Mallika Sherawat acquitted from obscenity case
This one goes way back, in fact more than four years ago, there was a case of obscenity filed against the seductress Mallika Sherawat. The case in question was filed by social activist Vinod Jain who claimed that the performance by the actress at a New Year party in ’06 was outright obscene.
The case which was filed in the Sessions court was dismissed stating that it was a classic case of morality issues. In other words, the performance can be deemed obscene depending on the point of view of the individual.
Though the actress is heaving a sigh of relief, Vinod Jain, states that he will not rest and will later approach the High Court with the same claim.
Alcohol more dangerous than crack or heroin: report
Alcohol is more dangerous than such illegal drugs as crack cocaine and heroin, a British study has found.
Researchers compared several drugs — including alcohol, ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine and heroin — against each other and measured the effects on both the individual and society. In terms of the effects on the individual, the British experts analyzed how addictive each drug is, and how much damage it causes to the body.
In terms of a drug’s effect on society, the researchers analyzed such factors as how much it costs the health care and prison systems. Overall, alcohol was the most harmful drug, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Heroin, crack and methamphetamine were found to be the most harmful to the individual. Alcohol, heroin, and crack were the most harmful to others. A Canadian expert said he is not surprised by the findings, and expects the results would be similar if the study was conducted in Canada. Alcohol dwarfs those other drugs, said Dr. Marvin Krank, an addictions expert from the department of psychology at University of B.C. Krank said the accessibility of alcohol weighs largely in its ability to cause so much damage. In one of his studies, Krank and his colleagues followed 1,300 Canadian students for three years. During the most recent survey, when the students were in Grade 11, researchers found that 80 per cent of the students said they had drunk alcohol within the past year, and that 60 per cent had been drunk within the same time frame. It’s so widely available, it’s socially accepted; and in our college campuses, it’s considered a rite of passage, he said. Certainly, having drugs illegal makes them more difficult to obtain and putting a stigma on them makes them less likely to be used. The British research, published Monday in the medical journal Lancet, established a grading system in which each drug received a grade between zero and 100. When considering the overall effect of the drug — both the harm on an individual and on society as a whole — alcohol scored 72 points, while heroin and crack scored 55 and 54 respectively.
Alcohol more dangerous than crack or heroin: report
Alcohol is more dangerous than such illegal drugs as crack cocaine and heroin, a British study has found.
Researchers compared several drugs — including alcohol, ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine and heroin — against each other and measured the effects on both the individual and society. In terms of the effects on the individual, the British experts analyzed how addictive each drug is, and how much damage it causes to the body.
In terms of a drug’s effect on society, the researchers analyzed such factors as how much it costs the health care and prison systems. Overall, alcohol was the most harmful drug, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Heroin, crack and methamphetamine were found to be the most harmful to the individual. Alcohol, heroin, and crack were the most harmful to others. A Canadian expert said he is not surprised by the findings, and expects the results would be similar if the study was conducted in Canada. Alcohol dwarfs those other drugs, said Dr. Marvin Krank, an addictions expert from the department of psychology at University of B.C. Krank said the accessibility of alcohol weighs largely in its ability to cause so much damage. In one of his studies, Krank and his colleagues followed 1,300 Canadian students for three years. During the most recent survey, when the students were in Grade 11, researchers found that 80 per cent of the students said they had drunk alcohol within the past year, and that 60 per cent had been drunk within the same time frame. It’s so widely available, it’s socially accepted; and in our college campuses, it’s considered a rite of passage, he said. Certainly, having drugs illegal makes them more difficult to obtain and putting a stigma on them makes them less likely to be used. The British research, published Monday in the medical journal Lancet, established a grading system in which each drug received a grade between zero and 100. When considering the overall effect of the drug — both the harm on an individual and on society as a whole — alcohol scored 72 points, while heroin and crack scored 55 and 54 respectively.
Pentagon faults official in spy operation: NY Times
October 29, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
WASHINGTON: A senior U.S. Defense Department official violated Pentagon rules and deliberately misled senior military officers when he created a spy operation using private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a Pentagon inquiry has found, according to the New York Times.
The Times quoted Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan as saying the probe found that “further investigation is warranted of the misleading and incorrect statements the individual made” about the legality of the spy program.
