Sania Mirza finds her love match

Leading Indian player Sania Mirza has become engaged to a business scholar from her hometown of Hyderabad but has no plans to retire from competitive tennis, domestic media reported on Friday.
The 22-year-old Mirza is a youth icon in a nation starved for sporting success after she became the first Indian to win a WTA tour title and break into the world's top 50 in 2005 but has struggled to live up to early expectations.

The pair were unlikely to tie the knot in the near future, however, as her 23-year-old fiance Sohrab Mirza planned to pursue higher studies, reports quoted family members as saying.

Mirza has been plagued by injuries over the last two seasons but has continued playing despite being frustrated by a series of court petitions attributed mostly to people trying to grab media attention.

India's Youngest Minister Fumbles, but earns applause

New Delhi: May 28 (IANS) She went slow and fumbled twice, but the entire hall at Rashtrapati Bhavan erupted in applause and smiles as Agatha Sangma, the youngest minister in the Manmohan Singh government, took oath Thursday.

Wearing a traditional stole and sarong in beige and white, 28-year-old Sangma folded her hands into a gentle namaste for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi sitting in the front row, before taking her place beside President Prathibha Patil to take oath in Hindi.

However the mike had to be specially adjusted for the petite first-time minister.

Daughter of former Lok Sabha speaker P.A. Sangma, who was present at the swearing-in ceremony Thursday and looked on appreciatively as his daughter took oath in the name of god, Agatha hails from Meghalaya and is a lawyer by profession.

Quite a few faces had an anticipatory look as Agatha Sangma fumbled more than once mid-sentence. However, Sonia Gandhi kept smiling throughout her oath taking, nodding appreciatively and then clapping with everyone else as Agatha completed her oath taking.

Walking back to take her seat, a number of people either folded their hands into a namaste to greet her or shook hands with the young minister.

Team Manmohan was finally inducted Thursday with 14 cabinet ministers and 45 ministers of state taking oath at the Rashtrapati Bhavan to wrap up the 79-member council of ministers that will shepherd the Congress-led UPA's second tenure in office.

Sonia Sotomayor: Who Is Obama's Supreme Court Nominee?

If Obama becomes president, his first nominee to the Supreme Court will likely be Sonia Sotomayor. As a Hispanic woman with 16 years of court experience, Sotomayor would slay two of the court's lack-of-diversity birds with one swift stone.

"These are criteria that matter these days. Even Laura Bush was disappointed that her husband didn't name a woman to replace Sandra Day O'Connor," says Mark Tushnet, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard.

And because Sotomayor has a reputation for staying behind the scenes and sits on a federal bench known for its centrism, it's likely that she would be able to garner a two-thirds majority in the Senate, even if the Democrats only control an estimated 55 or so seats.

Plus there's an insurance measure if the nomination gets too politicized publicly: Sotomayor was appointed to the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush. Says Tushnet, "If you're a Democratic strategist, you can gin up ads that say, 'She was good enough for George H. W. Bush.

Why isn't she good enough for Mitch McConnell?' "

Iraq's Kirkuk rocked by bombings

Source : bbc

At least 16 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a series of bomb attacks on police in Iraq's northern oil city of Kirkuk.

A police patrol was targeted in the first blast in the city centre at about 0730 (0330 GMT), leaving at least 10 dead, a police official said.

About half an hour later, a suspected suicide car bomber tried to ram the main police headquarters, killing five.

The offices of President Talabani's Kurdish party were also targeted.

In another attack, a district police chief was wounded and his bodyguard killed when two bombs went off outside his house.

Confusion surrounds the exact number of attacks. There are fears the death toll could rise.

The attacks may be part of the revenge promised by al-Qaeda in Iraq for the death of their leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a US air strike last week, the BBC's Hugh Sykes in Baghdad says.

Ordinary guerrilla insurgents would not have the resources to organise such a co-ordinated attack, one experienced observer told the BBC.

In the first attack, eight civilians and two policemen were killed when a bomb exploded in a parked car, Brig Gen Sarhat Qadir was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying. Another eight civilians and a police colonel were wounded.


In the second attack, a suicide car bomber attempted to ram into a checkpoint at the police headquarters. Police opened fire and the car exploded. Two policemen and three civilians were killed, Brig Gen Qadir said.

