Bangladeshi, Pakistani minorities can stay in India after visa expiry

India on Monday decided, on humanitarian grounds, to exempt Bangladeshi and Pakistani nationals belonging to minority communities, who entered the country on or before December 31 last year, to stay in the country, even after expiry of their visas, an official statement said.
"The central govennment has decided, on humanitarian considerations, to exempt Bangladeshi and Pakistani nationals belonging to minority communities who have entered into India on or before December 31, 2014 from the relevant provisions of rules and order made under the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920 and the Foreigners Act, 1946, in respect of their entry and stay in India without such documents or after the expiry of those documents, as the case may be," the home ministry statement said.

It said the the central government has accordingly issued two notifications in the official gazette on Monday under the two acts, adding that there were reports that a number of Bangladeshi and Pakistani nationals belonging to minority communities, such as Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Parsis and Buddhists, in those countries were compelled to seek shelter in India due to religious persecution or fear of religious persecution.

"They have entered into India either without any valid document including passport/other travel document or with valid documents but the validity of such document has expired. The issue of regularization of entry and stay of such Bangladeshi and Pakistani nationals in India has been under consideration of the central government," the release said.

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Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus Inaugurates Grameen Koota’s New Corporate Office in Bangalore

World-renowned social entrepreneur, founder of Grameen Bank and pioneer of micro-credit, Prof Muhammad Yunus inaugurated the new corporate office of NBFC-MFI Grameen Koota in Jayanagar, Bangalore on Saturday, September 5, 2015.

World-renowned social entrepreneur, founder of Grameen Bank and pioneer of micro-credit, Prof Muhammad Yunus inaugurated the new corporate office of NBFC-MFI Grameen Koota in Jayanagar, Bangalore on Saturday, September 5, 2015. Professor Yunus often referred to as father of micro credit, developed the concept which has enriched millions of poor households around the world with micro credit support. He is widely credited for his work to end poverty through micro-lending and cause-driven businesses in his home country of Bangladesh and throughout the world. The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Yunus and Grameen Bank, a bank Prof Yunus established in 1983 to provide micro-credit in Bangladesh and which is serving 8.5 million poor households today.
Founded as an NGO project in 1999 by Vinatha M. Reddy, Grameen Koota caters to the need of micro-credit to the rural poor and low-income households in five states today. Grameen Koota was modeled after taking inspiration from Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank. It has grown largely after its transition into a non-banking financial corporation (NBFC) in 2007-08.
After inaugurating the new corporate office of Grameen Koota, Prof Yunus inscribed on the wall his message: “Keep Changing the world.” Later, addressing the employees and management of Grameen Koota, he said: “We have to create a worldwhere we have no poverty, zero poverty as we put poverty in the museum. We will create that. We have to come up with all the ideas to create that. We have a mission to accomplish and togetherwe can make it happen.”
In his message to all the microfinance professionals, he said, “Today you have a clear mission in front of you. Make sure you understand it. Within your outline work, you have a bigger mission and work towards achieving that. Make sure your work changes the world.”
Earlier, Mrs. Vinatha M Reddy, Chairperson of Grameen Koota, said, “Grameen Koota remains a top quality Microfinance Institution and it is known in the microfinance sector as a socially conscious  and client centric organization. Today on the occasion of our new corporate officeinauguration and in your august presence, we reaffirm Grameen Koota’s commitment to remain a top quality MFI with high social-focus.”
Mr. Suresh K Krishna, Co-Promoter & Director of Grameen Koota, echoed similar views when he thanked Prof Yunus for being Grameen Koota’s inspiration and guide. “We always look up to you and Grameen Koota continues to be serving what it stands for.”
Mr. Udaya Kumar, Managing Director and CEO of Grameen Koota, recalling that the auspicious occasion also coincided with Teachers’ day in India, said: “Today is Teachers’ Day and we have our teacher, philosopher, guide, architect and Father of microfinance with us. Team Grameen Koota bows to you with gratitude and re-assure you that we will continue our responsible lending principles and practices with social focus you always taught”
About Grameen Koota Financial Services Pvt Ltd
Bangalore-based NBFC –MFI, Grameen Koota Financial Services Pvt Ltd (Grameen Koota) with 286branches spread across Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, reached one million customers with a portfolio of Rs.1,602 crore as of 30th June 2015.
Grameen Koota is one of the 5 financial institutions in the world and one of the 3 microfinance institutions (MFI) in India to have been honored by Smart Campaign for having met all the client protection principles. It is also one of the few MFIs be awarded with Truelift Certification of ‘Achiever’s level’ and Social Rating of  Σα-(alpha- minus) for its commitment on social performance and pro-poor business. Grameen Koota is one among the few with a top grade of ‘mfR1’ by CRISIL for its Quality and high Credit rating of ‘A-‘ by ICRA among MFIs in India.
Grameen Koota has been working with Joint Liability Groups formed exclusively of women belonging to poor and low income households by providing them with financial literacy and diverse credit products catering all life-cycle needs such as income generation and access to water, sanitation, education, health care, home repairs, emergency, energy efficient cook stove etc. It gives its clients the option to repay weekly, fortnightly or monthly, depending on their cash flow and convenience. Grameen Koota’s social awareness campaign ‘Jagruti’ has become an important source of information across its customers over period of time.
The Financial Express

