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Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan can now call himself "doctor" after being honoured in the United Kingdom for his contribution to arts and culture.
Bedfordshire University conferred the doctorate upon him at a ceremony in London on Friday night.
Khan said he aimed to use the award to help educate underprivileged children.
The actor, who has starred in dozens of films, already has his own waxwork at Madame Tussaud's and has previously been honoured in France and Malaysia.
'Top' award
Khan was able to joke about becoming a doctor after frequent surgery in the past few years, most recently on his shoulder five months ago.
"Interestingly my kids don't understand this doctorate and believe I will be awarded a stethoscope," he joked at the degree ceremony.
The star was awarded the doctorate at a top London hotel instead of on university premises north of London because of the summer break.
The university received his nomination from Routes 2 Roots, an NGO that works towards people-to-people contact across the subcontinent, especially India and Pakistan.
source:bbc.com

Pakistan says the army has almost ended operations against the Taliban in the former tourist resort of Swat and nearby districts. Some two million people are being urged to return to their homes in the north-west. The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan reports from Swat's main town, Mingora.
As we move deeper into the Swat valley, the ravages of war are all around us.
Destroyed buildings and broken roads mark the passage of fighting which was heaviest close to Mingora.
There is also a steady stream of people moving to and from the region.
"We came back to check out whether our house and belongings had survived the fighting," Abdullah, a Mingora resident, told us.

"Thanks to Allah, it has survived intact. Now I am going back to my family, who are in a camp in Mardan."
source: bbc.com

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- When Glynis McCants looks at Michael Jackson's life, she sees the number five.
Jackson's talent was discovered when he was 5 years old, he came to fame as a member of the Jackson 5 and he planned a series of 50 concert dates in London, England, as part of a comeback tour before he died on June 25 at the age of 50.

For McCants, a noted numerologist and author, those facts are very telling: "Five is the number for drama, and it was in his life his whole life."

For many fans, the lure of Michael Jackson as a performer and pop icon was magical. Those who deal in the paranormal are tuned in to that magic.

Numerology deals with the influence of numbers on personal characteristics and human affairs.

McCants -- who has appeared on nationally syndicated television and radio shows and is known as the "Numbers Lady" -- said that by taking Jackson's birth date (August 29, 1958, or 8/29/1958) she could chart his personality.

His was "six life path," she said, meaning he was magnetic and drew people to him. That, coupled with the fact that he was born on a two day made him irresistible, she said.

"If you are born on a two day and are a six life path then America and the world seem to fall in love with you," McCants said.
source: cnn.com

Twenty milligrams; that's the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article.

Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released. And in the several minutes it will take you to get to the end of this story, the number of milligrams of greenhouse gas emitted could be several thousand, if not more.

This may not seem like a lot: "But in aggregate, if you consider all the people visiting a web site and then all the seconds that each of them spends on it, it turns out to be a large number," says Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University who studies the environmental impact of computing.

Wissner-Gross estimates every second someone spends browsing a simple web site generates roughly 20 milligrams of C02. Whether downloading a song, sending an email or streaming a video, almost every single activity that takes place in the virtual environment has an impact on the real one.

As millions more go online each year some researchers say the need to create a green Internet ecosystem is not only imperative but also urgent.
source: cnn.com/technology

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Ijaz Butt will not attend the logo unveiling ceremony of the 2011 World Cup and a meeting of the central organising committee to be held in Mumbai on July 14.

Instead, Director Cricket Operations Zakir will represent the PCB in the meeting.

According to sources, the PCB chief will not attend the meeting, as the board is involved in legal proceedings against the ICC.

“Since we are in the process of having the ICC disputes resolution tribunal hear out appeal against the moving of the World Cup matches from Pakistan and we have also talked about a proper legal challenge against the ICC decision, we have to see what our lawyers say,” a board official said yesterday.

The official said PCB chairman Ijaz Butt and chief operating officer Salim Altaf had been invited to attend the two events on July 14. “We will do whatever our lawyers tell us to do because we don’t want to damage our case in the ICC,” he added.

The PCB is fighting to regain hosting rights of its share of World Cup matches that were shifted to other host countries, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by the ICC executive board due to security concerns. But the PCB said since the security situation is the same in other host countries, Australia or New Zealand should host the 2011 World Cup and the 2015 event held at the sub-continent or the country be allowed to host its share of matches at neutral venues. Both proposals by the PCB have been rejected by the ICC and the other host countries who had, however, said Pakistan would get the entire hosting fee of $10.5 million for its share of World Cup matches.
source: geo.tv

COLOMBO: Pakistan team collapsed for a mere total of 90 runs against Sri Lanka after lunch on first day of the second Test match here on Sunday.

This was Pakistan’s lowest ever Test score against Sri Lanka, eclipsing previous total was 117 made just in the first Test.

Sri Lanka's pace duo of Nuwan Kulasekera and Thilan Thushara ripped through Pakistan's batting line after Pakistan elected to bat on a wicket that gave early assistance to the seamers, slumped to 19-4 within the first seven overs before going to lunch on the first day struggling at 74-6.

Kulasekera, playing his eighth Test, grabbed four wickets for 21 runs and left-armer Thushara chipped in with three scalps in a dramatic Pakistani collapse at the P. Sara Oval.

Former Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik was the lone batsman to defy the Sri Lankan bowlers as he returned unbeaten at the end of the innings with 39.

Only two other batsmen, Fawad Alam (16) and Mohammad Yousuf (10) could enter into double figures whereas four batsmen, captain Younis Khan, Misbah-ul-Haq, Saeed Ajmal and Abdul Rauf, got out for nought.

It was not the start the tourists were looking for after losing the first Test in Galle last week to trail 1-0 in the three-match series.
source: geo.tv

Federal agents found much of the information produced by the Bush administration's top-secret warrantless surveillance program vague and difficult to use, a sweeping review of the program found.
Then-President George Bush and other top administration officials have said the program was a critical tool in preventing terrorist attacks. However, a report Friday by the inspectors general of the CIA, the Justice Department, the Pentagon and other agencies found that some FBI and CIA agents were frustrated by the secrecy surrounding the program.

Former CIA chiefs Michael Hayden and Porter Goss told investigators the wiretaps filled a gap in U.S. intelligence. One senior official quoted in the report called the wiretaps, dubbed the "President's Surveillance Program" by the report, "a key resource," while the FBI considered it "one tool of many" in their efforts to head off terrorist plots, the report states.

"Even though most PSP leads were determined not to have any connection to terrorism, many of the FBI witnesses believed the mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile," the report states.

The program was hugely controversial when Bush acknowledged its existence in 2005. Critics said the program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a 1978 law passed to rein in the wiretapping abuses of the Watergate era.

Bush's approval allowed the National Security Agency to intercept communications between people in the United States and overseas who were suspected of having ties to terrorists without getting a court order. He and other officials said the program "prevented attacks and saved lives," as Vice President Dick Cheney put it in a May speech critical of their successors in the Obama administration.
source: cnn.com