Agartala/Aizawl: India would strengthen vigil along its border with Myanmar to check drugs and arms smuggling besides movement of inimical elements, including militants, officials said on Thursday.
“We would further strengthen the security along the India’s border with Myanmar to check smuggling of drugs, arms and other contraband items,” a senior Assam Rifles official told IANS, wishing anonymity.
“The vigil would also be reinforced to stop trans-border movement of extremists and other inimical elements,” the official said.
He said: “It is a tough task to guard the unfenced mountainous borders with a full-proof security. Additional Assam Rifles troopers would also be deployed along the Myanmar borders.”
Four northeastern states – Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Manipur (398 km), Nagaland (215 km) and Mizoram (510 km) – share 1,643-km unfenced border with Myanmar.
Smuggling of drugs, arms, animal pieces, various contraband goods is rampant across the India-Myanmar border, specially along Mizoram’s border with that country.
According to Mizoram Police, seven AK-47 assault rifles, two AK-56 rifles, six US-made M-16 rifles, four MA-3 Mk-II rifles, two hand grenades, three kg of RDX, around 8,000 rounds of ammunition of different guns and 312 boxes of special and ordinary detonators have been seized by the security forces in Mizoram last year.
“Bulk of the seized arms and ammunition were suspected to have been meant for Chakma militant outfit operating in neighbouring Bangladesh and these were mainly smuggled from Myanmar,” a Mizoram police official said.
Mizoram also shares an unfenced 318 km international border with Bangladesh.
According to intelligence officials, Bangladeshi rebels belonging to the Chakma tribal community – Parbartya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samati (PCJSS) – are involved in the arms smuggling.
PCJSS’s armed wing Shanti Bahini has been demanding sovereign status for tribals in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of southeast Bangladesh and had waged guerrilla warfare against Bangladesh for two decades until 1997.
Though the Shanti Bahini had signed an agreement with the Bangladesh government in 1997, a splinter group is still active in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
IANS
Agartala: The Left-ruled Tripura maintained its top position for the sixth consecutive year by providing 88 person-days’ rural jobs per household under the job guarantee scheme during the 2014-15 fiscal, a Cabinet minister said here on Friday.
“Tripura has been providing the highest average employment for the past six years under the MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme),” Tripura Rural Development Minister Naresh Jamatia told reporters here.
He said: “Tripura provided 88 days of work per household in the just concluded financial year (2014-15) against the national average of 40 person-days.”
“Tripura has maintained the top position in providing rural jobs since 2009-10,” the minister said, citing from the status report of the union rural development ministry.
According to the report, Maharashtra came second with 53 person-days per household, followed by Andhra Pradesh with 47 person-days, Rajasthan with 45.71 and Meghalaya with 46.42 person-days.
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) mandates 100 days of employment in a financial year to at least one member of each rural household in the state.
According to the central government performance report on the MGNREGS, of the total of 249,542 panchayats across the country, 33,670 panchayats did not provide any job to any worker.
These 33,670 panchayats are mostly in Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand.
The minister said the central government at a very short notice from April 1 introduced the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) to make the monetary system — from fund allocation by the union and state governments to payment to labourers revoking the previous e-FMS (Electronic Fund Management System).
“Though both the systems are transparent, hassle and error-free and paperless besides eliminating administrative delays and we support the new system too, the PFMS was introduced in less than a week’s notice, creating problems in some blocks to disburse the wage payments to the workers,” Jamatia added.
Tripura is providing wages to the MGNREGS workers at their doorstep through business correspondents engaged by various nationalised and regional rural banks, he said.
Besides providing rural jobs, the MGNREGS has created rural assets that include household latrines, drinking water sources, rural road connectivity, livestock promotion, pisciculture, watershed management and afforestation, securing livelihood activities.
IANS
Mumbai: In an attempt to curb child labour, the Maharashtra government, along with a non-governmental organisation, helped reunite 65 rescued children with their families.
The children were rescued from various establishments last month and sent to shelter homes in a joint operation of the NGO and the state government.
