Mumbai: Shahid Kapoor and Kiara Advani, who worked together in the blockbuster ‘Kabir Singh’, share a great friendship.
Shahid was in fact one of the attendees at Kiara and Sidharth’s wedding. As it was Shahid’s birthday on February 25, Kiara wished him on social media with a sweet post.
Taking to Instagram, Kiara dropped a sunkissed picture of Shahid and wrote, “Happy birthday to the selfie king! Wishing you the happiest, healthiest and most wonderful year ahead. Lots of love.”
Shahid shared Kiara’s post on his Instagram Story and captioned it, “muah Preeti.”
Shahid’s response to Kiara reminded fans of ‘Kabir Singh’.
“We want ‘Kabir Singh 2.0’,” a social media user commented.
Preeti was the name of Kiara’s character in ‘Kabir Singh’.
It’s been four years since Kiara and Shahid’s hit film ‘Kabir Singh’ was released and Shahid still addressed Kiara as “Preeti”.
On ‘Koffee With Karan 7’, Kiara illustrated how Shahid Kapoor addresses her as Preeti still. Shahid teased her how Sidharth must also call out her name in a similar manner. Isn’t their bond adorable?
Meanwhile, on the work front, Kiara has resumed work post her wedding with Sidharth.
On Saturday, Kiara shared that she has gotten back to work today. She dropped a boomerang video where she can be seen getting ready in her vanity van, as she winks looking at the mirror.
Sharing the video clip, she wrote, “Saturday, 25 February 2023, Back at Work,” along with heart-eyed and dancing emojis.
Kiara will be seen sharing screen space with Ram Charan in ‘RC 15’.
Speaking of Shahid’s upcoming projects, he will be seen in Ali Abbas Zafar’s ‘Bloody Daddy’. The film which will mark the actor’s first collaboration with the director is said to be the official adaptation of the 2011 French film ‘Nuit Blanche’ (Sleepless Night). He is currently basking in his OTT debut ‘Farzi’ success.
Wellington: A Cabinet committee and regional ministerial leads were appointed on Tuesday to help coordinate New Zealand’s response and recovery from cyclone Gabrielle which lashed the North Island over the past week.
The new Extreme Weather Recovery Committee will be chaired by Finance Minister Grant Robertson as Minister for Cyclone Recovery, with Barbara Edmonds as deputy, while Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty will also be members, reports Xinhua news agency.
“The government is fully aware of the scale of the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle and that the rebuild will come with a multi-billion dollar price tag,” Hipkins said.
The cyclone has left 11 people dead and more than 3,200 people uncontactable.
The government has provided an initial support package of NZ$50 million for businesses, farmers and growers, as well as injecting an extra NZ$250 million to help local councils fix roads, get transport links back up and access into communities, Hipkins said.
“But recovery is going to take a long time, so the Committee will help steer the work needed over the coming weeks and months to get affected regions back up and running again,” he said.
Ministers, in place for each affected region, will work directly with local councils on the local response and ensure local voices are heard and acted on, he added.
More fatalities still remain possible, said the prime minister, adding that the government discussed initial recovery plans on Monday, with the cost of the recovery estimated to be about NZ$13 billion.
New Zealand’s resilience is being tested like never before, Hipkins said.
“Lives have been turned upside down… Many people have seen their homes and all of their possessions completely destroyed. Countless others have been displaced,” he said.
About 10,000 people have been displaced by the adverse event, the level of which New Zealand has not seen since the Christchurch earthquake in February 2011, the authorities said.
New Zealand declared state of emergency on February 13, the third time in the country’s history, followed by widespread power outages, flight cancellations and school closures in the North Island.
It is only two weeks after Auckland and the adjacent region Waikato were inundated by record downpours and floods.
Four people were killed in the previous disaster three weeks ago, mainly in Auckland, the country’s largest city.
Peru used “excessive and lethal force” driven by “marked racist bias” against a largely indigenous and campesino population, Amnesty International has concluded, following an investigation into more than two months of anti-government protests which have claimed at least 60 lives.
