his parents.
According to the minor three years ago she met Gaurav, the son of Ramesh, a resident of Mallital.
He then lured her to his house and had sexual relations.
He then continued to mistreat her, constantly under threat.
Last October 18th he took Kishori away.
On the 21st he tried to kill her by giving her poison instead of medicine.
When the girl's condition deteriorated she was treated in the BD Pande Hospital.
Meanwhile, the family attempted to make them get married, but he refused.
Not only that, Anand the brother of the accused also was in a fight on Degree College Road.
Inspector B.D. Juyal said that on the basis of an investigation, a case has been filed under sections 276, 323, 506 against the youth Gaurav, his brother Anand, mother Kunti and father Prakash.
This case is being handled by the SI, Rajendra Kumar.
Thought travel agents were a thing of the past thanks to the internet?
Flight Centre seem to be bucking the trend.
The company has upgraded its full year profit forecast and is looking to record earnings from holidaymakers in Australia and the United Kingdom.
The travel company now expects its full year underlying profit before tax to be between $325 million and $340 million, compared with the $305 million to $315 million it previously forecast.
If the current guidance is achieved it will represent a 12 to 17 per cent growth on the record $290.4 million profit it achieved in 2011/12.
Managing director Graham Turner said Flight Centre had made 8 per cent profit in the first half and had started the second half strongly especially in Australian and UK non-business travel.
"Year-to-date, our 10 countries are profitable and several are on track for record full-year earnings before interest and tax contributions," he said.
This includes Australia and the United Kingdom, which are typically our largest profit generators.
In Australia the leisure business rebounded during the second half which offset a slightly weaker domestic corporate travel market.
Similarly in the UK, Flight Centre's leisure business performed well while corporate clients were spending less.
Its US business had recovered its losses during its seasonally weaker first half and was expected to deliver its third consecutive full year profit.
Flight Centre shares were up 3c at $38.20 yesterday.
In a recent media report it was said that the NSA hacked into the data centres of Yahoo and Google for surveillance.
The Washington Post exposed this based on the documents collected by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden.
According to the report, the NSA program was called Muscular, and was run together with their British counterpart - GCHQ.
Both agencies stole data passing through the vast network of fibre optic cables laid by Yahoo and Google.
On January 9th, 2013 the Washington Post reported, quoting a top secret document, that more than 18 million documents were stolen within just 3 days from the beginning of the program.
These included email, text, audio and video messages.
According to the Washington Post the program was run out of the U.S. and an anonymous telecommunications provider helped the NSA to access this information.
According to the newspaper it was much easier for the NSA to run the program outside the U.S. because in the U.S. such campaigns must have court orders.
During a press conference in Washington the NSA Chief, General Keith Alexander, denied these allegations saying, "As far as I know, this never happened.
The NSA has always gathered its information only within the framework of the law".
The NSA recently became a target after spying on the German Chancellor.
The United Nations said on Wednesday that the U.S. government has issued assurances that communications are not being monitored.
The U.S. also said that the United Nations communication system is not being monitored.
The BJP leader and prime ministerial candidate for Gujarat, Chief Minister Narendra Modi's most trusted aide, Amit Shah's brother arrived on Thursday afternoon in Gaya with his family.
District President Jainendra Kumar, National Convener of Non-conventional Energy Sources, Krishan Kumar Singh, Anil Singh an MLA of Hisua from Nawada, Anil Swami, Shyama Singh, Mukesh Kumar along with many other leaders were at Mr. Shah's private function.
District President Mr. Kumar said Mr. Shah, along with his family, went to worship and pray to Shaktipeeth's mother at the Kamakhya temple in Assam and arrived at Gaya Airport on a special plane.
Then they directly went to pay obeisance at the feet of the Shaktipeeth mother, Mangala Gauri.
After the worship and prayer at the Vishnupad temple he went back on a special plane.
District President Mr. Kumar said that, for security reasons, Mr. Shah's program had not been made public.
Schools urged to focus more on maths, spelling and grammar
English literature courses will require pupils to study at least one Shakespeare play, a 19th century novel, Romantic poetry and contemporary British fiction from 1914 onwards.
The exam will also feature "unseen texts" to encourage wider reading;
A combined English literature and language course will be scrapped.
From 2015, pupils will be required to take a standalone GCSE in language, with strong incentives to choose English literature as a separate qualification.
The Department for Education is due to release the new syllabuses in English and maths tomorrow - the first subjects to undergo a radical overhaul.
It will make changes in other core subjects next year.
In a separate move, Ofqual, the exams regulator, will unveil a shake-up of the structure of GCSEs, with a new grading system and less coursework.
Speaking in the summer, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said there was a "widespread consensus that we need to reform our examination system to restore public confidence," insisting GCSEs would be "more challenging, more ambitious and more rigorous."
Studies show that English schools devote less time to maths - 116 hours a year or three hours a week during term time - than in most countries.
By comparison, Australian schools provide an average of 143 hours a year and pupils do around 138 hours in Singapore.
While there will be no formal requirement to devote more of the timetable to maths, Coalition sources said the extensive maths GCSE - combined with more weighting for the subject in league tables - was likely to encourage schools to provide extra teaching.
The syllabus will place a greater focus on "real world problems," including financial mathematics.
The Supreme Court has refused to ban media reporting.
The Supreme Court said that they cannot ask the media to stop reporting information collected from the police or any other source.
Asaram's lawyer said that Asaram was being made out to be a kind of Dracula in this case.
In this case, the guidelines for reporting are in place but they are not being followed.
The Supreme Court said that there are several other options that could be used.
Asaram's lawyer said that there are thousands of newspapers and 100 news channels in the country, but specifically there were having problems with two channels.
These people were damaging his image and are guilty of one-sided reporting.
Asaram's rights should be protected in this case.