An attempted car bomb attack on the office of President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party was also foiled. Police opened fire on the car, causing it to explode.

Kirkuk, some 250km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, is home to a mix of Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen inhabitants, all of whom claim ownership of the city and the oil-rich territory around it.

The city has been spared some of the large bombings suffered by other Iraqi cities.

But it has been the scene of frequent attacks on police by insurgents waging war on US-led multinational forces and their Iraqi allies.

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NASA to try California shuttle landing

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, California (CNN) -- NASA will attempt to land space shuttle Atlantis at California's Edwards Air Force Base on Sunday, after rainy Florida weather precluded a Kennedy Space Center landing for a third day, officials said.

Rain at Kennedy Space Center in Florida canceled plans to land the space shuttle Atlantis on Saturday.

The first attempt will be made at 11:39 a.m. ET at Edwards, north of Los Angeles. Another opportunity will come at 1:17 p.m. ET.

Rainy weather postponed the shuttle landing on Friday and Saturday. While Atlantis could conceivably remain in space until Monday, NASA has said it wants to land Sunday.

Officials said Sunday's Florida weather was better than conditions Saturday, but atmospheric conditions in Florida remained too unstable for landing.

The landing would be the 53rd at Edwards, NASA officials said. In the early days of the space shuttle program, Edwards was its primary landing site.

Atlantis launched May 11 for NASA's final repair visit to the Hubble Space Telescope. Shuttle astronauts conducted space walks during the mission to perform routine repairs and replace key instruments, in what has been called one of the most ambitious space repair efforts ever attempted.

Hubble was released back into orbit Tuesday morning.

Hubble, which has been in space for nearly two decades, can capture clear images that telescopes on Earth cannot, partly because it does not have to gaze through murky atmospheres.

Global hunt for accidental millionaires

CNN) -- An international manhunt was under way Thursday for a
New Zealand couple who fled after a bank mistakenly paid them NZ$10
million (US$6 million) when they applied for a loan of just NZ$10,000.

Westpac bank paid the couple 1,000 times the amount they asked for.

New Zealand authorities said they had sought help from Interpol in

locating the couple who disappeared May 7, two days after an employee
error at Westpac bank paid them 1,000 times the amount they asked for.

The accidental millionaires, who have not been identified by authorities but are believed to come from the resort of Rotorua, were thought to have left the country, police said.

"At this time I am not prepared to disclose the amount of money involved, name the
individuals or business involved, or discuss which country the
individuals may be in right now," said Detective Senior Sergeant David
Harvey of the New Zealand police. 

Local media identified the couple as Leo Gao and Australian girlfriend
Cara Young, adding that they are now believed to be in China.

The bank, too, would only say it was "pursuing vigorous criminal and civil action to recover a sum of money stolen."

However, local media and many Rotorua residents were abuzz about the amount.

TVNZ, a CNN television affiliate, said the couple applied for a NZ$ 10,000 (US$ 6,000) loan for a service station they owned.

On or about May 5, the bank erroneously put NZ$ 10 million (US$ 6 million) into their bank account. What would you do in this situation?

The next day, the service station closed its doors. And the day after, the couple went missing, TVNZ said.

"Saturday, Sunday, we realized something else was up," Rotorua resident Tania Davies told the station. "They'd done a runner."

Another resident, Chevi Lambert, said a private investigator came by asking about the couple over the weekend.

"It's such a big world, he could just disappear," Lambert said.

Plane crash kills 79 in Indonesia

An Indonesian military plane carrying more than 100 people crashed into
several homes and burst into flames on Wednesday, killing at least 79
people, officials said.

Dozens were injured and more were feared dead, with local television flashing footage of fire engulfing the mangled wreckage.

Black smoke billowed in the air, as soldiers carried badly burnt bodies on stretchers to waiting ambulances.

Air force spokesman Bambang Sulistyo said at least 79 people were killed when the C-130 Hercules crashed near a base in East Java province early Wednesday.

There were 112 passengers and crew on board.

Military spokesman Sagom Tamboen said the aircraft was transporting troops and their families, including at least 10 children, when it tumbled from the sky near an air force base in East Java province.

