There’s something peculiar about Ranbir Kapoor’s public persona. The Kapoor lad has always been labelled as the young Casanova of B-town. Though Ranbir doesn’t take that title seriously, we wonder what to call a man who is always in the headlines as much for his acting talent as for his string of love affairs. So far, the 29-year-old actor has been linked with some gorgeous ladies in B-town, including Deepika Padukone, Nargis Fakhri and Katrina Kaif.
And now we hear that Ranbir was caught kissing a girl in Delhi in the wee hours of the morning. The good looking actor was in the capital city to shoot for an advertisement and was staying in a five star hotel. He was spotted at the hotel’s nightspot well past closing time. A little birdie tells us that the place was dimly lit and when some sources from the media wanted to approach Kapoor, they saw him in a passionate clinch with a mystery girl who was present with him.
We also learned that the gal in the question was not a B-town hottie, but the daughter of a highly influential banker from Mumbai. Apparently the girl is studying in college and the news that she was spotted kissing the Kapoor lad has not gone down well with the girl’s ‘well-connected’ and reputed family, who was reportedly in Delhi to celebrate the engagement of their elder daughter. What is more interesting is that the girl who was the other half of the kissing couple is not the type to indulge in PDA, so this behaviour is totally uncharacteristic, we are told.
Now this news has come as a shocker to us. We thought Ranbir was all grown up now and would not indulge in crazy shenanigans like any hormone-loaded teenager. Sigh! This rockstar has proved us wrong, big time!
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The film still doesn’t have a title, but the first teaser came out yesterday alongside the release of Ek Tha Tiger. The teaser mainly takes us through the journey of Chopra senior and highlights the best cinematic moments of his films. Perhaps the makers are trying to connect with the younger lot who may not have seen the maestro’s older films. Only the last 30 seconds show what the Diwali release is all about. It seems to be a winning combination – Shahrukh, Katrina and Anushka in a film directed by the grand master of love. Lyricist Gulzar and AR Rahman have also come together for this romantic outing.
We loved whatever little we saw in the teaser. Watch it and tell us if you like it too!
For the new generation, director Yash Chopra is best known for his romantic films starring Shahrukh Khan. His last outing, the Shahrukh-Preity Zinta starrer Veer Zaara was highly appreciated and became a big box office hit. After that he got busy producing movies under his banner Yash Raj Films. That is the reason we were excited when we heard that the veteran director is making a comeback as a director after an eight year break and that too with Shahrukh Khan, Katrina Kaif and Anushka Sharma playing the lead roles.
The film still doesn’t have a title, but the first teaser came out yesterday alongside the release of Ek Tha Tiger. The teaser mainly takes us through the journey of Chopra senior and highlights the best cinematic moments of his films. Perhaps the makers are trying to connect with the younger lot who may not have seen the maestro’s older films. Only the last 30 seconds show what the Diwali release is all about. It seems to be a winning combination – Shahrukh, Katrina and Anushka in a film directed by the grand master of love. Lyricist Gulzar and AR Rahman have also come together for this romantic outing.
We loved whatever little we saw in the teaser. Watch it and tell us if you like it too!
From Main Khiladi Tu Anari to Omkara, it has been an educational ride through the crowded bylanes of Bollywood for the Nawab of Pataudi. And as the Cocktail star celebrates his 46th birthday we look at defining roles of the versatile actor’s 20-year-long career in Bollywood
The first memories of Saif Ali Khan – born in Bhopal and brought up in the UK – as an actor was that of a long-haired, cherubic-looking, male version of Sharmila Tagore with a goofy smile, a silly sense of humour and an uber cool fashion sense. Remember films like Main Khiladi Tu Anari, Yeh Dillagi, Tu Chor Main Sipahi, Hum Saath Saath Hain, et al?
And the UK-returned son of the 60s A-list leading lady bumbled around in the initial years of his filmi career – his first film was Parampara – doing humdrum stories packed with melodramatic characters. While the disconcerting disconnect between the real Nawab and his reel roles was apparent, Saif always had a project on hand to keep him busy and the home fires burning.
So neither his fans nor the critics expected anything meaty (read: powerful roles) of the dapper dude called Saif. But came the new millennium, and he shocked, stunned and surprised everyone with his striking performance in the cult-film Dil Chahta Hai.
While Farhan Akhtar’s creation called Sameer (name of Saif’s character in DCH) was still as silly and playful as the star’s earlier roles, the part seemed extremely close to the UK-returned actor’s real life persona. The upper middle-class mindset, the wicked sense of humour and the light-hearted attitude of Sameer worked wonders for Saif’s career as an actor.
Slowly everyone’s perception of and expectations from Sharmila Tagore’s son started altering. Fortunately, he followed it up with Karan Johar and Nikhil Advani’s Kal Ho Naa Ho, again a role with foreign roots, close to the real Saif, adding a new feather to his fancy hat. We don’t know if it was the appreciation for the decent performances that awakened Saif’s acting bug, or the scripts targeting the NRI market that finally connected the actor to his audience. Whatever it may have been, it was starting to work imn his favour.