The Court refused to stop the media from reporting, but told Asaram's lawyer that they have other legal options which they may make use of.
Pawan Bansal attcked by the opposition's questions on Rail Gate, shocked the opposition by saying that he had not so much as looked at a women in the past 15 years.
After this everyone one was stunned and wondered where the issue of a woman had come from.
Maybe, Bansal was hinting at the family life of a Senior BJP leader and legislator.
Then, changing the subject, Bansal told the reporters that in the last parliamentary elections the BJP had sent a women after him and conspired to lodge a complaint against him, but that they had failed.
Addressing the reporters Bansal said that the CBI had interrogated him in the Rail Corruption case.
If he has called as a witness then it must only have been after a complete investigation.
Bansal said that, in the booth in question, he had only delivered a letter for a needy person.
If that is a crime, he would always commit the crime.
He said that it was not the corporation's constitutional right to raise the issue in the House, but he himself told the opposition to do so.
He said that as far as the developmental activities were concerned the opposition would be provided with a list of all the developmental activities of the last 15 years.
In Chandigarh they cannot imagine the way in which the development is taking place or will take place.
Greetings were exchanged between the two in a cabinet meeting.
After the meeting, Singh praised the Chief Minister for his speech in the meditation camp for the counter attack on Narendra Modi.
He also commented on his speech, saying that he didn't have any second thoughts in his mind.
He wanted the party to become strong.
New challenges will be faced strongly.
The expression on the Chief Minister's face showed that he had taken Singh's speech in a positive way.
It should be noted that Singh had urged the Chief Minister to respect the activists in the meditation camp and to protect them from the alleged harassment by officials.
However, he had also said that to assert his point he was also prepared for the dissolution of the cabinet.
Though, after seeing the opinions arising from the meditation camp there was a chance that the case for putting activists into government posts will also be reconsidered.
At the camp the state JDU president, Vashisht Narayan Singh, had said that the nominations of the activists in the 20-point committee would be announced soon.
He also indicated that the list was almost ready.
Now the news is coming that Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, will have a look at the list at his level.
He will also examine whether or not the opinion of the legislators and Members of Parliament was taken into account when generating the list.
If need be the list will be revised on a large scale to give places to older and more committed activists.
The common complaint of the legislators and Members of Parliament is that their opinion was not considered while generating the list.
Most of the people who have come from other parties are on the list but a significant number of workers, active since the Samata Party period, have been left off.
Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, while others create a perfect life by their hard work and people take inspiration from them.
One of the such personalities is the late Dhirubhai Ambani.
The third son of Hirachand Govaradhandas Ambani, who worked as a teacher in a school in Coravada, a small village in Gujarat, Dhirubhai Ambani was born on December 28th, 1932.
Dhirubhai was the third of five brothers and sisters.
The five children were Ramanikalala, Natwar Lal, Dhirubhai and two sisters, Trilochana and Jasumati.
Due to financial constraints Dhirubhai had to drop out after high school.
Dhirubhai started helping in the house financially from childhood.
At that time he set up a stall selling Bhajiyas near Girnar. The income from the stall was dependent on the number of tourists going there.
Dhirubhai's first job was in 1949 at the age of 17 when he arrived on a ship called Cabota in the city of Aden, in the Yemen.
His elder brother, Raniklala, had made all the arrangements for him there, so he did not have any problem getting a job abroad.
But Dhirubhai had something else in mind.
So he returned home in 1954.
By 1955, he had landed in Mumbai with Rs 500 in his pocket, to try his luck.
And from here he started his travel business.
Dhirubhai never looked back.
His name became known not only in the country, but also abroad.
Dhirubhai Ambani bade farewell to the world on July 6th, 2002.
When he died he had Rs 62,000 crores.
Currently his sons, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani, are looking after his empire.
Like their father, today these two brothers are at the international level of businessmen.
Who has not heard of the Ambani family today?
Dhirubhai, Kokilaben, their two sons, Mukesh and Anil Ambani, and their wives Nita Ambani and Tina Ambani.
Pamela Anderson chops off those iconic blonde locks, debuts dramatic new pixie cut.
Pam's blonde locks were made famous by her role in sexy TV show Baywatch.
Pamela Anderson is the latest celebrity to shock fans with a dramatic new hairdo.
The ex-Baywatch babe has ditched her long blonde locks in favour of a platinum pixie crop.
The 46-year-old actress revealed her latest look while out and about in LA on Wednesday and shared a snap on her Twitter page.
It's the first time in 20 years that the blonde beauty has had short hair, and we're loving the demure change.
What do you think about Pammy's hair?
Share with us your thoughts in the comments below.
The sacrifice of Shaheed Kesari was remembered and a cultural program, including patriotic presentations, was performed.
The program was organised on Friday at Gandhi park on behalf of the committee.
Here Mayor Vinod Chamoli, with the office bearers of the committee, laid a wreath at the statue of the Shaheed Kesari Chand.
After that a cultural program was organised at the Hindi Bhavan, where the former SP state President Vinod Badthwal was present. Principal guest and former legislator Munna Singh Chauhan was also present as a special guest.
In this program Sukh Kala Manch, Jaunsaar presented 'Kesari teri yaad mein kashi bhulauni, Jiyendei teri yaddon bira kashi mitauni', 'Veer kesari chand ji ki harut', Jaunsaar ke aradhya dev mahasu devata ki vandana; etc. Cultural programs were presented.
The principle guest, shedding light on the life of the Veer Shaheed Kesari Chand, made everyone aware of the contribution he had made to the freedom struggle.
The speakers urged those present in the program to become strong-willed and patriotic, like Shaheed Kesari.
The Chairman of the Committee Jayavir Singh Chauhan, Matbar Singh Chauhan, Suresh Tomar, Ravindra Bhandari, Amit Joshi, Mijaan Rai, Sunil Dutt Sharma were present at the event.
