August 2018

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16 August 2018 ASIA/WORLD www.theasianindependent.co.uk 1.67 million ballots rejected in Pakistan polls: Report Islamabad : About 1.67 million votes were excluded from the count in Pakistan's July 25 general election, surpassing the number of ballots rejected in 2013 polls, according to a report by an independent poll watchdog. Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) is a coalition of 30 domestic non-governmental organizations that observe general election and mobilize voters. According to the FAFEN report, the increase in the number of discarded ballots was a ubiquitous phenomenon observed in Pakistan's all four provinces and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT). Overall, the increase was recorded at around 11.7 per cent. There were more than 100 million registered voters in Pakistan but out of them, only about 51 per cent exercised their franchise, according to the Election Commission. Around 40 per cent increase in the number of rejected votes was observed in Balochistan, 30.6 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa including Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), 7 per cent in Sindh and 6.6 per cent in Punjab, said the report cited by Geo News. In ICT, the number of ballots excluded from the count was over double the discarded ballots in the region in 2013 election. The report also said that the number of votes excluded from the count surpassed the margin of victory in 120 (21 per cent) of the 570 provincial assembly constituencies where polls were conducted. These included 58 constituencies in Punjab, 24 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 22 in Sindh and 16 in Balochistan. The victory margin in 79 national and 169 provincial assembly seats was less than 5 per cent of the total votes cast, FAFEN said. N.Korea still pursuing nuclear, missile programmes: UN report Washington, A confidential UN report has accused North Korea of continuing to d e v e l o p nuclear and missile programmes in violation of international sanctions. The report was prepared by independent experts who submit their findings every six months to the UN North Korea Sanctions Committee of the Security Council, CNN reported on Saturday. The report also says North Korea is defying sanctions through diplomats and others based overseas and continues to sell conventional weapons to fuel violence. The revelation comes as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in Singapore for an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) ministerial meeting, told reporters that he was an advocate of keeping pressure on Pyongyang as the country has yet to take any concrete steps to dismantling its nuclear program. “I’ve also emphasized the importance of maintaining diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea, to achieve the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea as agreed to by chairman Kim (Jong-un),” he said. Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the gathering of southeast Asian diplomats, Pompeo said he had called for “the complete shutdown of illegal ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum destined for North Korea”. Boeing, SpaceX human spaceflight postponed to 2019 : NASA Washington, NASA has confirmed a delay in the first piloted flights of Boeing and SpaceX, part of NASA’s Commercial Crew programme to send humans to the International Space Station (ISS) on private US spacecraft. SpaceX is targeting November 2018 for Crew Dragon’s first uncrewed demonstration mission (Demo-1), three months later than the previous schedule released by NASA early this year. The crewed demonstration flight, with two astronauts on board, will follow in April 2019, four months later than previously announced. “We believe, the earliest time we can confidently do that will be in mid-2019 after flying an uncrewed flight test late this year or early next year,” said John Mulholland, vice president and programme manager for Man jailed for breaking into Buckingham Palace Boeing’s Commercial Crew effort, in a NASA blogpost. “I’m incredibly proud of the progress our team has made, and it has been inspiring to watch them work through challenges quickly, while developing a brand new human-rated spacecraft that Boeing, NASA and the Pompeo visits Malaysian PM ahead of Asean summit Kuala Lumpur, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday met Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Friday before leaving for Singapore to attend a summit of foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). Pompeo, who arrived in Malaysia on Thursday night, visited Mahathir Mohamad in Putrajaya and congratulated the 93-year-old leader for his surprise victory in the elections held in May, reports Efe news. Pompeo and Mahathir discussed a number of issues of mutual interest, according to a statement by the Malaysian government. The US and Malaysia established diplomatic ties in 1957, when the latter became independent from British rule and strengthened them in 2014 by signing a partnership agreement. After meeting Mahathir, Pompeo will leave for Singapore, the second stop of his