The big real turning point in Saif’s career came with dark unconventional roles in Sriram Raghavan’s Ek Hasina Thi, Homi Adajania’s Being Cyrus and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara. The killer hidden behind the façade of a suave lover, an eccentric Parsi artist and a treacherous Langda Tyagi proved that the Nawab of Pataudi had the acting chops to match steps with contemporaries like Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, etc.
But just when we had started enjoying watch the real Saif make magic with his zany sense of humour and out-of-the-box approach, the star actor seems to have gone back to doing far-fetched roles (the ludicrous spy in Agent Vinod and a romantic lover in films like Love Aaj Kal and Cocktail) and giving us nightmares very like those he induced in his earlier days in B-town. Turkeys like Tashan and Kurbaan – though his role in that one was dark and committed – have not helped redeem his reputation.
On this birthday (August 16) we’d like to remind the Khan superstar that it’s time to throw caution to the wind and thrust the envelope out of the window. And get back to some real acting!
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Pictures of Andrea Jeremiah and Anirudh Ravichander getting intimate with each other have gone viral on the net
With members of social networking and microblogging sites sharing the photographs and discussing the ‘relationship’ between the two, the actor and music composer have emerged the latest hot topic of Kollywood.While Anirudh Ravichander rose to fame with Why this kolaveri di, a song in the Dhanush-starrer 3, which became worldwide hit, Andrea – a popular actor in Kollywood, is a singer too. It is said that their passion for music brought these two talents together. “They are just good friends,” sources say.
According to the popular actor came out to give her statement on the leaked images. Andrea admits kissing Anirudh and the pictures are indeed real, but she is not bothered about it. While most celebrities would give their right arm to cover up the explicit images, Andrea coolly disregards any gossip over it. The actor claims that the pictures are 18 months old and they are not ashamed of it. However, the couple no longer share the same equation now.
Salman Khan’s ambitious film could outdo the box office collections of the Raju Hirani-Aamir Khan super-successful 3 Idiots
Salman Khan’s buddy actor Aamir Khan wished that Salman’s film should do better business at the box office than his, and that is exactly what might happen over the weekend with Yash Raj Films’ Ek Tha Tiger. The mania over Salman and Katrina Kaif’s new movie is such that most theatres went houseful for almost all shows on the opening day (August 15 – a holiday). The film has reportedly collected Rs 28-30 crore on the first day itself.
Although Ek Tha Tiger has garnered mixed reviews from critics, the collections tell a different story. And with a weekend approaching and an Eid holiday on Monday, the romantic thriller is likely to overtake the Rs 200-crore record held by Aamir’s 3 Idiots (2009). Boxoffice India reports that Ek Tha Tiger showed 100 percent opening in multiplexes in Noida and Ahmedabad. A Rajinikanth-followers kind of hysteria was seen outside theatres, where fans were dancing to Salman’s songs, garlanding his pictures and praying for a blockbuster film for him.
Cinemax DGM Girish Wankhede confirmed, “Ek Tha Tiger has had the biggest opening ever. Cinemax showed it in 120screens all over India, and all were full. Considering we contribute 8 percent to the pan-India collections, the film has collected Rs 28-30 crore overall.”
But will it cross Rs 200 crore on the weekend? Wankhede said, “I would sayit will make the fastest Rs 150 crore. And yes, it is likely to cross 3 Idiots’ Rs 202 crore if the hysteria continues over the next four days of holidays. Even today (Thursday), the bookings are humongous.”
The takings of Salman’s Dabangg (2010) came close to 3 Idiots, with Rs 140 crore plus, crossing Aamir’s Ghajini (2008), which collected Rs 114 crore. This year, four films have already crossed the Rs100-crore mark – Agneepath, Housefull 2, Rowdy Rathore and Bol Bachchan. Let’s see if Salman is able to beat all of them with Ek Tha Tiger!
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BEIRUT: Syrian state-run TV says troops have freed three journalists who were seized last week by rebels while covering violence in a Damascus suburb.
Syrian TV says the three journalists from the pro-regime TV station Al-Ikhbariya were freed in a "qualitative operation" on Thursday in the town of al-Tal just north of the capital. It did not provide further details.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported heavy shelling on al-Tal during which it said the Al-Ikhbariya team were freed. The group relies on a network of activists on the ground.
WASHINGTON: The United States fears the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah may be planning imminent attacks in Europe and around the world, a senior security official in Washington said on Friday.
"Our assessment is that Hezbollah and Iran will both continue to maintain a heightened level of terrorist activity and operations in the near future," said Daniel Benjamin, the US State Department's counter-terrorism coordinator.
"We are increasingly concerned about Hezbollah's activities on a number of fronts, including its stepped up terrorist campaign around the world," he said.