Killing mosquitoes to prevent diseases like dengue, malaria and filariasis is going to be expensive.
The state government is proceeding to raise the tax on mosquito killing repellents, mats and liquids by up to three times.
The proposal to increase tax will be presented to the cabinet soon.
The government is struggling with a financial crisis these days and is searching for ways to do everything possible to increase revenue.
It is noteworthy that, to improve the financial health of the government, a resource committee has been formed under the chairmanship of Urban Development Minister, Mohamed Azam Khan.
According to sources, in a recently held resource committee meeting many proposals to increase the tax were rejected if the general public would be directly affected.
However, the committee has given the green flag to increase the taxes on mosquito repellents, coils, mats and liquids.
A proposal to triple the taxes has been put forward.
Currently they carry 4% VAT plus an additional 1% tax.
Now a 12.5% VAT plus a 1.5% additional tax on these items is proposed.
The government is likely to generate additional revenue of around Rs 14 crore in this way.
A proposal for a tax hike on the persimmon leaf was rejected: In fact, to increase the revenue income the commercial tax department was in favour of increasing the tax on the persimmon leaf by 14%, but the Financial Resources Committee has rejected that proposal.
The committee believes that persimmon leaf is used to make bidis that the lower-class people smoke.
Similarly, the committee rejected the proposal to increase taxes on transmission wires, etc., and electrical goods that would have pushed up the cost of electricity and would have a direct impact on the general public.
The committee also rejected the proposal for the application of a green tax on the renewal of commercial vehicles.
On Friday Congress leader Chadvir Hooda gave a speech to the inhabitants of Sector 2 and Maheshpur village
During this speech he invited the people to join the rally and determined who was responsible for what.
Chadvir also determined the duties of the activists.
Chadvir Hooda said that the Haryana Chief Minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, has spent billions of rupees in the district.
In the last four years Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has completed development work worth Rs 15 crore in Barwala and has blocked panchayats.
Chadvir Hooda said that because of the appeal of the Chief Minister activists are very excited about this rally and this rally will be the biggest amongst all the rallies so far and this will put Haryana politics on the map in the entire country.
Chadvir said that, based on the popularity gained by the Chief Minister by the way of landmark decisions and for activities for the people's welfare, the public would also elect Hooda for the third time.
Diwali, the festival of wealth, happiness and prosperity begins on Friday with Dhanteras.
Preparations at home and in the markets have reached the final stage.
To double the enjoyment of the city's inhabitants the main market Bapu Market, Ashwini Market, Sarafa Market, Badbhuja Valley, Sindhi Market, etc. have put up extensive decorations.
Shopkeepers have made special preparations in their shops for the convenience of their customers.
The festive atmosphere has resulted in large crowds in the major markets several times during the day.
There is a competition amongst the merchant unions for the best decorations during Diwali.
The main markets sectors 4, 5, 6 and sector 14 of the suburban areas have been decorated.
Shopping continued in these markets on the eve of Dhanteras too.
Sales of materials related to worship, lamps and lighting etc. were especially strong on Thursday.
Jagaran Bureau, Shrinagar: The police have allegedly removed the security of the former Minister Ghulam Hasan Khan who joined Congress from the People Democratic Party.
Khan blamed the government, saying that his security has been removed for political reasons.
It may be recalled that in the year 2002 Ghulam Hasan Khan, who won the 2002 elections from Shopian on a PDP ticket, was included in the cabinet, while Mufti Mohamed Sayeed was a Chief Minister.
Ghulam Hassan Khan said he has had protection since 1996.
I live in Shopian, which is believed to be a stronghold of terrorists.
A CRPF security team under the leadership of a sub-inspector is stationed at my house.
I have also bodyguards, but all my security was suddenly withdrawn on Thursday.
As when the security team was leaving from my house I spoke to the District Deputy Commissioner and District Superintendent.
But instead of restoring security they just said that they would investigate the matter.
However, in this regard, when the Kashmir IGP, Abdul Gani Meer, was contacted he denied any knowledge of the issue and said that it was a sensitive issue.
I should check it out myself. After all, how can the protection of a former minister and senior political leader be removed?
The State Congress Chief, Prof. Safudin Soz, said that as far as he knew nothing of this kind had ever happened before.
If Hasan Khan's security has been compromised, then it is a very serious matter.
I am in Jammu now and will be coming to Kashmir in a day or two.
I will discuss this issue with the authorities concerned.
According to the report, the UPA government has spent Rs 8.5 crore to advertise the anniversary of the birth of Sardar Patel over the last four years.
But, contrary to the claims by Modi during the NDA government (between 1994 and 2004), while Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the PM there was a time for 2 consecutive years (2001-2002) when not a single advertisement for Sardar Patel was published by the Government.
On Thursday in Kevadia,Gujarat laying the foundation stone of Sardar Patel's 182 meter high statue, 'the Statue of Unity', Modi said, "Earlier, there was no advertising for the anniversary of Sardar Patel.
While the DAVP's records show that in 2009-10 up to 3 million, in 2010-11 to Rs 4.10 crore, in 2011-12 and Rs 2.7 crore and in 2012-13 to Rs 1.4 crore UPA had been spent on advertising for Sardar Patel.
When the Union Information and Broadcasting Minister, Manish Tewari, was asked about Modi's claims he said that what the BJP's PM candidate said was not based on the facts.
In 2008 the UPA did not publish any ads in the name of Patel.
Tiwari said that it was because of the economic downturn in that year.
The amounts spent on promoting Sardar Patel are far less than the amount spent on the birth and death anniversaries of the Nehru - Gandhi family members.
