New Delhi, Apr 26 (PTI) In a move to stay competitive against rivals like Samsung and Xiaomi, domestic mobile handset maker Micromax is planning to rope in strategic investors on its board in the next 2-3 months, as part of its plans to expand product portfolio and services.

“Micromax is looking at beefing up investments in research and development of its products and services and so, getting a strategic investor on board makes sense,” sources said.

They added that the company is in discussions with potential partners and these kind of decisions “take time”.

“It will be a month or two before the company announces anything,” they said.

When contacted, a Micromax spokesperson said: “As a company policy, we do not comment on any market speculation.”

There have been speculations that Micromax is looking at raising as much as USD one billion from overseas investors, including Japan’s SoftBank, as it looks to invest in start-ups and bringing in innovative technology to defend its turf against rivals like Samsung and Xiaomi.

However, the company has stated that its founders will stay on.

Sources said though Micromax has the option of going in for listing but the Gurgaon-based Micromax is likely to opt in favour of “strategic partners” than an IPO.

In 2010, Micromax had filed for a public listing but later shelved its plans citing poor market conditions.

“The funding would also boost development of new products and technology as this could help Micromax differentiate itself in the crowded smartphone market,” the sources said.

Micromax’s investors include TA Associates, Sequoia Capital, Sandstone Capital and Madison India Capital.

According to research firm Canalys, Micromax overtook Samsung (20 per cent) as India’s largest handset vendor with 22 per cent of shipments in the October-December 2014 quarter.

The Korean firm has challenged the report.

Affordable handsets from homegrown firms, especially Micromax, is credited to have helped India become one of the fastest growing handset markets globally.

For smartphones too, affordably priced devices, especially those under Rs 10,000 are driving the boom in the market, making it the world’s third biggest market.

United Nations, Apr 26 (PTI) UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today assured quake-hit Nepal that the world body will mount a major relief effort and support it in dealing with the humanitarian crisis.

Ban sent his deepest condolences to the Nepali government and to all those affected by the 7.9-magnitude earthquake that jolted the country yesterday, killing nearly 2,000 people and injuring 5,000 others and said the UN will help the government in coordinating international?search and rescue operations.

“The reports of the devastation are still coming in and the numbers of people killed, injured and affected by this earthquake continue to rise,” Secretary-General Ban said in a statement.

“It is clear that very many lives have been lost. There has also been significant damage to Nepal’s irreplaceable cultural heritage. The United Nations is supporting the Government of Nepal in coordinating international?search and rescue operations and is preparing to mount?a major relief effort,” the UN Chief added.

The powerful quake razed to the ground a number of buildings, including the iconic Dharhara tower and the landmark Darbar Square – a UNESCO World Heritage site – in the heart of the capital, trapping scores of people.

The UN expressed concern over the massive number of people in hospitals in the Kathmandu Valley that are running out of room for storing dead bodies and also running short of emergency supplies.

UN field offices reported that the eastern region was not badly affected and that the Terai had been minimally affected.

The Nepali government has requested international assistance in the response to the disaster, with particular importance placed on the search and rescue capacity, medical teams, supplies and tenting for hospitals, heavy equipment for rubble removal and helicopters for transport and access to blocked areas.

President of the General Assembly, Sam Kutesa, also expressed his deep concern and sorrow over the devastation.

Executive Director of the UN Population Fund, Babatunde Osotimehin, also expressed his deepest sympathy to those affected by the earthquake, saying he was “shocked and saddened” by the deaths and disappearance of hundreds of people, as well as the widespread destruction and displacement caused by the disaster.

He added that the UNFPA stood ready to join international efforts to give assistance to the government and people of Nepal, expressing particular concern about the fate of pregnant women who have been affected by this tragedy, including those who might face potentially life-threatening complications.

All efforts will be exerted to support their safety and the safety of their babies, he said.

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit Nepal early this morning, striking an area between Kathmandu and the city of Pokhara, with damage extending to India, Bangladesh, and Tibet. At the time of publication, nearly 1,000 people have died and more than 1,700 have been injured as a result of the earthquake, the BBC reports. In an attempt to aid rescue efforts, Google has once again opened up its Person Finder tool — a simple crowd-sourced missing persons database.

Google first launched the application in 2010, following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and has since deployed the tool several times after natural disasters. Person Finder gathers information from emergency responders and individual users who can enter information for a missing person or someone who has been found. At this time, around 1,300 records have been collected and that number will likely continue to grow throughout the day.