"And we assess that Hezbollah could attack in Europe or elsewhere at any time with little or no warning," he warned, in a conference call with reporters to announce new US sanctions against Hezbollah, Iran and Syria.
Hezbollah is a Shiite armed faction that within Lebanon operates as a political party and as a "resistance" force to counter Israel, and which Western powers says runs an international militant network.
It is backed by Damascus and Tehran, and has been accused both of carrying out recent bomb attacks on Israeli targets in Europe and Asia and of backing Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad's brutal crackdown on an armed revolt.
Benjamin warned Hezbollah might step up violent action as international economic sanctions turn the screw on its backers in Iran and Western-backed Syrian rebels threaten to overthrow its sponsor in Damascus.
"Hezbollah maintains a presence in Europe and its recent activities demonstrate that it is not constrained by concerns about collateral damage or political fallout that could result from conducting operations there," he said.
"Hezbollah believes there have been sustained Israeli and western campaigns against the group and its primary backers Iran and Syria over the past several years and this perception is unlikely to change," he continued.
"Both remain determined to exact revenge against Israel and to respond forcefully to the Western-led pressure against Iran and Syria," he said.
"This suggests more acts of terrorism by both Hezbollah and Iran are likely and they will continue to pose a serious threat for the foreseeable future.
"We have not detected any operational activity of the group in the United States," he added. "We do not have any information on any operational targeting or anything like that in the US.
"But, that said, it's a very ambitious group with global reach."
MADRID: A Spanish emergency service official says two firefighters have died from injuries sustained in battling a wildfire in the eastern province of Alicante while hundreds were evacuated by boat to escape a fire raging on the Canary Island of La Gomera.
A spokesman said one firefighter died on Monday in an Alicante city hospital while another died there Sunday. Two other crew members were being treated in the hospital. He spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with service regulations.
Nearly 1,000 people were evacuated by boat from the town of Valle Gran Rey on La Gomera, located off the northwest coast of Africa, as authorities feared fires in surrounding hills could engulf the town.
Some 5,000 people were evacuated from towns on La Gomera and neighboring Tenerife over the weekend.
OSLO, NORWAY: Norwegian authorities could have prevented or interrupted the bomb and gun attacks by a far-right fanatic that killed 77 people last year, a government appointed commission said on Monday.
The long-awaited report into the July 22 attacks also said the domestic intelligence service could have done more to track down the gunman, but stopped short of saying it could have stopped him.
Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has admitted to the bombing of the government's headquarters in Oslo, which killed eight people, and the subsequent shooting spree at a youth camp that left 69 dead, more than half them teenagers. He is currently awaiting sentencing.
While noting that the attacks "may be the most shocking and incomprehensible acts ever experienced in Norway," the 500-page report said the bombing ``could have been prevented'' if already adopted security measures had been implemented more effectively.
Breivik was able to park a van with a fertilizer bomb just outside the high-rise before he drove another car to the Labor Party's youth camp on Utoya, unhindered.
The report said that a car bomb scenario "at the government complex and several coordinated attacks have been recurring scenarios in threat assessments as well as for safety analyses and exercise scenarios for many years.''
The police response was also slowed down by a series of blunders, including flaws in communication systems and the breakdown of an overloaded boat carrying a police anti-terror unit. Meanwhile, Norway's only police helicopter was left unused, its crew on vacation. Breivik's shooting spree lasted for more than one hour before he surrendered to police.
The report said a faster police response could have stopped Breivik's shooting spree earlier, but recognized that "hardly anyone could have imagined'' the attack on Utoya. "Sadly, however, after repeated school massacres in other countries, an armed desperado who shoots adolescents is indeed conceivable -- also in Norway,'' it said.
Though Breivik has admitted the attacks, he rejected criminal guilt during his trial, saying his victims had betrayed their country by embracing a multicultural society.
Prosecutors have said there were doubts about his sanity and suggested Breivik be committed to compulsory psychiatric care instead of prison. A ruling is set for August 24.
MOSCOW: Russia's Foreign Ministry has harshly criticized new US sanctions on Iran, calling them "undisguised blackmail" and warning that relations between Washington and Moscow will suffer if Russian companies are affected.
The US Congress on August 1 slapped sanctions on Iran's energy, shipping and financial industries as part of an effort to pressure Tehran over its suspected nuclear weapons program.
The new sanctions would hit foreign companies that mine uranium with Iran or help it export oil by providing tankers, insurance or banking services.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said today in a statement that while Russia supports UN sanctions, it opposes US efforts to spread its legislation throughout the world and "rejects methods of undisguised blackmail used by the US against the companies and banks of other countries."
WASHINGTON: A powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck in the Sea of Okhotsk off the east Russian coast early on Tuesday, US monitors said, but no tsunami warning was immediately issued.
The quake occurred 158 kilometers (100 miles) east-north-east of Poronaysk, Russia, at a comparatively deep 625 kilometers (390 miles) down, the US Geological Survey said in an initial report.
