Nine years since acid attack, still Sonali mukherjee begging for justice

Sonali Mukherjee before and after acid violence

In 2002, Sonali Mukherjee, a 19-year-old girl from Jharkhand, topped her college and was aspiring to be a professor someday. But less than a year later, her world fell apart when three men, whose advances she had been spurning for a while, threw acid on her. Today, nine years since the incident, Sonali and her family are still struggling from day to day to pay for her treatment. She has now appealed to the state for help.

"The pain and the torture of the last nine years I can't even describe in words. I am appealing to the state to help me, get me justice, otherwise I don't want to live," she says.

On April 22, 2003, the three men who had been making advances came late at night and poured acid all over Sonali, who was fast asleep on the terrace of her house in Dhanbad, Jharkhand. With 72 per cent burns, she was lucky to have survived, but lost her sight, her face, her body and life as she knew it. Each day since then has been a struggle for her.
Sonali's family, which does not have much to begin with, has sold every last thing they owned for her treatment, but she is far from okay - both physically and emotionally.

Her attackers included a 40-year-old married man, and an 18-year-old. The teenager was let off on account of being a juvenile, the other two were convicted for nine years, but appealed to a higher court and got out in just four, while Sonali continues to struggle to put together the Rs. 15 lakh she still needs for her treatment.

"Everything we owned has been sold, including cows, but till today I'm fighting," said her father Chandi Das Mukherjee.

Sonali's family says they can't do it alone anymore.

"I am appealing to everyone through you to help me... I am really desperate," she says.

How you can help:

Send your cheques to: Chandi Das Mukherjee

Account Number: 0612000103217964
Punjab National Bank, New Delhi

Or contact her brother at: +91 9437638600

Indian minister tells bureaucrats it's OK to 'steal a little ...

Shivpal Yadav

Shivpal Singh Yadav, in charge of housing and construction in northern Uttar Pradesh state, on Friday hastily withdrew the offer he made a day earlier during a meeting with government employees, which was also attended by journalists.
Yadav is an uncle to the state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, whose Samajwadi Party stormed into power on an anti-corruption platform in elections held in Uttar Pradesh in March.
"If you work hard, you can steal a little, but don't behave like bandits," Yadav as saying at the meeting in Etah town, about 124 miles from capital Lucknow.
The comments drew flak from political opponents, prompting Yadav to retract his offer and accuse journalists of sneaking into the gathering.
"I have taken back those words," he told reporters in Lucknow on Friday. "Why are you raking it up? I don't know why the media is targeting me," he said.
Shame !! Shame !! Shame !!!!!!!!!!

Iran quake death toll hits 250, with over 2,000 injured, six villages leveled

A 6.4 -magnitude earthquake killed at least 250 people and injured over 2000 others in northwestern Iran on Saturday,
Iran's main news channel said the quake hit the towns of Ahar, Haris and Varzaqan in East Azerbaijan province at 4:53 p.m. local time (GMT 12:23), also damaging hundreds of homes.
The TV quoted Khalil Saei, local Crisis Committee chief, as saying that 30 people were killed in Ahar, 40 in Varzaqan and 17 others in Haris.
The broadcast said at least 60 villages sustained damage ranging from 50 to 80 per cent, while 4 other villages had been totally levelled to the ground.
 At least three aftershocks — measuring 6.0, 4.7 and 4.1 — jolted the same area and were felt in a wide region near the Caspian Sea.
Iran is located on seismic fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. It experiences at least one earthquake every day on average, although the vast majority are so small they go unnoticed.

Usain Bolt becomes living legend at London 2012 Olympic

“I won’t let Yohan beat me over 200 metres,” he said. “In the 100 maybe, he might have a chance, but the 200 is my favourite event. I’ve worked hard to perfect it over the years. I told him already that I won’t let it happen.” Last night Bolt was true to his word, even having the audacity to look across the line to check whether his friend had kept up with him. It was a performance that ended all the arguments about who is the greatest sprinter on the planet.

Yet, when he reflects on his achievement of becoming the first sprinter to win the Olympic double-double, Bolt will know just how big a contribution his 22-year-old understudy made to his history-making week in London, for it is impossible to overstate the impact Blake has had on Bolt’s return to his best, all-conquering form.

Bolt said as much after his 100m triumph at the olympics last Sunday, when he admitted that his training partner had jolted him out of his complacency by beating him not once, but twice at the Jamaican Olympic trials in June.

“The trials woke me up,” said Bolt. “Yohan gave me a wake-up call. He knocked on my door and said, 'Usain, wake up! This is an Olympic year.’”

