Introduce Bill to amend laws for conducting jallikattu during Pongal: Jayalalithaa

Amid growing chorus for holding the banned bull-taming sport 'jallikattu' in January, Tamil Nadu government has urged the Centre to introduce a bill to amend laws for its conduct. It also suggested a special Parliament session for the purpose or even promulgating an ordinance considering the "urgency" of the matter.

Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Pongal (Tamil harvest festival) was fast approaching (next month) and "it is very important that the sentiments of the people of Tamil Nadu, who have a deep attachment to the conduct of the traditional event of jallikattu, are honoured."

In a December 22 letter to Modi, she said media reports had "indicated" that Minister of State for Environment and Forests Prakash Javadekar had stated the Centre would introduce a Bill in Parliament in the Winter Session to enable its conduct.

She said, "We were eagerly looking forward to introduction of the bill," but Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan was quoted in media that the deadlock in Rajya Sabha was the reason for non introduction of the legislation.

Strongly urging the PM to immediately direct the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change to introduce a Bill to comprehensively and suitably amend relevant provisions of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, she said it had to be passed immediately to enable conduct of Jallikattu.

"May I request that the Parliament session be extended, or a special session called for this purpose? Alternatively, considering the urgency of the issue, the Government of India may consider promulgating an ordinance enabling the conduct of jallikattu during Pongal 2016. On behalf of the people of Tamil Nadu, I urge you to have the ordinance promulgated expeditiously," she said in the letter, released today.

The CM said inability to conduct Jallikattu has caused general disappointment and widespread resentment among the people, particularly in rural areas, as this was a sport, which was part of their cherished tradition.

Jayalalithaa said jallikattu was a traditional sporting event held as part of Pongal festivities in rural Tamil Nadu for many centuries, adding that bulls reared exclusively for this event were tamed by able-bodied youth.

Jallikattu had considerable historical significance and was ingrained in the cultural tradition of Tamil Nadu and even found mention in the 'great epic Silappathigaram', and was popular among warriors since the Sangam era, she said.

"The sport is inextricably linked to rural, agrarian customs and practices and helps with the conservation of native germplasm since bulls with excellent physical attributes are reared. It also has religious connotations with families donating bulls to temples in fulfillment of vows."

"The second day of the Pongal festivities is dedicated to showing gratitude to the bulls that serve and contribute to the prosperity of the farmers," she said.

Barack Obama, Narendra Modi have strong, productive relationship, says US official

Washington: US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have developed a strong and productive relationship between them, a top American climate change official has said.

"President Obama and Prime Minister Modi have a very, strong and productive relationship, not just on climate change but broadly," Todd Stern, the US Special Envoy on Climate Change said on Tuesday.

"It was a quite extraordinary fact that within the space of four months there were two head of the state visits, one first to the United States in September of 2014 and then Prime Minister Modi invited the President to India just four months later in January," the official said.

Thereafter the two leaders have been close communications with each other. "They met on the margins of the UNGA in New York and they met on the first day of the Paris meeting," Stern said.

According to Stern the meeting was a very warm and positive, cordial and detailed.

"In fact, they talked so long that they were both supposed to go — and did go finally, but they were a little bit late to the announcement of this big Mission Innovation idea on R&D that both — well, the United States, India, China, many other countries ultimately were part of," the US official said.

"So I think, that the call later, sort of more towards the end, was a check-in call to see how we were doing and to urge us all on together toward a successful conclusion. And I think it was done in that spirit, not in the spirit that there was some specific thing that had to be done before the agreement could get completed," Stern said. 

Malala Yousafzai calls for end to Syria war, welcomes young activist to Britain

Malala, who moved to Britain in 2012 after being shot in the head in Pakistan by the Taliban for refusing to quit school, won acclaim for her advocacy of women’s right to education. She became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Nearly two years after they met in a refugee camp in Jordan, Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai on Tuesday welcomed the Syrian schoolgirl activist Muzoon Almellehan to her new home in northern England.