DAVP has spent 33 crores on the birth and death anniversaries, 21 crores for former PM Rajiv Gandhi, 14.5 crores for Indira Gandhi and Rs.9.38 crores for Jawaharlal Nehru, on print advertising.
When Manish Tiwari was asked about the difference, he said, "it should not be seen from the perspective of spending on advertising.
Because the price of advertising depends on several things, such as the size or frequency of the advertisement for that year.
The fact is that it shows our dedication without understanding that the people opposed to this are busy taking care of the legacy of a great leader.
Today he will meet the families of the people who died in Patna last Sunday.
As it is Narendra Modi's second visit to Patna just a week after the blasts the security has been tightened.
The police have examined the route of Modi's visit and the sites of the meeting thoroughly.
Police will keep an eye on the people coming to the meetings.
The Gujarat police force, the NSGIB and the State police force will take care of security.
Modi's protective shield will be tightened.
Meanwhile, questions are being raised about the urn procession undertaken by the BJP, carrying the ashes of the people who died in the blasts.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has accused the BJP of spoiling the atmosphere.
Trekking through mud, rivers and jungle to provide free medical care
Dr. Georges Bwelle is bringing free health care to rural villages in Cameroon
Bwelle and his team spend almost every weekend seeing hundreds of patients
There aren't many doctors in the west African country; just one for every 5,000 people
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Dr. Georges Bwelle is one of the top 10 CNN Heroes of 2013.
You can vote for him, or any of the other top 10 Heroes, to be CNN Hero of the Year.
That person will receive $250,000 to continue their extraordinary work.
For 21 years, Georges Bwelle watched his ill father slip in and out of consciousness, traveling to hospitals that weren't equipped to help him.
Jamef Bwelle was injured in a 1981 car accident near Yaounde, Cameroon's capital.
He suffered only a broken arm at first, but an infection developed and spread to his brain, creating a hematoma that would affect him for the rest of his life.
"There were no neurosurgeons in Cameroon," Georges Bwelle said.
We would have taken him out of Cameroon if we had the money.
Instead, Bwelle spent years escorting his father to overcrowded clinics and hospitals, getting whatever treatment they could get.
"It's not easy," Bwelle said.
You can leave home at 5 a.m., running to the hospital to be the first, and you are not the first.
There are a lot of patients.
Some people can die because they are waiting.
The situation hasn't changed much since Bwelle's father passed away in 2002.
In Cameroon, there is only one doctor for every 5,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.
For comparison's sake, the ratio in the United States is one doctor for every 413 people.
And even if they could see a physician, many Cameroonians couldn't afford it.
Two out of five people in the country live below the poverty line, and nearly three-quarters of the country's health-care spending is private.
"The only problem they have is poverty," Bwelle said.
And with poverty, they cannot enjoy their life.
Seeing his father and so many of his countrymen suffer, Bwelle was determined to do something about it.
Dr. Georges Bwelle and his team of volunteers have performed 700 free surgeries in the past year.
He became a doctor himself, working as a vascular surgeon in Yaounde's Central Hospital.
And he started a nonprofit, ASCOVIME, that travels into rural areas on weekends to provide free medical care.
Since 2008, he and his group of volunteers have helped nearly 32,000 people.
Almost every Friday, he and up to 30 people jam into vans, tie medical supplies to the roofs and travel across rough terrain to visit villages in need.
Their luck doesn't always hold out.
They've had to push vehicles through rivers and mud more than once.
But when they arrive, they receive a true heroes' welcome: a feast, singing and dancing, and the best accommodations the community can offer.
In these villages, free medical care is truly a cause for celebration, and Bwelle -- with his big smile and boundless energy -- is more than happy to join in the fun.
The next morning, the team begins meeting with hundreds of patients.
"We are receiving 500 people in each trip," Bwelle said.
They are coming from 60 kilometers around the village, and they're coming on foot.
Each of these weekend clinics provides a variety of medical care.
Many people are treated for malaria, tuberculosis, malnutrition, diabetes, parasites and sexually transmitted diseases.
Others might receive crutches, a pair of donated eyeglasses or free birth certificates -- documentation that's required for school but that many impoverished families simply can't afford.
In the evenings, the team will do simple surgeries with local anesthesia.
Operations are usually done in a schoolhouse, town hall or home; after the procedure, patients get up and walk to the recovery area to make way for the next person.
With the group's generator lighting the operating room and sanitizing equipment, Bwelle and his volunteers work into the early hours of Sunday morning.
It's a backbreaking pace, but village musicians usually help keep the team motivated.
"They are beating drums all night to keep us awake and continue our work," Bwelle said.
On Sunday, the team heads back to the city, tired but proud of their work.
The group -- a mix of Cameroonian doctors and foreign medical students -- has performed 700 free surgeries in the past year, and they know that their help can make a world of difference to those they help.
One man explained that the free hernia surgery he'd received will allow him to work again.
"This will change my future with my family," the man said.
In addition to holding these weekend clinics and working as a hospital surgeon, Bwelle also works nights at private medical clinics around Yaounde.
It's this second job, he said, that funds about 60% of his nonprofit; the rest is covered by private donations.
"I'm not sure when he sleeps," said Katie O'Malley, a second-year medical student from Drexel University in Philadelphia and volunteer with Bwelle's group.
He is always either at the hospital or trying to make money for the organization so he can go on these campaigns.
For medical and nursing students such as O'Malley, who come from the United States and Europe to join Bwelle on his missions, it's a hands-on opportunity they'd never get at home.
"We've been able to scrub in on surgeries where we help blot blood away or hold tools for Dr. Bwelle," O'Malley said.
That's not something you'd ever get to do in America as a second-year medical student.
The student volunteers usually pay their own way to Cameroon, often arriving with donated medical supplies.
But once they arrive in Yaounde, their board, transportation and instruction are covered by Bwelle.