PARIS: Dozens of young men rioted in a troubled district in northern France after weeks of tensions, pulling drivers from their cars and stealing the vehicles, and burning a school and a youth center. The police department in Amiens says at least 16 officers were hurt by the time the riot ended on Tuesday, some by buckshot.
At the height of the confrontation, 150 officers - both local and federal riot police - faced off against the young men throughout the neighborhood. There were no arrests.
"The confrontations were very, very violent,'' Amiens Mayor Gilles Dumailly told the French television network BFM. Dumailly said tensions had been building for a number of weeks between police and the impoverished residents, whom he described as ``people who are in some difficulty.''
Police in Amiens said the riot involved about a hundred young men and began around 9pm. Monday, ending around 4am after federal reinforcements arrived. It wasn't immediately clear what caused the unrest, but there had been smaller confrontations with police over the past week, including one involving a weekend traffic stop that some local residents thought was unnecessarily violent.
Until Monday night the violence in Amiens had been on a smaller scale. By the time the latest confrontation was over, two school buildings had been burned, along with a dozen cars and trash cans used as flaming barricades. At least three bystanders were hurt when rioters yanked them from their cars, police said.
Earlier this month, the district in Amiens was among 15 areas declared the most troubled in France, and the government pledged more security and more money. Dumailly said he hoped tensions would improve with a plan to fix up the housing projects and offer more services.
"Public security is not just a priority but an obligation,'' French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday, speaking at a memorial for two gendarmes killed in June. "We owe it to the population, we owe it to the security forces."
He mentioned the violence in Amiens, as well as unrest in Toulouse, in southern France, where rival groups in two housing projects have been battling for a number of days.
French interior minister Manuel Valls was expected in Amiens on Tuesday afternoon.
In 2005, violence raged unchecked for nearly a month, leaving entire neighborhoods in flames in far-flung suburbs that are home to France's housing projects. The violence in Amiens marked the first major unrest under Hollande, who took office in May.
AMIENS (FRANCE): Youths fired buckshot at police in clashes in the French city of Amiens overnight on Tuesday, torching cars and a nursery school in a resurgence of urban unrest that President Francois Hollande said he would do everything to confront. Hollande dispatched his interior minister Manuel Valls to the northern city, where two nights of violence were apparently sparked by tension over spot police checks on residents.
Officials said 16 police officers were hurt in the disturbances, some struck by buckshot others hit by a hail of missiles thrown by around 100 youths who gathered in northern districts of Amiens.
One officer was in a serious condition, the city's Socialist mayor Gilles Demailly said. Speaking during a visit to southeastern France, Hollande said the state would "mobilize all its resources to combat this violence", which has shaken depressed quarters of major French cities at regular intervals.
The radiation exposure harmed their genes and the damage could be passed on to future generations, the 'Daily Mail' reported. "Artificial radionuclides from the Fukushima (No 1) nuclear power plant caused physiological and genetic damage to pale grass blue butterflies, a common species in Japan," said the Journal 'Scientific'.
"Sensitivity (to irradiation) varies between species, so research should be conducted on other animals," said Joji Otaki, a team member at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa. Abnormalities such as unusually small wings were found in 12% of total in 121 adult pale grass blue butterflies collected in and outside Fukushima Prefecture in May 2011.
LONDON: Only one in six voters believes the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government will survive until the 2015 elections, with the proportion expecting a collapse within two years almost doubling in just two weeks, a Guardian/ICM poll showed on Monday.
The coalition, formed in 2010, has endured a rough year confronted with a shrinking economy and growing disagreements over policies such as the agreement to reform the House of Lords and Britain's relationship with the rest of Europe.
The findings came after conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat deputy Nick Clegg held a Downing Street dinner on Friday amid mounting tensions about the health of the coalition.
Cameron and Clegg insist their parties will see their term through in order to complete what they came together for-slash a budget deficit that was around 160 billion pounds, more than 11% of GDP, when the 2010 elections were held.
With Britain in the midst of a double dip recession and the Bank of England forecasting zero GDP growth this year, the Lib Dems are considering a rethink on chancellor George Osborne's militant deficit reduction programme.
Most commentators say the parties would do best to stay together and hope the economy improves enough by 2015 to claim their policies are responsible. ICM Research interviewed a sample of 2,021 adults aged 18-plus online on 8 to 9 August 2012.
On Sunday, a YouGov survey put Labour's support on 42%, with the Conservatives on 34% and Lib Dems on 8%.
LONDON: London to New York in one hour? US military is ready to test a radical new hypersonic aircraft that can reach a speed of 4,500 mph within seconds. The aircraft, called the X-51A Waverider, is currently being prepared at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert.
It uses a revolutionary 'scramjet' engine that allows it to travel at hypersonic speeds and it will be dropped from a B-52 bomber in its latest test on Tuesday, the 'Daily Mail' reported.
Attached to a B-52 bomber's wing, it will be taken from Edwards to about 50,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean near Point Mugu. Hypersonic flight is seen as the next step for aircraft. The WaveRider program is estimated to cost $140 million, according to Globalsecurity.org, a website for military policy research.
