British police seize over $400,000 suspected funds for IS

London: British police have confiscated 250,000 pounds (about 401,713 dollars) of suspected funds for the Islamic State (IS), the anti-terror authorities said Monday.

 Most of the money was seized from travellers departing from Manchester Airport to Turkey, who were suspected of supplying cash for militia fighters in Syria and Iraq.

"Terrorists need money to fight. At the Turkish border with Syria there are shops where you can buy guns, boots, rations and if you are going out there to fight you need money and you want equipment," Xinhua quoted Tony Mole, detective chief superintendent of the Greater Manchester Police (GMP), as saying.

"We take that cash away from people, not only stopping them from buying weapons and funding terror organisations which are a threat to the UK and an international threat but we also disrupt that person," added Mole, who is also head of the North West Counter Terrorism Unit (NWCTU).

Some of the confiscated cash was spotted in the travellers' luggage or hidden under their clothes.

The confiscated cash was seized between April 2013 and April this year, while details for the rest of Britain were not available yet.

Nod to prosecute Baba-baiter seer

New Delhi: The Supreme Court said the Sankaracharya of Dwarka can be prosecuted for his alleged remarks that the Sai Baba of Shirdi should not be worshipped as he was neither a god nor an incarnation of divinity.

The Sankaracharya of Dwarka

“The moment he incites violence, he commits an offence. Prosecute him,” the court said but refused to pass any directive in what was “not a matter for judicial intervention”.

The three-judge bench declined to entertain a petition by the Maharashtra-based Saidham Charitable Trust, which had sought a directive asking the Union government to tell all states to ensure protection of Sai Baba idols and action against the pontiff.

The trust, represented by senior counsel A. Sundaram, had said the Dwarka seer’s remarks had a devastating effect as idols had been removed from temples in several states and dumped in gutters or immersed in local ponds and rivers.

Justices T.S. Thakur, A.K. Goel and R. Banumathi said if the trust was really aggrieved, it could approach criminal courts in places where the alleged vandalism had taken place and seek Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati’s prosecution.

“Hinduism is a way of life. Go and file a suit. Ordinary law will apply. Nothing prevents a trust from preventing… miscreants from taking away… idols. Law and order is a state subject,” the bench told the counsel.

“This is not a matter for judicial intervention,” it added. “If you want to pursue a remedy, you can always go to a criminal court.”

The trust’s counsel persisted with the plea, saying the reported incidents of vandalism had taken place at 10-15 places and it wouldn’t be possible to lodge complaints everywhere.

The court wasn’t convinced. “Just as you say you believe in idol worship, someone else will say I don’t believe in idol worship. It is not for this court to interfere in such matters. Go and file a suit. Ordinary law will help you,” the bench said.

The trust subsequently withdrew its plea.

Earlier in June, the Sankaracharya had reportedly said Hindus should not worship the Sai Baba of Shirdi, revered by millions, as he was a human being and not a god.

The petition filed by the trust complained that the Sankaracharya’s comments had created widespread anxiety and anger among followers of the Sai Baba. Although a criminal complaint was lodged with Indore police, the pontiff, it said, had repeated his assertion to the media.

The petition said the Union government had done nothing to restrain the Sankaraharya and his followers from persisting with instigating people against the Sai Baba despite a representation to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Know how to make $500,000 a year on Twitter?

New York: By just tweeting out facts to his seven million-plus followers, a 23-year-old youngster here is making $500,000 a year.

Owner of the tweeter account @UberFacts, Brooklyn-based Kris Sanchez makes a moolah for tweeting sponsored links.


The links, when clicked by his followers, earn him between $.01-.03 per click, according to Fast Company, a New York-based firm that inspires a new breed of innovative and creative thought leaders.


"I joined Twitter to follow Britney Spears. But I did not have anything to tweet about. So I figured, hey, tweeting these facts would be a really good idea. It was just so I could feel like I was closer to her,” Sanchez told Fast Company.


This is how he makes his millions.


A company called Social Reactor pairs social media influencers with advertisers, supplies him with galleries or other web pages that Sanchez links to in his Tweets.


He gets paid for every click those pages receive.


In his branded deals with companies like Ford and Paramount, a simple tweet, accompanied by a link and a hashtag, becomes a virtual slot machine, gushing out thousands of dollars.


Sanchez has also developed an UberFacts app that reportedly brings in $60,000 a week in ad revenue.


The app has been downloaded 1.5 million times till date.

