Spanish court rejects Messi appeal in tax fraud case

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Barcelona: A Spanish court has rejected an appeal lodged by Argentina and Barcelona forward Lionel Messi against his prosecution for alleged tax evasion.

Spain's public prosecutor argued in June that Messi's father Jorge was responsible for the family's finances and not the four-times World Player of the Year.

A court in Barcelona decided, however, Lionel Messi could have known about and approved the creation of a web of shell companies that were allegedly used to evade taxes due on income from image rights.

The appeal against that decision has been rejected, according to court documents published on Friday.

Messi and his father have been accused of defrauding the Spanish state of more than 4 million euros (5 million US dollars). They have denied wrongdoing.

2 million Muslims stone 'devil' at Haj, feast begins

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MINA(SAUDI ARABIA): Two million Muslims, including Indians, ritually stoned the devil today in the last major ritual of this year's Haj in Saudi Arabia, while fellow believers around the world celebrated Eid al-Adha. The stoning took place in Mina, about five kilometres east of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca. Pilgrims had moved to Mina overnight on foot, motorbikes, and buses from Mount Arafat after the Haj reached its zenith with a day of prayer, as well as tears by pilgrims moved by the sanctity of the spot where Prophet Mohammed is believed to have given his final sermon 14 centuries ago. In the stoning ritual, pilgrims throw pebbles, which they collected at Muzdalifah on the way to Mina, at walls to emulate Abraham who is said to have stoned the devil at three locations when he tried to dissuade Abraham from God's order to sacrifice his son. In conjunction with the stoning, pilgrims offer sacrifices by slaughtering a sheep, whose meat goes to the needy. Nowadays pilgrims do not carry out this rite themselves, but pay agencies which distribute the meat to Muslims in many countries. A total of about 1.5 billion Muslims around the world were celebrating Eid al-Adha with sacrifices of sheep, goats and other animals. This year's Haj attracted just over two million believers including almost 1.4 million from abroad, according to statistics published by the official Saudi Press Agency. The balance of almost 700,000 came from within the kingdom. These numbers are roughly the same as last year. The Haj has drawn a cross-section of humanity, everyone from presidents - Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir was among them - to commoners including a wounded Syrian rebel war veteran, as well as rich and poor pilgrims alike. The Haj, which officially ends on Tuesday, is the world's largest Muslim gathering. It is one of the five pillars of Islam that every capable Muslim must perform at least once, the high-point of his or her spiritual life.

New lab at MIT to analyse Twitter messages

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San Francisco: Twitter will provide the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with $10 million over the next five years to analyse every tweet that has gone out since the network was launched in 2006.

The MIT Media Lab will use the money to establish and operate a Laboratory for Social Machines.

'As part of the new programme, Twitter will also provide full access to its real-time, public stream of tweets, as well as the archive of every tweet dating back to the first, the MIT Media Lab said in a statement announcing the initiative.

'With this investment, Twitter is seizing the opportunity to go deeper into research to understand the role Twitter and other platforms play in the way people communicate, the effect that rapid and fluid communication can have and apply those findings to complex societal issues,' Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said.

The new lab's work will extend across many social media and mass media platforms, the MIT Media Lab said.

The LSM is to be directed by MIT Media Lab associate professor Deb Roy, who is also chief media scientist at Twitter.

'The Laboratory for Social Machines will experiment in areas of public communication and social organisation where humans and machines collaborate on problems that can't be solved manually or through automation alone,' Roy said.

IANS

Spread of AIDS traced to Kinshasa in the 1920s

London: The HIV pandemic began its global spread from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), says a study.

Between the 1920s and 1950s, a 'perfect storm' of factors, including urban growth, strong railway links during Belgian colonial rule, and changes to the sex trade, combined to see HIV emerge from Kinshasa and spread across the globe.

'It seems a combination of factors in Kinshasa in the early 20th Century created a 'perfect storm' for the emergence of HIV, leading to a generalised epidemic with unstoppable momentum that unrolled across sub-Saharan Africa,' said senior study author Oliver Pybus, a professor at Oxford University in Britain.

For the study, the researchers reconstructed the genetic history of the HIV-1 group M pandemic, the event that saw HIV spread across the African continent and around the world.

'For the first time we have analysed all the available evidence using the latest phylogeographic techniques, which enable us to statistically estimate where a virus comes from,' Pybus said.

'This means we can say with a high degree of certainty where and when the HIV pandemic originated,' Pybus added.

HIV is known to have been transmitted from primates and apes to humans at least 13 times but only one of these transmission events has led to a human pandemic.

It was only with the event that led to HIV-1 group M that a pandemic occurred, resulting in almost 75 million infections to date.

'We think it is likely that the social changes around the independence in 1960s saw the virus 'break out' from small groups of infected people to infect the wider population and eventually the world,' first author of the study, Nuno Faria from Oxford University said.

The study appeared in the journal Science.

IANS

Seventeen fall ill after eating snake bitten goat's meat

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TIRUVALLUR (TN): Seventeen people complained of nausea and giddiness after consuming meat of a goat which was reportedly bitten by a snake, a local health official said Wednesday.

They were discharged after treatment at a hospital, the official said.

