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Maggi manufacture, sale is now allowed in Karnataka

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MAGGI

Bengaluru: The Congress government in Karnataka today decided allow manufacture and sale of Maggi noodles in the state as it decided to withhold the Centre’s directive banning it, saying it lacked clarity.

 

The state government would withhold the implementation of central order on not allowing the production and sale of Maggi because of lack of clarity on the permissible limits of Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) and lead, Karnataka Health Minister U T Khader told reporters here.

Khader said it was left to the company to decide on the start of production of noodles and other products.

“It is left to the company to decide on production of noodles and other products. We are clear in our stand that we will not be honouring the central order,” he added.

However, the Minister said the government would be very happy to implement the central order if it frames clear guidelines on the permissibility of the level of MSG and lead contents in noodles.

“We will be happy to implement the central order, there are no issues on this matter. But, it has to come out with clear guidelines,” Khader said.

Even if the company produces or manufactures noodles and other products, they should undergo laboratory test before hitting the market, he said.

On June 2 this year, the government had ordered random lifting of samples of Maggi noodles from across the state for laboratory testing after allegations of lapses in food safety standards came to the fore.

Khader said the government collected the samples and sent them to national-level laboratory units situated in Mysuru and another private laboratory in Bengaluru which found the lead and MSG contents in permissible levels.

However, the Central food safety regulator FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) rejected the test results and directed the government to send it to national laboratory at Kolkata, Khader said, adding accordingly the samples were sent to the lab.
“Inspite of the lapse of four months, there has been no response from the central authority, and therefore, no clarity on permissibility of level of MSG and lead content persists,” he said.

Maggi noodles came under the scanner in May after Uttar Pradesh Food Safety and Drug Administration asked Nestle India to withdraw a batch of the noodles “which were manufactured in February 2014” after it found presence of non-essential taste enhancer monosodium glutamate and high levels of lead in the samples.

(Agencies)

Dalit family set afire; two kids burnt alive

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dalit

Faridabad: Two children of a Dalit family were today burnt alive and their parents suffered injuries after a group of terrorists from so called upper caste set their house afire while they were sleeping.

The shocking incident occurred at around 2.30 AM at Sunped village on the outskirts of Delhi, police said, adding two persons have been arrested.

11 persons, including a father-son duo, have been booked on murder, rioting and other charges, a police spokesman said.

Vaibhav, who was two-and-a-half years old, and his sister, 11-month-old Divya, died after the attackers allegedly poured petrol from the window and set the house ablaze while the family was sleeping inside. A religious programme was being held nearby in the village at that time.

Their mother Rekha, 28, suffered serious burns and has been referred to Delhi for treatment while their father Jitender, 31, too suffered injuries while trying to save his family.

Concerned over the attack on the Dalit family, Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Khattar over phone asking him to ensure security to everyone and prevent any recurrence of such incident, officials said in Delhi.

The Union Home Ministry also sought a report from the state administration.

A compensation of Rs 10 lakh has been announced for the family by the Haryana government, state officials said.

Jitender alleged that the attackers were from Rajput caste and the family had a confrontation with them over a murder in October after which a case had been registered.

“We were sleeping when they poured petrol from the window. I smelt the petrol and tried to wake up my wife but by then the fire had started. They locked the door from outside. My children died in the fire…,” said an inconsolable Jitender.

“They had threatened that they will finish my family, that I should never return to the village… I won’t but please give me back my children,” he said.

The incident has led to tension in the area and security has been tightened. Subhash Yadav, commissioner of police of Faridabad, reached the village and is monitoring the situation.

“Sunped resident Balwant and his son Dharm Singh are among 11 persons booked under IPC sections 302 (murder), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 324 (Voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 148 (Rioting, armed with deadly weapon) and 149 (Every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object).

“Two persons have been arrested,” the police spokesman said. An SC/ST Commission team met the victims’ family and assured them that they will get justice.

(Agencies)

Jadeja recalled to Test squad, replaces Harbhajan

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Harbhajan Singh

New Delhi: India all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, who had fallen out of favour with the national selectors, has been recalled to the squad after a gap of around 14 months for the first two Tests against South Africa, starting on November 5.