It smashed into a row of houses in Geplak village, killing three on the ground, before skidding into a rice field.

The tail of the plane and several large parts of its charred body were scattered in the paddy and nearby bushes.

It was not clear what caused the crash, the latest in a string to hit the air force.

But several witnesses described hearing a large explosion while it was still in the air and then seeing it split apart

Nearly 20,000 slots still left in H1B visas

Washington:

Once the most sought after H-1B American work visa is still having nearly 20,000 slots open seven weeks after the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) started receiving applications for the financial year 2010 beginning October this year.

The USCIS said it has so far received approximately 45,500 H-1B petitions counting toward the Congressionally-mandated 65,000 cap. As such, the USCIS would continue to accept petitions subject to till the cap is reached.

This is in contrast of the previous few years when the USCIS had to resort to computerised draw of lots as it received petitions outnumbering several times more than the Congressional mandated cap of 65,000 within the first few days after it started receiving H-1B applications.

USCIS said it has received approximately 20,000 petitions for the advanced degrees category. However, it would continue to accept advanced degree petitions since experience has shown that not all petitions received are approvable, the USCIS said in a statement.

Questions of torture, abuse rooted in Bush-era decisions

After the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the Bush administration crafted the legal basis for aggressive interrogation techniques of prisoners and terrorism suspects.

The techniques included keeping the prisoner in stress positions for extended periods of time, sleep deprivation, slapping, enclosing the prisoner in a box with insects, and waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

Those techniques were detailed in four Bush-era legal memos -- one from 2002 and three from 2005 -- released by the Obama administration last month. The memos concluded that such techniques did not constitute torture and were not illegal.

The Obama administration disagrees.

President Obama formally banned the techniques by issuing an executive order requiring that the U.S. Army field manual be used as the guide for terror interrogations.

"I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture," he said during an address to a joint session of Congress in February.

More than 400 people have been disciplined based on investigations involving detainee abuse, according to Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said the punishments have ranged from prison sentences to demotions and letters of reprimand.

"The policy of the Department of Defense is to treat prisoners humanely, and those who have violated that policy have been investigated and disciplined," he said.

The most notorious of the cases centered on Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

DNA tests prove Prabhakaran is dead: Lankan govt

The Sri Lankan government on Tuesday said the DNA tests have proved that Prabhakaran has been killed.

PTI adds: With a pro-LTTE website raising questions over his death, the Sri Lankan army on Tuesday said Velupillai Prabhakaran's body has been found.

"Prabhakaran's body was found near Nandikadal lagoon (in the No Fire Zone)," military spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said.

He said Prabhakaran was in uniform and there were bullet wounds on his head.

Military officials, giving details of the encounter in which the LTTE chief was killed on Monday, said that Prabhakaran and his two top commanders, Pottu Amman and sea Tiger chief Soosai, drove out of their hideout in an armoured vehicle escorted by his armed cadres in an ambulance.

They tried to drive through the security cordon of army, triggering a 2-hour battle, which ended when troops targeted the vehicle with a rocket and later took out the bodies.

Prabhakaran's body, the officials said on Monday, bore
burn marks apparently due to the direct impact of the rocket on the vehicle which was carrying the LTTE chief.

However, the pro-rebel Tamilnet website claimed that Prabhakaran was still "alive and safe".

"I wish to inform the global Tamil community distressed witnessing the final events of the war that our beloved leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is alive and safe," LTTE's International Relations head S Pathmanathan was quoted as saying by the website.

Is Prabhakaran dead or alive?

As Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakasa declared victory over the LTTE after a nearly three decade long civil war, the reports came that almost mythical LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran has either been killed or has committed suicide.

The reports of Prabhakaran's death gained ground as rebel websites declared the LTTE's surrender after the Sri Lankan army captured the last remaining coastline under rebel control, and rescued all civilians from the war zone.

According to Tamil.net, an LTTE spokesman S Pathmanathan said the group has decided to "silence its guns" in order to protect Tamil civilians left in the area and appealed to the government to hold fire and enter peace talks.

But President Rajapaksa who was earlier meant to address the country on Sunday has now postponed his speech to Tuesday. That is perhaps an indication that the government is not fully confident of the reports of Prabhakaran's death in the absence of concrete proof.

