Kareena dedicates 180 days for Karan

Although BizAsia recently reported that a heroine for Karan Johar’s forthcoming production, ‘Shuddhi’, has not been finalised, reports are suggesting that Kareena Kapoor has already marked time in her schedule for the movie. The film is rumoured to be bringing her back on screen with Hrithik Roshan and the project will be directed by Karan Malhotra who directed last year’s ‘Agneepath’. A trade source, according to TOI, has confirmed that Kapoor has indeed taken out 180 days for the movie. The source also said that the project is likely to begin towards the end of this year.

Kim K finds out baby’s sex without Kanye West

kim-kardashian

Kim Kardashian can be seen finding out the sex of her baby in the new episode of 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians', but disappointingly, her beau Kanye West is absent during the ultrasound. The 32-year-old reality star was accompanied by members of her family, including her mother and manager Kris Jenner and her two sisters Kourtney and Khloe, the Mirror reported. In the clip, Kim has her hair tied in a bun while wearing full makeup. As the Kardashian clan look at the monitor, Dr. Crane takes them through the whole anatomy of Kim's baby, starting with an arm, and then the femur. Kris looks much more excited that Kim, shrieking: "Look at that! Look at the little ankle! Oh Kim look!"

Charlie Sheen to use real name in ‘Machete Kills’

For the first time in his career, Charlie Sheen will use his real name, Carlos Estevez, in the credits of the movie " Machete Kills", a decision that contrasts a past statement that he does not feel "Latino". Celebrity-news Web site TMZ.com published a shot from the film, to premiere September in the US, which shows Sheen carrying an assault rifle while a super on the screen says "and introducing Carlos Estevez". Charlie's dad, Martin Sheen, the son of a Spanish immigrant to the US, was born Ramon Antonio Gerardo Estevez. He called himself Martin Sheen to get work as an actor, but never legally changed his name. Martin Sheen starred in the 2011 movie "The Way", directed by his son Emilio Estevez, the story of a Californian ophthamologist who goes to France when he learns that his son died in a storm in the Pyrenees. After discovering that the young man was going to make a pilgrimage on the Way of St. James to Santiago de Compostela, he decides to take his place, carrying his ashes. It was in July last year that Charlie Sheen said he didn't feel Latino. "I'm not ashamed of it, I'm not escaping from it, but I was born in New York and grew up in Malibu - that's not very Latino," Sheen said in an interview that aired on Univision.

Chinese ink makes a big splash

Interest in contemporary Chinese ink painting, the age-old tradition that is currently undergoing a renaissance, has never been greater—and not just in China. Traditional ink painting is one of the oldest forms of Chinese art and commands huge respect, as well as high prices. Today’s painters are using the medium to produce art that links back to this long tradition. At the end of this year, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a major survey—“Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China” (10 December-6 April 2014). Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, the planned M+ museum is seeking a specialist contemporary ink curator. Hong Kong, in fact, has been the cradle of the new ink movement since the mid-20th century. The market is sitting up and taking notice, and there is even talk of ink being “the new contemporary Chinese art”—and attracting a rush of collectors. Whether this is a good thing is debatable: the senior curator at M+, Pi Li, who co-founded Boers-Li Gallery (3C05) in 2005, says: “There is quite a bit of marketing going on here. I think it would be better to take this more slowly.” Time and thought are, indeed, important when it comes to this art form. “Ink painting is demanding, and it requires connoisseurship to appreciate it,” says Johnson Chang of Hanart TZ (3D07). In his gallery in the Pedder Building, he is devoting a show to Qiu Zhijie, whose “Bird’s Eye” maps, inspired by GPS systems, fuse cartography with contemporary urban and rural landscapes. At Art Basel Hong Kong, another series of Qiu’s maps (priced at $20,000 each) was pounced on by a leading New York museum at the opening. What defines ink art is a topic of endless debate. Qiu himself rejects the label applies to his work. Official support Chang says there is the political will to promote this quintessentially Chinese art form. “Since the 1990s, the government has been actively supporting exhibitions of ink,” he says. As demonstrated at a major Unesco conference held in Hangzhou this month, the Chinese government sees culture as an important way of developing “soft power” in the world. Backing for the art form is also building commercially, with Sotheby’s and Christie’s dipping their toes in the water by holding private selling exhibitions, rather than auctions, in Hong Kong. Both firms have shown ink in New York, and Christie’s has now brought its private-sale exhibition to Hong Kong (it opened on Thursday). Ink painting already has a strong international following. Yahoo’s co-founder Jerry Yang, who collects calligraphy, has acquired work by the contemporary artist Tai Xiangzhou and others. A work by the same artist—Paradise Hills, 2013—sold at Paul Kasmin Gallery (3D34) for around $165,000 on the first day of the fair. Other fans include Guy Ullens, the founder of Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, and the French collector Sylvain Levy. Hong Kong-based Alisan Fine Arts (3C32) is showing artists such as Wang Tiande, who paints landscapes and then uses sticks of incense to burn a second layer of silk, combining them with rubbings of Qing dynasty calligraphy (HK$288,000). Wei Ligang, showing Golden Dragon, 2012 (HK$140,000, US$18,000), updates calligraphy with a bold, expressive stroke. Another local gallery is Grotto (1D15), which is showing five Hong Kong artists who work with ink. More subversive is Yang Jiechang’s On the Rock (Stranger than Paradise), 2011, at Arndt (3C08), which depicts animals getting up to no good in a classical Chinese landscape (€70,000): Christie’s owner, François Pinault, is a fan. Beyond the fair In Hong Kong, Galerie du Monde (1B34) is showing work by the brothers Qin Feng and Qin Chong in “A Brush with the Future” (until 17 June). The gallery’s Fred Scholle notes the growing buzz. “Last year, we sold out our show by Li Hao,” he says (prices from HK$15,000 to HK$70,000). In Beijing, a specialist gallery is opening next week. Ink Studio’s inaugural show is by Zheng Chongbin. With all this interest building up, it seems sure that ink painting is once again making a splash.