What prompted his inclusion was that Jadeja scored 149 runs and picked up 24 wickets in the two Ranji Trophy games he has played for Saurashtra so far this season. However, veteran off-spinner Harbhajan Singh has been left out of the Test outfit.

Harbhajan is getting married to his long-time girlfriend, actress Geeta Basra, reportedly on October 29.

Harbhajan, who was sidelined from the Test squad since March 2013, made a comeback against Bangladesh earlier this year in June.

He played the one Test there and then featured in the first Test against Sri Lanka in the island country but he did not help his cause as he grabbed only one wicket from the 25 overs he bowled. He was out of the team for the second and third games of the three-match Test series.

Though offie Ravichandran Ashwin is still recovering from a side strain, he has been selected in the 16-member Test squad.

Fast bowler Ishant Sharma has been included too for the Tests but he will have to sit out the first contest as the International Cricket Council (ICC) has suspended him for a Test owing to his bad behaviour during India’s tour to Sri Lanka.

The selectors have made only one change for the remaining two One-Day Internationals (ODI) against South Africa, replacing Umesh Yadav with Sreenath Arvind, who played in the three-match Twenty20 International series which India lost 0-2.

India currently trail the ODI series 1-2 with the fourth match to be played on Thursday in Chennai.

The squads:

India ODI squad for last two matches: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain, wicketkeeper), Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Ajinkya Rahane, Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, Axar Patel, Harbhajan Singh, Amit Mishra, Mohit Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Sreenath Arvind, Stuart Binny, Ambati Rayudu, Gurkeerat Mann.

India Test squad for first two games: Virat Kohli (captain), Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, Wriddhiman Saha (wicketkeeper), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Amit Mishra, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Lokesh Rahul, Stuart Binny, Varun Aaron, Ishant Sharma.

Board President XI: Cheteshwar Pujara, Lokesh Rahul, Unmukt Chand, Karun Nair, Shreyas Iyer, Naman Ojha, Hardik Pandya, Jayant Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Shardul Thakur, Nathu Singh, Karn Sharma, Sheldon Jackson.

(IANS)

South Africa beat India by 18 runs in third ODI

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south-africa-india

Rajkot: South Africa beat India by 18 runs in the third of their five-match One-Day International (ODI) series at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium here on Sunday.

Quinton de Kock (103) and Faf du Plessis (60) helped South Africa reach 270/7 in 50 overs. In reply, India managed 252/6 despite Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli scoring fluent fifties.

With this win, the visitors took a 2-1 lead.

(IANS)

Mumbai Police thrashed two young Muslims, asked them to go to Pakistan

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mumbai-indianmuslim-india-pakistanindia-bandra-asif

Mumbai: Residents of Mahim, two 19-year-olds Asif Shaikh and Danish Shaikh were allegedly detained and tortured by a few Bandra police officers on suspicion of being Pakistani terrorists or ISIS agents on Saturday, a leading daily reported.

Asif who works as a gym trainer was with Danish near Bandra Reclamation on the way back home from Bhabha Hospital, when they were allegedly picked up by the police.

Victims’ relatives and neighbours allege that both Asif and Danish were detained and grilled for over three hours and were beaten badly. They were even asked to “leave India and go to Pakistan” by the police, they said.

Asif was hit with belts and batons and Danish slapped and punched, after which the police finally made a call to their parents to take them back.

It is not clear whether the detention of Asif and Danish was made an official entry in police records.

Asif’s photo published in the news report shows the brutality he was treated with, but the police is yet to make comment on the incident.

(Agencies)

Mungala is the perfect depiction of a villager’s life in a rural ambience: Producer Gaurav Bhanushali

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Gaurav Bhanushali

Producer Gaurav Bhanushali deserves a pat on his back for presenting a perfect picture of a village in times of drought. And how the villager’s suffer more due to the politician’s mean game of using the villagers to win the so called elections. That apart they also become the victims of a natural calamity.

So how would you describe your film Mungala?

My film Mungala is the perfect depiction of a villager’s life in a rural ambience. First of all the main protagonist Kisan has just returned from the city after being sacked by an American IT company due to recession.