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Is Yuvraj Singh dating Bollywood actress Hazel Keech?

Reports suggest that India's 2011 World Cup-winning hero is in a relationship with Bollywood actress

India's 2011 World Cup-winning hero Yuvraj Singh is believed to be dating British model actress Hazel Keech, NDTV.com reported yesterday.

According to the report, the star all-rounder, currently out of favour with the national selectors, was seen holidaying with Hazel in London recently. They have also been seen together on a few occasions on their return to India.

This would be the second Bollywood actress that Yuvraj would be linked with after previously dating Kim Sharma.

If reports are true, Yuvraj will be the second current India cricketer after Test skipper Virat Kohli to be in a relationship with a Bollywood actress. Kohli is dating Anushka Sharma.

Hazel made her Bollywood debut in blockbuster movie 'Bodyguard' where she was one of the co-stars with Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor.

- See more at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/is-yuvraj-singh-dating-bollywood-actress-hazel-keech/16518156#sthash.EOAErov1.dpuf

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Nasa invites space enthusiasts to send name to Mars

 

WASHINGTON: Do you wish to send your name on a mission to Mars? Do it now. Nasa is inviting space enthusiasts to send in their names that will go on the next mission to Red Planet and the deadline is Tuesday.

In March, 2016, Nasa will launch the InSight mission to Mars - a robotic, stationary lander designed to study Mars geophysics.

You can send your name that will be embedded on a computer chip aboard the InSight lander.

InSight is an acronym for Interior Exploration for Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. The mission will launch on an Atlas V 401 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on March 4, 2016.

As part of a series of tests, the spacecraft was commanded to deploy its solar arrays in the clean room to test and verify the exact process that it will use on the surface of Mars.

It is scheduled to land in Mars' Elysium Planitia (Plain of Ideal Happiness) on September 20, 2016.

Once on Mars, the mission is designed to last two years. 

IANS | Sep 8, 2015, 01.52 PM IST

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Samsung Galaxy Note5 first impressions

Anupam Saxena,TOI Tech | Sep 8, 2015, 11.24 AM IST

Samsung Galaxy Note5 first impressions

NEW DELHI: Less than a month after unveiling Galaxy Note5, Samsung has announced the availability of its flagship phablet in India.
Successor to Galaxy Note 4, the new device breaks away from how Samsung typically designs the Note devices and instead follows the company's flagship smartphone, Galaxy S6. The phablet comes with a much refined S-Pen stylus capabilities for better multi-tasking and improved video capabilities. We spent some time with the Note5 at the launch event and here's a brief look at the phone...

Samsung Galaxy Note5 looks like a bigger version of the Galaxy S6 complete with a metal frame and glass panels at the front and back. However, the back is curved at the edges to enhance grip. This is critical especially since the Note5 is a large device though the phone's width is slightly lesser than that of the Note 4.

Read full specs of Samsung Galaxy Note5

Thanks to the super-thin bezel, Samsung has been able to fit the 5.7-inch display in a relatively smaller body which means the phone doesn't feel unwieldy though not exactly optimum for one hand use. It's undoubtedly a premium device and feels great to hold but the back is very prone to smudging. Also, it felt a bit slippery.

You no longer get access to the phone's battery as the phone has a unibody design and a non-removable back and this is slightly disappointing. It also doesn't feature a microSD card slot so you have to live with the built-in flash storage.



On the metal-clad edge, you'll see the power button on the right, volume rocker keys at the left, sim card slot at the top and the micro-USB port at the bottom along with the S-Pen slot and 3.5mmm headset jack. The bottom edge of the phone would remind you of the iPhone 6/6S. There's no Infrared port unlike the Note 4 so you won't be able to use your phone as a remote control.

The front of the phone features the 5.7-inch display with the physical Home button just placed below it. The button also integrates a fingerprint sensor. Two capacitive navigation keys are located next to it.