It has had a mixed history, with previous tests being aborted after the engine stalled. The latest test will see the craft freefall for four seconds over the Pacific before its booster rocket engine ignites and propels the nearly wingless aircraft for 300 seconds before being jettisoned.
Then the cruiser's scramjet engine, notable because it has virtually no moving parts, ignites.
The WaveRider is expected to accelerate to about Mach 6 as it climbs to nearly 70,000 feet, the Los Angeles Times reported. After 300 seconds of flight, the WaveRider is set to break up after splashing into the Pacific, as planned.
There are no plans to recover the WaveRider.
The cruiser is designed to ride its own shock wave. That's how the X-51 earned the WaveRider nickname. "The X-51 is a technology feeder to larger, more sustained flight times," said Darryl W. Davis, president of Boeing Phantom Works, which built the cruiser. "The hope is to advance state of the art." agencies
LONDON: Having declared the London Olympics a success after Sunday night's glittering ceremony, Britain's political elite on Monday promptly took off for their annual holiday, marking the beginning of the 'silly season' that extends from August until early September.
Both PM David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg reportedly left for Spain on Monday morning, leaving foreign secretary William Hague in charge in London. Considered a minor British institution, the 'silly season' is the time when most of Britain seemingly comes to a halt. Most top newsmakers - politicians, bureaucrats and journalists - are on holiday, a period when not much happens and when inconsequential, funny and quirky stories are passed off as news in the British media.
But as they packed bags and took off, many must hope that unlike last year, this year their holiday is not rudely interrupted again. In August 2011, the 'silly season' had proved too short-lived as riots broke out in England. During the 'silly season', journalists scour for funny stories to fill pages with - egg fried on hot pavement, cow falling from cliff-top into caravan, no one appearing to be running the country, among others.
LONDON: A painful economic recession, rising unemployment and biting austerity measures may have already driven more than 1,000 people in Britain to commit suicide, according to a scientific study published on Wednesday.
The study, a so-called time-trend analysis which compared the actual number of suicides with those expected if pre-recession trends had continued, reflects findings elsewhere in Europe where suicides are also on the rise.
"This a grim reminder after the euphoria of the Olympics of the challenges we face and those that lie ahead," said David Stuckler, a sociologist at Cambridge University who co-led the study, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
The analysis found that between 2008 and 2010 there were 846 more suicides among men in England than would have been expected if previous trends continued, and 155 more among women.
Between 2000 and 2010 each annual 10 percent increase in the number of unemployed people was associated with a 1.4 percent increase in the number of male suicides, the study found.
The analysis used data from the National Clinical and Health Outcomes Database and the Office of National Statistics.
Stuckler, who worked with researchers from Liverpool University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, stressed while this kind of statistical study could not establish a causal link, the power of the associations was strong. Its conclusions were strengthened by other indicators of rising mental health problems, stress and anxiety, he added.
He also pointed out the study showed a small reduction in the number of suicides in 2010 which coincided with a slight recovery in male employment.
Depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse
A survey of 300 family doctors published by the Insight Research Group on Tuesday found that 76 percent of those questioned about the effects of the economic crisis said they thought it was making people unhealthier, leading to more anxiety, abortions and alcohol abuse.
Data this month from the government's Health and Social Care Information Centre showed the number of prescriptions dispensed in England for antidepressants rose 9.1 per cent in 2010.
A study published last July, also by Stuckler, found that across Europe, suicide rates rose sharply from 2007 to 2009 as the financial crisis drove unemployment up and squeezed incomes.
The countries worst hit by severe economic downturns, such as Greece and Ireland, saw the most dramatic increases in suicides.
In Britain, there's little doubt times have been getting harder. The economy has shrunk for the last nine months and now produces 4.5 per cent less than before the economic crisis.
Government debt is well above a trillion pounds and is predicted to rise above 90 percent of GDP even with austerity policies being pushed through by the government.
Many Britons have had the worst squeeze in living standards for 40 years and the crisis has hit young people hard, with youth unemployment soaring above 20 percent.
Stuckler's BMJ study found that the number of unemployed men rose on average across Britain by 25.6 percent each year from 2008 to 2010, a rise associated with a yearly increase in male suicides of 3.6 per cent.
"Much of men's identity and sense of purpose is tied up with having a job. It brings income, status, importance..." Stuckler said in a telephone interview.
"And there's also a pattern in the UK where men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women, while women are much more likely to report being depressed and seek help."
The World Health Organisation estimates that every year, almost a million people die from suicide - a rate of 16 per 100,000, or one every 40 seconds.
The UN health body also estimated that for every suicide, there are up to 20 attempted ones.
LONDON: An intrepid Indian origin entrepreneur who relishes putting together spicy 'chaat', 'bhel puri' and 'samosa' has climbed up Britain's food charts by being one of 16 finalists out of over 3000 entries for the British Street Food Awards 2012.