Yesterday at 11.56 am Nepal witnessed the deadliest tremor in centuries which scaled 7.5 Richter scale. The effect was felt in all the districts of Nepal.

The death toll so far has has reached 2000 till Sunday morning and still bodies are being recovered under debris.

The quake has damaged massive loss of property and houses. At least 7,00,000 lakh houses are fully or partially damaged. While most modern buildings remained standing after the quake, it brought down several buildings in the center of the capital as well as centuries-old temples and towers. Among them was the nine-story Dharahara Tower, a Kathmandu landmark built by Nepal’s royal rulers as a watchtower in the 1800s and a UNESCO-recognised historical monument. It was reduced to rubble and there were reports of people trapped underneath.

The Kathmandu Valley is listed as a World Heritage site. The Buddhist stupas, public squares and Hindu temples are some of the most well-known sites in Kathmandu, and now some of the most deeply mourned. Nepali journalist and author Shiwani Neupane tweeted: “The sadness is sinking in. We have lost our temples, our history, the places we grew up.”

India was quick to respond with relief materials being sent in Army helicopters. About 300 doctors are attending the injured. PM Modi has taken self initiative to help Nepal in this disastrous moment. Relief ametrails from other countries have already started pouring in the country. The United States and the European Union were among those to pledge assistance to the government of Nepal, as messages of support poured in from world leaders including China’s Xi Jinping, France’s Francois Hollande, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The US is sending a disaster response team and has authorised an initial $1 million in aid to address immediate needs, the US Agency for International Development said. The European Union also said its humanitarian experts were heading to the crisis areas.

Nepal’s devastating earthquake was the disaster experts knew was coming.

Just a week ago, about 50 earthquake and social scientists from around the world came to Kathmandu, Nepal, to figure out how to get this poor, congested, overdeveloped, shoddily built area to prepare better for the big one, a repeat of the 1934 temblor that leveled this city. They knew they were racing the clock, but they didn’t know when what they feared would strike.

“It was sort of a nightmare waiting to happen,” said seismologist James Jackson, head of the earth sciences department at the University of Cambridge in England. “Physically and geologically what happened is exactly what we thought would happen.”

But he didn’t expect the massive quake that struck Saturday to happen so soon. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed nearly 1,400 and counting and caused widespread destruction.

“I was walking through that very area where that earthquake was and I thought at the very time that the area was heading for trouble,” said Jackson, lead scientist for Earthquakes Without Frontiers, a group that tries to make Asia more able to bounce back from these disasters and was having the meeting.

Hospitals across the impoverished nation of 28 million people struggled to cope with the dead and injured from Nepal’s worst quake in 81 years, and a lack of equipment meant rescuers could look no deeper than surface rubble for signs of life.

Ramesh Pokharel, a staff member of the Bhaktapur Hospital on the outskirts of Kathmandu, said that around 50 bodies were lying in a field outside.

Doctors were treating patients in a makeshift tent next to the main building, and staff were too busy to count or register names of the casualties.

While most Indian men brag after a date, this man from Chennai has been a dating spree with 110 dates, in just 4 months starting from 1st January 2015, and plans to do a total of 365 dates before the year ends.

This super achiever of a date expert is Sunder Ramu is a Chennai-based actor and photographer.

He has set a rule that the woman he dates, should pay for the meal. They can cook for him too. And women from different fields have taken him out on a date.To be dating so many women without spending a single penny! Well, he saves money for a greater cause, which is providing a day’s meal for an NGO every month.

Some experiences of Sunder Ramu on a date
How Does He Set Up The Dates?

“It’s mostly people I know. I always approach strangers face to face, and a lot of them now ask me on Facebook.”

The oldest woman he went on a date with was a 105-year-old granny from a village near Pondicherry. And the most adventurous date was when a journalist took him sailing! Here’s a photo blog of some of the many women who took our man out on a date.

“I feel so loved and reenergized about people. It’s difficult to pick one because everyone is putting in a of thought n effort into the meals.”

He also went on a date with Chandra, who works as a sweeper. She made a home-cooked lunch for him, and they ate the meal sitting under the shade of trees in the apartment compound where Sunder resides. The mother of three was thrilled to share a meal with a man she had seen on television, and apologized for not wearing anything fancy.

The Australian government says it is “gravely concerned” by apparent preparations for the executions of 10 drug smugglers.