“I came here to work… I came here on my own… (was working) in Dharavi… from 10 am to 10 pm,” said a rescued child, Satish Kumar, adding, “I am feeling happy to go back home.”
Of the 65, parents of 10 rescued children, picked up their wards from the shelter homes, while the rest were sent to their homes on a special coach of Rajendra Nagar Superfast Express.
“Initially we used to rescue around 500 children yearly but now it has come down because these children are sent back to parents who now know that child labour is a crime,” said state Minister For Women and Child Development, Vidya Thakur.
ANI
Mumbai: After having renamed Bombay as Mumbai during its rule in Maharashtra between 1995-99, Shiv Sena, which is sharing power with BJP in both state and the Centre, is now vehemently pressing for its demand to rename the Bombay High Court.
The saffron party wants the name Bombay dropped and replaced it with Mumbai.
Talking to PTI, Sena MP Arvind Sawant on Tuesday said he has spoken to Union Law Minister Sadananda Gowda regarding the renaming issue.
“Since the city is now known as Mumbai, we cannot continue to relate the government institutions with the old name,” Sawant said, adding, “I will myself demand that all the government institutions like IIT-Bombay should also be addressed with Mumbai in it.”
According to the Sena leader, Mumbai derived its name from Goddess Mumbadevi. “However, the name Bombay was coined by the British rulers as they could not pronounce Mumbai,” he added.
The Sena’s move has drawn flak from opposition Congress, as it said that the ruling party was deviating from development issues.
“They have lost all focus. Before joining the government, they portrayed themselves as the messiah of farmers and wanted the BJP to stop their suicides and provide them with adequate compensation,” Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil said.
“Instead of throwing in their weight over this (renaming) issue, the state needs to do something to stop farmers’ suicides and pay compensation to the affected farmers. That should be their focus. Wasting time on such issues is unwarranted at this point of time,” Patil said.
PTI
New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will hold a protest against the controversial Land Bill at Jantar Mantar on Wednesday and will be joined by farmers from Delhi and neighbouring states.
“We will launch a nationwide protest against the NDA government’s Land Bill seeking its withdrawal,” party leader Sanjay Singh said during a press conference today.
Party leader Kumar Vishwas said that AAP has been opposing the attitude of the central government towards farmers affected by the crop damage.
He added that if the government fails to withdraw the bill then a nationwide protest will be launched by the party.
The AAP leaders also launched a scathing attack on Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress and said that they should not think that they have worked for the interest of farmers.
AAP is the latest political party to join the opposition against changes in Land Acquisition Bill proposed by NDA government.
New Delhi: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Tuesday commissioned the Bawana Water Treatment Plant and Underground Reservoir in Outer Delhi’s Bawana and, while at it, also provided an on-the-spot solution for the drinking water problem of a nearby village.
The Bawana plant will serve the Sultanpur and Narela areas, among others.
Speaking on the occasion, Kejriwal said that although completed 12 years ago, the plant could not become fully operational due to the lack of political will.
“AAP has done in two months (commissioning the plant) what BJP and Congress couldn’t in 12 years,” he said.
At the function to mark the commissioning of the plant, Kejriwal also pitched in with a remedy for the people of a nearby village who complained they were not getting clean drinking water.
As Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia rose to speak, residents of Sanop village waved bottles of dirty water and raised slogans that they do not have access to potable water.
When Kejriwal sought to intervene, the protesters told him that a proposed iron treatment plant in their area was yet to be completed and they were facing a severe drinking water problem in the meantime.
The chief minister thereupon instructed Delhi Jal Board officials to see to it that drinking water is supplied to the village from the Bawana plant within 10 days as a stop-gap arrangement until the local water treatment plant becomes operational.
Meanwhile, local BJP MP Udit Raj, a guest at the event who arrived almost one hour late, faced protests by locals who accused him of not visiting them when their crops were damaged by unseasonal rain.
“This is anarchy, they should have waited for me as I was stuck in a meeting. These people who are protesting against me are AAP supporters and this is politically motivated,” Raj told reporters. He also maintained that his name should have been inscribed at the top of the inauguration stone.