An Amnesty International fact-finding mission investigated 46 possible cases of human rights violations and documented 12 cases of deaths from the use of firearms – all the victims appeared to have been shot in the chest, torso or head – following visits to the capital Lima and the southern cities of Chincheros, Ayacucho and Andahuaylas.
In a damning report, Erika Guevara-Rosas, the organisation’s Americas director, said the Peruvian authorities had permitted the “excessive and lethal use of force to be the government’s only response for more than two months to the clamour of thousands of communities who today demand dignity and a political system that guarantees their human rights.”
Police officers arrest a woman protesting against the government of Dina Boluarte in Lima, Peru. Photograph: Antonio Melgarejo/EPA
“The grave human rights crisis facing Peru has been fueled by stigmatisation, criminalisation and racism against Indigenous peoples and campesino communities who today take to the streets exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and in response have been violently punished,” she told journalists on Thursday.
The rights group’s visit comes as President Dina Boluarte and her government face widespread accusations of using excessive force against civilian protesters. At least 48 people have been killed by security forces, prompting the UN human rights office to demand an investigation into the deaths and injuries last month.
Peru has been mired in political strife and street violence since early December, when former president Pedro Castillo was accused of staging a coup after attempting to dissolve congress and rule by decree. He was arrested, and Boluarte, his vice-president and former running mate, took office. Protesters, however, have called for her resignation and early elections amid mounting deaths. She has refused to resign while the country’s congress has rejected bills to announce elections.
Amnesty International’s delegation said it presented evidence of excesses by the security forces to Boluarte in a meeting on Wednesday. The investigation found evidence of “marked racist bias” targeting historically marginalised populations as the number of arbitrary deaths was disproportionately concentrated in largely Indigenous regions, the organisation said.
Indigenous populations represent only 13% of Peru’s total population but they account for 80% of the total deaths registered since the crisis began, it found.
“It’s no coincidence that dozens of people told Amnesty International they felt that the authorities treated them like animals and not human beings,” said Guevara-Rosas. “The systemic racism ingrained in Peruvian society and its authorities for decades has been the driving force behind the violence used to punish communities that have raised their voices.”
“I come to demand justice. I come to speak on behalf of all those who were killed by bullets,” said Ruth Bárcena, the widow of Leonardo Hancco, 32, one of 10 citizens killed by soldiers in Ayacucho on December 15 after some protesters tried to storm the airport. “We are not terrorists,” she said.
Protests in Peru have not stopped since Boluarte assumed the presidency in December. Photograph: Carlos Garcia Granthon/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock
“I didn’t think that in the Peruvian state demanding your rights was a crime that deserved having your life taken,” said Bárcena, who leads a group of families left bereft by the violence in the Andean city. “[The dead] have left orphans who will never embrace their parents again. Like my daughter, who asks every day: ‘Why did they kill my father, why did the soldiers shoot my father?’”
A recent investigation by Peruvian journalists at IDL Reporteros retraced the final steps of six of the 10 killed in Ayacucho. It found that one of the victims was helping an injured protester on his doorstep, and two others, including a 15-year-old boy, were walking home and had not taken part in the demonstrations nor been involved in the attempt – by some protesters – to storm the airport.
The organisation said it found photographic and video material which pointed to “excessive and sometimes indiscriminate use of lethal and potentially lethal force by the authorities”. It added some of the cases could constitute extrajudicial killings.
It also found that judicial investigations into the deaths were slow and under-resourced and the “chain of custody of certain evidence had not been preserved, which could undermine the possibility of genuinely impartial and exhaustive investigations”.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
New Delhi: A high-level Parliamentary panel has asked the government to broadly define the term “fake news” and has also sought its response on the need for various fact-checking units (FCUs) in the country.
Noting that “fake news” is becoming a disturbing trend in the country, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communication and Information Technology has disapproved of the government’s silence on the matter.
The comments from the panel have come just days after the government decided to extend the timeline for consultations of its plan to take down information which is marked as “fake” by the FCUs of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
The extension came amid protests from all quarters against the move.
The Parliamentary panel’s observations have been made in its action taken report on “Ethical Standards in Media Coverage”, submitted in Parliament by the panel last week during the Budget session.
In the light of false or fake news becoming a disturbing trend in India, the committee has also sought to know from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, whether it intends to have such FCUs for countering misinformation in general.
