London: An Australian study is expected to be used as proof by the British government in its battle to remove branding from cigarette packets. The report, by Australia's Department of Health shows that plain packaging, introduced in 2012, has provoked reduced smoking. In March, Britain became the third country in the world, after Australia and Ireland to pass laws that required the removal of branding, a move which did not go down well with several cigarette manufacturers. British American Tobacco and Marlboro even sought to challenge the legality of plain packaging in a series of court cases. Sources at BAT, the fourth biggest company on the FTSE 100, said the criteria for measuring the success of plain packaging had changed and that they would dispute the report’s validity when the study is published.
Outrage as city with new £188m library ask readers for help buying books
Birmingham: Birmingham City Council has been criticised by readers and authors after it issued notices requesting members to donate their new and recently released books, saying they would be “gratefully received”. This issue comes after the council spent £188million to build a state of the art new library. The council has confirmed it placed its own book fund on “pause”, after it was compelled to make “huge savings” across the board owing to nationwide budget cuts. Social Media went berserk with an image of a poster detailing the request, provoking further criticism from writers, including S J Watson, who said it made him “really angry”, and Neil Gaiman, who posted the news with a simple “!”. The notice placed in some of the city's libraries states read, “Due to public savings cuts we are no longer purchasing any new books or newspapers. Therefore we're looking for any books published in the last 12 months to be donated to the library. All gratefully received.”
Hamid Gul, brain behind Pakistan's ISI, dead
Islamabad: Pakistan's Islamist Director General of the country's Inter Services Intelligence, who was best known for supporting Khalistani and Kashmiri militants, died of brain haemorrhage at the age of 78. He is considered the brain behind Pakistan's proxy wars with India, and is often referred as the “godfather” of well known terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The group is widely known for its terror attack on Mumbai, allegations which were strongly shunned by Gul. He openly said, “They (India) are saying these boys were village boys trained to be killers. How can this be believed? Village boys don't know anything about a five-star hotel. They would not know how to use the toilet.” He quite often went on TV, defending the Taliban and Kashmiri militants, going as far as blaming a Jewish conspiracy for the dreadful September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Suicide bombers kill Pak minister
Islamabad: Senior provincial minister in Pakistan, Shuja Khanzada fell prey to a suicide bomb attack, which also killed 10 others, wounding several. Home minister of Punjab Province, Khanzada was holding a political meeting in his home district of Attock when a loud explosion rocked the building, causing it to collapse and leaving several people, including himself, under the debris. While there have been no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, officials speculate that it could have been in response to the July 29 killing of Malik Ishaq, one of Pakistan’s most notorious and feared sectarian militants, in a police shootout. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, strongly condemned the attack and vowed to continue Pakistan’s fight against militancy and extremism. “Such dastardly, cowardly attempts can’t dent our national resolve to eliminate the menace,” a military spokesman said, quoting the army chief. “Khanzada was a bold officer whose sacrifice for the greater cause of cleansing Pakistan won’t go to waste.”
54 feared dead in Indonesia plane crash
Jakarta: The latest in a string of incidents provoking concerns over air safety, an airliner that had disappeared last week with 54 people on board, as reported to crash on a mountain in eastern Indonesia, as per the country's transport officials. The country's air transportation director-general, Suprasetyo said the missing Trigana Air Service plane was found by villagers in the Oktabe district, 175 miles south of Jayapura, capital of Papua, from where the plane had taken off. “The latest information is that the Trigana aircraft that lost contact has been found,” he told reporters. “Residents provided information that the aircraft crashed into Tangok mountain.”Gerry Soejatman, a local aviation analyst, said the mountainous and heavily forested area of Papua was particularly difficult terrain. “We are not talking about a place where you can have a nice flat runway being built,” he said. “In a lot of places you don’t even have roads going there. You have to build runways by mountains, valleys, hills.”