A Filipino maid facing the death penalty after being convicted of drug trafficking was moved yesterday to an island prison in Indonesia where the execution will take place.

Mary Jane Veloso is among 10 drug smugglers whose planned executions last month were postponed due to last-minute appeals. The others are three Nigerian men, two Australian men, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, and a man each from Brazil, Ghana, France and Indonesia.

An armoured personnel carrier and a car were seen arriving at a port on Friday for the short trip to Nusa Kambangan, and prison officials said Veloso was inside the car. Tony Spontana, a spokesman for the Indonesian attorney general, confirmed that Veloso had been moved.

Warren Truss, the Australian deputy prime minister, said on Friday: “I am aware of growing concerns that these executions may now be being brought forward. The Australian embassy is endeavouring to gather as much information as they can so that we are better able to respond to the circumstances.

“Our position, obviously, hasn’t changed. We are appealing and will continue to appeal to the Indonesian government not to proceed with these executions. We abhor the drug trade but the death penalty is also unacceptable to Australians. That’s a message we have conveyed in the past and will continue to do so, so long as there’s hope.”

A spokesperson for Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop said she had “made contact with Indonesian foreign minister Marsudi to register her concern at recent developments, following her further written representation to her this week.”

“Minister Bishop has been informed that foreign minister Marsudi is attending the Asia-Africa conference and is unavailable to speak with her. Therefore, our embassy has lodged a formal request for a telephone call to take place.”
Bali Nine: embassies summoned in sign executions could be imminent
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Appeals have been exhausted for all but one of the 10, Raheem Agbaje Salami of Nigeria, who is awaiting the outcome of his request for a judicial review.

Salami’s lawyer confirmed on Thursday that the Nigerian embassy had received a letter asking it to go to Cilacap, the port closest to the execution site, on Saturday. Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte’s lawyer confirmed that the Brazilian embassy had received the same letter.
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“Based on experience from the previous execution, they’re going to tell them the date for the execution,” Salami’s lawyer said.

“Last time when we were asked to gather in the district prosecutor’s office we were then taken to Nusa Kambangan to tell the convict about the execution time,” he said. “And three days after that, they were executed.”

Indonesian officials have not said when the executions by firing squad will take place. Indonesia has vowed to go through with the executions despite various appeals from the countries of the convicted.

Veloso’s case has caused a public outcry in the Philippines. She travelled to Indonesia in 2010 where her godmother’s daughter reportedly told her a job as domestic worker awaited her. She alleges that her godsister provided the suitcase where the drugs were discovered when Veloso arrived at an airport in Java, Indonesia.

Her move to the island prison comes after Indonesia’s supreme court earlier this week turned down the final appeals by prisoners from France and Ghana.

The appeals for judicial review by Serge Areski Atlaoui of France and Martin Anderson of Ghana were rejected by Indonesia’s highest court in closed-door hearings on Tuesday, said Suhadi, the court spokesman and a member of the three-judge panel.

Lawyers for Chan and Sukumaran, two of the so-called “Bali Nine”, have lodged a new appeal in the constitutional court but the attorney general says the pair have exhausted their legal avenues and he will not recognise the latest action.

Spontana confirmed reports on Thursday that his office had sent letters to prosecutors advising them to prepare for the executions.

Asked if a date was set, he replied: “Up to tonight, not yet.”

The letters asked prosecutors to make preparations and were not the notification letters for the convicts themselves, he said.

The planned executions have soured relations between Indonesia and other countries. President Joko Widodo has vowed not to grant mercy to drug offenders because Indonesia is suffering a “drug emergency”.

In Paris, the French president François Hollande urged Indonesian authorities to grant clemency to Atlaoui, telling a news conference that executing Atlaoui “would be damaging for the relations we want to have with Indonesia”.

Jakarta executed six drug convicts, including five foreigners, in January, brushing aside last-minute appeals from Brazil and the Netherlands. More than 130 people are on death row in Indonesia, including 57 drug convicts.

Indonesia is required to give 72 hours’ notice of the executions.

The White House was forced to concede on Thursday that it killed two innocent hostages – one American, one Italian – in a drone strike that targeted an al-Qaida compound despite officials not knowing precisely who was in the vicinity.
White House admits: we didn’t know who drone strike was aiming to kill
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The deaths of Dr Warren Weinstein, a US government aid worker, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian aid worker, who were being held captive in the Afghanistan and Pakistan border region, have placed unprecedented pressure on Barack Obama’s secret program of targeted drone killings.