"He's a hero, without a doubt," O'Malley said.
He gives his life to this organization, and his desire to help the Cameroon people is everlasting.
For Bwelle, the near-constant workload isn't a hardship.
Helping others live happier lives, fulfilling a promise he made to his father, is something that brings him great joy.
"I am so happy when I am doing this work," Bwelle said.
And I think about my father.
I hope he sees what I am doing.
To make people laugh, to reduce the pain, that's why I'm doing this.
Check out the ASCOVIME website and see how to help.
You may not believe it but it is true.
Not only that, but the name of Mission road was changed to the name of the City Legislator, Anjali Kumar.
Actually, the Jharkhand Development Youth Forum had changed the name to express their anger at the bad condition of the roads.
The program was led by the JMM central secretary, Sachchidanand Pandey.
While addressing a rally Modi said, "If you listen to all the speeches given by all the leaders of Congress, then you will see that they never talk about what they have done."
He said, "Congress has become so arrogant that does not answer media questions."
Manmohan Singh is the Prime Minister and it is his government, yet they want Modi to respond.
Answering the public's questions is your duty.
Clearly, Modi was referring to Sibal, who had told journalists in Delhi that Modi wants to create an environment where he is in control, where he gives his speeches and he does not talk to journalists in order to avoid their questions.
Sibal challenged Modi to a face to face debate.
Modi said, "I promise the people of the country that when the BJP will form the government in 2014, then we will submit a report each year to the public."
Congress has given the tickets to all his former legislators.
In the list there are 6 old and 2 new faces.
The new faces who have been given a chance include Nirmala Sapre from the Bina Assembly constituency's Sagar District and Pratapsingh Lodhi from Jabera Assembly Constituency's Damoha District.
Three from Sagar, two from Tikamgarh and one legislator from Chhatrapur have been given a ticket again.
As predicted, Govind Singh from Surkhiin Sagar, Arunoday Chaubey from Khurai and Narayan Prajapati from Banda are candidates again.
Tickets have been given to Yadavendra Singh from Tikamgarh and to Brujendra Singh Rathore from Prithvipur and Vikramsingh's grandson Raja from Rajnagar Chhattarpur.
All these are current legislators in these constituencies.
It has been decided that, after the first lists from the BJP and Congress, the contest will be between the new faces from both parties in Bina.
Mahesh Rai of the BJP and Nirmala Sapre of the Congress will face each other in Bina.
At present in the Prithvipur Tikamgarh Congress the MLA, Brijendra Singh Rathore, is running against the late former minister's wife, Anita Nayak
The current MLA Vikramsingh's grandson, Raja of Raj Nagar, will be challenged by Ramkrushna Kusumariya of the BJP.
Arunoday Chaubey the MLA of Khurai and the MLA Bhupendra Singh of the BJP will go face to face.
Govind Rajput, the MLA from Surakhi, is being challenged by the BJP's youth leader, Paril Sahoo.
He has been assigned to the Assembly elections at the state level to Election Director and reception committees.
The strong contestant of State Vice-President Raipur North Seat, Sachchidanand Upasane, has been appointed Raipur Rural Seat's election Director.
Upasane has been asked to handle the State office and also tour the State if required.
As the State President Ramsevak Paikara and Secretary Shivratan Sharma, along with many other officials, are contesting the elections, Secretary Rampratap is left to handle the organisation alone.
Because of this, Upasane has been handed a great responsibility.
The North seat contestant, RDA President Sunil Soni, has been given the responsible position of the Raipur South Seat election director.
Another contender, Regional Municipal Corporation Chairman Sanjay Srivastava, has been given a seat on the reception committee.
He will receive the party's star campaigner national leaders to help the coming and going.
On this committee there are some more contenders, along with Soni.
Shyam Basaarng seat and Leelaraam Bhojwani will conduct the election for the Rajnandgaon seat.
A colourful program was organized by the Association.
In the Diwali program the singer Hargun graced the function with his beautiful songs.
In the Diwali program organised under the leadership of Bar President Advocate, Pradeep Saini Jidge, Bar association officials and lawyers were present.
The District and Sessions Judge, Harminder Singh Madan, said that festivals of all religions in the country should be celebrated by everybody.
The Bar Association President Advocate, Pradeep Saini, said every year the bar association celebrates all the festivals without discrimination and with devotion and enthusiasm.
Hundreds of devotees attended this event.
On the occasion of Mahavir Jayanti, the god Hanuman was worshipped on Devika beach.
At this event Advocate Surinder Khajuria said that a yagna had been organized at eight o'clock on Friday morning with a ritual obeisance to Lord Mahavira.
Veneration was started at nine o'clock in the morning and ended at 12 o'clock.
He said that after the veneration a grand bhandara was organised with the help of the citizens, in which people of all religions in the city came to pray.
Obama's Health Care Walk Back
Amid a firestorm of criticism, President Obama yesterday walked back his oft-repeated, unambiguous promise that "if you like your health plan, you can keep it."
With hundreds of thousands receiving cancellation notices from their providers, Republicans have slammed the president in recent days for misleading the American public.
Yesterday, Obama tweaked his original pledge.
"For the vast majority of people who have health insurance that works, you can keep it," he said in a speech in Boston.
Addressing what he called the "flurry in the news" about the cancellations, Obama urged Americans receiving these notices to shop for new coverage in the marketplace.
Most people are going to be able to get better, comprehensive health care plans for the same price or even cheaper than projected.
"You're going to get a better deal," he said.
The administration has said it should come as no surprise that the 5 percent of the population who purchase insurance on their own may be forced to switch plans because their coverage doesn't meet the new standards required under the Affordable Care Act.
"Let me say directly to these Americans: you deserve better," Sebelius said in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in Washington.