The awards, to be announced in London on September 15 and 16, celebrate the variety of street food available across Britain, usually sold in vans and trolleys stationed at key locations in city centres and some residential areas.
Based in Leeds, Britainborn Manjit has enticed customers with her freshly prepared street food sold from a 'thela' named 'The Number 1 Chaat Station', which also plays songs on a vintage sound system.
After awards organizers announced the 16 finalists, Manjit is preparing to slowly roll her 'thela' all the way to London, where the finalists will congregate with their vans and trolleys outside celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's restaurant for the judges and food lovers to adjudicate.
She started her company 'Manjit's Kitchen' on 2009 when she was made redundant from her office job, and soon gained culinary popularity as her vegetarian offering went down well with people who prefer authentic Indian food to dishes that are customized to the British palate.
Food journalist and founder of the awards Richard Johnson writes: "In the old days, British street food meant cheap sausages and overfried onions, served off rusty metal handcarts. But that's changing. And about time too. For a nation that's stacked with food magazines and food programmes, we've run out of excuses."
LONDON: Ecuador's Leftwing president, Rafael Correa, "strenuously denied" on Wednesday reports in a section of the British press that Ecuador has decided to grant political asylum to Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks, who sought sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 19 last and is lodged there since.
The Guardian newspaper reported on its website on Tuesday night that Correa had agreed to grant Assange asylum, quoting officials within Ecuador's government said to be familiar with "government discussions" (on the matter) in Quito. The Australian formally applied for political asylum when he entered the Ecuadorian mission , within which he has enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
On Monday, Correa, who has said he will take a sovereign decision on Assange, told a state-run TV he would decide this week on the issue. He added that a large amount of material about international law had to be examined to make a responsible, informed decision.
In April, Assange had interviewed Correa for his TV show on Russia Today. In the 75-minute programme Assange and Correa bonded over freedom of speech and the negative role of the US in Latin America. Correa has this year cracked down on private media. Analysts say that granting asylum to Assange could be a way for him to depict himself as a champion of free of speech ahead of next February's presidential elections.
On Monday a government-owned daily in Ecuador, El Telegrafo , claimed a decision had already been made, although it did not specify what this was. Besides, Maria Augusta Calle, a legislator in Correa's party, said, "Our comrade the president, who leads our international policy, will grant Julian Assange asylum."
But it remains unclear as to how Assange would leave Britain even if he is granted asylum in Ecuador. British Police have said he will be arrested for violation of his bail conditions the moment he steps out of the Ecuadorian embassy.
QUITO, ECUADOR: In the two months since Julian Assange ducked into Ecuador's London embassy to seek political asylum, Rafael Correa has been consistently deferential to Britain while insisting on his right to protect a free speech advocate facing persecution.
Asked earlier this week if he felt solidarity with the Wikileaks founder, Ecuador's leftist president told a TV interviewer "of course, but we also feel solidarity for England and for the English and international law."
The decision on Assange's petition, which his government said it would announce on Thursday, would come only after careful and lengthy scrutiny of the law and consultations with the governments involved, Correa insisted.
But on Wednesday, this cordiality ended.
Ecuador's foreign minister Ricardo Patino accused Britain of threatening to "assault our embassy" if Assange was not handed over.
A storming of Ecuador's embassy would be interpreted as "hostile and intolerable and, as well, an attempt on our sovereignty which would oblige us to respond with the greatest diplomatic force," he said.
London had warned Ecuador in writing earlier in the day that a 1987 British law permits it to revoke the diplomatic status of a building if the foreign power occupying it "ceases to use land for the purposes of its mission or exclusively for the purposes of a consular post." Its foreign office said later in statement that it is Britain's "obligation to extradite Mr Assange."
The former Australian hacker who incensed US government officials by publishing thousands of secret US diplomatic cables and Iraq and Afghan war dispatches in 2010, took refuge in the embassy on June 19 to avoid extradition to Sweden. He faces questioning there for alleged sexual misconduct and had exhausted all appeals after a 17-month legal battle.
As news broke of the British warning on Wednesday, police were seen reinforcing Scotland Yard's presence at the embassy, which occupies a first-floor apartment in a tony London neighborhood near the Harrods department store.
A small group of Assange supporters later gathered outside.
In statement, WikiLeaks accused Britain of trying to bully Ecuador into denying Assange asylum.
"A threat of this nature is a hostile and extreme act, which is not proportionate to the circumstances, and an unprecedented assault on the rights of asylum seekers worldwide," it said.
As Thursday dawned in London, there was no sign police might try to enter the embassy.
British officials have vowed not to grant Assange safe passage out of their country. They say they will arrest him the moment he steps foot outside the embassy.
But they had not publicly suggested they might strip the embassy of its diplomatic inviolability.
The AP has found no record of that law ever being used to justify forcible entry into an embassy. Under the 1961 Vienna Convention, diplomatic posts are considered the territory of the foreign nation.