Jism - 2 Official song Yeh kasoor

Girl molested by mob in Indian State Assam at night video

India blackouts leave 700 million without power

More than 700 million people in   India  have been left without power in the world's worst blackout of recent times, leading to fears that protests and even riots could follow if the country's electricity supply continues to fail to meet growing demand.
Twenty of India's 28 states were hit by power cuts, along with the capital, New Delhi, when three of the country's five electricity grids failed at lunchtime.
As engineers struggled for hours to fix the problem, hundreds of trains failed, leaving passengers stranded along thousands of miles of track from Kashmir in the north to Nagaland on the eastern border with Burma.
Traffic lights went out, causing jams in New Delhi, Kolkata and other cities. Surgical operations were cancelled across the country, with nurses at one hospital just outside Delhi having to operate life-saving equipment manually when back-up generators failed.
Elsewhere, electric crematoriums stopped operating, some with bodies left half burnt before wood was brought in to stoke the furnaces.
As Delhiites sweated in 89% humidity and drivers honked their horns even more impatiently than usual, in West Bengal the power cut left hundreds of miners trapped underground for hours when their lifts broke down. All the state's government workers were sent home after the chief minister announced it would take 10 to 12 hours for the power to return.  
First to fail was India's northern grid, which had also collapsed the previous day leaving an estimated 350 million people in the dark for up to 14 hours. It was quickly followed by the eastern grid, which includes Kolkata, then the north-eastern grid.
An estimated 710 million people live in the affected area, ever more of whom require electricity as they snap up the air-conditioning units, flat-screen TVs and other gadgets that have become status symbols among India's burgeoning middle class.
India has five electricity grids – northern, eastern, north-eastern, southern and western. All are interconnected, except the southern grid. The northern grid covers nine regions: Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Chandigarh.
At least six states are covered by the eastern grid: West Bengal, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Sikkim; the north-eastern grid connects Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.

Stop Genocide of the Muslim in Myanmar

Thousands of Muslims of Burma is facing worst conditions of killings in the Northwest Myanmar. There is 0.7 million Muslims in Burma having total population of about 75 million. The situation become tense after the violence overwhelmed its largest city last month. The mobs of Buddhists torching the houses of Muslims Rohingya communities and brutally killing them, according to Muslims this is all supported by the government officials. Thousands of Muslims were killed and annihilated. The Budhist mobs and army are free to play this blooded game.
This is the worst communal violence since the reformist government replaced a military janta last year and Thein Sein becomes the president. Burma is of the most ethnically diverse countries of Asia.  The agitations were founded in the Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Rakhine since last many years. Muslims are stateless in Burma, living near the border of Bangladesh. This fighting erupted and after the killing of many Muslims, government declared the state of emergency and imposed a dawn-to-dusk curfew.
The Muslims of Burma demanded recognition as an aboriginal ethnic group with full citizenship rights, which the Muslims against government regarded it illegal. They considered them immigrants from Bangladesh while the Indian influenced government of Bangladesh denies them and not allow crossing borders. The government of Bangladesh refused to tender them asylum.
The human rights organizations all over the world have maintained a criminal silence; most amazingly the Muslim world is also silent as in sound sleep. The world behaving as callous in this situation as killing of thousands of Burman Muslims are not any issue.
This is not the unusual thing, Muslims have been subject to such massacre and injustice even before. In Kashmir and now in Nigeria they are facing the same situation. Even in Syria the Muslims were faced the same situation but no one speaks out and all the human rights agencies including the United Nations were quite.

Reporter who filmed girl's molestation in Guwahati arrested

News Live reporter Gaurav Jyoti Neog, who filmed the molestation of a 17-year-old girl outside a pub in this main Assam city was arrested, on charges of instigating the mob of harassing the girl.

Neog, who worked for TV channel News Live, quit the job after he was accused of instigating the mob that molested and stripped a teenaged girl on a main road of Assam's main city July 9 night.

The activist had produced the video footage of the whole incident before the media to prove his allegation and also submitted the footage to Assam Police

Neog resigned from the channel following the controversy. The channel's editor-in-chief Atanu Bhuyan also resigned from the channel later.

The police have so far arrested 12 people for their alleged involvement in the crime and seized the raw video footage captured by the TV channel on the molestation.

Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi has recieved a lot of flak for being insensitive in issuing a press release with the name and photograph of the victim.

A mob molested and stripped the teenage girl after she came out with her fiends from the restaurant-cum-bar Club Mint on the busy G.S. Road Monday night.

The clip of the girl being molested was also caught on camera and went viral on the youtube .

Ramadan in Singapore

Ramadan Bazar in Singapore

There are many celebrations which take place on the island of Singapore. Singapore is a multi-cultural island. And, each culture has its own celebrations.
Singapore is a relatively young country, sewn together from radically different races and cultures. No wonder their holidays are also quite diverse! Both religious holidays and secular celebrations take place in Singapore, and guests are encouraged to take part in any of them, no matter what your particular religious or cultural allegiance!
Ramadan in Singapore is a celebration of receiving the Holy Quran. It is a time of worship and contemplation. 
The time of this event changes every year. It is a time of fasting for Muslims; from dawn to dusk they eat and drink nothing. During Ramadan food stalls are set up in the evening in the Arab Street district, near the Sultan mosque. Geylang Serai, one of the theme villages in Singapore, featuring Malay culture is well worth a visit in the evening.

Rajesh Khanna Funeral: Nation Pay Respects To Bollywood Icon

Bollywood stars and film fans have paid their last respects to one of India's first superstars, Rajesh Khanna, as his body was cremated in a Hindu ceremony in Mumbai.
Khanna's grandson Aarav performed the last rites Thursday after the star's body was carried from his home in a glass coffin by a truck festooned with photographs.
Thousands lined the streets to view the funeral procession.
Khanna died Wednesday of undisclosed causes at age 69.
He was known as the "King of Romance" and played the lead in most of his 170 movies, earning fame that had directors booking him for his box-office draw.
Screaming fans would surround Khanna in public, and women wrote him letters in their blood. But his appeal waned as Bollywood shifted toward action films.