Sebelius, who is overseeing implementation of the Affordable Care Act, said the launch of the online marketplace has gone "miserably" since October.
"I am as frustrated and angry as anyone," she said.
I am eager to earn your confidence back.
An exasperated Sebelius uttered that phrase, caught by a hot mic, to an aide seated behind her at yesterday's House hearing following a contentious exchange with Rep. Billy Long, R-Mo., over whether she should be required to enroll in Obamacare.
More than three hours into the hearing, Long repeatedly pressed Sebelius on why the "architect" of the Affordable Care Act has not voluntarily forgone government-sponsored insurance to purchase a plan through HealthCare.gov, which she is now pitching to millions of Americans.
It has been revealed that a ransom of two lakh rupees was demanded from the trader.
If no money was paid he was threatened and told his daughter would be kidnapped.
In a case registered in the Hudkeshwar police station efforts to solve the crime are being taken by the cyber cell.
Narendra Bahad (21),a resident of Ayodhya City, is the owner of an electronics shop.
Between the 25th and the 29th he received calls from various numbers on his mobile.
The callers asked for two lakh rupees as ransom.
He was threatened that if the money was not paid Narendra would be killed or his daughter would be kidnapped.
Narendra did not take the threats seriously at first, but when the threats started to increase and his 12th. Std. daughter was threatened he became worried.
The family members are frightened.
A complaint was lodged on Thursday.
No clue to the identity of the criminals has yet been found.
Given the severity of the case support from the cyber crime cell is being sought.
In addition, MLA Bandal has ordered the officials from the villages of Bhagiwander, Bandar Patti, Lalena, Jjal Fulokhari Gatwali and Malkana to meet the people personally and to solve their problems face to face.
The MP has also released grants for rural development.
He ordered the panchayat that the grant released for rural development had to be used properly in order to benefit the village residents. He took stock of the ongoing paddy procurement arrangements in Bhagiwander village.
He awarded the 15 girls who had received training in sewing with a sewing machine, plants and certificates.
At this time the village of Bhagiwander has 400 congressmen and PPPs, Laleanna has 35 Congressmen and PPPs and the village of Jjal has 71 families following Akali Dal, excluding Congress and PPP members.
Badal said that the farmers in Punjab are being insulted in the markets due to the standards set by the Centre for procurement, while the Centre has always discriminated against the farmers of the Punjab.
Also present with him were DC K.K. Yadav, SSP Ravcharan Singh Barad, ADC D. Sonali Giri, ADC Rajiv Parashar, SDM Shruti Sharma, Talavadi Sabo Area Incharge Balveer Singh, Sarpanch Kulwant Singh Virk along with administrative officers of various departments and Akali leaders.
Due to which the number of cases of violations of the code of conduct are declining.
After the implementation of the election code of conduct between October 4th to October 21st, 313 cases were lodged against various political parties.
While only 31 cases were registered between October 22nd and October 27th.
With the implementation of the election code of conduct cases of its violation were also being reported.
Initially there were many complaints, but gradually they are becoming fewer.
It is being said that, as no-one had full information about the code of conduct, the number of complaints registered against the political parties was rising.
As the election commission made the political parties aware of them and asked them to learn a lesson from the registered complaints the complaints have reduced.
Many parties were campaigning in an old fashioned manner because of a lack of information, but when action was taken against them they stopped doing that.
The political parties are learning about the election code of conduct and are also complying with it.
Due to this the number of cases of code violation have declined.
A proposal concerning this matter has been sent to the government on behalf of ADA, which is soon going to be approved.
This historical city, surrounded on three sides by Ganga-Jamuna has no land left where ADA can plan a big residential project.
So now they have decided to plan residential projects beyond Jhunsi in the east, Fafamau in the north, and beyond Naini in the South.
To make the plan inclusive a meeting was held under the chairmanship of the District collector, Rajshekhar.
ADA has plans to include the villages of Phulpur, Soranva, and Kurchhuna, with a population of two hundred citizens.
After being included in the ADA boundary the Chaka and Bahadur blocks will be completed.
Half of the Kaudihar block will be brought within the ADA boundary.
According to Amarnath Upadhyaya, secretary of ADA, a proposal concerning this matter has been sent to the government.
ADA wants to bring the boundaries of these grampanchayants under its authorisation for planning, and will begin work on it soon.
If that happens, the price of buildings will decline in the city.
The availability of housing for the general public will be increased.
Soon residential palaces on the lines of Lucknow and Noida will begin to be built in these new areas.
In the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Sector 32 ENT department head, Prof. Arjun Das of the National Academy of Medical Sciences New Delhi, has been selected for the fellowship.
He has received this fellowship for his remarkable work in the field of ear, nose, throat medicine.
According to the Director of the Institute, Principal Prof. Atul Sachdeva, he is the second faculty member of the institute to have received the fellowship.
The human population has exceeded 7 billion.
If the population continues to increase this way, the time will soon come when mustering a morsel for every hungry mouth would be very difficult.
According to experts, in the near future people will have no other option but to eat worms and insects.
According to reports, this year a group of students from McGill University in Montreal received the Hult Prize for an innovative project.
They were given the award for making protein flour from worms and insects.
A $1 million grant was awarded to them to make it possible for them to pursue their research and experiments.
In an interview with ABC News on September 30th, the Group Chief Student Researcher, Mohammed Ashor, said that his team will experiment with grasshoppers for food.
This report has an detailed description of edible worms and insects.
Finally, due to the Lok Sabha elections the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, expanded his cabinet on Friday to include 6 new ministers.
The swearing in ceremony of these leaders was held at Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar today.
Governor Kamal Beniwal swore in the newly appointed Jashwant Singh Bhambhor, Dilip Rathore, Chhatrasingh Mori, Jayey Raddiya, Vasanbhai Ahir, and Jayedrathsingh Parmar.