They mark the first time a US drone strike has inadvertently killed innocent hostages, and have forced the Obama administration to disclose an unprecedented amount of information about what would typically be a highly classified operation.

Among the most startling admissions was the fact the drone strike was authorized by a senior counter-terrorism official without any specific information about who was in the immediate area, which had merely been identified as a compound frequented by al-Qaida leaders.

Hours after Obama personally expressed his “profound regret” over the deaths, and announced an immediate review of the operation, his press secretary, Josh Earnest, said the victims’ families would be compensated, and gave unprecedented details about the intelligence that led to the operation.

Earnest said the compound was targeted based on “near-certain” intelligence that indicated it was being frequented by at least one al-Qaida leader, and that no civilians were in the area. Earnest said the review may raise “legitimate questions” that would force the administration to change its protocols for such operations.

Conceding that the operation was not ordered against any individual targets, Earnest said the administration only discovered later that the compound was occupied by Weinstein, La Porto and another American named Ahmed Farouq, who the White House says was a “leader” of the terrorist group.

Farouq was not, however, the target of the operation. The drone strike was not targeted at known al-Qaida members; instead, it was directed against anyone in the vicinity of what the US believed was a compound being used by the terrorist group.
Adam Gadahn: California death metal fan who rose quickly in al-Qaida’s ranks
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A second drone strike in January, which killed Adam Gadahn, another American who the US says had become an al-Qaida fighter, was also targeted at terrorist compound, without knowledge of who specifically was in the vicinity.

There was no specific authorisation to kill Farouq and Gadahn.

Earlier, Obama praised what he claimed was his administration’s exceptionally transparent response to the tragedy.

He did not mention the two American al-Qaida members in the statement from the White House, in which he sought to explain how his counter-terrorism strike could have take the lives of two hostages. Neither did he use the word “drone”.

“As president and as commander-in-chief, I take full responsibility of all of our counter-terrorism operations, including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovanni,” Obama said. “I profoundly regret what happened. On behalf of the United States government, I offer our deepest apologies to their families.”

Yet the president struck a surprisingly defiant tone, insisting that his administration had acted on the best intelligence available at the time and claiming that his decision to declassify the operation and initiate a review was a sign of American exceptionalism.

He said he had decided to make the existence of the operation public because Weinstein and Lo Porto’s families “deserve to know the truth” and “the United States is a democracy, committed to openness, in good times and in bad”.
Warren Weinstein’s wife: US efforts to rescue husband ‘disappointing’
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Weinstein was kidnapped by al-Qaida in 2011. Lo Porto had been a hostage of the terrorist group since 2012.

While Obama praised the transparency of the response, secrecy still surrounds the vast majority of drone strikes that one senator estimated in 2013 had killed 4,700 people.

This was only the second time, following a presidential speech that year, that Obama has acknowledged killing innocents. These have included a 16-year-old boy with US citizenship.

Critics have lambasted Obama for conducting a counter-terrorism war almost entirely in secret.

The American Civil Liberties Union in March sued the Obama administration for disclosure of critical legal documents underpinning what the administration calls its “targeted killing” program – including the criteria for placement on a list permitting the US to kill people, including its own citizens, without trial.
Giovanni Lo Porto, killed in US drone strike, was ‘incredibly loyal’ friend
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Obama’s admission regarding the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto is likely to intensify criticism of the president’s drone strikes, conducted by the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command. A recent analysis by human-rights group Reprieve estimated that US drone strikes intending to target 41 men had killed 1,147 people as of November.
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US officials insist the operations are “targeted” and cause minimal civilian casualties.

In his statement from the White House Obama, said intelligence indicated that “this was an al-Qaida compound, that no civilians were present, and that capturing these terrorists was not possible”.

He added: “And we do believe that the operation did take out dangerous members of al-Qaida.”

The White House said Ahmed Farouqwas a “leader” of the terrorist group, and also confirmed that it killed fellow al-Qaida member Adam Gadahn in a separate operation in January.

The two American al-Qaida members were not, however, deliberately targeted. Instead, the White House indicated they, too, were killed by accident. “Neither was specifically targeted, and we did not have information indicating their presence at the sites of these operations,” the White House said.