PTI
Porbandar: The Pakistani boat intercepted by the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard off Gujarat’s Porbandar yesterday, was carrying a cargo of narcotics. NDTV, which was aboard the Coast Guard interceptor Sangram that caught the Pakistani vessel, found 232 packets of narcotics, half-a-dozen cellphones and satellite phones and global positioning systems.
The crew, eight Pakistani nationals, has been arrested. The narcotic, suspected to be heroin, is worth Rs. 600 crore. Each packet weighs nearly one kg.
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Sources said a terror link has been ruled out. The satellite communication phones and global positioning systems were “being used to facilitate transhipment of the contraband to another boat,” an officer said.
But it is not yet known what was the destination of the narcotics and which boat the Pakistani vessel was trying to contact. The Pakistani boat has been brought back to Porbandar for further investigation.
The authorities had been tracing the movement of the boat since April 18, the Coast Guard officials said later at a media conference. On basis of intelligence inputs, multiple units of Coast Guard and the Navy had been deployed.
The ships on the trail of the Pakistani vessel included Sangram and two ships of the navy — Nirghat and Kondul.
Extensive aerial searches were undertaken by Coast Guard and Naval aircraft including Dorniers, IL-38 and P8Is.
At dawn on Monday, Sangram intercepted the boat and by 7 am, it was formally seized and the crew arrested, said the Coast Guard officials.
Three months ago, on New Year’s Eve, a Pakistani boat laden with explosives caught fire and then exploded killing the four crew members on board after it was intercepted by the Indian Coast Guard, about 365 km off the Porbandar coast.
In True Story, the type of drama for which the expression “stranger than fiction” was coined, James Franco finds a creepy new application for his signature sleepiness, that narcotized daze he usually reserves for stoner comedies and award-show appearances. Franco plays Christian Longo, an “intelligent and sane man” arrested, in December of 2001, for the suspected murder of his wife and three young children, all of who were found floating in the shallow waters of an Oregon slough. Awaiting trial behind bars, Longo didn’t confess to the heinous crime, but he didn’t express much grief about it either, and Franco—clad in a bright orange jumpsuit, his limbs in chains—wears the man’s eerie calm like a mask of false civility. The actor never raises his voice, only an eyebrow or two. Skin nevertheless crawls.
It’s unnerving to see the star of Pineapple Express play his heavy-lidded stupor for basically the opposite of laughs. And the disorientation is only enhanced by the sight of Jonah Hill, Franco’s on and offscreen buddy, doing his own straight-faced routine across the table from him. Relying less than ever before on his comedic chops, Hill has been cast as Michael Finkel, the disgraced New York Times reporter who became Longo’s unlikely confidante. The two met after Finkel discovered that Longo, then in custody, had used his name as an alias while laying low in Mexico. The journalist was doing some low-laying of his own, having recently lost his job after fudging crucial facts in a cover story about child slavery in Africa. Smelling a big scoop—and maybe a shot at professional redemption—Finkel arranged a meeting with the accused, which turned into a regular correspondence. Did Longo do the deed? And if so, what game was he playing by submitting himself to close scrutiny?
True Story, adapted from Finkel’s memoir of the same name, chronicles the unusual bond these two pariahs forged, touching on the notoriety that linked them and the moral dilemma that grew out of their conversations. The first feature from Rupert Goold, artistic director of London’s Almeida Theatre, the film owes a dramatic and stylistic debt to Capote, another stage veteran’s big-screen debut about the complicated relationship between a prisoner facing a murder rap and the writer looking to capitalize on his experiences. (There’s certainly a touch of Bennett Miller in scenes of Hill trekking through the snowy woods of upstate New York, standing in here for Montana.) But True Story also fits—neatly if by happy accident—into the current true-crime craze. Like Serial and The Jinx, it draws some fascination from the distinct possibility that the suspect it studies may be guilty as charged.
