VHP, church join hands to counter ‘love jihad’

‘Love jihad’, a religious conversion racket which lures gullible girls by feigning love, has brought rivals Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Christian groups in Kerala together. The two have decided to join hands to combat the “social evil’’, which they claim is hitting their respective communities hard.
    Ironically, the two groups had always been at daggers drawn over the issue of conversions. The 2008 Kandhamal riots had, in fact, widened the gulf between the Christians and Hindu hardliners. Adding fuel to the religious hatred, a group of 21 US lawmakers has recently shot off a letter to Orissa CM Naveen Patnaik expressing concern over the alleged intimidation of the minority community in the violence-hit region of the state. The two rival groups now joining hands to fight a “social evil” will certainly cheer peace lovers.
    “Both Hindu and Christian girls are falling prey to the design. So we are cooperating with the VHP on tackling this. We will work together to whatever extent possible,’’ K S Samson, an office-bearer of Kochibased Christian Association for Social Action (CASA), a voluntary Christian association, told TOI.
Samson said some days ago, CASA got to know about a Hindu family in a Christian parish where a school girl was the victim. “We immediately referred it to the VHP,’’ he said, adding the saffron outfit has helped them in many cases. The Parishad, on its part, has started a ‘Hindu Helpline’, which claims to have received as many as 1,500 calls in the last three months. “Many of these callers wanted to congratulate us for our efforts and some were threats,’’ said Vineesh, who manages the helpline.
    The Kerala Catholic Bishops Council has come out with a set of guidelines for Christian parents warning them to be more careful about their wards. “It’s shocking but it is happening. Many Christian families are getting affected,’’ said Father Johny Kochuparambil, secretary of the Council’s Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance. “We are careful as this is a sensitive issue and could even lead to a religious conflict. But now that the high court too has interfered in the matter, we have decided to take a stand,’’ said Kochuparambil. The HC has asked the DGP to probe the charges and report to it.
    Some of the suggestions by the commission to parents include a call to parents to “monitor the cellphones’’ of children, making girls aware of the problem, and monitoring computer usage details of their wards.

What’s love jihad?
    Ajihadi movement that has been started in Kerala to target college girls for the purpose of conversion by feigning love. Taking serious note of the matter, the Kerala high court had on September 30 directed the state police and the Union home ministry to probe the movement. It also asked the state and the Centre to look into the sources that fund ‘love jihad’ while rejecting the bail petitions of two Muslim youths, accused of ‘luring’ two MBA students into marriage for the purpose of conversion
source :Timesofindia

Rs 5 coin saves man from death

 In Yash Chopra’s Deewar, Amitabh Bachchan was famously saved from a goon’s bullet by his coolie badge lodged in his shirt pocket. Reel life blended into real life at a nondescript Kalina neighbourhood on Thursday evening when a wallet in a video parlour owner’s pocket came between him and certain death.

    Krishna Shetty is now in hospital, showing family and close friends the mangled Rs 5 coin that took the full impact of the bullet that would have otherwise pierced his heart. He’s having a little chuckle at their expense as well, for, as he reveals, he has been listening to taunts all his life about his “strange’’ habit of carrying his wallet in his shirt pocket.

    Shetty and his neighbour, Nicholas Gomes, were sitting outside the video parlour engaged in causal conversation when three persons sped by on a motorcycle and fired four bullets at them. One of these hit Gomes while Shetty took the brunt of two—one in his stomach, the other aimed straight at his heart. Enter the Rs 5 coin a la Bollywood. “It was the only coin in the purse but there were cards and photographs as well,’’ Shetty’s wife recounts.

    “The bullet would have definitely killed him, but thanks to the coin it fell harmlessly to the ground,’’ assistant commissioner of police Arvind Mahabadi told TOI.
    The news spread like wildfire among Shetty’s neighbours and friends. His son, who’s studying in the United States, is flying back to Mumbai. “He’s as interested in seeing his dad as the coin that saved his dad’s life,’’ Shetty’s wife smiles.