In fact, the army says fierce fighting against the LTTE continues at close quarters, in the last square kilometer left.

Now that all civilians have crossed over to the government-controlled area, the Tamil Tigers have no option but to fight to the last bullet and to the last man. How long will the fight last , 12 hours, may be 24 hours, no one knows but it surely is in the very last stage

Obama to tap consumers for emission, mpg standards

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to propose the first-ever national emission limits for cars and trucks as well as average mileage requirements of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016 — all costing consumers an extra $1,300 per vehicle. Obama's plan couples for the first time pollution reduction from vehicle tailpipes with increased efficiency on the road. It would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil through 2016 and would be the environmental equivalent to taking 177 million cars off the road, senior administration officials said Monday night.

The plan also would effectively end a feud between automakers and statehouses over emission standards — with the states coming out on top but the automakers getting a single national standard and more time to make the changes.

The plan still must clear regulatory hurdles at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department. The administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the formal announcement by Obama was scheduled for Tuesday.

New vehicles would be 30 percent cleaner and more fuel efficient by the end of the program, according to officials familiar with the administration's discussions. The officials also spoke on condition of anonymity because the formal announcement had not been made.

Administration officials said consumers were going to pay an extra $700 for mileage standards that had already been approved. The comprehensive Obama plan would add another $600 to the price of a vehicle, a senior administration official said.

The extra miles would come at roughly a 5 percent increase each year. By the time the plan takes full effect, at the end of 2016, new vehicles would cost an extra $1,300.

The cost would be recovered through savings at the pump for consumers who choose a standard 60-month car loan if gas prices follow government projections, according to one official.

In a battle over emission standards, California, 13 other states and the District of Columbia have urged the federal government to let them enact more stringent standards than the federal government's requirements. The states' regulations would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent in new cars and trucks by 2016 — the benchmark Obama planned to unveil for vehicles built in model years 2012 and beyond.

Obama more popular than U.S. among Arabs - survey

Enlarge Photo U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington May 9,...

President Barack Obama's popularity in leading Arab countries far outstrips that of the United States, suggesting he could be able to boost goodwill in the region toward his country, a survey showed on Sunday.

Obama, set to give a major speech to the Muslim world in Egypt next month, "currently enjoys widespread optimism among citizens of that region that he will have a positive effect on their own country, the Middle East, the United States and indeed the world," the polling outfit Ipsos said.

Ipsos said its poll, conducted in March, involved 7,000 adults in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan.

Of those surveyed, 33 percent had a favorable view of the United States, 43 percent had a negative view, 14 percent were neutral and 10 percent said they did not know, Ipsos said.

In contrast, Obama received favorable ratings averaging 48 percent in the region as a whole. Approval ran as high as 58 percent in Jordan and was lowest among Egyptians, who gave Obama favorable ratings of 35 percent, Ipsos said.

Only 22 percent of Egyptians expressed a favorable view of the United States, the lowest of the six countries surveyed.

Regionwide, only one in 10 residents thought Obama would have a negative effect on their country, the poll showed.

The gulf between Obama's popularity and that of the United States indicated "there is an opportunity for the president to literally 'bridge the gap' where his reposit goodwill lifts the goodwill towards America," Ipsos said in statement.

The White House announced on Friday that Obama would deliver a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world in Egypt on June 4, seeking to repair ties that were damaged under his predecessor George W. Bush.

Many Arab and Muslim nations were angered by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Bush's initial reluctance to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Ipsos said the survey had a margin of error ranging from 2.6 to 3 percentage points depending on the country.

Tiger leader Prabhakaran killed - Sri Lanka army sources

Enlarge Photo Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, is seen during the annual...

Mon, May 18 01:10 PM

Tamil Tiger leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran's body has been recovered from an ambulance troops destroyed as it sped out of the war zone early on Monday, military sources said.

"It was confirmed Prabhakaran was killed when trying to flee in an ambulance before dawn. We are waiting for the official announcement by the president," a military source said on condition of anonymity. Four other sources confirmed the account.

There was no immediate official comment from the military.

State TV also broadcast images of the corpse of Prabhakaran's son and heir apparent, Charles Anthony, for the first time.

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