The back features a shiny Gorilla glass panel. There's a camera module with the lens protruding out a bit along with an LED flash and a heart rate sensor.



The Note5's 5.7-inch dual-edge Quad HD (1440x2560p) or 2K resolution Super AMOLED display offers vibrant albeit slightly saturated colours, deep blacks and excellent viewing angles. It's one of the most pixel-dense phones offering super sharp text and images.

The Galaxy Note5 is powered by a Samsung Exynos octa core (2.1GHz Quad + 1.5GHz Quad), 64 bit chip and 4GB RAM (LPDDR4). It comes in 32GB and 64GB storage variants but there's no microSD card slot for expansion. In terms of connectivity, the the phone supports WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, MIMO(2x2), Bluetooth 4.2 LE, ANT+, USB 2.0, NFC, GPS/GLONASS, and 4G LTE Cat.9 / LTE Cat.6 options. The phone comes with a fingerprint sensor and heart rate monitor.

The phone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop with a new optimized version of Samsung's TouchWiz UI layer with icons that look good and suit the high-resolution display.

The newly-designed Galaxy Note5 provides a new set of productivity tools such as SideSync, along with a much refined 5th generation S Pen capabilities for better multi-tasking.



Samsung claims the Galaxy Note5's new S Pen feels more solid and balanced in the user's hand, offering improved writing capabilities and a variety of tools. It features a clicking mechanism to offer a better experience and users can now quickly jot down ideas or information even when the screen is off without even unlocking the phone through a low power mode. The 'Air Command' feature has also been given an upgrade; now the icon hovers for instant access to all of S Pen tools from any screen at any time. Users can also annotate on PDF files and capture lengthy web articles or long images at once via 'Scroll capture.'

In our brief time with the phone we did not encounter any stutter or lag while navigating through the user interface and switching between apps.

The Note5 sports a 16MP rear camera with Optical Image Stabilisation and a 5MP front-facing camera.

Samsung's new phone also comes with improved video capabilities including Steady Video, which provides Video Digital Image Stabilization on both the front and rear cameras for sharp, crisp video on-the-go, and Video Collage Mode, which allows users to record and edit short videos easily in various frames and effects. The Galaxy Note5 also features 4K(UHD) video filming and Live Broadcast, which lets users instantly live stream Full HD video straight from the phone to any individual, group of contacts, or even the public through YouTube Live.



It's backed by a 3,000mAh battery that supports fast charging with both wireless and wired chargers.

The phone will be available at Rs 53,900 for 32GB and Rs 59,900 for 64GB variant. We feel that Samsung has priced the new Note device sensibly and it would be interesting to see how it would stand against Apple's upcoming large-screen iPhone and Sony Xperia Z5 Premium. We'll soon have a full review of the phone.

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Decoding Steve Jobs: Was he a genius or cruel?

Andrew Ross Sorkin,New York Times | Sep 8, 2015, 10.05 AM IST

Does Jobs deserve to be admired?

That's the underlying question that emerged in a new documentary released over the weekend by Alex Gibney in "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine." It is also a question that lies beneath the surface of the upcoming biopic by Aaron Sorkin, "Steve Jobs," which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend and will open on October 9.

Jobs, of course, was a complicated leader: Brilliantly creative and obsessive about every last detail yet so maniacal that he could make his colleagues cry and, yes, there is no getting around it, at times, he created his own truth. (That's the polite way of putting it.)

Gibney, who directed the recent HBO documentary "Going Clear" about Scientology, explained what appeared to be his rationale for pursuing a documentary about Jobs in a voice-over at the beginning of the film.

"When Steve Jobs died, I was mystified," Gibney said, as he showed images of people all over the world mourning his loss. "What accounted for the grief of millions of people who didn't know him? I'd seen it with John Lennon and Martin Luther King, but Steve Jobs wasn't a singer or a civil rights leader." He added, "The grief for Jobs seemed to go beyond the products he left behind. We mourned the man himself. But why?"

Gibney, a remarkably talented and persuasive filmmaker, uses the next two hours to seemingly make the case that Jobs, the man, doesn't deserve the iconic status he attained. Through a series of interviews — including one with the mother of a child Jobs denied was his own until much later — Gibney paints Jobs as "ruthless, deceitful and cruel." Gibney retreads a laundry list of Jobs' sins: Backdating options, factory conditions in China and secret agreements with Silicon Valley rivals to prevent employee-poaching.