Villagers of Periyakadambur in Tiruttani Panchayat Union fell ill after consuming mutton late last night. The affected persons "found" that the meat they ate was of a goat owned by a farmer that was reportedly bitten by a snake.

"Nausea is among the common symptoms of food poisoning. We do not know if the goat was bitten by a snake.

If at all that was true, we do not know if that was a poisonous reptile," a Tiruttani health official said, requesting anonymity.

"The villagers say that the goat was bitten by snake. It may be true or may not be true. All the seventeen were treated and later sent home.

"Non-venomous rat snakes are common in Tiruttani region as farm lands are plenty here," he added.

Tiruttani police said they were aware of the incident and declined to comment as there was no complaint

Vigilance probe against Minister Ibrahim Kunju

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THRISSUR: The Thrissur Vigilance Court ordered a vigilance probe against Public Works Minister V K Ibrahim Kunju. Probe is on the order issued to register the land of Kalamassery Water Authority to a private person.

Ernakulam vigilance DySP is in charge of the probe and a three months’ time is given to complete the investigation.

Director Priyadarshan’s mother dies

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Noted director Priyadarshan’s mother Rajamma died here Wednesday following old age ailments at her residence in the capital city. She was 88.

She leaves behind her husband K Soman Nair.

She would be cremated at the Thycaud Crematorium at 5 pm in the evening.

12 blacklisted pharma companies enter Kerala market

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As many as 12 pharma companies that had been blacklisted in other states have managed to make their entry in Kerala. Kerala Medical Services Corporation's failure to examine the list of companies approaching the State for distribution of their products has allegedly been the reason for this.

 

The blacklisted companies have taken part in the tender called by the State for distribution of medicines and got qualified for doing the business here.

 

Kerala Kaumudi had earlier reported on a Rajasthan-based company, which had been blacklisted, entering the Kerala market. A blacklisted Odihsa company was also found to have entered the State. Ten companies banned for sale in Kerala till 2015 taking part in the tender had already created a controversy.  

India not to join war on ISIS

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Washington: India is not going to join "any coalition" in the ongoing fight against the dreaded ISIS group in West Asia but agreed to work with the US to deal with the "major issue" of flight of radicalised people to that region for terror strikes.

The Indian stand over any participation in the US-led coalition air strikes in the war on terrorism against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was outlined by an official of Ministry of External Affairs even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared his concerns during summit talks with President Barack Obama over emerging challenges in West Asia.

Vikram Doraiswami, Joint Secretary (Americas) in the MEA, during a media briefing on yesterday's summit talks said India was not going to join "any coalition" against terrorism but the two sides had agreed on the need to deal with "travellers of terrorism" -- radicalised people who travel for participating in terror activities in West Asia.

"This is a very major issue for us," he said while referring to reports of movement of radicalised youth from India to that region.

Likewise, it was clarified that a trilateral partnership agreed on Afghanistan, would be developmental in nature and not military cooperation.

Doraiswami also said that the "joint and concerted efforts" on dismantling safe havens for terrorist groups and criminal networks as resolved by India and the US in the Joint Statement did not mean that the two countries were going to launch operations but will carry out any UN-mandated task.

India does not have an exact figure on the number of radicalised youth from the country in Iraq.

In what could be a warning bell for the security agencies in India, reports have emerged that the dreaded ISIS group has been recruiting youths from states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra and Jammu and Kashmir to fight in Iraq, Syria and other places in the Middle East. It has also been said that the ISIS is particularly targeting Muslim youths.

Modi during his joint media appearance with Obama said the two countries agreed to intensify cooperation in counter terrorism and intelligence sharing.

Obama said India was emerging as a major power for peace and security in the region.

Modi in his address to the UN General Assembly in New York last Saturday had said that "extremism and fault lines" were growing in West Asia.

Australian PM labels burqa 'confronting form of attire'

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Canberra: Australia's parliament approved tough new counter-terrorism laws on Wednesday but cross-party support for the measures was accompanied a spat over the wearing of burqas.

The opposition Labour combined with the governing conservative coalition to pass a bill designed largely to deal with the threat posed by Islamic State extremists spreading their terror to Australia.

But the united front showed signs of fraying as members of the Labour expressed anger at calls by a small group of governing Liberal MPs to ban the burqa, the full face and body covering worn by many Muslim women.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott weighed into the debate, saying he found the burqa 'a fairly confronting form of attire'.

'Frankly, I wish it was not worn but we are a free country, we are a free society and it is not the business of government to tell people what they should and shouldn't wear,' Abbott said.

He said it was proper that people were required to remove headgear at the request of security staff when entering buildings such as Parliament House in Canberra.

'In certain buildings, people may be required to show their face and I think that is perfectly appropriate,' he said. 'There can't be one rule for one form of attire and a different rule for another form of attire.'

However, Labour MPs accused the government of inciting community division over the issue.

Labour leader Bill Shorten said Abbott needed to slap down the 'fringe dwellers' in his party.

'It is not good enough to talk tolerance and yet have your backbenchers out there pushing socially divisive arguments,' Shorten said.

Meanwhile, Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt labelled Abbott's comments 'shameful dog-whistling.'

IANS