The allegations about the off-the-books spy operation centered on Michael Furlong, a senior U.S. Air Force civilian official who hired contractors from private security companies that employed former CIA and military operatives, the Times reported.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the investigation in March.
The contractors gathered intelligence on the
Peru’s Vargas Llosa wins Nobel for literature
October 7, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
STOCKHOLM: Peruvian-born writer and one-time presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa, who has chronicled struggles for power, won the 2010 Nobel prize for literature, the awarding committee said on Thursday.
The committee said in a statement Vargas Llosa received the award “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat”.
Vargas Llosa, who made his international breakthrough with the novel “The Time of the Hero” in 1966, is the first Latin American winner for literature since Octavio Paz won in 1990.
His works build on his experiences of life in Peru in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Vargos Llosa ran for president of Peru in 1990 but lost to Alberto Fujimori, who ultimately had to flee the country and was subsequently convicted of various crimes.
“He is an outstanding author, and
bonnaroo
June 9, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
NEW YORK — It’s often joked that more people like to claim that they were at Woodstock in 1969 than were actually there.
For today’s music mega-festivals, such boasting is entirely plausible.
The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, which begins its ninth annual installment Thursday evening in Manchester, Tenn., has — like many festivals — gradually let more of its experience seep out on the Web.
This year’s festival, more than any earlier, need not require a cross-country road trip or four days of camping in the mud. Much of the music at Bonnaroo will filter out through live streaming on YouTube, audio webcasting on NPR and television coverage on Fuse.
A Web-minded vibe was set right from the start: This year’s Bonnaroo lineup was announced through the individual websites, MySpace pages, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages of the performing acts. It took frantic Googling to uncover that the headliners would be Jay-Z, the Dave Matthews Band and Kings of Leon.
Nearly 100 acts, including Conan O’Brien’s traveling comedy show, will be spread out over a multitude of stages and tents on the Tennessee farm owned by Superfly Productions and AC Entertainment, the organizers of Bonnaroo. More than 70,000 fans are expected to attend the festival, which runs through Sunday.When we look at this, the festival model is very successful; tickets continue to sell out, there are lots of fans and followers, people who plan their summer schedules around these events,” says Dana Vetter, manager of music marketing programs at YouTube. “We see it as really compelling content and not something we’re necessary trying to replace. YouTube brings reach and more attention to the artists and the festival.”
YouTube has partnered in webcasting San Francisco’s Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival, which is also produced by Superfly. The Google Inc.-owned site has been making more of a push into live music, most notably webcasting a U2 concert last October to a live Internet audience of nearly 10 million.
CBSE Announce Class XII Exam Result 2010 | Result for Ajmer, Chennai and Panchkula
CBSE Results 2010 class XII declared today. CBSE class 12 results 2010 are available on the official website of CBSE Exam Results 2010th CBSE 12 class results 2010 declared the Chennai, Ajmer and Panchkula regions.
Over 1.6 million students appeared for CBSE class X and XII board Survey year.
Last year was the CBSE results for class X, determined 29 May 2009 and the actual dates were 26 and 29 May 2009 and for Class XII passed 22 May and actual dates were 20 and 22 May 2009.
CBSE results are available for individual students and schools. Individual student results can be checked through by entering their roll numbers and school results can be checked through by incoming the code school.
The CBSE Exam Result for Chennai, Ajmer and Panchkula regions results will be available in the below mentioned links:
http://cbseresults.nic.in/
http://www.cbse.nic.in/
http://results.nic.in/
Pak annual tax exemptions estimated at Rs200b
ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) estimates that it can generate around three per cent of the GDP in taxes by abolishing exemptions, an official document said on Saturday.
Influential people, industrialists, agriculturists and businessmen of the country are enjoying tax and duty exemptions to the tune of Rs 200 billion per annum including general sales tax (GST), which comes to 3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).
According to Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) first half (July-December) period report issued here on Saturday, Punjab has potential to generate an amount of nearly Rs 6 billion per year from agriculture income tax. Total collection of agriculture income tax is hardly Rs 1 billion that is mostly from Punjab. Sindh makes an insignificant contribution, while Baluchistan and NWFP have no contribution at all.