During the swearing in ceremony as well as Chief Minister Modi, BJP senior leaders Amit Shah, Purushottam Rupala and a large number of activists were also present.
In this meeting two state-level cabinet ministers were promoted to include them in the cabinet and a change in the responsibilities of some ministers is expected.
Currently in judicial custody at the Central Jail on charges of sexual abuse of a minor, the student Asaram will spend his Diwali in jail this time.
Apart from Jodhpur, Asaram is also a suspect in the case of the rape of a girl in Surat.
Meanwhile, his son Narayan Sai is on the run from the police.
And so now an arrest warrant has been issued for him by the Gujarat police.
From Ahmedabad a report is also coming in that Asaram's trustees are also slowly breaking away from Asaram.
Further action is now also being taken on Asaram's ashrams that have been built illegally or on public land.
We have already informed you that Asaram is the owner of more than 400 Ashrams.
Amongst these is one ashram in New Jersey, USA.
Asaram and his son are accused of various crimes.
In spite of this, the blind faith of some of their devotees continues.
Asaram has a following not only in India, but also equally in America.
Here in India, Asaram is in jail and his devotees are slowly breaking away from him, but this is not at all the case in America.
In the New Jersey ashram even now the devotees continue to come as before and pray to Asaram.
John Kerry says US spying has "reached too far inappropriately" in unprecedented admission
John Kerry has indicated a softening of the U.S's defensive stance on its surveillance programmes with an unprecedented admission that on occasions its spying has "reached too far inappropriately."
The Secretary of State also admitted that he'd been guilty, along with Barack Obama, of being on "automatic pilot" as incendiary revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden about the NSA's spying activities emerged.
The leaks have put the US government at the centre of a diplomatic storm with its allies.
Speaking to an open government conference in London via video link, Mr Kerry said: "There is no question that the President and I and others in government have actually learned of some things that had been happening on an automatic pilot because the ability has been there, going back to World War Two and to the very difficult years of the Cold War, and then, of course, 9/11."
He then became the first high-ranking member of the U.S government to admit that US spying had crossed the line, but emphasised that no one's rights had been abused.
He said: "In some cases, it has reached too far inappropriately."
And the President is determined to try to clarify and make clear for people and is now doing a thorough review in order that nobody will have the sense of abuse.
I assure you innocent people are not being abused in this process.
Mr Kerry insisted, however, that the NSA was a force for good and that its surveillance operations had saved many lives.
He added: "We're dealing in a new world where people are willing to blow themselves up."
There is radical extremism in the world that is hell-bent and determined to try to kill people and blow people up and attack governments.
So what if you were able to intercept that and stop it before it happens?
We have actually prevented airplanes from going down, buildings from being blown up, and people from being assassinated because we've been able to learn ahead of time of the plans.
Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers will head to Europe to help address concerns abroad about alleged U.S. spying and convince the Europeans of the need to continue joint anti-terrorism efforts with the U.S., the chairman of a Senate subcommittee on European affairs said on Thursday.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said he spoke with European Parliament members and others this week and is concerned about their threats to stop participating in anti-terrorist organizations because of frustration over surveillance by the National Security Agency.
"It's really important for U.S. national security interests for Europeans to stay on board with us with respect to our mutual anti-terrorism endeavors," Murphy, a first-term Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs, said in an interview from Washington.
And I'm going to Europe to make it clear to them that we need to continue to work together in combatting terrorism, notwithstanding their anger over these NSA programs.
News reports that the NSA swept up millions of phone records in Europe have frayed relations with some U.S. allies, though the agency's chief said this week that they were inaccurate and reflected a misunderstanding of metadata that Nato allies collected and shared with the United States.
Other revelations cited documents leaked by Snowden that the NSA monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone and those of up to 34 other world leaders.
The national intelligence director, James Clapper, defended spying on allies as necessary and said it's commonplace on both sides.
Amid the uproar, Murphy said his office is arranging the congressional trip, expected to take place this year, and hopes the delegation will include members of both parties and both chambers.
Names of other participating lawmakers were to be released in coming days.
He said the itinerary is still being worked out.
While Murphy said the purpose of the trip is to help improve relationships, he said some "tough love" will also be dispensed.
He said European leaders need to be honest with their own people about the kind of espionage programs they've used for years themselves.
"While we can amend our surveillance programs to better protect the rights of Europeans, they also need to come to terms with the fact that we're not the only ones that are out there spying," Murphy said.
Meanwhile, Mr Kerry is scheduled to head this weekend to the Middle East and Poland to address rancor over U.S. strategies in the Syria, Egypt and Iran as well as U.S. surveillance activities.
New politics has begun following the changes in the boards of the Municipal Corporation.
Recently, in the Santhiya Municipal Corporation's Beerbhum District, due to the party change of legislators the Congress led board changed to the Trunamool board.
This change occurred because most of the legislators, including the Chairman of the Municipal Corporation, joined Trunamool.
Not only from Congress, but some of the legislators from CPM, CPI, and Forward Block have also joined Trunamool.
The Trinamool Congress General Secretary Mukul Roy admits it augurs well for the party.
He said that the Santhiya Municipal Corporation Chairman, Virendra Parikh, and Congress leader Viplav Dutta, along with 10 Congress legislators, have joined Trunamool.
Some legislators from CPM and Left Front have also joined Trunamool.
All of them informed the District Collector in writing, as required by the Bengal Municipal Act, that they have joined Trunamool and because of its majority the Santhiya Municipal Corporation board will come under Trunamool Control.
Mr. Rai also claimed that everyone agrees with the development template decided upon under the leadership of the Chief Minister, Mamta Banerjee.
Political leaders from Congress, the CPM, the CPI, Forward Bloc and other political leaders are moving to join the Trinamool Congress.