Misbah was not forced to sit out, clarifies PCB

Karachi: The trouble-prone Pakistan cricket team dressing room was once again witness to some drama and it took PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan’s intervention to diffuse the controversy generated by Misbah-ul Haq’s decision to rest from the third ODI against Australia.

Misbah-ul-Haq

Khan had to talk to the media in Abu Dhabi during the third ODI to defuse the impression that Misbah had been coerced or pressurised into not playing the third ODI by the team management, which is totally behind Shahid Afridi who led the side in the match on Sunday.

Although Misbah took pains to make politically correct appearances during the match to give the impression that everything was alright in the dressing room but former players still didn’t spare the PCB for its sudden decision to hand over the captaincy to Afridi.

Shaharyar said that Misbah was not forced to sit out.

“Neither me nor management have influenced Misbah to sit out, he has done it on his own, he is determined to return. I had an half hour chat with him. He says if ‘I am back to form I would like to lead to the World Cup’,” Khan told the media.

After Pakistan lost the match, former fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar waded into head coach Waqar Younis and even manager/chief selector Moin Khan and the PCB for even accepting Misbah’s wish to take a break.

“What is happening? What sort of message is being conveyed to the cricket world? Four months before the World Cup, we don’t know who is going to be our ODI captain. The PCB and management is only adding to the confusion with their strange statements,” Akhtar said.

Former Test captain, Ramiz Raja said if Misbah wanted to rest, a younger player should have been given charge of the team instead of Afridi.

Blonde woman makes head turn by walking 'Polar Bear'

London: A blonde recently made heads turn when she took a polar bear out for a stroll in Tokyo, Japan.

People clicked pictures, which showed the bear crossing the world-famous Shibuya Scramble crossing, however, some of the people believed that it wasn't real and could have been a "robot," the Daily Star reported.

The woman who walked the bear was accompanied by some men, and all of them were clad in similar T-shirts with the words "LALSH" printed on them, a name which as per the reports belongs to some unspecified group from Russia.

The group, which is also listed on Facebook as an organisation, has promised some sort of reveal in Shinjuku at the end of this month.

IRCTC finally releases a ticketing app for your Android device

New Delhi: The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, better known as IRCTC, has at long last launched its official app for Google's mobile platform, Android. The app can now be downloaded from Google Play India, requires about 12MB of free space, and will work on devices running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean or above.

 The new IRCTC Connect app for Android will allow users to do pretty much everything that they can do on the website – booking tickets, checking reservation status, train schedules, train routes and more. Users can even login to their IRCTC accounts to search, book and cancel train tickets, and even receive upcoming journey alerts.

IRCTC launched its official ticket booking app for Blackberry's BBOS 10 in August this year, while the version for Windows Phones and PCs was released last year. While it's odd that the Indian railways chose to bring their service to less popular platforms first, there has been a beta version of the IRCTC app for Android for some time now.

In any case, Android users will now be able to book Indian railway tickets right from the smartphone app, eliminating the requirement to access the IRCTC website. The app boasts of being an easy and quick way of booking tickets, checking reservation status and canceling them, but for a first hand experience you can download the app from here.

Why beer tastes good to us

London: The importance of yeast in beer brewing has long been underestimated but researchers from University of Leuven in Belgium now report that beer yeasts produce chemicals that mimic the aroma of fruits in order to attract flies that can transport the yeast cells to new places.

Interestingly, yeasts are essential for the flavour of beverages such as beer and wine.

“In fact, yeasts may even be responsible for much of the 'terroir', the connection between a particular growing area and wine flavour which previously often was attributed to differences in the soil,” said Kevin Verstrepen from University of Leuven, also known as KU Leuven.

The new collaborative study from VIB, a life sciences research institute, and KU Leuven shows that the fruity volatiles produced by yeast cells are highly appealing to fruit flies.

This attraction allows some yeast cells to hitch a ride with the insects who carry the otherwise immobile microbes to new food sources.

Flies are strongly attracted to normal yeast cells when compared to mutant yeasts that do not produce esters.

“Knowing that esters make beer taste good, it seems that the same flavours that allow us to enjoy our beer probably evolved to attract flies and to help yeast disperse into broader ecosystems,” explained neuroscientist Emre Yaksi from Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders (NERF), an academic research initiative.

The team believes that their findings have far-reaching implications.

“We all know that flowers attract insects by producing aromas. But there is also a lot of microbes living inside flowers and the chemicals they produce may also play an important role,” added Joaquin Christiaens from VIB who performed the experiments with yeast cells.