Asked about Patino's characterization of Britain's warning, a foreign office official said via email that the letter "was not a threat" and was intended to clarify "all aspects of British law that Ecuador should be aware of."
The official would not be identified by name, citing policy.
The foreign office statement that mentioned the government's invoking of the 1987 Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act also stated: "We are still committed to reaching a mutually acceptable solution."
Patino said the missive including the veiled threat was delivered to his country's foreign ministry in writing and verbally to its ambassador in London on Wednesday.
The foreign office statement did not elaborate on Britain's intentions if Assange were to be granted asylum by Ecuador.
Correa, a US and European-trained economist who won the presidency in December 2006 in his first bid for elected office, has called Assange a beacon of free speech but has used criminal libel law to try to silence opposition media at home.
WikiLeaks has strengthened him politically against the United States, whose influence he has sought to diminish in Latin America as he deepens commercial ties with countries including China, which now buys most of Ecuador's oil, and pushes a populist agenda.
One cable published by Wikileaks prompted Correa to expel a US ambassador in 2010 for alleging a former Ecuadorean police chief was corrupt and suggesting Correa had looked the other way.
Assange says the Swedish charges against him are trumped up, and his supporters say they believe the US has secretly indicted him and would extradite him from Sweden.
Correa has said Assange could face the death penalty in the United States and for that reason he considers the asylum request a question of political persecution.
Analysts in Ecuador expressed doubts on Wednesday that Britain would raid the embassy.
Professor Julio Echeverria of Quito's FLACSO university said Britain "has a long establish tradition in Europe of respecting diplomatic missions," which under international law are considered sovereign territory.
A former Ecuadorean ambassador to London, Mauricio Gandara, said he believed that if asylum were granted "Mr. Assange could be in the embassy for a long time."
YANGON: At least 13 people have died in Myanmar in fresh sectarian violence, an official said on Saturday. The violence erupted five days ago in the Kyauktaw township of Rakhine state, Xinhua reported. Over 300 houses and a rice mill were destroyed in arson.
About 3,000 people were affected. Kyauktaw is about 120 km from the state capital Sittway.
The clashes broke out between ethnic Rakhinese Buddhists and Bengali speaking Rohingya Muslims.
Authorities had imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Kyauktaw Wednesday, bringing to seventhe total number of areas placed under curfew in the state.
The state has already been under a state of emergency since June 10.
The riots first broke out in Rakhine in June, when some 90 people were killed and 100 others were injured.
KABUL: An Afghan police officer killed at least 10 of his fellow officers on Saturday, a day after six US service members were gunned down by their Afghan partners in summer violence that has both international and Afghan forces questioning who is friend or foe.
Attacks on foreign troops by Afghans working with the alliance are on the rise and, while cases of Afghan security forces killing within their own ranks are less frequent, together they show how battle lines have blurred in the decade-long war.
The assaults on international service members have stoked fear and mistrust of their Afghan allies, threatening to hamper the US-led coalition's ongoing work to train and professionalize Afghan policemen and soldiers. The attacks also raise questions about the quality of the Afghan forces that have started taking charge of security in many areas of the country as US and Nato combat troops move to withdraw by the end of 2014.
Coalition officials say a few rogue policemen and soldiers should not taint the overall integrity of the Afghan security forces and that the attacks have not impeded plans to hand over security to Afghan forces, which will be 352,000 strong in a few months. But there is growing unease between international troops and their Afghan partners and that's something Taliban insurgents are happy to exploit.
Shakila Hakimi, a member of the Nimroz provincial council, said the policeman who opened fire on his colleagues at a checkpoint in Dilaram district is believed to have had ties to militants. He was killed in an ensuing gunbattle, she said in a telephone call from the provincial capital of Zaranj, along Afghanistan's western border with Iran.
"The checkpoint is in a remote area of a remote district," Hakimi said. "The telecommunications are poor and we are not able to get more details."
Hakimi said the provincial governor has sent a team to the scene to get more details about what happened.
A day earlier, two Afghans shot and killed six American service members on Friday in neighbouring Helmand province in the south where insurgents have wielded their greatest influence.
In the first attack, an Afghan police officer shot and killed three marines after sharing a pre-dawn meal with them in the volatile Sangin district, according to Afghan officials.
Sangin's district chief and the Taliban both identified the gunman as Asadullah, a member of the Afghan National Police who was helping the Marines train the Afghan Local Police, a village-level defence force overseen by the Ministry of Interior. The district chief, Mohammad Sharif, said the shooting happened at a police checkpoint after a joint meal and a security meeting. The meal took place before dawn because of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting in which Muslims abstain from food and drink during daylight hours.
A US defence official had a differing account. He said he's read reports saying a man clad in an Afghan security forces uniform shot the Marines shortly after 1 a.m. not at a checkpoint, but on a coalition outpost. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident is still being investigated.