But all these efforts to paint Jobs as a hero or a villain miss a larger truth: He can be both and still be worthy of acclaim. More than 700 million of his iPhones have been sold around the world, with a new version to be announced Wednesday. Hundreds of millions of people spend more time with their iPhones — and all the copycat and directive devices — than just about anything else on any given day. Think about this: He managed to create an emotional attachment between humans and a device.

Say what you want about the man, but you don't have to be an "Apploonian" to appreciate he has an authentic claim on changing the world during this last generation.

Not surprisingly, most people who have had a huge influence on the world have been flawed, some deeply so. It should go without saying, but most people happen to be flawed in one way or another.

Gibney held out Lennon and King as somehow more worthy of the wave of grieving that took place after they died than Jobs. But both men, in truth, were terribly troubled, too.

Lennon's own son Julian told The London Telegraph in 1998, "I felt he was a hypocrite. Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world, but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son. How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces — no communication, adultery, divorce?"

King had his own personal demons: It is well chronicled that he was a serial adulterer.

Sadly, it does appear that being flawed in one area may help in others. In an article in The Atlantic titled "Why It Pays to Be a Jerk," the author Jerry Useem quotes several studies that show that nice guys don't usually win. Donald Hambrick, a management professor at Penn State, told the magazine, "To the extent that innovation and risk-taking are in short supply in the corporate world, narcissists are the ones who are going to step up to the plate."

Of course, not everyone thinks Jobs was a jerk. Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president for internet software and services, wrote on Twitter that he felt the Gibney film was "an inaccurate and meanspirited view of my friend. It's not a reflection of the Steve I knew."

But the black hat-white hat version of Jobs may be too confining.

In a fascinating interview last year with Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair, Jony Ive, Apple's famed designer and longtime friend of Jobs, recounted a telling story. He remembered a time when Jobs had been tough — too tough, in Ive's estimation — on his team and Ive pulled him aside and told him to be bit nicer. "'Well, why?" Jobs replied. "Because I care about the team," Ive replied. "And he said this brutally, brilliantly insightful thing, which was, 'No Jony, you're just really vain,'" Ive recalled. "He said, 'You just want people to like you, and I'm surprised at you because I thought you really held the work up as the most important, not how you believed you were perceived by other people.'"

That story and the documentary left me with two questions: Would you rather do something extraordinary that benefits the lives of millions of people? Or be liked by several hundred? And does it have to be an either-or question?

The answer, like Jobs, is complicated.

Times of India

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Pregnant Coco Austin flaunts growing baby bump and bounteous curves barely covering her assets wearing tiny bikini

By Mike Larkin For Dailymail.com

Published: 00:27 GMT, 8 September 2015 | Updated: 07:19 GMT, 8 September 2015

Just last month she hit out at claims she was using a surrogate rather than being pregnant herself.

And it seems Coco Austin was determined to prove it after she posted an array of revealing bikini selfies to mark the appropriately named Labor Day.

Ice T's saucy wife seemed to revel in flaunting her bump, among other things, as she posed in front of a full-length mirror in her walk-in wardrobe while surrounded by her gigantic shoe collection. 

In a reflective mood: Pregnant Coco Austin showed off her baby bump as she posed for bikini selfies in front of a mirror on Monday 

The 36-year-old Ice Loves Coco star told her army of Facebook followers: 'Happy Labor Day! I wanted to finally surprise you with pregnant bikini pics! For some reason many of you have been asking weeks now to see my baby bump in a swimsuit!

'And of course I had to do it,Coco style and rep in a micro bikini..... Well, I've been waiting sometime to take this cuz as u can see if u look at me from the front its very hard to see my lump but from the side its getting more visible.'

She claimed her workout regime was the reason she was looking so lithe,  and said she is now 26 weeks into her pregnancy.

Coco has previously hit out at rumours she was using a surrogate, telling Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen last month she was really pregnant.

Micro management: She showcased her belly to the full by wearing a itsy bitsy 'Coco style' bikini

Rearly impressive: She says her dedication to fitness is the reason she is looking so lithe

At the time she said she was six months pregnant with daughter Chanel. 

She also raised eyebrows after insisting, much to her husband's delight, that women should be submissive toward their husband.

'I think all women should do it,' said a smiling Coco. 'I am a slave to him. It has been 15 years and it has worked out.'

'Out of choice, she likes that,' a thrilled Ice-T added.

'I hit the jackpot with this one. Coco is also OCD so when she gets mad she also cleans,' the glowing rapper and television star said.

No wonder he's smiling: She delighted husband Ice T last month when she said wives should be submissive

Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3225794/Coco-Austin-poses-reflection-shows-baby-bump-bikini-selfie.html

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