The panel has also expressed its disappointment over the ministry’s silence on its earlier recommendation of using latest technologies like Artificial Intelligence, considering existing expertise in non-government agencies and to study the anti-fake news laws of countries like Australia, Malaysia and other democracies for developing some legal provisions.
It noted that “the ministry’s reply is silent on all these aspects and they submitted merely the statutory and institutional mechanisms for preventing spread of fake news existing for print media, TV channels and digital news publishers”.
However in the light of rapid spread of fake news due to latest technologies and its impact on the citizens, the committee has recommended that “there is always a scope for learning from the expertise of non-government organisations in the field and for studying anti-fake news laws of other countries so as to have some legal provisions for curbing fake news in the country”.
It has thus asked the Ministry to provide action taken in this direction along with the initiatives taken for utilising latest technologies such as Artificial Intelligence for intervening and checking fake news in near real time.
Ruqaya Mohammed Mustafa stood next to her few remaining neighbours and the heaped piles they once called home and wearily welcomed the first visitors she had seen since the earthquake last week.
All this time, she and the people of Jindires, in northern Syria, had been begging for help. First to dig survivors from the rubble, then to provide shelter and food in the cruel grip of winter.
“Where was the world when it mattered?” asked Ruqaya, 58, flanked by the remains of buildings where up to 80 people had died. “Why tell our stories when there’s nothing left?”
As aid bosses travelled to regime-held Damascus and Aleppo, desperation in opposition-held north-west Syria had turned to anger, then grief. “We realised there was nothing coming for us,” Ruqaya said. “We dug the bodies out with our bare hands. Those we couldn’t reach died.”
With no one now left alive under the devastation in Jindires, a scramble is under way to source life-saving supplies. Not for the first time, residents of northern Syria feel forgotten – by a world inured to their suffering after more than a decade of civil war, and by unresponsive global bodies that defer to political process.
Devastation in the town of Jindires. Photograph: Ghaith Alsayed/AP
A UN announcement on Monday that it had won the approval of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to open border crossings into the opposition-held north-west drew particular scorn.
Jindires was home to displaced people from all corners of Syria, especially those who had defied Assad and been forced into exile as a result. Tareq Aamer was one of them. “Assad is worse than the earthquake,” he said. “And the UN is killing us more by its policy towards Bashar. We don’t need to wait for them to open the borders. They are already open. Why are people asking for their permission?”
The first non-scheduled aid convoy crossed the border at Bab al-Salam on Tuesday carrying tents, medicines and blankets – a speck in the collective needs of a province ravaged by more suffering over the past decade than most other places in the Middle East.
Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, said the UN announcement was redundant and drew on narrow and bitterly contested interpretations of international law.
“The Assad regime has no right to be the ultimate authority on the fate of millions of civilians in non-regime-held areas of Syria,” he said. “The UN doesn’t need a [security council] resolution for cross-border humanitarian assistance, yet it is allowing Assad to be the only representative of the people he has oppressed for 12 years.”
Food is distributed to earthquake survivors in Jindires. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Ali Bakr, 60, was also demanding help for residents of Jinderes – the few still alive that he knew. Out of 18 members of his family, only one had survived, he said. “I need mental help to calm my nerves. I dug the bodies out with my own hands.”
Next to him stood Omran Sido, 36, whose three children, aged four months, six and eight, all died in the same building. “How will I ever recover from this?” he said. “It’s made worse by knowing that no one else cares.”
Along the road to Jindires, near the city of Afrin, a convoy of trucks carrying aid from Saudi Arabia had parked up. Flags announcing Qatari deliveries flew nearby. NGOs active inside the province have also distributed relief from pre-existing stockpiles.
But the piecemeal global response and readiness, even now, to defer to Assad hangs a pall over the region. “I went to Ukraine and saw UN cars every five metres,” said one resident – one of few with permission to cross into neighbouring Turkey and travel beyond. “I understand what they’ve been through. But so have we, and we continue to.”