Humayun Gauhar Humayun Gauhar
Tackling the fault lines with sobriety and realism “Who won?” a dear old lady asked me. “The script won,” I replied. “I’ll tell you an old army joke, because it fits us like a sock.” A commander announced to his soldiers, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that you can change your old socks. The bad news is that you will exchange them with one another.” We do that after every election: exchange our current smelly old socks full of holes for our earlier smelly ones torn and tattered… and so the spiral goes – down, down, down… Spiral it is, for by going round in circles we create the illusion of forward movement. Any movement is backward. Lenin said, “One step forward, two steps back.” Forward and back like a yoyo, to and fro, to and fro like automatons programmed. By bringing Nawaz Sharif back to power we have actually gone back to October 12, 1999, though when we emotionally brought the PPP back to power we had regressed to November 1997. In that sense it is indeed forward movement, from 1997 to 1999. If the army is forced to intervene again, we will be back to 1999. If another election is held and the PPP returns it will be back to 2013. What a rollercoaster. First there was Bhutto. He begot General Zia. Then we elected Bhutto’s daughter. She gave way to Zia’s political heirs. Then we elected Bhutto’s daughter again, then Zia’s heirs, then Bhutto’s daughter and then Zia’s heirs who gave us another general after whom we elected Bhutto’s heirs and now Zia’s. The Lucky Irani Circus can’t hold a candle to this. Since the ‘New Pakistan’ of 1971 we have elected either Bhutto or Zia forces three times each with little to show for it. Overall, the country has declined so much that some are questioning its viability. Change might be constant but nothing changes here except the details. The iniquitous status quo always triumphs. We persist in opting for old socks and yet lamenting our sorry lot. Einstein said that repeating the same experiment again and again and hoping for a different result is a sign of insanity. Quite! Aping the experiments of colonizers and hoping to hit gold is a sure sign of a colonized mind. Persisting with colonized minds and hoping to win freedom is a sure sign of lunacy. But no matter: things have a way of sorting themselves out. Hopefully the sorting process is not too painful. It bears repetition: we have created the facade of a British parliamentary system but the essence of democracy is missing. Instead, the essence is our native dynasticism throughout South Asia. We have simultaneously erected the facade of an Islamic state but the essence of Islam is missing. Instead, the essence is clericalism with all its myriad interpretations of the Word of God. The dynast-cleric compact is age-old in Muslim history and persists to this day. Our peoples’ will has never been heard. All elections held under the 1973 constitution have been rigged. There is consensus only on the fairness and transparency of the 1970 elections in Jinnah’s Pakistan. It led to disintegration. Things have gotten worse. This too bears repetition: the contours of this election have exposed our sharp parochial divides with parties getting elected around province, area, city, language and ethnicity. Today no national party remains, only provincial ones. The Punjab’s party gets to rule Pakistan because of the province’s brute majority. This is dangerous. When East Pakistan had a slight majority we devised the satanic ‘parity principle’ and treated the populations of both wings as equal. Why not now? Because it is totally and utterly undemocratic, that’s why. The will of the people is a cornerstone of democracy and you cannot emasculate it to any extent. Hidden in these contours lie the seeds of disintegration or confederation. A wise leadership tries first and foremost to save the federation. If not, then it will try for confederation. Disintegration is not an option for it will throw the entire region into a tailspin. Language and ethnicity have emerged at the most powerful cohesive force, even in educated and advanced Canada and Britain where Scotland is on the cusp of separation. We have proved that language defines nationhood, not religion splintered into many interpretations. Only a strong ideology can supersede language as a cohesive force provided it is dynamic, as the Soviet Union wasn’t and the Chinese is. Pakistan falling apart suits no one for it will change maps from Turkey to Bangladesh and everywhere in between. After every Great War the