And then?

And then on his return to the village Kisan discovers that the villagers are also passing through a phase of drought, the villagers are now solely depending on tanker’s everyday to fulfill their necessity of water. While they are also being used as a crowd puller for an election rally time & again by the political workers. So Kisan also whiles away his time with his coterie of friends. And then there were news reports in the papers that there was a rainfall due to a research being done on the moon. Instantly Kisan & his friends devise a plan to end the sufferings of the villagers.

This almost sounds like Mungala is an off beat venture. What say?

Maybe you are right but I think the audiences all over will like it. Rural audiences will lap up Mungala, but I firmly believe that even the urban audiences will have a lot of food for thought to ponder upon.

What according to you are the main highlights of Mungala?

First of all I would like to say that it is Vijay Devkar’s excellent directional skills that will keep the audiences all over spell bind. No we don’t want their sympathy, we just want them to realize the villager’s problem minutely & offer us a concrete solution. That apart I would like to mention the names of all my artistes like Lokesh Gupte, Jyoti Joshi, Suhas Palshikar, Ganesh Yadav, Chetan Dalvi etc for going through all the grind and literally getting into the skin of the charater and literally living their roles and lastly I would like to make a mention of my music composers Vijay Gawande & Atul Lohar who have also delivered the goods expected of them.

By the way what was the need to include an item song in such an off beat film?

Mungala is not just an off beat venture, it is also a thoroughly entertaining film. So instead of keeping a tamasha oriented lavani as usual I thought of including a proper item song which would enliven the audiences.

So what’s next on your agenda?

Frankly speaking right now Mungala is my top priority. I am seriously considering of sending Mungala to global fests as in India it has already been an official selection for Sahayadri Cine Awards for “Best Choreography” & also an official selection with 4 nominations for Nashik International Film Festival where it ultimately bagged the Golden Camera Award for “Best Rural Cinema”.

Movie Review: ‘Crimson Peak’ is entertaingly enjoyable albeit not so scary

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Crimson Peak

Producer: Callum Greene, Jon Jashni, Thomas Tull & Guillermo Del Toro
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Star Cast: Mia Wasikowaka, Jessika Chastian, Tom Hiddleston, Jim Beaver & Charlie Hunnam,
Genre: Horror
Verdict: AVERAGE

The most famous works of director Guillermo Del Toro were The Hobbit series, The Orphanage, Hell Boy series, The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, Blade series et al all which falls into the Horror oriented category. In short Guillermo Del Toro happens to be one director who has hardly deviated his film making attention from one particular genre.

Plot: When her heart is stolen by a seductive stranger, a young woman is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood – red clay: a place filled with secrets that will haunt her forever. Between desire & darkness, between mystery & madness, lies the truth behind Crimson Peak. So from the imagination of director Guillermo Del Toro comes a supernatural mystery starring Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska & Charlie Hunnam.

Aces: The only redeeming factor of Crimson Peak are the par excellence performance of its male brigade of actors like Tom Hiddleton, Jim Beaver & above all Charlie Hunnan who is simply superb.

Minuses: Wonder why a master of the horror genre like Guillermo Del Toro has seriously failed to live up to audiences expectations.

Last Word: Tom tomed as the most scary fare Crimson Peak fails to catch your most scary fancy.

Over 10,000 refugees stranded in Serbia: UNHCR

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A child waits in the rain on the Serbia-Croatia border, October 19, 2015. (AFP/File)

A child waits in the rain on the Serbia-Croatia border, October 19, 2015. (AFP/File)

by ITN

More than 10,000 refugees are currently stranded in Serbia because of restrictions imposed by countries further away in western Europe, according to the UN refugee agency.

“We can only say that there are more than 10,000 refugees in Serbia,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melita Sunjic was quoted by Reuters as saying from the Serbian-Croatian border.

“It is like a big river of people, and if you stop the flow, you will have floods somewhere. That’s what’s happening now.”

Sunjic said there was a shortage of food and blankets. “We are missing everything,” she said.

‘Dozens of ISIL fighters killed’ in air strike in Syria

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At least 40 rebels killed after their convoy comes under attack by unidentified jets in Hama, monitoring group says.

