I would love to direct Amitabh Bachchan: Peter Webber

British director Peter Webber, best known for his Scarlett Johansson-Colin Firth starrer feature debut 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', says he would love to make a cross-cultural film with Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan.

"I would love to work to with Amitabh Bachchan. Who would not? He is a living legend. He is amazing and I would like to make a movie with him, which has elements of both India and England, basically a cross-cultural film. That would be interesting," Webber told in an interview.

The director is in India to judge the International Competition section at the ongoing Mumbai Film Festival with filmmakers Mahamat Saleh Haroun, Ritesh Batra and Ron Mann.
Webber said Bachchan and other Bollywood stars like Shah Rukh Khan enjoy huge popularity in England.

"There is a big Indian community in England, so we all know about Bollywood actors and they are really famous."

Webber is looking forward to watching some Bollywood films as he is not well acquainted with contemporary Indian cinema.

"I am not an expert on contemporary Indian films. I have not watched any but I am fond of the old era of Satyajit Ray and Guru Dutt's times. I like those movies. I am hoping to catch on some good Indian stuff now," the filmmaker said, adding that he would like to collaborate with Indian filmmakers.

As a part of the jury, Webber says he does not have any set criterion to mark the films in competition but will look for storyline and performances.

"I will see if a story is captivating enough, if it is told in an interesting manner and whether 
performances are great or not."

Webber, who mostly chooses history as his main subject in his films, will next direct 'Piano Tuner', based on Daniel Mason's acclaimed historical novel.

 It is set in 1886 and follows a piano tuner who receives a request by the British War Office to deliver a rare grand piano to a legendary British Officer in the remote jungles of northeast Burma.

Slave girl kept in cellar awarded $160,000 in UK court

LONDON: A deaf and mute girl smuggled to Britain and kept as a slave for almost a decade must be paid £1,00,000 ($1,60,000) by her captors, a court ruled on Wednesday.

Trafficked from Pakistan as a 10-year-old girl, the victim was repeatedly raped by Ilyas Ashar, 85, who along with his wife Tallat, 69, forced her to work as their servant.

She was discovered in the cellar of their five-bedroom house sleeping on a cot bed by investigators looking into allegations of money laundering.

Now in her 20s, she learned a form of sign language to testify at the trial last year.

"The money will in no way make up for what she went through over a number of years, but it will help her move on with her life and continue her inspiring recovery from these awful events," said Salford Chief Superintendent Mary Doyle.

"I believe today's outcome also gives hope to any victim of trafficking. It reminds us that there are people out there willing to bring people to this country purely to be exploited but, with the correct use of the law, the perpetrators can be brought fully to justice."

The court calculated the Ashars should pay the victim £101,300: what she would have been paid if she had earned the minimum wage working for the couple for 12 hours a day, every day since 2003 except for ten days off.

The two also must also pay back benefits to the state that they wrongfully claimed for the girl.

The victim, who cannot be named, could not read or write but was taught to write her name by the Ashars so that they could claim social benefits on her behalf.

Ilyas Ashar was earlier jailed for 15 years for rape, trafficking and benefit fraud, and his wife Tallat was jailed for five years for trafficking and benefit fraud.

Their daughter Faaiza Ashar, 46, was ordered to do community service after being convicted of benefit fraud.

At their earlier conviction, judge Peter Lakin said the Ashars had shown no remorse and were "deeply unpleasant, highly manipulative and dishonest people" who did not treat the girl as a human being. 

Kevin Pietersen a Brash Kid Who Never Grew up: Martin Crowe

Former New Zealand skipper Martin Crowe feels there is no need to sympathise with Kevin Pietersen, who has accused his former England teammates of bulling younger players in his recently released controversial autobiography.

File photo of former England player Kevin Pietersen. 

 

Former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe said Kevin Pietersen has been unable to lose the bitterness of his past, which forced him to leave Natal in South Africa as a young man and seek cricketing opportunities in England.
Pietersen, who was controversially sacked from the England side after an Ashes whitewash against Australia, Down Under, released his bare-all book, KP: The Autobiography, where he picked on teammates and former coach Andy Flower besides accusing senior players of allowing a bullying culture to develop in the dressing-room. The revelations drew mixed reactions and Pietersen was once again subjected to intense criticism from men he had once played cricket with, men he once called friends.
Crowe, one of the more charismatic captains to have ever led the Black Caps, said Pietersen's story of a kid who left his home shores to travel to a distant land and represent an adopted country had taken a sad turn, given everything he had achieved and subsequently destroyed. The brash right-handed batsman made a sensational debut against Australia, slamming two half-centuries in 2005, a year after he first played ODIs for England.
"It is a sad story of a kid who never grew up. With sadness normally comes sympathy, but in this case there need not be any now. This young, brash kid from Pietermaritzburg has had more chances to step out of his shadow, and has ultimately, going by this week's example, accepted very few," Crowe wrote for ESPNcricinfo. "The record of the batsman will speak of something, but not of the man, for it never came to be. KP simply remained an insecure kid.
Now, at 34, he is ship-wrecked, his international cricket career well over, his esteem in his adopted country utterly compromised. He may as well go back to Natal and start again."
Many believed Pietersen was among the best batsmen in the world, even when the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Jacques Kallis, Ricky Ponting and Rahul Dravid were in full bloom. He had smashed his way to 4000 runs in his first 45 Tests and bowlers the world over shuddered at the thought of bowling to England's new middle-order star.
However, Pietersen's dizzying heights soon came crashing down when as a captain, he got into tiffs with coach Peter Moores, who was removed from his role. He was co-incidentally named coach again after Flower's tenure was over in 2014. In the following years, Pietersen would also get into trouble over texting South African cricketers derogatory messages about former England skipper Andy Strauss. Removed from the national team, Pietersen was reintegrated during the tour of India, where he got back to scoring match-winning hundreds yet again.
The joy of England fans watching Pietersen decimate bowling attacks remained short-lived as he soon started developing differences with captain Alastair Cook in the wake of a horror Australian tour that ended early this year.
Pietersen's fall from disgrace and the affection of the cricket-loving public in his home remained a mystery and Crow, much like former England captain Nasser Hussain wondered if the cash-rich Indian Premier League had anything to do with it.
"Did the IPL become his new focus and paymaster once disposed as a Test captain? In his bitterness did he turn his energy off England, in defiance of England, switching his allegiance to grow his own marketable brand? We are left to ponder all that this week.
What he cannot deny is that his batting numbers went down while his behaviour got exposed, his attitude changed towards ODIs to play more IPL games, the runaway train crashing inevitably," Crowe wrote.
Crowe, one of the most outspoken commentators of the game feels his autobiography "reeks of ego and a falsehood. It is not one of a man's truth, but of a wayward youth. Make no mistake, despite its superb authorship, this book is feeble, even pitiful, definitely unnecessary."
Pietersen knows his England career is now over. After such unsettling claims, the England dressing-room will no longer be a welcome place. But the 'kid from Natal' will always be remembered for once leading England to the top of the world, before crashing down on his face in the most unglorious manner.

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.

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.