Raveena alleges 'harassment' at event in US
Los Angeles: Bollywood actress Raveena Tandon who was in the United States to perform for an Indepedence Day event, was subjected to misbehaviour from one of the organisers. In a tweet, Tandon said the man was drunk and there was no security to control him. “In LA after two glorious days, of spending the Independence Day celebrations- sadly a bad ending. All was going well. Till a drunk got on stage. Some chap... started misbehaving, and padding comments, sadly all security was down and couldn't get to him first. (He) was one of the organisers and was upset that his kids didn't get to travel in my car with me to the event, which security and protocol didn't allow. Started making nasty remarks till I had to yell out to the others to get some other guys up... And that's when they took him away! But yes I did give him a piece of my mind too.. That's no way to talk to anyone- when I didn't even know what he was upset about...,” she wrote.
Islamists threaten Bangladeshi activists on FB
Dhaka: Mere days after Bangladesh's fourth secular blogger was hacked to death by Islamists, six Bangladeshi activists, including three poets have been allegedly threatened by Al-Qaida linked extremists, on Facebook. 'Ansar BD', issued the threat on its Facebook page with pictures of six men associated with Ganajagaran Mancha, a group demandin capital punishment for the 1971 war criminals. “There are three anti-Islamic poets & three organisers of blogs. They are the enemy of Islam. We should do what will our aim (sic),” the post read. Identified as poet Henry Swapan, sculptor Charu Tuhin, poet Syed Mehedi Hasan, organiser Nazrul Biswas, poet Tuhin Das and Chhatra Union's Barisal unit general secretary Pritom Chowdhury, none of the six ave filed a police complaint as yet.
MQM quits Pak parliament, assembly over Karachi operation
Karachi: Lawmakers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement party, the biggest party in Pakistan's largest city Karachi, has resigned from the Parliament and Singh provincial assembly alleging victimisation of party workers in the ongoing security operation. MQM parliamentary leader Farooq Sattar told the National Assembly before resigning that his party's decision to quit all legislative bodies was taken after long deliberations. He said the army chief and Karachi corps commander refused to meet him after he approached them to convey the party's concerns over the operation. “If you cannot feel the heat of the fire engulfing our homes, just remember this fire could also engulf your home,” Sattar said. The security operation in Karachi, launched in 2013, to purge the city affected with violence from militants and criminals, was supported by all parties, including the MQM. However, differences rose when several members of the party were arrested for alleged involvement in different crimes.
Facebook fires Indian-origin intern for pointing out flaw
New Delhi: Indian-origin Harvard student, Aran Khanna's internship with Facebook was cancelled after he developed an app that brought to notice the privacy flaws in the popular social media's messenger service. Khanna was preparing for the internship when he launched a browser application called Marauder's Map, that used data from Facebook Messenger to map where the users were, when they sent messages. A media report said the app “capitalised on a privacy flaw that Facebook had been aware of for about three years: the Facebook Messenger app automatically shared users’ locations with anyone who they messaged.” Within three days of gaining popularity, Facebook asked Khanna to disable the app and withdrew its internship offer to him. The student has accepted internship with a tech start-up in Silicon Valley and detailed his experience in a case study titled 'Facebook's Privacy Incident Response: A study of geolocation sharing on Facebook Messenger' in the Harvard Journal of Technology Science.
Former Khalistan leader stabbed to death in US
Washington: A former Sikh separatist leader was stabbed to death by unidentified assailants outside his apartment in the US city of Illinois. Satwinder Singh Bhola, 52, the owner of Griswold Grocery & Liquor in Peoria, was parking his car when some unidentified persons attacked him with a knife.
Local police has launched a massive manhunt to nab the assailants. The police has not been able to determine the cause of his murder. Bhola, according to the police, suffered multiple stab wounds. Preliminary indications are that he died of a stab wound in the neck. Bhola was nominated as spokesperson of All India Sikh Student Federation at the peak of militancy in Punjab. Following operation Blue Star in Amritsar, he served a two-year jail sentence. After being released from the jail, Bhola moved to California and from there he moved to Chicago where he was in the hotel business