Southeast Asia tour, where he will attend the Asean meeting, coinciding with the visit of a North Korean delegation, headed by his counterpart Ri Yong-ho. On Thursday, the Asean foreign ministers urged the two Koreas, the US and other parties to sustain efforts to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and establish lasting peace. Asean consists of Myanmar, Brunei, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, which have a joint population of around 630 million. London : A homeless man who trespassed into the grounds of Buckingham Palace before damaging a glass display cabinet and falling asleep on it has been jailed. Steven Lawlor, 44, entered the protected royal site on July 16 and broke poster boards and glass cabinets fixed to metal railings to use as bedding, Westminster Magistrates' Court heard, the BBC reported. He stayed there for more than four hours before the security guards spotted him on CCTV cameras. Lawlor was jailed for 28 days for trespassing and 21 days for criminal damage, to be served concurrently. The Queen was not in the palace at that time. Lawlor appeared in court nation can be proud of,” Mulholland added. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, on the other hand, will likely perform two crucial test flights next year, instead of this year as planned. Each test flight will provide data on the performance of the rockets, spacecraft, ground systems, and operations to ensure the systems are safe to fly astronauts. The crew for Boeing’s Crew Flight Test and SpaceX’s Demo-2 flights will each include at least a flight commander and pilot aboard to test out the systems. After successful completion of the flight tests with crew, NASA will review flight data to verify the systems meet the agency’s safety and performance certification requirements and are ready to begin regular servicing missions to the space station, the US space agency said. CBI moves request for Choksi's extradition from Antigua New Delhi : The extradition request for fugitive diamond merchant Mehul Choksi, who has secured an Atiguan passport and is living there, will soon be sent to the Caribbean country, the CBI said on Friday. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing the Rs 13,500-crore banking fraud allegedly committed by the jeweller and his nephew Nirav Modi, said that its letter to get Choksi deported has been forwarded to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). The CBI sent on Monday the letter to the Union Home Ministry which in turn forwarded it to the MEA, an official said. In its request to the Home Ministry, the CBI said Choksi's extradition was being sought "on grounds of principle of reciprocity and dual criminality". A source revealed that the MEA has received the extradition request from the CBI and is currently in the process of conveying it to the authorities in Antigua and Barbuda. via video-link on Friday and pleaded guilty to criminal damage and trespassing on a protected site. He caused 210 pound of damage but no order of We should have the right to criticise religion: Bangla writer New Delhi : Bangladeshi- American human rights activist and writer Rafida Bonya Ahmed, whose husband Avijit Roy was hacked to death by Islamic extremists in February 2015 while they were visiting Dhaka, has called for citizens right to critique the religion. She was participating at an international media forum here on Saturday. "Religion is a problem. It propagates hate and divisions. We should have the right to criticize religion. You don't pick up machetes, you pick up the pen. I see the hunger for change," Ahmed said at a session titled "Fighting Machetes with a Pen" during the closing day of The Media Rumble. Unnerved by the personal tragedy and attack that she and her late husband faced, she spoke in concern of issues related to free speech and highlighted the rise of religious extremism and censorship in Bangladesh. She said that religious fractiousness is injected very strategically in the country by those in power for purely self-driven ends. She also mentioned that extrajudicial killings have become common, and stated that religion, politics and class issues are all related. She said such issues have to be talked about in public space. Rafida Bonya Ahmed and her late husband, Avijit Roy, a writer, blogger and online activist, was attacked with machetes by Islamic extremists in Dhaka. Roy died and Ahmed was critically injured. She had received deep wounds in her head. The Media Rumble, organised by Newslaundry and Teamwork Arts, touched upon a wide range of issues facing the media industry and journalists in contemporary times. The two-day event was held across several venues at India Habitat Centre. compensation was made because of his limited means, the report said. The break-in prompted concerns over the security of the royal site. The Times newspaper reported that there were at leat two intruders at the palace last year. A 22-year-old man was arrested trying to climb a security fence last August, while in December a man was caught attempting to scale a wall within the perimetre fence. In 2016, a convicted murderer was jailed after climbing over the wall to get inside the palace.