Of course, in this case, the answers are just a Google search away. Counting on his audience going in blind, Goold builds his dramatization around the all-but-solved mystery of what really happened to Longo’s family. Stylized flashbacks, including one of a pint-sized body being dumped and discovered, carefully obscure the pertinent details. The goal is a “satisfying” arc: True Story, true to its source material, adopts Finkel’s blinkered perspective; we’re meant to share his shifting opinion of Longo. Fittingly, perhaps, the movie also bends the truth to fit its storytelling needs, in ways not so different than the ones that got Finkel fired. Interactions that occurred by letter take on the new form of in-person confrontations. Did Finkel’s wife (an overqualified Felicity Jones) really visit Longo in prison to deliver a scathing coup de grâce? Did Longo really turn and wink at Finkel in court, as Franco does to Hill during the obligatory trial scene?
True Story isn’t a documentary or a news piece, so its dramatic liberties and strategic withholding of info are permissible. As a portrait of modern journalism, though, it leaves quite a lot to be desired; this is the kind of film that has characters trade grandiose talking points about the ethics of reporting, but can’t be bothered to show its reporter hero—still recovering from the damage factual inaccuracies did to his career—using a recording device during interviews. The meat of the movie is the behind-bars rendezvous between Finkel and Longo, whose interactions raise questions of journalistic responsibility and the banality of evil. But when a closing block of text announces that the two men still talk on a semi-regular basis—a surprise, given the finality of their last on-screen meeting—it’s hard to shake the feeling that a truly complex liaison has been reduced to an acting exercise for a couple of moonlighting funnymen. Neither cracks a smile, which is its own kind of victory, but nor do they crack the code of these “characters,” two men united by circumstances that look, in movie form, not so stranger than fiction after all.
Even though the news that Penelope Cruz would join the cast of Zoolander 2 was all but confirmed a few months ago, Ben Stiller has made things official. He did so by posting what we can only assume is the headshot Cruz has been using in Hollywood for the past 25 years on Instagram:
Zoolander 2 has been stewing for a while, but is shooting now; Stiller and Owen Wilson walked the Valentino runway in character last month to acknowledge that the movie is finally happening. Celebrated good looking person Justin Theroux wrote the script with Stiller, who is also directing. The film is currently slated for a February 12, 2016 release, which leaves plenty of time to watch the original Zoolander on repeat in the hopes that each viewing will somehow counteract the sequel’s inevitable diminishing returns on jokes from 2001.
fter taking on Sonam Kapoor at the box office in January, Akshay Kumar is now set to battle it out with Sunny Leone at BO. Next month, Twinkle Khanna’s hubby dearest is going to clash with the Baby doll fame actress at the ticket windows.His action flick Gabbar Is Back will be releasing on May 1 and on the same day Sunny’s adult comedy Mastizaade will also be hitting the screens. While Akshay’s film, which co-stars Shruti Haasan and Kareena Kapoor Khan, has already created good buzz courtesy its trailer and romantic number Teri Meri Kahani, Ek Paheli Leela heroine on the other hand has a huge fan following and has become a popular name in a very short span of time. So it was hard to decide which film would actually race ahead in the numbers game. After all, when two films clash at the box office, only one is bound to walk away with the bigger money pie, hai na?
Therefore we recently conducted a poll on our website asking you’ll to vote and tell us which film according to you will create hungama at the ticket windows on May 1 – Akshay Kumar’s action flick Gabbar Is Back or Sunny Leone’s sex comedy Mastizaade co-starring Tusshar Kapoor, Vir Das and Riteish Deshmukh? By bagging 91 percent of the votes, Khiladi Kumar has won the poll by a huge margin. Yes, this means Sunny’s film only received 9 percent of the votes.
While Akshay clearly is a bigger star and a crowd puller, Ms Leone shouldn’t worry much because her latest release Ek Paheli Leela has surprisingly fared well at the Indian box office. In fact, it has become the 7th highest grossing film this year and is still pulling in crowd to the cinema halls. That certainly says a lot about Sunny’s growing star power, right?
So Akki’s film may rake in big moolah at the BO but at the same time I am pretty sure Sunny starrer will give it a tough competition!
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