Sidiq Sidiqi, a spokesman for the Afghan ministry of interior, told reporters on Saturday that the shooter may have been a member of the Afghan Local Police, but that Afghan investigators also were still reviewing the case.
Then at around 9pm Friday in the Garmser district farther south, an Afghan working on an installation shared by coalition and Afghan forces shot and killed three other international troops, said Maj. Lori Hodge, a spokesman for the coalition in Kabul. A US defence official confirmed the three victims also were Americans. Hodge said both shooters had been detained.
There also were differing accounts of the Garmser shooter's identity.
The US defence official said the gunman was described as an employee of the Afghan Uniformed Police. Sidiqi said initial reports were that the shooter was a student not associated with the Afghan police. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed the gunman was a member of the Afghan security forces.
Attacks where Afghan security forces or insurgents disguised in their uniforms kill foreign troops have spiked with four such attacks in the past week. There have been 26 such attacks so far this year, resulting in 34 deaths, according to the US-led coalition. It's unclear if the Garmser killings will be counted as one of the so-called "green-on-blue" attacks.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks in Helmand _ the site of many "green-on-blue" killings.
Since 2009, 18 international soldiers, including 14 from Britain, have been killed in such attacks in Helmand. The most recent was on July 1 when three British service members were killed in Sangin by a gunman wearing an Afghan National Civil Order Police uniform.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the latest killings, ordered investigations into the incidents and directed relevant Afghan authorities to work to ensure the safety within training and security institutions.
"The enemy who does not want to see Afghanistan have a strong security force, targets military trainers," Karzai said in a statement.
BAMIYAN, AFGANISTAN: "It's there," says an archaeologist pointing to the ground, where fragments of a Buddha statue from the ancient Gandhara civilisation have been covered up to stop them being stolen or vandalised.
Just months before the US-led invasion in 2001, the Taliban regime shocked the world by destroying two giant, 1,500-year-old Buddhas in the rocky Bamiyan valley, branding them un-Islamic.
More than 10 years on Western experts say Afghanistan's ancient Buddhist and early Islamic heritage is little safer.
At the foot of the cliff where the two Buddhas used to stand 130 kilometres (80 miles) west of Kabul, an archaeological site has been found and parts of a third Buddha, lying down, were discovered in 2008.
The area of the lying Buddha is around half the size of a football pitch. A dozen statues or more lie under tonnes of stone and earth.
"We covered everything up because the ground is private and to prevent looting," says Zemaryalai Tarzi, the 75-year-old French archaeologist born in Afghanistan who is leading the project.
Tarzi says he dug first in the potato fields to find artefacts, which he buried again afterwards. All around him, under a large area of farmland, he says, lie exceptional treasures.
In the West, the presence of such riches would lead to a large-scale excavation, frantic research and in time, glorious museum exhibitions.
In Afghanistan, ground down by poverty and three decades of war, it is the opposite.
"The safest place is to leave heritage underground," says Brendan Cassar, head of the UNESCO mission in Afghanistan, adding that policing the thousands of prehistoric, Buddhist and Islamic sites dotted around the country was impossible.
Below ground, the relics are protected from endemic looting, illegal smuggling and the corrosive effects of freezing winters.
"There is looting on a large or small scale at 99.9 percent of sites," says Philippe Marquis, director of a French archaeological delegation in Afghanistan.
Middlemen pay Afghans $4 to $5 a day to dig up artefacts, which are smuggled abroad and sold for tens of thousands of dollars in European and Asian capitals, he says.
Cassar believes the solution is educating locals about the value of their history and the need to implement the law, and a global campaign using Interpol and customs to stop smuggling.
UNESCO added the rocky Bamiyan valley, with its old forts, temples and cave paintings, to its list of endangered heritage sites in 2003. But sites have been destroyed throughout the country.
Hadda in the east was home to thousands of Greco-Buddhist sculptures dating from the 1st century BC to 1st century AD, but it was devastated in the 1990s civil war. Hundreds of pieces have disappeared or been destroyed.
Marquis says the old city of Lashkar Gah, the capital of the southern province of Helmand -- whose 11th-century arch appears on the 100 afghani ($2) banknote -- was irreparably damaged by an influx of refugees.
A Chinese copper mining company has been granted a concession over an area in Logar province, south of Kabul, that includes an ancient Buddhist monastery, and researchers fear the ruins will largely be destroyed.
Archaeologists complain that culture is only a secondary consideration to development and security.
"Cultural issues are never the priority. Security, yes, which eats up 40 percent of the Afghan state budget," says Habiba Sorabi, the governor of Bamiyan province, where few public resources are allotted to archaeology.
A meeting in Paris last year decided one of the two niches that housed Bamiyan's giant Buddhas should be left empty as testimony to the destruction, while experts should look at partially reassembling the other statue on site.
But local archaeologist Farid Haidary says "lots of money" was spent on restoring the Buddhas before the Taliban destroyed them.
"What's the point in building something if the Taliban, who are 20 kilometres away, destroy it afterwards?" he asks.
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