Appropriate leaders from any party are welcome to join Trunamool.
The control by Trunamool of the Santhilya Municipal Board due to the change of the party by congress legislators before the November 22nd elections to be held in 5 Municipal Corporations is considered as an important development in the political arena.
Before this the Left Front-ruled Haldia and Congress-ruled Nadia Municipal boards had also come under the control of Trunamool.
When the Municipal boards in the district come under Trunamool party control, due to the change of party, then the new members of the party are made very welcome in Kolkata at the Trunamool Bhavan.
Trinamool Congress General Secretary Mukul Roy is excited about the leaders breaking away from other parties to join the Trinamool party.
He said that leaders breaking away from any party were welcome to join Trunamool.
He claims that the people's trust in Chief Minister Mamata Banarjee's leadership is increasing, and that this is the reason people are joining Trunamool.
The main opposition CPM is claiming that grassroots leaders of the other parties are being threatened and bullied.
People are joining them due to the fear of Trunamool's threats.
The change in the elected local boards is being considered as a blow to democracy by CPM.
It is a right of any party to increase their support base in a democracy but, there are obvious questions raised by changes of opinion on the accountability of power.
Australian woman appeals Thai jail time
A 21-year-old Sydney woman sentenced to 15 days jail in Phuket for falsely claiming she was assaulted by a taxi driver is appealing the verdict and has been granted bail.
Stevie Rochelle Bamford was initially found guilty by a Phuket provincial court on June 15 of making false claims after telling Thai police a local taxi driver, with two other men restraining her, carried out the assault in the early hours of Sunday June 10.
However, CCTV footage later revealed she had returned to her hotel safely after becoming separated from her Australian boyfriend.
Phuket police interviewed Bamford for two days before she confessed to fabricating the story.
She was held in local police cells before the court hearing.
Bamford was sentenced to serve the 15-day prison term at a low security detention centre on the outskirts of Phuket rather than in an adult women's jail.
She is the daughter of former Australian league player Peter Tunks, who has appealed to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra to assist his daughter.
Tunks told Sydney's Sunday Telegraph the whole family was "extremely concerned" about his daughter's welfare and wanted her back in Australia.
"It's obviously been a worrying time but we're hopeful to have her back home safely as soon as possible," Tunks said.
Bamford is appealing the sentence and has been granted bail of 50,000 baht.
Reports in Australia said that in the meantime, she was holidaying at the resort area of Krabi in Southern Thailand.
Thai-based legal sources said Bamford was being represented by a local lawyer in Phuket but warned that the appeal may lead to the court increasing her sentence by up to two years and forcing her to serve it in an adult prison.
However, following the recent murder of Australian travel agent Michelle Smith in Phuket, Thailand may also be looking to repair its battered tourist image, leading to an acquittal.
Implicating Bishnoi, the MP said that eating Curma on one day at the home of a family from a particular community and publishing photos does not make you a supporter of the poor.
They go to various houses and eat Curma three times a day, but never boast about it.
The MP Dipendra Hooda from Rohtak, in a meeting of the Congress activists from the Maham Halake, said that the rally conducted on November 10th in Gohana was very important for you and us.
The opposition will realise the strength of the Government by the crowds that gather for the rally.
Prof. Virendra and MLA Anand Singh Dangi also addressed the meeting.
They handed over a list of 10,000 activists coming to the rally from different villages to the MLA.
Before the meeting the MLA visited the covered shed in the grain market, the second water reservoir in Maham, the National Multi-Technology Institute building, the widening of the Gohana- Lakhanjara - Maham -Bhiwani Road along with the construction site of the Maham four lane road fly-over and ground preparation.
The Rural Distrct President of Congress, Jaideep Dhankhad, Jagat Kala, Dharmbeer Vakil, Balaram Dangi, Vikas Sisar, Shamsher Kharak, Anil Sharma, Dr. Sunil Rangi, Deepak Gupta, Dharamraj Sarpanch, Sadhu Baba and Nirmala Rathi were also present at this event.
The fans of German-American Model Heidi Klum were shocked at what she had done.
The heart-throb of many young men, Heidi was seen in such a manner it was difficult to recognise her.
The signs of ageing on her face and entire body were so dramatic that her fans were astonished when they first saw her.
The occasion was a Halloween party and Heidi had dressed up in such a way that people who saw her were in shock and were also were very impressed by the amazing change she had undergone.
The pictures of the premature ageing of Heidi are a hot topic on the internet and an Oscar winning team of makeup artistes had given Heidi this new look for the 14th Halloween Festival.
This 40 year super model looked like an 80 or 90 year old and at the event she was wearing a skirt suit and it would not be wrong to say that her face and expression really looked old.
India's richest businessman's wife, business woman Nita Ambani, is celebrating her 50th birthday on Friday.
Numerous spectacular arrangements were made to make the birthday a special occasion.
Jodhpur city was selected for the spectacular birthday party.
Balsamand lake, about 11 kilometres from the famous Umaid Bhawan, was chosen as the venue.
All the guests will join the Lakshmi Puja for the birthday party on Friday.
A dance program has also been organised after that.
This has been choreographed by the famous Bollywood star Vaibhai Merchant.
It is being said that Nita Ambani and her daughter Isha may also perform in this.
It is noteworthy that both Nita and Isha are professional, classical dancers.
250 VIPs have been invited to this royal party.
These include the Jodhpur royal family and Umaid Bhavan's owner, Raja Gajsingh II and his family, and personalities from the business world along with Tata, Birla, Mittal, and Godrej.
L.N. Mittal, Sachin Tendulkar, and Bollywood actors Anil Kapoor, Aamir Khan and A.R. Rahman has already arrived in Jodhpur on Thursday evening.
32 chartered planes have been booked to ferry the guests to and fro.