world map changes, as it did after World Wars I and II, the Cold War and now the War on Terror winding down, the first that the West has lost. Dangerous though it is, what else one can expect but a parochial outcome from a poor clone of the first-past-the-post British parliamentary system where the number of seats in assemblies does not reflect the percentage of votes a party gets. This system divides, not unites. That doesn’t mean that proportional representation is better. It means that a one-person-one-vote election in a two-candidate race in a second ballot would better reflect the will of the people. More expensive and time-consuming sure, but something more positive and reflecting the will of the people will come out of it. It’s not as simple as that though. It will require great administrative, systemic and constitutional changes. Who can now do that? Perhaps the answer lies in the script. The biggest pre-election challenge was to hold free, fair and transparent elections. In this the caretaker governments, the Election Commission and by extension the judiciary have failed utterly. Consensus is emerging that this could be the most flawed election in our history. Having said that, wisdom demands that the result be accepted despite the flaws if you wish to save the federation. Wisdom also demands that all new governments be allowed to tackle our fault lines with sobriety and realism and not get too macho, which betrays weakness because it is a gambit to hide its absence. The bigger post-election challenge comes now: for all governments to complete their terms and try and take Pakistan out of its multidimensional morass. If they must go before time they must go constitutionally. The Chinese are making an economic corridor with Pakistan. We need a ‘Wisdom Corridor’ from China even more. Nawaz Sharif is showing signs of maturity, but its early days yet. Once they actually sit on the throne of power, it always goes to their heads. It is the bounden responsibility of advisers to keep their leaders on the straight and narrow, remind them that pre-election bombast is not always to be taken seriously and give them lessons in realism and human frailty twice a day, morning and evening and shake well with different words and new examples. Machiavelli’s Prince has little relevance in a democracy. Mr Sharif has held government twice in the centre and thrice in the Punjab. These will be his sixth and seventh governments. He should have learned the limits of power by now. He lost power every time by overreaching against forces more powerful than him. None has limitless power except the Almighty. Learn the limits of power and stay within them. Then and only then can you successfully and legitimately expand its limits. The best way is to earn so much respect that people automatically take your word to be good for the nation, not because they are frightened of you. Fright was Mr Bhutto’s method; respect was Mr Jinnah’s. Take your pick. As I write, word has just come in of a huge bomb blast in Peshawar during Friday prayers. Obama has said that he won’t stop drone strikes. What are you going to do? Go on a drone shoot? Attack Washington, begging bowl in hand? Welcome back to power Nawaz Sharif. Enter reality Imran Khan. Now start negotiating with terrorists. You can never succeed by negotiating from a position of weakness. You have to negotiate from a position of strength. Have you won the war against native terrorists? Has America won against the Afghan Taliban or Al-Qaeda? Those who sue for talks have weakness. You must also know how much you can give them and whether the people can swallow it. Otherwise negotiate and you will be taken for a ride. You may win over some but the hardcore will remain, for zealots don’t give up until they have imposed their belief system or are wiped out either by force or with counter ideology. Democracy British style has survived its own persistent failure due to military interventions that make it a martyr. No more interventions please unless the very survival of the country is at stake or the official economy collapses totally, both of which possibilities are centre stage in the drama of the script. Let alien systems crash towards their destiny. Pakistan has crossed the precipice and ascended the tightrope between two cliffs. The choices: either fall into the abyss below or cross over to the other side where, please God, the grass is greener. The writer is a political analyst. He can be contacted at humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com

