MAQzine

PM watches   Peepli Live New Delhi  August 29, 2010 Taking a break from his busy schedule, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday watched Aamir Khan's Bollywood film   Peepli Live , a scathing satire on farmers' suicide. Singh watched the film along with his wife Gursharan Kaur. Besides Khan, the film' producer and Bollywood star, director Anusha Rizvi and a couple of senior cast members were present at the special screening. Khan had arranged a similar screening of the film for BJP leaders including L K Advani. The film, starring a clutch of theatre actors with a debutante director in Rizvi, deals with the growing divide between rural and urban India through the story of Natha, a landless farmer. He is talked into committing suicide by his brother Budhia, who hopes that their family will benefit since government has relief packages for the families of farmers, who kill themselves. Their drunken conversation is heard by a local journalist, who ...

New Delhi  August 29, 2010 Rahul Gandhi   is a hit on Facebook. He has a fan page following of 67,921 people which could be among the largest for any leader in the country on the popular social networking site. Moreover, Gandhi's facebook account, which   Congress   says has not been created by him, has 4,999 friends listed in it. It has photographs and videos as well as regular updates. Rahul's sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra too has a fan page with 17,469 people listed as followers and another page named as "Priyanka Gandhi politician" having 163 followers. Party President Sonia Gandhi has a page which lists her as an author with 1,283 people liking it while another page with politician listed along with her name has 503 people who like it. Source : http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/StoryPrint?sId=110708&secid=114&page=null

By Benjamin Joffee – WALT / The Media Line 20-08-2010 Home grown search engine set to go by 2012 It all began in the early 1990’s with Internet search engine startups like Excite, Galaxy, Lycos and Webcrawler. Then Yahoo and Alta Vista moved in, followed only a few years later by what would become the neighborhood bully: Google.   Now Iran would like to introduce the new kid on the block... Ladies and Gentelmen, please welcome ‘Oh Lord,’ a homegrown Iranian search engine sure to highlight very high resolution photos of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the regretful testimony of green movement opposition activists.   Hadi Malek-Parast, Director General for Research and Development at the Iranian Information Technology Company, told the Iranian Mehr News Agency on Sunday that Iran has started developing a national search enginged dubbed ‘Ya Haq’, a Persian expression meaning “Oh Lord.” Speaking of the need for faster search capacity and higher security for the cou...

VIEW:   The Manhattan mosque   by Yasser Latif Hamdani President Obama and his government are now under great stress because of the difficult position the mosque issue has put the Obama administration in. Logically, there should not be a problem with building a place of worship, a right guaranteed under the First Amendment to the US Constitution, but the issue is much larger than one of freedom of faith The mosque in Manhattan has stirred a hornet’s nest. The issue now threatens to test the very ideals of western secular democracy that we admire and cherish and seek to emulate in the rest of the world. It is important, therefore, to weigh in logically and as reasonable people — though reason is hard to come by these days — on the unnecessary provocation in Manhattan created by Imam Feisal Abdel Raouf and his wife Daisy Khan that they refer to as ‘Cordoba House’ or ‘Park 51’, a $ 100 million Islamic centre in New York City. I say unnecessary not because I oppose the ...

Sikander Amani The Lisbon earthquake challenged the general sense of intelligibility of the natural world, as a transparent order that would mirror the moral and social orders. This led to a severance of the links between the physical and the moral paradigms: there are no connections to be found between natural events and moral desert Human stupidity, sadly, knows no boundary, and natural catastrophes seem, for some reason, to offer a singularly good opportunity for it to emerge in all its glory, with the connivance of the media. The floods, like the 2005 earthquake, have created a spectacular podium for would-be theologians and fake prophets: here they are, sanctimoniously explaining to us all over again that the natural disaster was a consequence of our very deadly sins.  The floods are a punishment meted out by Allah, they say; although they differ about what grave sin unleashed such harsh treatment. Licentiousness and depravity (whatever that means) rank high among these s...

An Australian woman has told how she brought her 'dead' premature baby son back to life with two hours of cuddles, baffling doctors. By   Rebecca Smith , Medical Editor Published: 7:45AM BST 27 Aug 2010 Baby Jamie Ogg showed no signs of life when he was delivered at just 27 weeks gestation at a hospital in Sydney . Doctors said they had lost him and he was given to his mother Kate who gently unwrapped his blankets and placed him on her chest so she and her husband David could say their goodbyes. Jamie's twin sister, Emily had survived the birth and was doing well but the couple were devastated at losing their son. But after two hours of cuddles and being spoken to by Kate and David, Jamie began to gasp. Doctors said this was a 'reflex' but he began gasping more often and then opened his eyes. After two hours of cuddles and being spoken to by  Kate and David, Jamie began to gasp Photo: SPLASH The family have now, five months on, appeared on Australia tel...