For years, Gadahn was al-Qaida’s premier American member – his nom de guerre was “Azzam the American” – and a fixture of its pre-social-media English-language propaganda. A former heavy-metal fan from California born in 1978, Gadahn joined al-Qaida around the turn of the century after physically attacking an Orange County imam for insufficient piety.
Adam Gadahn: California death metal fan who rose quickly in al-Qaida’s ranks
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Obama spoke with Weinstein’s wife, Elaine, and the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, on Tuesday. “As a husband and a father I cannot begin to imagine the anguish that the Weinstein and Lo Porto families are enduring today,” he said. “I realise that there are no words that can ever equal their loss. There is nothing that I can ever say or do to ease their heartache.”

But the president blamed the deaths of the innocent hostages on “the fog of war” and maintained that his response to the tragedy showed his administration’s transparency.

“What we did not know, tragically, is that al-Qaida was hiding the presence of Warren and Giovanni in this same compound. It is a cruel and bitter truth that in the fog of war generally, and in our fight against terrorists specifically, mistakes – sometimes deadly mistakes – can occur,” he said.

“But one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.”

Weinstein’s wife Elaine said in a statement their family was “devastated” by the news of his death, and criticised the response of the US government to his abduction.

Elaine Weinstein stressed her husband’s captors “bear ultimate responsibility” for his death, but said the Pakistani government had treated his captivity as “more of an annoyance than a priority”, and described the assistance the family received from the US government as “inconsistent and disappointing”.

“We hope that my husband’s death and the others who have faced similar tragedies in recent months will finally prompt the US government to take its responsibilities seriously, and establish a coordinated and consistent approach to supporting hostages and their families,” she said.

Speaking from Palermo, where Lo Porto was from, his mother Giusy was quoted as saying she did not want to speak to reporters. “Leave me alone to my pain,” she told the Italian news agency Ansa. Her Facebook page was covered with photographs of Lo Porto from a happier time.

“Italy extends its deepest condolences to the family of Giovanni Lo Porto,” prime minister Renzi said in a statement. He had personally been informed of the news by Obama on Wednesday, just days after the two leaders met in Washington. “I express deep sorry for the death of an Italian, who has dedicated his life to serving others,” he added. Lo Porto’s family was notified of his death by Italy’s crisis unit.

In a separate statement, Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, said the “uniquely tragic” nature of the operation was something the administration would do its best to ensure was not repeated. “To this end, although the operation was lawful and conducted consistent with our counter-terrorism policies, we are conducting a thorough independent review to understand fully what happened and how we can prevent this type of tragic incident in the future,” he added.

Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, indicated that the oversight panel had known about the mistaken drone strikes for some time.

“The committee has already been reviewing the specific January operation that led to these deaths, and I now intend to review that operation in greater detail,” Feinstein said.

Despite the details released by the White House – a highly unusual move for a clandestine “counterterrorism operation” – important questions remain.

Although it is assumed Weinstein and Lo Porto were killed by a drone strike, it is not known precisely when or where it took place, or how many al-Qaida operatives or other civilians were killed in the strike.

The White House said only the operation took place in the operation that killed Weinstein and Lo Porto took place in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan in January.

The Wall Street Journal, which was first to break details of the operation based on details supplied by senior officials in Obama’s administration, said the operation was a drone strike against a compound in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

According to media reports on both sides of the border, there were five attacks in Pakistan in January and seven air strikes in Afghanistan.

Although not all of the Afghanistan strikes may have been by unmanned aircraft, the use of drones has increased sharply in the east of the country in recent months as militants have been pushed from their old sanctuaries in Pakistan.

The Obama administration’s decision not to publicly locate the operation in either Afghanistan or Pakistan is probably the result of a longstanding US practice of merging the border areas between the countries for counter-terrorism purposes.

The US has a UN mandate to conduct military operations in Afghanistan; that is not the case for Pakistan, where the US drone campaign is regarded as illegal by some critics.

Saifullah Mahsud, director of the Fata Research Centre in Islamabad, said he heard rumours months ago that two foreign hostages, including an Italian, had been killed by a drone strike at the end of January.

Pakistani government and security officials believe the strike took place on January 15 in Shawal, a thickly forested area of in North Waziristan, a longstanding trouble spot bordering Afghanistan.
One researcher who works in the tribal areas said they were killed in the same strike that targeted senior members of al-Qaida’s recently formed South Asia franchise.

“There is a limit to what the drone can see on the ground,” said Mahsud. “Incidents like these are bound to happen now and then if you don’t have intelligence on the ground.”

Shazad Akbar, a lawyer and anti-drone campaigner, said he believed the strikes took place in Pakistan and they “proved the CIA have no clue who they are killing”.