Bruce Riedel
Impulsive terrorism by a few is a counterterrorism challenge The terrible attack on the Boston Marathon is the most vivid and violent demonstration of terrorism confronting the United States and its allies today. Instead of large, complex plots hatched by organized jihadist terror gangs abroad, the new challenge is homegrown Muslim extremists who use the internet to self-radicalize and learn how to build bombs and create chaos by studying Al Qaeda texts online. Much remains unknown about the two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who allegedly built the bombs that exploded near the finish line of the marathon and killed three and wounded more than 200 on April 15. Experience shows that it’s dangerous to draw too many conclusions about a terror plot until the investigation is finished, but a preliminary judgment or two can be made about the Boston case. The surviving terrorist, Dzhokhar, has reportedly told investigators that he and his brother were not part of an organized terror group like Al Qaeda or a broader conspiracy in the United States and that they decided to attack the marathon only a week or so before the event. They then decided to drive to New York City and carry out another attack in Times Square as a follow-up. The police stopped them before they got out of Boston, killing Tamerlan and capturing Dzhokhar. The two reportedly learned how to build their bombs from an internet magazine produced by Al Qaeda called Inspire, the brainchild of an American citizen of Yemeni origin, Anwar al Awlaki, killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. They also listened to tapes of Awlaki’s sermons on jihad, available on the internet. The older brother, Tamerlan, traveled to Russia last year, and his activities there remain largely a mystery. He may have had contact with the Chechen jihadist movement which has longstanding ties to Al Qaeda and especially its leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, who traveled there in the 1990s. Enough is not known so far, but the plot appears to involve radicalized, angry, young Muslim men who found ideological and practical advice on the internet from Al Qaeda, but don’t belong to the organization. Al Qaeda will likely adopt them as “heroes” of the global jihad. They and their evil deed fit perfectly with Al Qaeda’s narrative – urging Muslims around the world to kill Americans, men, women and children since 1998 and glorifying any who do so as a “knight of the prophet,” fighting holy war. In the last several years Al Qaeda has publicly urged Muslims in America and other western countries to act spontaneously like the Tsarnaev brothers.The Palestinian American Army Major Nidal Malik Hassan who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 has since been lauded by Al Qaeda for his actions and has been listed in Inspire as a role model for others. A Pakistani American, Faisal Shahzad, who put a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010 has become an Al Qaeda knight. The French Algerian Mohammed Merah who killed seven in Toulouse, France, in 2012 has also been lauded since as a jihadist star. Hassan and Shahzad have said they were inspired by Awlaki’s sermons and articles to carry out their attacks. Other homegrown plots have been less successful, but also roughly fit the pattern. An Afghan American Najibullah Zazi and two other Muslim Americans plotted to attack the New York City subway system on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but were arrested before they could strike. They wanted to replicate in New York what other jihadists with Al Qaeda sympathies had done in Madrid in 2003 and London in 2005. Some of these other plots had more interaction with the Al Qaeda core leadership in Pakistan than what’s been reported so far in the Boston case. Shahzad, Zazi and the European metro bombers all spent some time in Pakistan and received training in explosives. Small plots like the Boston operation are extremely difficult to uncover and penetrate by the counterterrorism security and intelligence community. The number of plotters is small, and the gestation period from target selection to attack can be very short, probably only a week or so in Boston and maybe only a few hours at Fort Hood. The short window of opportunity makes such conspiracies near impossible to detect. The radicalization process may take much longer, perhaps in the Boston case more than a year. Russian authorities asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to check on Tamerlan before he visited Russia in 2012, suggesting they had already detected his anger over the Russian occupation of his ancestral homeland. But reading jihadist literature is not a crime nor is being angry at the brutal Russian wars against Chechnya. Moscow has a history of atrocious human rights violations in Chechnya under the tsars, commissars and Vladimir Putin. It’s not abnormal for young Chechens studying their history to be radical. So for the counterterrorist community, the issue is not whether an individual is “radical” or “extremist,” but whether they are violent and breaking the law. It’s likely that the prospective terrorist will hide the transition from radical to violent from all around him. The younger brother in Boston kept attending university classes after the marathon attacks precisely to avoid attracting attention. Larger foreign-directed plots are much more susceptible to penetration and discovery. The 9/11 plot gestated over at least two years and involved 19 terrorists entering the United States from abroad and living in several locations for months, traveling inside the country and even outside to meet with other conspirators in Spain. The plot was supported by cells in Hamburg, Abu Dhabi, Karachi and the Al Qaeda core leadership in Kandahar. The attacks in 2001 should have been detected, and the failure to do so is rightly an intelligence failure greater than Pearl Harbor. The largest Al Qaeda plot since 9/11, a plot to simultaneously blow up eight or more jumbo jets en route from London to cities in the United States and Canada to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 in 2006, was detected because of its complexity and size. Phil Mudd, then deputy director of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, has said that it was the most dangerous plot against the West ever, more dangerous than 9/11, but built around a simple explosive device that could be smuggled on airplanes in soft drinks. The CIA and MI6 got wind of the plot involving more than a dozen British citizens of Pakistani origin led by a Manchester-born man named Rashid Rauf, the plot’s Al Qaeda mastermind. Like 9/11, there were many places to penetrate the plot and a gestation period of months. It was an intelligence success. Homegrown terrorism is nothing new in the United States. It goes back to at least John Brown, a bitter opponent to slavery who died in a raid on a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859. Such insurrection is a challenge in a democracy that values civil liberty – and even harder in a country awash in guns. There is no reason for panic, but also no place for complacency. An alert community can be the first line of defense, as happened this spring in Canada when a Muslim cleric alerted the police about a plot to derail trains. The difficult job of counterterrorism has a long future.   The writer is the Director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution His most recent book is Avoiding Armageddon: America, India and Pakistan to the Brink and Back. His another book, Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad, was released in paperback this year.