There is a probable estimate that in Punjab there is a potential of Rs 6 billion a year. Provincial taxes yield no more than 0.4 percent of the GDP, so that district and provincial governments depend on large fiscal transfers from the Centre to meet their expenditure responsibilities. The contribution of provincial taxes in the overall taxes collected is very low. While vesting the power to tax incomes on the Centre, presumably as a legacy of history, the constitution excluded income from agriculture from the purview of the income tax, violating the canon of horizontal equity and opening up scope for evasion and litigation.
The report said that some exemptions like the income tax threshold and GST and basic foodstuffs are granted to protect the most vulnerable groups of society from ‘onerous’ taxes.
Some (the GST threshold) are done for administrative reasons. Exemptions are also introduced to protect certain industries or provide for the development of infant industries.
There are also political exemptions for segments of the economy like diplomats, top echelon of civil and military bureaucracy, and employees of international organisations. Specific temporary exemptions are also granted to address issues that arise from time to time. The exemptions granted for import of essential commodities to counter inflationary expectations are a good example of these temporary exemptions.
FBR said that Pakistan made considerable progress in broadening the tax-base and ensured equity in the taxation system. A broad-based Value-Added Tax (VAT), bitterly opposed by the business community, is being proposed from the new financial year 2010/11 (July-June).
The implementation of VAT is one of the conditions of International Monetary Fund (IMF) under its standby arrangement of of $11.3 billion for Pakistan.
“The Value-Added Tax could be considered as an efficient tool for documentation of the economy, widening of the tax-base and affective taxation mechanism, leading to a substantial increase in government revenue,” the report said.
Punjab, the report estimated, has a potential to generate nearly Rs6 billion from agriculture income tax. Total collection of the agriculture income tax is hardly Rs1 billion that is mostly from Punjab. There are also political exemptions for segments of the economy like diplomats, top echelons of civil and military bureaucracy, and employees of international organisations.
In case of Pakistan, the threshold is Rs200,000 ($2,410) for the individual income tax and Rs5,000,000 ($60,240) in turnover for the sales tax.
Idol Contestant Disqualified + news
Idol Contestant Disqualified , As per fellow American Idol contestant for the Hollywood Week, Samantha Musa, the response is “Yes”. Samantha musa auditioned for Idol in LA and got a Golden Ticket, but we never saw her on TV.
If you have seen the Wednesday February 17th episode you would have noticed that Chris Golightly was integrated in the group shot at episode’s end, but when the individual dancing montage was showed Golightly was missing and instead we saw Tim Urban shaking his groove thing.
Many of the viewers remember Chris Golightly as the man who has lived in around 25 foster homes from the time when he was 18 months old.
The news of Golightly’s disqualification got confirmed with Ryan Seacrest’s TWEET, Ryan on Wednesday, February 17, soon after the Idol Top 24 were announced Tweeted that, “been determined that Chris Golightly is disqualified from IDOL, he will be replaced by contestant Tim Urban as part of the Top 24?. Though the reason of the disqualification hasn’t been estimated yet, and even Ryan remained shady on it and wrote “must have broken a rule or maybe had previous deal”.
Idol Contestant Disqualified + news was first posted on February 19, 2010 at 10:32 am.
Shutter Island Movie
Latest updates Shutter IslandMartin Scorsese, Shutter Island Book, Shutter Island TrailerWe’ve come to expect Martin Scorsese to swing for the fences every single time he’s at bat, so when a movie comes along like Shutter Island, a pulpy, by-the-numbers thriller, it’s easy to feel a slight twinge of disappointment. Here, we’re dealing with a lesser work by a modern master, which is to say that Shutter Island is still a crackerjack mystery, executed with great artistic care, but it’s also Scorsese working about as close as he ever has to popcorn-munching cineplex fare. It’s a hard-boiled and unpretentious outing, but the individual parts of Shutter Island are greater than the whole — particularly the cinematography by Robert Richardson and outstanding work from a dream team ensemble cast.
Leading that dream team is Leonardo DiCaprio as U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, called in to a state-run mental institution on a storm-battered, rocky island on the East Coast, along with his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo). The delusional murderess Rachel Solando has gone missing from her cell, leaving behind no evident clues, and with those in charge of the facility (Ben Kingsley, who needs to work with Scorsese more often, and Max Von Sydow) only forthcoming with information to the officers as it seems to suit them.
Shutter Island Movie was first posted on January 18, 2010 at 5:22 pm.
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