Malala, who moved to Britain in 2012 after being shot in the head in Pakistan by the Taliban for refusing to quit school, won acclaim for her advocacy of women’s right to education. She became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Meeting with families in tow at a gleaming public library in the northeast English city of Newcastle, 18-year-old Malala and Muzoon, 17, pledged to campaign together for access to education for Syrian refugee children.

“I hope world leaders promise the future generation that they will not deprive them of their basic human right, which is education,” Malala told Reuters in an interview.

The setting for their reunion was a far cry from the sprawling lines of tents comprising the Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees in the Jordanian desert, where the pair first met in early 2014.

Malala now lives in England’s second city, Birmingham, where she was treated after being shot, and Muzoon is among the first Syrians from refugee camps in the Middle East to have come to Britain.

Since the two first met, the number of registered Syrian refugees has doubled to almost 4.4 million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees (UNHCR).

More than 250,000 people have been killed since the Syrian civil war began in 2011.

“I hope 2016 becomes a year when this war ends and world leaders must try,” Malala said.

Appeals for funding from the world’s governments have fallen far short of targets. With only days before the end of the year, the UNHCR’s $4.3 billion appeal for Syria in 2015 has raised just $2.2 billion.

Syria’s children

UN children’s agency UNICEF estimates 2.6 million Syrian children are no longer in school. Muzoon, often dubbed the “Malala of Syria”, made her name encouraging girls to stay in school, rather than being married off at a young age.

“We need to speak about education and how to help children, especially in Syria, because there are more children in Syria without education,” Muzoon said.

Malala and Muzoon met again in July this year to open a school for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and have kept in touch through Skype and email.

“(World leaders) need to listen to Muzoon - she has a dream, she wants to become a journalist, she has been away from her home for three or four years, and she wants to go back to her country one day,” Malala said.

Despite being occupied by school exams and plans to attend university in the next couple of years, the pair will be keeping a close eye on an international summit due to be held in Britain in early February, focused on Syria’s humanitarian crisis.

“This coming generation of Syrians are going to be deprived of their right and it means that country is going to face more problems if its children are uneducated,” Malala said.

Britain said in September it would resettle up to 20,000 Syrian refugees through to 2020. Germany was the world’s biggest recipient of new asylum claims at 159,000 during the first six months of 2015 alone, according to the UNHCR.

Malala expressed hope that Newcastle would welcome Muzoon in the same way Birmingham did for her.

“I call myself a Brummie now,” Malala said, referring to the nickname for residents of Birmingham.

“It’s a lovely society where you can interact with people and feel like you’re just part of it. I hope Muzoon can have a similar feeling.”

Students eat beef in Osmania University hostel rooms

Hyderabad: Police on Thursday thwarted efforts to conduct the beef festival in Osmania University. The festival was planned at the Arts College to observe Human Rights Day by 24 Dalit and Left wing student organisations. The police ensured that the event was not held.

However, students claimed that they prepared beef items and consumed them in their hostel rooms. Pictures of students consuming beef in the hostel were circulated on social networking sites and mobile apps.

Some arrested students even posted pictures of themselves eating beef inside the Amberpet police station.

Cops ensure students don’t leave hostels

Police ensured that none of the students living in hostels where the festival organisers stayed stepped out of their rooms.

Mussavir Mohammad, one of the organisers at Ambedkar hostel said, “The police arrested anyone who stepped out of the hostel regardless of whether the student was an organiser or not. Even mess workers were not allowed into the hostel to prepare dinner.”

The pork festival too was not allowed to take place which was to be conducted at Arts College on Thursday. Solanki Srinivas, the organiser, was arrested on Wednesday evening.

OU registrar Prof E. Suresh Kumar said, “University was peaceful and I thank the police for upholding court orders.”and not allowing any untoward incident to take place in the university."

Outside the university campus too there was high drama as groups of people belonging to Hindu organisations shouted “Jai Sri Ram” slogans and made sporadic appearances near the NCC gate.