Saad Rasool Saad Rasool
And a message for President Obama The past decade in Pakistan has been a continuous and unrelenting tug-of-war between voices of peace and forces of extremism. A battle between the law enforcement institutions of the state and banned terrorist outfits. And in this ongoing conflict, the hapless civilian population of Pakistan – without any choice or consent of their own – has served as cannon fodder in the crusade between religious militancy and western hegemony. The tip of the sword, perhaps, has been the consistent barrage of hell-fire missiles from unmanned Predator drones that have rained down from beyond the reach of the people suffering their consequences, in blatant violation of the territorial integrity of Pakistan, requirements of international law, and contours of the human rights discourse. There is a popular belief that the State of Pakistan (or at least some part of its military establishment) has afforded tacit approval to the Americans to carry out these barbaric episodes, making them complicit in the murder of hundreds of Pakistani civilians. And militant organisations – the alleged target of these attacks – being unable to shoot-down or stop the drones, have taken out their frustration and vengeance against these strikes through a series of terrorist attacks in the heart of Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar, targeting civilian and state personnel alike. But neither have the drone attacks stopped nor have the retaliatory aggression and violence subsided. And this spiral of violence, in addition to weakening the state and making Pakistan one of the most precarious nations in the world, has resulted in the loss of thousands of lives over the past decade. As this cycle of violence continues, in a startling (almost apologetic) address, the American president, while addressing the National Defence University, on 23rd May, 2013, acknowledged that drone attacks could not be used as a long-term and effective weapon to counter terrorism in porous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. “Such interventions cannot be the norm,” Obama admitted, marking a shift in the drone doctrine of the United States. The speech, however, fell short of Pakistani demands of declaring an end to drone strikes. The address, which was a protracted and indirect apology for the loss of civilian lives, included statements that accepted the fatal flaws of the drone doctrine, and its consequences in terms of loss of civilian life. Obama accepted that “for me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live”. As the US occupation of Afghanistan nears its end (in 2014), Obama declared that for any further use of the drone attacks “there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured”. The salient features of a new policy, in terms of the drone attacks, stipulates that that i) a drone strike will not be ordered if a target can be captured, either by the US or by a foreign government, ii) a strike can be launched only against a target posing an “imminent” threat, iii) preference shall be given to the military to control the drone programme, although the CIA will continue to control the attacks in Pakistan (and Yemen). And the expectation is that this new approach will dramatically decrease the drone attacks, and within them, decrease the possibility of loss of civilian life. Despite the welcomed move, this is all too little too late. The people of Pakistan have been living in the shadow of the indiscriminate violence that the drone attacks ensue, and the consequent retaliation in terms of a spike in terrorist activities in our urban areas. This nexus, in most cases, has managed to augment the anti-American sentiment in this land. Many of those who were, some years ago, on the fence in terms of supporting the American “war on terror” next door, have now squarely fallen in line with the idea of opposing any and all American interference, regardless of the lofty rhetoric and peaceful intentions. If there was any doubt about this fact, the election 2013 has put it to rest. Across Pakistan, a party that is right of the centre, and has long-standing ties with many of the religious organisations and political parties, has swept the polls. There is little hope of a push towards “fighting” the madrassah culture, during the next parliamentary term. And the talks of entering into ‘peaceful negotiations’ with the Taliban are already making rounds in Pakistan’s echelons of political power. The strategy of using force, without negotiations, has failed, and the battle to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of people has been all but lost (in light of the drone attacks). In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province bearing the brunt of the drone attacks, the political party that has triumphed is the one that has openly declared a keen desire to negotiate with the Taliban, staged a rally against the drone attacks, and has declared that, were they to be in power, they would order Pakistan Air Force to shoot down the drones. In no uncertain terms, the choice for the average Pakistani, in these elections, was one of picking between the devil and deep blue sea – between America and the Taliban. For better or worse, even perhaps reluctantly so, the people have picked the deep blue sea. This may not be the correct choice. It is certainly not the perfect choice. But under the circumstances the people have decided that this is the only choice that can keep their streets safe and children alive. Even if the resulting life and safety comes at the cost of tilting towards a retrogressive approach in terms of personal freedoms and gender disparity. Pushed against the wall, the people have chosen to negotiate with the beast, and send a message to the alleged guardian angel. President Obama, I hope that you have gotten this message. The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore. He has a Masters in Constitutional Law from Harvard Law School. He can be reached at: saad@post.harvard.edu