www.theasianindependent.co.uk ENTERTAINMENT When Kher turned into Freeman’s fanboy! Till date, he has won a number of prestigious awards besides getting nominated for global honours such as Screen Actors Guild Awards and BAFTA. In fact, this year itself, Anupam Kher was nominated for his outings in The Big Sick and The Boy With the Topknot (both from 2017). Interestingly, the senior actor readily admits that he still behaves like a fanboy when he meets or spots iconic actors. “When I go for global award functions, whichever direction I look at, I see best actors from across the world sitting around. And there is a fan inside each one of us, including me. When Morgan Freeman got the lifetime achievement award (at Screen Actors Guild) earlier this year, I ended up clicking a photo with him. In fact, I went up to him as a fan. When I approach someone like that, I don’t do it as an actor, who has done 500 films and is a Padma Bhushan awardee; I go only as a fanboy,” he says. At international functions, Kher feels like he is “representing my country”. “So, for me, it is like, ‘India’s Anupam Kher’ or ‘Indian actor Anupam Kher’, and it’s a great feeling. In fact, that’s why when you see sportsmen/ athletes [winning medals at] Olympics or Commonwealth Games etc., it gives you a sense of Actors have well-researched scripts now: Shabana Azmi Veteran actor Shabana Azmi feels that the filmmaking process in India has come a long way in India. Talking about more acting workshops and the rising significance of the script, Azmi states, “What’s good about today’s movies is that there are acting workshops organised with intent to bring familiarity between the actors and characters, which is essential for any film.” “This also helps actors understand the director’s vision in a proper way. Today, actors have well-researched scripts in their hand which wasn’t the case with us, earlier,” Azmi further says, adding, “I always used to feel strange about it, especially working with child actors. The filmmaking process has developed, which I feel, is the best thing that has happened to Indian cinema.” However, when it comes to the quality of music being churned out of Bollywood, Azmi’s different views. “When I listen to today’s music, especially when it comes to their lyrics, I find it absurd. The quality has gone down, unfortunately.” vShabana Azmi has appeared in acclaimed films such as Sparsh (1980), Arth (1982), Godmother (1999), and more recently, the 2016 Sonam-K Ahuja starrer, Neerja. pride. After all, your nationality is mentioned right next to your name on the passport,” he says, adding that he still inds “awards to e fantastic.” “It makes you feel good ecause you are taught rom childhood that if you study well, you will get an award. So, it must be a great thing. I never got awards in studies or sports. In fact, I remember once my PT teacher, Sada Singh, saw me running and he said, ‘stop running Anupam, because even if you run alone you will come second (laughs)’. So, it is always a great feeling to get awards,” says the actor. August 2018 17 Richa Chadha takes a cue from Jessica Alba Richa Chadha has been busy filming for the second season of the web series Inside Edge, and it seems she's going to sport a different look this time around. According to a source from the production house, the actor's new style has been inspired by Hollywood actor Jessica Alba. A source reveals, "Her look in the show - that of a femme fatale - has been inspired from Alba's character Max Guevera in the popular TV show, Dark Angel. The show was hit in the West, and Alba's uber cool look was the talk of the town. Following that, the makers zeroed in on a similar look for Richa that would match her character in the series." The makers of the show have apparently decided on an edgy look for Richa, who plays Zarina Malik, the owner of a T20 cricket team in the show. In season two, Richa is said to take the centre stage, and her character is bolder and more powerful than she was in the previous season. The source further explains, "The team wanted something that was chic and modern and something that made Richa look powerful. When they were looking for references, they chanced upon Jessica Alba's look from Dark Angel, and Richa was drawn to it immediately." The actor has also been shooting a biopic on south Indian adult star, Shakeela Khan. She is flying between Mumbai, and a remote village in Karnataka, where the biopic b e i n g filmed. eat lengths to get l o o k right. the is Go with the flow Modelling to acting to singing, Himanshi Khurana has many a talent. No wonder, she is the latest face of music videos Social media is akin to a university in current times; be it your business or career, all are hugely dependent on it... believes actress and model Himanshi Khurana. In the age of 'influencers', this Ludhiana girl is known for her act in music videos, something that she has been doing for about a decade. In Chandigarh, on Thursday, she spoke at length on how visibility online is an indicator of success in any profession. "Short on time, today everyone is looking for solutions on the web - courses, opportunities, shopping, selling - today everything has converged on one's phone and the competition is fierce," says this recently turned singer. Work ethics As for moving from modelling to acting to singing, this girl likes to go with the flow. "I started modelling in class 10 and took up each project as it came my way. I was young, I didn't really care. If work came my way, I did it or carried on with my life, but my parents instilled in me strong work ethics." She has quite a few Punjabi films to her credit as well, including Jeet Langey Jahaan, Sadda Haq, Sukhpreet, Leather Life, Siffat and Bol. "If I am offered a role that a film can do without, I am not going to bother doing it," says the actress, who is getting ample recognition being the face of many a music videos, including the hugely popular Mann Bharrya. "It sure feels great to have the name prominently in the cast of music videos," she beams. It's this recognition that has fetched her endorsements, something that she insists she takes up only if she genuinely likes and uses the product. She offers a tip for a shining mane, "Ensure that you eat well."
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August 2018

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