A scene in Jindires, Aleppo province, on Tuesday. Photograph: Ghaith Alsayed/AP
In hospitals, medicines and morale are running low. Afrin hospital, one of the region’s biggest, received 750 patients, many of them badly injured or dying, in the hours after the earthquakes. Many were children, up to 15 of whom required amputations. “They are the most difficult things to perform,” said Wadan al-Nasr, who performed most of the surgeries. “Not technically, but because of what they represent.”
Three-year-old Nour clings to an inflated glove. Photograph: Celine Kasem
In a nearby ward, three-year-old Nour lay sleeping, her one remaining leg covered by a blanket. Her other leg had been amputated in the rubble of the family home, where her mother and siblings had died. Her father came to visit her most days, and her comfort in between was a hand-shaped balloon. Nour’s tiny hand held one of its fingers.
In a sports hall, Wahid Khalil had bunkered down with what remained of his family. His young daughter was listless and feverish. A young doctor in a white coat rushed her away amid crowds of men and women who wandered slowly around their makeshift home. A little while later, the girl returned with a lollipop and a cup of medicine, a rare glimpse of hope after a dark week.
But elsewhere there was little to celebrate. “The countries that claim humanitarian rights are paramount, where are they?” asked Aamer, back in Jindires. “They end up exploiting our suffering. They seem to care about animal rights more than humanitarian rights.
“This earthquake will give up more bodies, when we can get to them,” he said. “But this regime has many more secrets that need uncovering. The Russians have tested 400 weapons on us and turned us into lab rats. It’s misery on top of suffering. The world must help us rebuild and it needs to learn the lessons of history. Assad is not your friend.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
New Delhi: In wake of the Centre telling the Supreme Court that the government has no objections on committee to probe the matter in wake of the Adani-Hindenburg Group episode, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Monday questioned the government on why it was not agreeing to a joint parliamentary committee (JPC).
“Today in Supreme Court Solicitor General said Govt has no objection to a commitee to examine the Hindenburg report on Adani. Then why the stubborn refusal to a JPC which will anyway be dominated by BJP & its allies? But will the proposed committee investigate Hindenburg or Adani?” he said.
Various opposition parties have been demanding a JPC to examine the whole issue as they alleged that many PSBs and LIC have lost money.
The Central government on Monday informed the Supreme Court that the existing structure, which includes the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and others agencies, are fully equipped to handle the situation which occurred after Hindenburg report on Adani group, and it would not oppose the court’s suggestion to constitute a committee to strengthen the existing regime.
It stressed that the court could permit it to suggest the remit of that committee with possible suggestions of names of the committee.
Washington: After the massive earthquakes that struck southern Turkey and western Syria on February 6 and killed thousands, NASA on Saturday said it is working to share its aerial views and data from space to aid relief and recovery workers, as well as improve its ability to model and predict such events.
Scenes collected before and after the earthquake were used by a team of scientists from the Earth Observatory of Singapore and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to create something called a damage proxy map for Turkey.
These maps compare before and after radar images of a given event to see how the landscape has changed.
“NASA’s hearts and minds are with those impacted by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
“NASA is our eyes in the sky, and our teams of experts are working hard to provide valuable information from our Earth-observing fleet to first responders on the ground,” he added.
In this preliminary damage proxy map, made with data from #Landsat and Japan’s ALOS-2 satellite, dark red areas are likely to have severe damage to buildings, homes, and infrastructure or changes to the landscape. Orange and yellow areas are moderately or partially damaged. pic.twitter.com/SexUwqQytO
One of NASA’s key capabilities is an expertise with synthetic aperture radar, or SAR.
Viewing Earth in all weather conditions, day or night, SAR is used to measure how the ground moves and built landscape changes after this type of event.
“We don’t know everyone who is using this information or how, but we are fortunate to have heard back from a few groups. For instance, the World Central Kitchen – which is providing food to those who’ve been displaced – have let us know they make use of it,” said Lori Schultz, NASA’s disaster coordinator for this earthquake.
In addition to assessing damage, NASA scientists use space- and ground-based observations to improve the agency’s ability to understand related events that cascade from the original natural disaster.
While not in use yet, NASA scientists are hoping to add a new tool to assess the aftermath of the quake.
The Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation, or EMIT, instrument was launched to the International Space Station in July 2022.