Today's Cartoon

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Injured Akshay returns to the sets of ‘Thuppakki’

Akshay-Kumar

Akshay Kumar was recently in the news when he got injured a couple of days back while shooting some action scenes for his Hindi remake of the Tamil superhit 'Thuppakki'. It seems now that Akshay is all fit and fine. He was back to work onSaturday and was seen shooting at one of the railway stations in Mumbai with Sonakshi Sinha. The movie that is tentatively titled 'Pistol' has the 'Skyfall' director Greg Powell directing the action scenes.

Salman Khan comes out in support of Sana Khan

Salman Khan

Salman Khan, who has kept himself away from Twitter for quite long, came in support of her leading lady in his home production film 'Mental'. Sana Khan has an arrest warrant issued against her by the Navi Mumbai police in connection with kidnapping of a minor girl. Expressing his views Salman posted on twitter, "Poor sana, so sad. 1st let her b cm famous then try n get sm publicity from her. This is the problem chappo any thing galat bhi ho toh." Taking the issue further he wrote on Twitter, "Y wld a girl kidnap a 15 year old? Fr money? To get her married, At 4pm in a populated area. Investigate the complainants. Kamaal hai yaar." While Salman's third tweet was, "Obviously must b scared n running around n hiding, they hv an arrest warrant on her, 5 dharas , jail is not big boss's house dude.SAD." Finally hitting back on those who have framed the charges against Sana he wrote, "Obviously those people must have sm ulterior motives. worked vit her on bigg boss, u hv seen her fr 3months every day wat do u think?"

Tom Cruise to help David Beckham with acting career?

Actor Tom Cruise has reportedly promised to help soccer ace David Beckham become an actor. "Beckham has always wanted to be an action film star, and Cruise promised him a long time ago he can make those dreams come true," a source told National Enquirer magazine. Beckham, 38, announced he was retiring from football this month after playing the game for more than 20 years, reports entertainmentwise.com. "Beckham still loved soccer but feels that now is a great time to transition into film while he's still young enough to land top-notch roles," the source added. Beckham and his wife Victoria became close to Cruise when Beckhams relocated here. Now the couple has moved to London.

Manyata steps out to promote Dutt’s film

While Sanjay Dutt spends his days in Pune's high security Yerwada Jail, his wife Manyata is stepping it up to ensure her husband's unfinished businesses are taken care of. She has decided to step out and promote Dutt's Policegiri to ensure it gets the right mileage. The film, directed by K S Ravikumar, is scheduled to release on July 5 and Manyata will join the ad campaigns from next week. When contacted, producer Rahul Aggarwal confirmed the story and added, "Bhabhi is very dear to all of us and we will maintain the integrity of this situation." A source told us, "Before surrendering, Sanjay had told his family members that he had given his blood and sweat to the film and he believed that the film had tremendous potential as it was his one of his solo releases in a long time. He had asked Manyata to do all she can to ensure the film gets its due." Apparently, Dutt had even jokingly told Manyata to sneak in the news that the film has crossed the 100-cr mark into his cell.

