Madonna”s new gym overcomes Mexican bureaucracy
December 2, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under Entertainment
MEXICO CITY: Madonna’s new gym in Mexico City was finally given a permit to operate, a local official said Wednesday, two days after the US pop diva inaugurated the luxury workout space.
The Hard Candy gym had been prevented from opening because it lacked permits for land use and for its parking lot, Demetrio Sodi, head of the Miguel Hidalgo borough of Mexico City, and uncle of Latin pop diva Thalia, said.
“It was authorized during the day (Wednesday),” he later told Radio Formula.
“People usually check they have all the permits before inaugurating something,” Sodi said.
No one answered telephone calls made to the gym and its public relations company on Wednesday.
Madonna was in Mexico City on Monday to open the first Hard Candy Fitness club, part of a global chain she and her business partners are unveiling around the world.
Sodi said the gym was granted a special permit for the inauguration, in a country renowned for its cumbersome bureaucracy.
The gym is set in a lavish, three-story, 3,000 square meter (32,000 square foot) space in the Mexican capital”s exclusive Lomas Altas neighborhood.
Madonna’s new gym overcomes Mexican bureaucracy
December 2, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
MEXICO CITY: Madonna’s new gym in Mexico City was finally given a permit to operate, a local official said Wednesday, two days after the US pop diva inaugurated the luxury workout space.
The Hard Candy gym had been prevented from opening because it lacked permits for land use and for its parking lot, Demetrio Sodi, head of the Miguel Hidalgo borough of Mexico City, and uncle of Latin pop diva Thalia, told AFP.
“It was authorized during the day (Wednesday),” he later told Radio Formula.
“People usually check they have all the permits before inaugurating something,” Sodi said.
No one answered telephone calls AFP made to the gym and its public relations company on Wednesday.
Madonna was in Mexico City on Monday to open the first Hard Candy Fitness club, part of a global chain she and her business partners are unveiling around the
Obama arrives in India, controversy over Pakistan
November 6, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
MUMBAI: U.S. President Barack Obama paid tribute on Saturday to victims of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, but the first day of his visit to India ran into immediate controversy as he made no reference to Pakistan.
Pakistan-based militants killed 166 people in a 60-hour rampage through India’s financial hub, gunning down their victims at luxury hotels, a train station and a Jewish centre.
India says elements in the Pakistan state were behind the attacks.
“We visit here to send a very clear message,” Obama said after meeting victims’ families at the luxury sea-front Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, the iconic landmark where TV images showing it in flames after battles between militants and commandos came to symbolise the massacre.
“In our determination to give our people a future of security and prosperity, the United States and India stand united.”
Obama’s
Obama arrives in India eyeing jobs for America
November 6, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
President Barack Obama flew into India’s commercial capital on Saturday aiming to boost ties and seal big-ticket business deals to secure jobs and exports days after voters punished his Democrats in mid-term elections.
Obama will also visit Indonesia, South Korea and Japan on a 10-day tour that will see Washington push to prevent countries unilaterally devaluing currencies to protect their exports, a top theme at the Group of 20 heads of state meet in Seoul next week.
In Mumbai, Obama’s first stop will be the luxury Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, where he will pay respects to the victims of the 2008 attacks at one of the primary targets of gunmen who slaughtered 166 people.
One of the first diplomatic tests for Obama will be at the Taj. Indians will want a strong statement against Pakistan for fostering militants, but Washington must tread a fine line
JUI-F’s Senator’s son uses smuggled vehicle
August 22, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
By Mairaj Akhtar
KARACHI: The custom officials have conducted a raid on the house of JUI-F’s Senator Khalid Mehmood Soomro and took a luxury smuggled vehicle into custody, SAMAA learnt Sunday.
The vehicle was being used by the Senator’s son, Rashid Mehmood.
The custom officials conducted raid on the resident of Soomro, situated in Gulistan-e Jauhar.
The custom officials said that the luxury vehicle was smuggled one and it was being used with fake number plate.
SAMAA learnt that Senator Soomro is in Saudi Arabia for Umra. SAMAA
Future of fast bowlers at risk: Imran
LONDON: Former Pakistan captain Imran Khan fears fast bowlers “could go the way of dinosaurs” if the international schedule retains its current format.
Imran, 57, said in the annual Cowdrey Lecture at Lord”s that 50-over cricket may have to be axed to prevent “unprecedented” stress on pacemen.
“Maybe we should eliminate 50-over cricket and just have Twenty20 cricket and Test cricket,” he said.
“I don”t believe Test cricket is the same standard as before.”
A campaigning politician and a tireless charity worker, Imran has remained actively involved in cricket as a commentator and pundit since retiring in 1992 after leading Pakistan to World Cup glory.
The first Pakistani to deliver the Cowdrey lecture, Imran was at Lord”s last week to see Pakistan lose the first of their two Tests against Australia, prompting Shahid Afridi to resign the captaincy after just one game in charge.
And he said Afridi was a prime example of a player who could be a brilliant Twenty20 performer, and yet lack the application to be successful at Test cricket.
“The only test of a cricketer is the Test match because his talent and technique is tested.
“In Twenty20, if you are very talented you can get away with it, but a good Twenty20 cricketer will not necessarily excel in Test cricket.”
He said having three formats of the game to focus on was particularly demanding for fast bowlers and that during his 1980s heyday things had been different.