A KISS OF BETRAYAL By Andy Dunn   Follow me on Twitter WHEN Mohammad Amir took his fifth wicket at Lord's on Friday, he dropped to his knees and kissed the most hallowed turf in cricket. The most hallowed turf in sport, perhaps. It was a kiss of BETRAYAL. A betrayal of the sport's soul by a young man corrupted by greed. A betrayal of a troubled nation beset by problems, grappling with the harrowing effects of a natural tragedy. Think that is an exaggeration? Think again. In a time of human devastation, cricket was an escape for the people of Pakistan . While their performances were strangely inconsistent - maybe we now know why - there were moments when the spirit of this team was admired back home and in England, their ups and downs in this series a reflection of the turbulent times four thousand miles away. It turns out that spirit can be bought, those ups and downs conducted by high-rolling gamblers. And to think we gave this team house room when security fears rob...

By Hollie McKay Published August 28, 2010 | FoxNews.com Paris Hilton was arrested late Friday for possession of cocaine, a Las Vegas Police spokesperson confirmed to Pop Tarts. The hotel heiress was a passenger in a vehicle that was stopped by police after officers smelled what they suspected was marijuana.  "Officers noticed a vehicle leaving smoke trail of a contolled substance (and) made a stop based on that," Las Vegas police spokesman Marcus Martin told The Associated Press. The driver was arrested for drug possession and through further interaction between Hilton and authorities, it was discovered she was in possession of cocaine, police say. Hilton was detained at the Clark County Detention Center and released at around 2:30 a.m. PT Saturday.  Her representative was not immediately available for comment. Her publicist, Dawn Miller, did not immediately return an e-mail message from the AP. Police didn't immediately released the name of the man who was d...

  Ten minutes with a legend: Jon Wilks discusses the recent Laureus Sports Awards with the current WBA world light welterweight champion   Are you feeling confident about your form at the moment? I’m very confident. I’ve just signed a deal with [leading boxing promoter] Golden Boy Promotions and I want to impress them, so I’m training twice as hard. That’s the same promoter as Manny Pacquiao. Are you going to be sparring with him? I’ll be doing a few things with Manny, but in more of a current fighting style. I’ve sparred against him before. I did really well and my trainer was quite impressed. Manny came up and said I was the fastest guy he’d ever faced at the time. Are you surprised he wasn’t a contender for the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year award? I’m very surprised. He’s had some big fights. I think with boxing, only very few people get enough publicity. Manny’s huge and he’s done so much for the game, but he’s not got that thing, that image that means he’s goin...

The Dubai One TV presenter discusses she-wolves, star signs and becoming Dubai ’s answer to Chelsea Lately   Did you always want to be on TV? Yes – absolutely. I was always very animated as a kid, and always impersonating people. I leaned towards drama and acting. I’m a Gemini – we’re the communicators of the zodiac. My entire life, people have said to me, ‘You’re going to be on TV one day.’ How long has your show, City Wrap, been running for? About three months now. This is my first TV thing. At first, being on camera was very intimidating, but I got used to it because I’d been working with Dubai One for a while. Now it just goes over my head. What’s City Wrap all about? Each week City Wrap recaps the best of Dubai ’s social, cultural and entertainment events. We talk about everything from awards to exhibitions and music festivals. Each week we have a different line-up of guests to give us the lowdown on the top social spots, and Time Out’s editor Ross Brown is one of o...

Film star, international DJ, documentary creator – Becky Lucas caught up with busy bee Jimi Mistry ahead of his Chi gig last weekend   And the Beat Goes On …   Ibiza , your movie about the island’s culture, was screened at   Chi   recently. That’s quite a different project for you – how did it come about? I went to Ibiza six years ago to a film festival. I’m a big lover of music and DJing, and at that point I’d never been to Ibiza before. Before I got there, I was expecting some sort of hedonistic island for kids. But when I arrived I was like ‘Ohhh, it’s such a spiritual place; there’s such good energy’. I saw something in it that I hadn’t seen anywhere else. I decided I’d go back to find out what that magical thing is, and film it too. I got a camera, a director, and filmed it. You’ve been around the world, screening the film and DJing afterwards. Do you love DJing? Even before I got into acting, that was all I wanted to do: I wanted to be a radio DJ and play...