Sajid and Jacqueline Fernandez part ways

Jacqueline

Three years after they met and fell in love on the sets of 'Housefull 2', Sajid Khan and Jacqueline Fernandez have decided to part ways. The 42-year-old filmmaker, who recently directed the Himmatwala, and the 28-year-old former beauty pageant from Sri Lanka last seen in Race - 2, took the decision early this week. The couple had so far been quite committed to the relationship. Sajid met Jacqueline's parents in October last year and there were reports that they were pretty close to getting married as well. Curiously enough, though Sajid never shied away from confessing his love for her, Jacqueline has always evaded all questions pertaining to her 'boyfriend.' Despite the fact that they graced several social events, parties and photo calls together. Confirming the development, a source close to the two said: "Sajid and Jacqueline were having serious issues since February this year. But they have many common friends who always helped them patch up. Their efforts worked for a while, but the cracks kept resurfacing." According to reports, Sajid's earnestness as a lover may have killed the fledgling romance. "He was always protective, but at times too possessive of his girlfriend," said a source, adding, "Jackie brought out his prudish side... he had issues with the way she dressed, her roles... everything." Industry insiders say this cost Jacqueline her coveted roles in Jism -2 and Krrish-3. Sajid apparently prohibited her from kissing Hrithik Roshan on screen or shooting sensual scenes with Arunoday Singh and Randeep Hooda. "Sajid's bear hug was stifling Jackie, and though it was a painful decision, they decided it is best to remain friends and end up as bickering lovers," said the source. A friend of the filmmaker called to say that the 'parting was amicable'. "There is no animosity. Now, both Sajid and Jacqueline want to focus only on their respective careers. Post Race 2, Jacqueline has been getting many offers. As for Sajid, he wants to bounce back with vengeance after Himmatwala." What remains to be seen is whether Jacqueline finds pride of place in Sajid's next film starring Saif Ali Khan anymore.

Cockroaches are evolving to evade sugar traps

Cockroaches Surprisingly, cockroaches are steering away from sugary-coated traps designed to kill them. The phenomenon has been subject to much scientific interest with many experts asking why they avoid the traps if they are coated in glucose - a tempting treat for cockroaches. A new study published in the May 24th edition of Science has revealed why. Cockroaches determine whether or not food is safe by using their sensory systems. However, these sensory systems are able to quickly adapt to environmental changes. How they are able to detect the presence of poison in food that was once considered to be "safe" - according to their sensory systems - is still a mystery. Researchers at North Carolina State University looked at a species of cockroaches that have adapted and avoided traps coated in sugar, they were able to determine the mechanism of this change. Cockroaches have tiny little hair-like sensors on their mouths which they use to "taste" food, activating sensors house gustatory receptor neurons, or GRNs. Certain GRNs activate in the presence of food that is sugary - which makes them feed - as opposed to GRNs that activate in the presence of food that is bitter - making the animal avoid the food. The research, which started in the mid-1980s, found that German cockroaches given baits incorporating a stimulant (glucose) and a deterrent (insecticide) evolved a behavioural change called "glucose aversion". Cockroaches with "glucose aversion" avoided all man-made traps even though they were coated with glucose. Using electrophysiological tests the scientists were able to analyze the responses of gustatory receptor neurons among normal and glucose averse cockroaches. They were surprised to find that when the German glucose averse cockroaches were exposed to sugar it actually stimulated their bitter GRNs and suppressed the sugar GRN response, which prevented them from feeding. This means that among glucose-averse German cockroaches glucose is processed as a deterrent which makes them avoid it completely.

Mom dies, gives birth, then is revived and they’re both fine

Bir

Three-month-old Elayna Nigrelli has redefined what it means to be a miracle baby. She was born while her mother was technically dead. In February, Erica Nigrelli was teaching at a high school in Missouri City, Texas, when she walked into a co-worker's classroom. Nigrelli said she felt faint, placed her hands on a table to steady herself and then passed out. Three teachers immediately grabbed a defibrillator and also began performing CPR. Kids in the classroom ran out, yelling for help. Nigrelli's husband, Nathan, also a teacher, was just two doors down. He rushed into the room. "Erica was lying on the floor, she was foaming and making gurgling sounds and just staring up," he told CNN affiliate KPRC. He called 911. "My wife is pregnant," he said, his breath heavy with panic. "She's having a seizure! The baby's due in three weeks!" "Oh my God!" the 911 operator exclaimed. By the time paramedics rushed the 32-year-old to the hospital, doctors could not find a pulse. Her heart had stopped. Doctors delivered the baby by emergency cesarean section. Technically, it was a postmortem delivery because Erica's heart was not beating. But then something remarkable happened. The doctors turned to Erica, and soon her heart started beating again. Over the next five days, she remained in a medically induced coma, she told CNN, and doctors diagnosed her with a heart defect she didn't know she had -- hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The condition causes the heart muscle to thicken. The thickening can make it more difficult for blood to leave the heart, forcing it to work harder to pump blood. Baby Elayna was in the intensive care unit for two weeks. On Friday, the couple appeared with her on CNN's "Early Start," with Elayna on Mom's lap, sucking on a purple pacifier. She weighs 8 pounds and is healthy. "We feel great," Nathan Nigrelli said. "We have a wonderful baby. My wife is back to 100%. The baby hasn't shown any signs of trouble but is still on oxygen. The child will undergo therapy soon, but by all accounts her recovery looks to be on track and she'll be fine. Erica Nigrelli believes that God was protecting her. She told CNN that she has a memory of being in the ambulance. "I remember being bounced up," she said. And she remembers seeing sunlight. When she came to in the hospital, she remembers the doctors telling her, "You have your baby. She is in the hospital." She saw Elayna three weeks after she was born. The two joked that if Elayna ever gets out of line, all her parents have to do is remind their daughter what they went through to bring her into the world. "I have got, like, the best ammunition for the rest of her life," Erica Nigrelli laughed. "She can never do anything wrong."