    Both Shetty and Gomes are out of danger and are recuperating at Guru Nanak Hospital at Bandra East. “We suspect it was a case of mistaken identity,’’ says Mahabadi. Krishna Shetty owns the Pushpak Bar and Restaurant in Kalina but has given it to Ganesh Shetty to run. Officials believe the miscreants had come to collect money from Ganesh Shetty, though residents of the area have told the police that the assailants were local toughs who run extortion rackets in Kalina.

Kerala HC admits petition on Mont Blanc pen

The Kerala High Court on Thursday admitted a petition praying the court to prohibit marketing and sales of Mahatma Gandhi Limited Edition-241 and Mahatma Gandhi Limited Edition-3000, the luxury pens manufactured by Mont Blanc International GmbH on which the name and pictorial representation of Mahatma Gandhi are used.
In the petition filed by Dijo Kappen, managing trustee, Centre for Consumer Education, it is alleged that the marketing and sales of the pen, which costs Rs 14 lakh each, is in violation of Section 3 of the Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act.“Gandhiji is the Father of the Nation and is considered the epitome of simplicity. Making him a symbol of a Rs 14-lakh pen is nothing but an attempt to degrade everything that Gandhiji symbolised,” the petitioner alleged.The court has directed to issue a notice to the Mont Blanc International, a German company.The Government of  India, and Entrack International Trading, the dealers of the product in India, are the other respondents in the petition.

Kerala HC judges first to disclose assets

In a trail-blazing move, the High Court of Kerala has become the first court in the country to post the details of the assets and  liabilities of all its judges in the public domain.

Titled 'Assets & Liabilities (At a Glance)', the disclosure was uploaded on the court's official website on September 30, as promised by the registrar-general D Sivalabhan on August 28.

Kerala high court's disclosure has come after sustained pressure from pro-transparency activists as well as sections of the judiciary who insisted that judges of the Supreme Court and high courts should reveal details of their assets.

The simple and uncluttered disclosure format on the Kerala high court's website has two broad categories - 'Immovable Properties' and 'Movable Properties' against the name of the judge concerned. While the first two columns contain details on the extent of `Land' and `Buildings' owned by the judges, the remaining four columns talk about assets in terms of bank deposits including fixed deposits and savings bank, weight of gold and silver, vehicles and shares/mutual funds/others. Liabilities such as bank loans are described separately, below the tabular column.

Spooks want govt to block out Skype

Intelligence agencies have asked the government to consider blocking Skype as operators of the popular global VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) engine are refusing to share the encryption code that prevents Indian investigators from intercepting conversations of suspected terrorists.

    The Cabinet Committee on Security has accepted in principle the recommendation but has not set a date for initiating action. The urgency to track Skype calls stems from the fact that terrorists — as the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai showed — are increasingly using VoIP services. The shift to VoIP has been prompted by the growing ability of intelligence agencies to intercept mobile and other calls.
    Like the BlackBerry service, VoIP operators send their signals under a specific code which makes it difficult for others to decipher. Sources said Skype has shared its encryption code with the US, China and other governments but is refusing to accept similar Indian requests.
    Since Skype is not registered here, Indian authorities have been forced to mull the drastic option of blocking its gateways here. This, however, may not be entirely effective as Skype can route traffic through other service providers. The agencies say blocking the gateways will at least serve as a signal to local service providers against carrying traffic from Skype or any other similar service provider who does not share the encryption code with the government.
    Sections 4 and 5 of the Telegraph Act gives government the right to grant licence for any kind of telephony and also the right to intercept. Last year, government amended Section 69 of the Information Technology Act to empower itself to take over servers of Net and telecom service providers and demand the encryption code. This may still be no remedy against recalcitrant overseas service providers who usually have their servers abroad.
    Last year, the government had a similar run-in with Canada’s Research in Motion, BlackBerry makers and service providers, and the UAE-based satphone operator Thuraya.
VoIP Decoded
Analog voice signals (the kind heard on phone) are converted to digital format, compressed into IP packets and transmitted over Internet For this, VoIP systems employ audio codecs (programs) which encode speech as digital audio VoIP thus turns a standard Internet connection into a way to place free phone calls, bypassing phone network
sourcr:timesofindia