While the police detained a few, others escaped. In one incident a cow was brought near the gate to conduct “gau puja” but that effort too was thwarted.

All entrances to OU were sealed for outsiders and police were deployed to ensure that only those with university identity cards were allowed to enter.

As per sources, only students who had exams were allowed to move about subject to scrutiny. While a final semester theory exam which was to be conducted in the Technology department was cancelled, exams in the Engineering College were conducted peacefully.

Mumbai court pardons David Headley, accepts him as witness in 26/11 terror attacks case

Mumbai: A local court on Thursday granted pardon to David Coleman Headley, one of the main accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case, and accepted him as a witness on certain conditions.

The court agreed to Headley's plea to turn an approver in return for pardon and wants Headley to reveal roles of him and co-conspirators in 26/11 attacks.

Headley, the Pakistani-American LeT terrorist serving prison sentence in the US, told the court that he was ready to depose and turn approver in the 26/11 trial if he was given pardon.

Headley appeared before the sessions court here through a video link from an undisclosed location in the US. Ujjwal Nikam, the special public prosecutor, told the judge G A Sanap that Headley was ready to turn "approver" if given pardon.

As Nikam sought some time to consult the investigating officers, the court adjourned the proceedings for half an hour this evening.

"I have received the charging document filed against me in this court. It charges me with same conduct for which I was charged in the US. I had pleaded guilty to the charges in the US and I admitted that I was participant in these charges," Headley told the court.

"I accepted responsibility for my role in those offences in my plea agreement (in US). I also agreed to make myself available as a witness in this court. I appear here ready to answer questions regarding these events if I receive a pardon from this court," he said.

At this point, Nikam said that Headley had proposed to become an approver provided he was given pardon. The prosecutor then requested the judge to adjourn the hearing for half an hour, so that he could consult the investigating officers about Headley's offer.

Earlier, the judge explained to Headley the charges against him.

On November 18, the court had said that Headley must be produced through video conference on December 10 as it allowed the Mumbai police's plea to make him an accused.

Headley is currently serving 35 years in an American prison for his role in the Mumbai terror attacks. The police had said he should be tried by the Mumbai court along with the key conspirator Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal.

Following this, the court took 'cognisance of offences' against Headley.

The offences with which Headley is likely to be charged by Mumbai court are distinct and separate than the offences with which he had been charged and punished in the US, the police had said then.

The police's application also noted that Headley entered into a plea bargain agreement with US authorities in 2010, and thereby willingly and voluntarily agreed that he was part of the conspiracy behind the November 26, 2008 attacks in Mumbai which claimed 166 lives.

He is accused of conducting a special reconnaissance of targets before the Mumbai terror attacks. His reconnaissance provided vital information for the 10 LeT terrorists and their handlers.

Facebook network and stress levels may be tied together

A small study suggests that for adolescents, their number of Facebook friends may be related to their stress levels, with more than 300 friends associated with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

The study only included 88 participants at one point in time, so it can’t indicate whether changes in Facebook metrics cause an increase in stress, or vice versa. Other important external factors are also responsible for cortisol levels, but Facebook involvement may have its own effect, senior author Sonia Lupien of Montreal Mental Health University Institute said in a statement.

"We were able to show that beyond 300 Facebook friends, adolescents showed higher cortisol levels; we can therefore imagine that those who have 1,000 or 2,000 friends on Facebook may be subjected to even greater stress,” she said. The 88 teens in the study, age 12 to 17, answered questions about their Facebook use frequency, number of friends, self-promoting behavior and supporting behavior of friends. The researchers measured the teens’ cortisol levels four times a day for three days.

Kids who had more than 300 Facebook friends tended to have higher cortisol levels than those with fewer friends, the researchers reported in Psychoneuroendocrinology. With more peer interaction on Facebook, however, cortisol levels tended to be lower. Neither depression nor self-esteem were related to cortisol levels.