Lost Apollo 11 moon dust found in storage

Apollo

Vials of moon dust brought back to Earth by the first men on the moon have been found inside a lab warehouse in California after sitting in storage unnoticed for more than 40 years. The samples — collected by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin — were rediscovered last month by an archivist who was going over artifacts tucked away at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "We don't know how or when they ended up in storage," Karen Nelson, who made the surprising discovery, said in a statement from the lab. Nelson came across about 20 vials with handwritten labels dated "24 July 1970," packed in a vacuum-sealed glass jar. Accompanying the jar was an academic paper published in the Proceedings of the Second Lunar Science Conference in 1971, titled "Study of carbon compounds in Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 returned lunar samples." All of the authors of the paper were from the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory, including Nobel Prize-winning chemist Melvin Calvin, who worked with NASA on efforts to protect the moon from contamination during the first lunar landing, as well as plans to protect Earthlings from unknown pathogens feared to be lurking in lunar dust. The moon dust samples were supposed to be sent back to NASA after the Space Sciences Laboratory team finished their experiments. By some wrong turn, they ended up in storage. After making the discovery, Nelson contacted officials at the Space Sciences Laboratory. "They were surprised we had the samples," she said. Nelson then got in touch with NASA officials, who allowed her to open the jar to remove the vials before she returned them to the space agency, according to the statement from Berkeley. In all, NASA's moonwalking Apollo astronauts brought 842 pounds of lunar samples back to Earth between 1969 and 1972, and very little of it is thought to be unaccounted for. Of the 68-gram batch of lunar material distributed to Calvin and his collaborators in 1970, NASA knew that only 50 grams was returned, said Ryan Zeigler, NASA's Apollo sample curator at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Space agency officials assumed that the unaccounted-for 18 grams had been destroyed during testing. Zeigler thinks the rediscovered, roughly 3-gram sample likely ended up in storage as a result of some miscommunication. "Given the lengths taken to preserve the samples, this does not appear to have been an attempt of deliberate deception, but likely a miscommunication where some of the material was retained for ongoing or expected future studies which never happened," Zeigler wrote in an email. "Why they were never returned is unclear." The vials have been returned to NASA's sample vault, the curator said, but it is possible that the samples could one day end up back in a lab. "I do not know whether these samples will be studied again, but this sample (10059) is a very interesting Apollo 11 breccia that is in short supply, so I believe there is a good chance that this material could be used to fill future requests for this sample," Zeigler added.

Anti-cancer drug reverses Alzheimer’s disease in mice

Drug

An anti-cancer drug may reverse memory problems in an Alzheimer's disease mouse model, according to new research carried out at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. The study, published in the journal Science, examined previously published outcomes on the drug bexarotene - which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in cutaneous T cell lymphoma. The researchers established that the drug does notably improve cognitive deficits in mice expressing gene mutations associated with human Alzheimer's disease, however, they could not verify the effect on amyloid plaques. Senior author Rada Koldamova, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor in Pitt Public Health's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, said, "We believe these findings make a solid case for continued exploration of bexarotene as a therapeutic treatment for Alzheimer's disease."

Why did our ancestors start walking upright?

Ancestor

Being four-legged has its perks. As a quadruped, your centre of gravity is lower, there's less wind resistance when you're running, and, best of all, you can use your hind foot to scratch your ear. All of this raises a big question: What were our apelike ancestors thinking when they started walking upright? A prevailing hypothesis is that they were prompted by climate change. As African forests declined due to temperature fluctuations some 2.5 million years ago, the hypothesis goes, our australopithecine ancestors descended from the trees and ventured out into the open savanna, an environment thought to be friendlier for those standing on two feet. The savanna hypothesis has its critics, however. There is some evidence that bipedal primates evolved before the biggest temperature swings kicked in, that some australopithecines ancestors lived in forests, and that they were adapted to both tree-climbing and upright walking.