90-year-young Cong veteran gets poll ticket

 Five years ago, when Satgonda Revgonda Patil knocked on the doors of the Congress for a ticket from the Shirol assembly constituency in Kolhapur district, he was politely told that he was too old to make the cut. Patil was then 85.

    A month ago, the farmer, now 90, made a fresh attempt. This time, not only was he offered a ticket, he got what was tantamount to a red carpet welcome. So what had changed between 2004 and 2009? Ironically enough, the presence of a newly minted, youth-promoting politician called Rahul Gandhi.
source:timesofindia

Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy)

 

 

source:boston

Fernando Alonso

Renault Formula One driver Fernando Alonso, left, of Spain signs his autograph at the paddock of the Suzuka Circuit in Suzuka, central Japan, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009. The Japanese Grand Prix is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 4.

Indira Gandhi Peace Prize

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei (R) receives the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize from India's President Pratibha Patil during a ceremony at the presidential palace in New Delhi September 30, 2009. Iran broke a transparency law of the U.N. nuclear watchdog by failing to disclose much earlier a nuclear plant being built for uranium enrichment, ElBaradei said in a televised interview.

Jurassic Jewels: Hundreds of dino eggs found in Tamil Nadu

Geologists in Tamil Nadu have stumbled upon a Jurassic treasure trove buried in the sands of a river bed. Sheer luck led them to hundreds of fossilized dinosaur eggs, perhaps 65 million years old, underneath a stream in a tiny village in Ariyalur district.

    Researchers from the Salem-based Periyar University found clusters of eggs of what they believe to be the most aggressive Carnosaur and the docile, leaf-eating Sauropod at Sendurai village.While Carnosaurs were large predatory dinasaurs, Sauropods were long-necked, herbivores which grew to enormous heights and sizes.

    That dinosaurs once roamed the area was known from the fossils found there on earlier expeditions. But this is the first time that hundreds of nests embedded with hundreds of clusters of dinosaur eggs have been unearthed in the district.

    Located on the highway between Chennai and Tiruchi, the Ariyalur and the neighbouring Perambalur geological sites nestle in the northern plains of the Cauvery river. The place is a veritable museum of ancient organisms, dating back to 140 million years. Ever since a British couple—the Wines—collected 32 boxes of “strange stone objects’’ in 1843, the Ariyalur region has drawn geologists from across the world for its rich fossil presence and diversity. Scientists have found the tiniest marine algae or the nano fossils besides the rare shell-like bivalve, gastropoda, telecypoda and brachiopoda in the geological sites spread across 950 sq km in Ariyalur and Perambalur districts.

    “We found several clusters of spherical eggs of dinosaurs.Each cluster contained eight eggs,’’ says Dr M U Ramkumar, geology lecturer at Periyar University. The eggs were 13-20 cm in diameter and were lying in sandy nests which were of the size of 1.25 metres.

    In the 1860s, a British geologist first recorded the presence of bone remains of dinosaurs in Ariyalur. Over a century and a half later, the egg of a dinosaur was found in a cement factory. Volcano may have wiped out dinos
source:timesofindia

60th China anniversary

China's President Hu Jintao stands on a limousine to inspect the military parade near Tiananmen Gate at celebrations to mark the 60th China anniversary in Beijing, China, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009. China celebrated its rise to a world power over 60 years of Communist rule Thursday, staging its biggest-ever parade of military hardware with over 100,000 marching masses in a display that stirred patriotism and some unease. (AP Photo)