Cortisol levels in early adolescence may influence risk of depression years later, the authors wrote. Wenhong Chen of the department of Radio-TV-Film and the department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not part of the new study, points out that the research is about Facebook, and so the findings can’t necessarily be generalized to other forms of social media use.

It may also not be generalizable to other age groups, Chen said. “The preliminary nature of our findings will require refined measurement of Facebook behaviors in relation to physiological functioning and we will need to undertake future studies to determine whether these effects exist in younger children and adults,” Lupien said. “Developmental analysis could also reveal whether virtual stress is indeed ‘getting over the screen and under the skin’ to modulate neurobiological processes related to adaptation.”

Offline friend network size was also related to cortisol levels. “It may not be about the number of friends either online or offline, it may be more about potential communication overload,” Chen told Reuters Health by email. Larger networks may mean more peers and more drama, she said.

Rather than using the overall number of friends online or offline it may be more revealing to examine network composition, strong ties and weak ties, as well as individuals’ position in their networks, she said.

Exercise as young adult related to heart health decades later

Young adults who exercise may have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and higher survival odds decades later than their peers who aren’t as active early in life, a U.S. study suggests. Fitness has long been linked to a reduced risk of heart disease in older adults. The new study, however, offers fresh evidence that workout routines started years before cardiovascular problems are generally encountered may help keep them from developing in the first place.

“Each additional minute a person could exercise on a treadmill in early adulthood was associated with substantially lower likelihood of risk of dying or developing cardiovascular diseases over 25 years later,” lead study author Dr. Ravi Shah of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston said by email.

The study included about 4,900 adults aged 18 to 30 who performed treadmill tests in 1985 and 1986, with roughly half of them repeating the exercise assessments again seven years later. The tests consisted of as many as nine two-minute stages of gradually increasing difficulty. Over the next several decades, the researchers monitored participants for obesity, hardening in the coronary arteries, heart muscle weakness, and incidents related to cardiovascular disease such as heart attacks or strokes. Half the subjects were followed for at least 27 years.

Overall, 273 people died, though just 73 of these fatalities were related to cardiovascular disease, the researchers report in JAMA Internal Medicine. In addition, 193 people survived events such as heart attacks or strokes.

Each extra minute participants lasted during the treadmill test as young adults was linked to a 12 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease and 15 percent lower odds of death by the end of the study period. Every one-minute increase in treadmill time was also linked to less strain on the heart muscle, but exercise test duration wasn’t tied to changes in hardening of the coronary arteries.

Among the subset of participants who did the second treadmill test seven years after the initial assessment, each one minute reduction in exercise tolerance was linked with a 20 percent increase in cardiovascular events and 21 percent greater odds of death. The increased risks persisted after the researchers accounted for individuals’ age, race, gender, obesity, and other cardiovascular disease risk factors such as smoking, diabetes, elevated blood pressure and high cholesterol.

The fact that even obesity didn’t change the outcome highlights the need to think about exercise as more than merely a tool for weight management, noted study co-author Dr. Venkatesh Murthy of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“Being fit and maintaining fitness over time are very important to your heart and overall health for everyone – especially starting in early adulthood – and not only for people who are trying to lose or to maintain weight,” Murthy said by email.

It’s possible that some of the association between fitness and heart health may be explained by improved diet, the authors concede. A different measure of cardiorespiratory fitness, known as a peak aerobic capacity test, might also get different results than the treadmill assessments.

Even so, the findings offer a substantive confirmation of the importance of physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, Dr. David Chiriboga and Dr. Ira Ockene of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester wrote in an accompanying editorial. Beyond fitness and exercise, patients should also understand the importance of limiting sedentary time, Ockene said by email. Many daily habits that contribute to inactivity – whether it’s channel surfing, using drive-through windows at the bank or the fast food restaurant, or emailing co-workers instead of walking down the hall to talk – all contribute to decreased fitness and increased weight.

“I spend a lot of time talking to folks not just about literal exercise but also about the extraordinary value of day-to-day activity,” Ockene said.