As part of its observations of the composition of material in Earth’s atmosphere, it can assess methane emissions.
When passing over the earthquake site, measurements of increased or new emissions could point to events not otherwise easily spotted from space.
As search and rescue efforts continued for a sixth straight day on Saturday to find more survivors, the number of people killed following the devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 has reached at least 23,831.
In one of her first acts as governor, Sanders garnered national attention for a directive banning the term Latinx across the Arkansas government. In her Tuesday response, Sanders similarly waded into culture war subjects that have animated conservatives in the Biden years, inveighing against “false idols” of the left and other conservative punching bags.
“That’s not normal. It’s crazy, and it’s wrong,” she said.
Huckabee also hitthe president for his stewardship of the economy and the Biden administration’s handling of immigration policy.
Those broadsides are not far apart from the depiction of Biden and his fellow Democrats presented by her previous boss, former President Donald Trump, underscoring the lasting impression he has made on the Republican party — albeit with the former president’s sharpest edges shaved off.
Trump, the only major declared Republican candidate for the White House, released his own short response to Biden’s speech in which he painted a bleak picture of the country and accused the president of allowing illegal immigrants to “storm” the country and letting drug cartels smuggle drugsacross the border.
Trump also highlighted inflation, the rise in murder rates, and said the Biden administration is “trying to indoctrinate and mutilate our children” — a reference to sexual orientation and gender identity issues that have animated the party.
By contrast, Sanders echoed those same themes, without the same level of rancor and in a way that Republicans have at times sought for in hopes of modulating the former president’s agenda into an enduring coalition. At the outset of her remarks, she referenced her thyroid cancer diagnosis and treatment, as well as her mother’s experience with a different form of cancer, before swiftly pivoting into a condemnation of Biden.
“The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left; the choice is between normal or crazy,” she said.
Sanders also teased the forthcoming release of an education plan for Arkansas that she said would — if enacted — raise teachers’ salaries, expand parental choice and improve childhood literacy.
Sanders’ speech stands in contrast to the tone left by her predecessor, Republican Asa Hutchinson, a regular presence on Washington Sunday shows who in the past has condemned some of Trump’s rhetoric, his most controversial policies while and members of the former governor’s fellow lawmakers in Arkansas.
Hutchinson has at times flirted with a presidential run as a conservative alternative to Trump, while Sanders has tamped down speculation that she is angling for a higher position.
“I look forward to serving as governor of Arkansas for a full eight years if the people of Arkansas will give me that privilege and that opportunity,” she said this week on “Fox News Sunday.”
Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
London: The UK government said on Monday that it will immediately deploy emergency response teams to Turkey to assist with rescue efforts in the wake of the country’s worst earthquake in decades.
A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Turkey and Syria early on Monday, killing more than 2,300 people. Turkey’s disaster agency said more than 1,500 people died there, while it is estimated that over 800 people were killed in Syria.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said it is deploying a team of search, rescue and medical experts to help on the ground following the 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes and subsequent aftershocks.
A flight is expected to depart the UK at 4 pm local time and arrive around 9 pm local time in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.
“The UK is sending immediate support to Turkey including a team of 76 search and rescue specialists, equipment and rescue dogs,” said UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
“In Syria, the UK-funded White Helmets have mobilised their resources to respond. We stand ready to provide further support as needed,” he said.
The UK said it is providing the support that the Turkish government has asked for.
The UK International Search and Rescue team has specialist search equipment including seismic listening devices, concrete cutting and breaking equipment, propping and shoring tools.
“The British Embassy in Ankara is in close contact with the Turkish authorities to understand how we can best support those on the ground,” said Jill Morris, the British Ambassador Designate to Turkey.
“Our thoughts are with all those affected by the earthquakes today. We pay tribute to the brave Turkish first responders working to save lives,” she said.
In northwest Syria, the UK-aid-funded White Helmets have activated a significant search and rescue response and mobilised all their resources to respond to emerging needs.
The UK government said it is in contact with British humanitarian workers in the affected areas, and stands ready to provide support to any British nationals affected.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday’s earthquake was the worst the country had seen since 1939, when a powerful tremor in eastern Turkey killed nearly 33,000 people.
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