He said: “You could rest, or you could have one full over bowling looseners. Now, one-day cricket has put tremendous pressure on bowlers. The amount of stress on a bowler is unprecedented, you don”t have the luxury of loosening up.
“The stress on fast bowlers is incredible. But cricket without fast bowling is never going to be the same standard if a batsman doesn”t test himself against fast bowling.
“I saw [Australia''s] Shaun Tait bowl in the Twenty20s and I thought an alien had come in – you suddenly saw batsmen hopping about.”
The experience of watching him play had reminded Imran of playing against Sylvester Clarke in county cricket. “He terrified batsmen, but couldn”t get into the West Indies team,” he said.
Imran also discussed the standard of umpiring in international cricket, which he felt had improved hugely since neutral umpires were adopted.
“The spirit of game suffered while I was playing. There was a lot of acrimony in the games and when India played against Pakistan it deteriorated to depths you cannot imagine.
“Neutral umpires have changed everything, technology has eliminated so many of the controversies and results are much fairer now. I think it should improve further with the use of [more] technology.”
porpoise
May 13, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
Dolphins bully porpoises, researcher discovers
Why are dolphins killing porpoises? Researchers are hoping a listening device could solve the mystery
It’s a cold, sunny spring day as our boat heads out of the little town of New Quay on Wales’s west coast. We’re on the lookout for dolphins and porpoises – at least, I am.
Bangor University PhD student Hanna Nuuttila, however, isn’t really interested in getting a sighting of these cetaceans – instead, she wants to hear them as they chat to each other beneath the waves.
By using submersible underwater hydrophones called C-Pods to collect acoustic data on their vocal behaviour – ie, where and when they do their characteristic “clicking” – Nuuttila is hoping to discover more about how bottlenose dolphins and their smaller and more shy relative, the harbour porpoise, use the vast sweep of water encompassed by Cardigan Bay.
We’re chugging along the coast towards a 1km-square “grid” she created just before Christmas, when she sank 44 C-Pods every 200 metres. Each of their locations is marked by a buoy, and for the moment, that 1km square is Nuuttila’s own little patch of sea.
“All the fishermen have been great and agreed not to put their [crab and lobster] pots in it,” she says. “The lifeboat has agreed to avoid it, too, and the coastguard is broadcasting twice a day and warning sea-goers not to go there.”
Donated by Cornwall-based manufacturer Chelonia, C-Pod devices are worth around £3,000 each, so she’s keeping close tabs on them – during the recent high spring tides several became completely submerged and for a few anxious days it looked as if they’d gone for good.
Cardigan Bay is a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), so designated partly because of its importance for bottlenose dolphins as they feed, calve and raise their young. Understanding where and when dolphins frequent different parts of the bay is vital to ensuring that the effects of human activities are mitigated in areas crucial to their survival. But harbour porpoises also use Cardigan Bay, and it is this species that could benefit the most from Nuuttila’s research.
This carries on from a previous acoustic monitoring study she did for The Seawatch Foundation, prompted by the discovery that Cardigan Bay dolphins were killing porpoises.
four seasons maui
May 13, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
Every day when I take a break to surf the internet all I can do is check the Four Seasons’ and Fairmont’s website and get excited. These look like 2 of the most luxurious hotels ever. And the best part ever is that you can actually find some reasonably affordable rates (espesh during non-peak seasons). .JPG "four seasons maui")
That’s the key peeps. You can stay at the luxury hotels if you can be flexible about your dates.
Fiance will finally be done with all his work and ready to play with ME! Do I sound like I’m 6? That’s how I feel. Do any of y’all have any fun vacays planned? I haven’t been out of the city (other than to go to CLE) in a LONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG time. Hello Hawaii Luxury! Goodbye, Cement Jungle! Let the countdown begin
Several injured in blasts in Bangkok business district
April 22, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
BANGKOK: A series of explosions rocked Bangkok”s business district Thursday, leaving several people injured, amid a standoff between groups of rival protesters.
Two ambulances were seen arriving at the scene following the blasts, the cause of which was not immediately clear.
France veil ban will apply to Muslim tourists too
April 22, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
PARIS: Muslim tourists in France will be forbidden to wear the full-face veil along with French residents under the government”s plan to ban the garment in public places, a minister said on Thursday.
“When you arrive in France, you respect the laws in force…. Everyone will have to respect the laws in France. That”s how it is,” Nadine Morano, a junior minister for families, said on a local radio station.
Hundreds of thousands of visitors come to France each year from the Middle East, according to estimates from the tourism ministry, and veiled women are a common sight in the luxury stores on Paris shopping boulevards.
Morano said women breaching the ban would be fined but would not be unveiled “on the spot”.
Morano said the planned ban was in line with France”s secular principles but also aimed to give “a message at international level” and would apply equally to visitors from abroad.
President Nicolas Sarkozy”s government announced Wednesday it will ban the wearing in public of the full-face veil worn by some Muslim women, despite a warning from experts that such a law could be unconstitutional.
Government spokesman Luc Chatel said a bill would be presented to ministers in May and would seek to ban the niqab and the burqa from streets, shops and markets and not just from public buildings.
Last month, the State Council — France”s top administrative authority — warned against a full ban on the veil, suggesting instead an order that women uncover their faces for security checks or meetings with officials.
The government says only around 2,000 Muslim French women currently cover their faces, but the niqab, which covers the face apart from the eyes, is widely worn on the Arabian peninsular and in the Gulf states.