The Syrian government has intensified bombing of rebel-controlled areas since Russia began air campaign on September 30 [Reuters]

The Syrian government has intensified bombing of rebel-controlled areas since Russia began air campaign on September 30 [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

At least 40 fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have been killed in an air strike on their convoy in the Syrian province of Hama, a UK-based monitoring group has said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday that unidentified warplanes hit the 16-vehicle motorcade overnight on Sunday in Hama province.

The Observatory, which monitors the war in Syria and has a network of sources on the ground, was not immediately able to say whether the raids were carried out by Russian warplanes or Syrian regime ones.

“But they don’t belong to the coalition led by Washington,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told the AFP news agency.

Rahman said that the convoy was hit as it was heading from the self-declared ISIL capital of Raqqa in northern Syria to the Hama countryside.

Russia, a key ally of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, has been carrying out a campaign of air strikes against his opponents since September 30.

Last year, a US-led coalition launched an air campaign against the group which controls swaths of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

Eritrean mistaken for Palestinian shot dead in Israel

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Eritrean bystander shot by security guard and beaten by mob after deadly attack on Beersheba bus station.

Eritrean asylum seeker Haftom Zarhum, 29, reportedly was in Beersheba to obtain his visa [Screen grab via YouTube]

Eritrean asylum seeker Haftom Zarhum, 29, reportedly was in Beersheba to obtain his visa [Screen grab via YouTube]

by Al Jazeera

An Eritrean man has died after he was shot and beaten by a mob after he was mistaken for an attacker during a raid in southern Israel, Israeli police say.

The attack on Sunday night at a bus station in the city of Beersheba saw a Palestinian man armed with a rifle and a knife kill an Israeli soldier and wound about 10 other people.

The Palestinian attacker was killed, while a security guard shot the Eritrean bystander, identified by Israeli media as 29-year-old Haftom Zarhum, thinking he was an accomplice of the assailant.

A video circulating online (WARNING – graphic footage) shows that a mob also beat Zarhum, who later died in hospital.

At least one Israeli soldier was filmed kicking Zarhum in the head as he lay bleeding on the floor of the terminal. Another man lifted a bench and dropped it on Zarhum’s head as others tried to protect him by placing a bar stool over his body.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed Zarhum was “misidentified”.

“The man was hit by bystanders and individual civilians who were in the area. Police are looking into it now and have obtained the CCTV footage of the incident.”

The Israeli IBA network posted footage of the attack, purportedly recorded by a surveillance camera.

Rosenfeld said the “Palestinian attacker stabbed a soldier and stole his M-16 rifle,” opening fire on the crowd at the bus terminal. The soldier died in hospital.

The attacker was named by police as Muhand Alukabi, 21, a resident of Hura in the Negev.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, called the attack a “natural response” and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian group, said it was a “normal answer to Israeli crimes”.

Sunday’s attack brings the total number of people killed in the violence that erupted at the beginning of the month to 52: 44 Palestinians and eight Israelis.

The incident comes just a day after five Palestinians were shot dead during alleged stabbing attacks – three of them in Hebron in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have disputed the police version of events in at least some of the cases.

Triggered by Israeli incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound last month, violence and protests against Israel’s occupation have increased in frequency across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Diplomatic moves to halt the more than two weeks of unrelenting violence has gained steam, with US Secretary of State John Kerry saying he plans to meet both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the coming days.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, rejected an idea from France that would see international observers sent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Israeli forces have responded with a crackdown on protesters, using tear gas, stun grenades, rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition.

Checkpoints have been set up in the occupied East Jerusalem, where some of the attackers have come from, and about 300 soldiers on Sunday began reinforcing the police force.

African asylum seekers in Israel have long been the target of political incitement and discriminatory legislation.

In July, an Israeli court approved the deportation of refugees to countries such as Rwanda and Uganda, and gave a stamp of approval to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers who refuse deportation.

Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev, a member of Netanyahu’s hardline Likud party, has in the past called African asylum seekers a “cancer in Israel’s body”.

Residences and schools servicing asylum seekers have also been targeted in attacks, including with firebombs, in recent years.

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