Bnei-Menashe Israeli Becomes IDF Officer

By Hillel Fendel History was made on Wednesday when Shalem Gin, 20, became the first IDF officer from the Bnei Menashe community - descended from one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Gin received the rank of Second Lieutenant, known as Sagam, before friends and family at a ceremony held at the Bahad-1 military base in the Negev. Born in Mizoram, a state in northeastern India, Shalem made Aliyah...

Indo-Bhutan Friendship Car Rally to Begin Soon

By Karma Palden Thimphu, Feb 18 : The 4th Indo-Bhutan Friendship Car Rally, 2011 – Eastern Himalayan Challenge with the theme ‘Connecting people of India and Bhutan’ is scheduled to begin from March 2. The first leg of the rally will begin from Guwahati, India, to Samdrupjongkhar on March 2 and the second leg from Samdrupjongkhar to Mongar on March 3. The third leg will be between Mongar and...

NCA Wants to Develop Cricket in Northeast: Patil

Shillong, Feb 18  : Offering help to develop cricket in the Northeast, former Indian player and director of National Cricket Academy (NCA), Sandeep Patil, today suggested that states in the region should have at least one ground with a tiger turf. "We from the academy are not entitled to sanction any thing but we can carry forward your requirement to the BCCI," Patil told a press conference...

Meghalaya Ranks Poorly in Elementary Education

Shillong, Feb 18 : Meghalaya ranks way below the national average in imparting elementary education in the country, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2010. The national average of children in the 3-4 years age group in 'anganwadi' schools is 75.7 percent, whereas Meghalaya's average is way below at 46.7 percent, revealed the report, released Thursday by Leader of Opposition...

Militants Release WWF Volunteers in Assam

Guwahati, Feb 18 : Three volunteers of environmental group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), who had been kidnapped by militants in Assam Feb 6, were released from captivity Thursday, police said. A police spokesperson said the three male WWF volunteers were released Thursday morning by memebrs of the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) near Balajan, close to the district headquarters...

Manmohan Singh on 2 Day Visit to Assam

New Delhi, Feb 17 : Against the backdrop of government-United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) peace process, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will undertake a two-day visit from tomorrow to Assam, where assembly polls are also due in April-May this year. Singh is expected to review the prevailing situation and some of the developmental projects in the state during the visit. During his talks with chief...

10 Hot New Phones To Look Out For 2011

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, one of the technology's biggest extravaganza, is seeing a slew of smartphone launches. While some smartphones boasts of impressive looks, others of features and some has unique design and user interface. The one thing that was common across most smartphones launched at the event was Google's mobile platform Android. The OS turned out to be a clear show...

Dialling 5683 On Your Mobile 'Can Arouse Love in Your Mind'

Washington, Feb 17 : Cell phones and specifically texting has drilled so deep into our minds that when we simply type numbers that correspond to the letters in a word like 'love', we can activate the meaning of that word in our minds, so says a psychological scientist in Germany. Sascha Topolinski at the University of Wurzburg in Germany tested this theory along with his students. For one experiment,...